Have you seen the new ad with Audrey Hepburn? Pure genuis. She is a classic. I love the Gap for keeping dance in their ads year after year.

Bravo!

Yes, i've seen it, and as is usually with the case with GAP ads, I had no idea what the ad was for until the GAP logo appeared!
The ad didn't really do anything for me, but I agree with admiring GAP for keeping dance in their ads.

I thought four horsemen would signal the end of humanity? Instead, the Apocalypse has been signaled by bringing Audrey Hepburn back to life so she can hawk Gap Crap dancing to the music of ACDC. Egad.

I just caught the ad. I didn't find it offensive. I thought it was creative...In fact, I have slender legs like Miss Hepburn, and I believe I will check out the new classic skinny black pants they are advertising!

The thing is....

While it's obvious that someone at Gap -- or at their ad agency -- loves dance, that can't be the only reason they feature the art in their ads. Someone high up in the process thinks that using dance will help sell the product...because people like to watch dance.

So, what we should be asking ourselves is this: How do we get the thousands of viewers -- the people who think the ads are pretty cool, because they've got dance in them -- to take the next step and start looking for other opportunities to watch dance?

If I were the marketing director for a major dance company, I'd be looking for opportunities for shared promotions between my organization and Gap. Imagine if there were billboards and TV spots all over NYC plugging both Gap and Mark Morris. In Canada, they could work with NBOC. In the UK, they could work with RB. The possibilities for some serious audience development are stunning.

If Audrey Hepburn were alive today she would not be shopping at GAP.

My pointe exactly. Audrey Hepburn wouldn’t be caught dead dressed down in Gap Crap. I have to admit the ad is kind of cute. I am quite familiar with Miss Hepburn’s career and life. Hence, I can state emphatically that she would never wear the Gap and never listen to ACDC. Case closed.

...And if she were asked to appear with such a group, Marni Nixon would overdub the vocals.

I am not so sure she would shop at the Gap either but she did start the trend of skinny black pants and ballet slippers. She made this style famous. I think that was the point.

Michael may I ask how you are familiar with her? Through books and movies or a family friend?

You just had to bring that up Salzberg! Grrrrrrrr! The powers-to-be should have stuck with Audrey’s vocals as Eliza Doolittle. She was good enough for the movie. I would rather have her acting than Julie Andrew’s singing.

Speaking of ballet slippers, I found this gem on the web years ago, which I wallpapered all over my computer. Yum!

Sadly I am no relation or friend of Audrey, just a huge fan. I have seen Sabrina about 255 times and own a veritable plethora of DVDs and books about Audrey.

I'm a total fan, too. She was my idol when I was growing up...

I don't shop at GAP (or much of anyplace else), I don't listen to ACDC, and I'm not a big fan of Audrey Hepburn (I think she's beautiful, but I never liked her voice). But I like the ad.

Just to defend The Gap (for a little bit!), Sylvie Guillem wears Gap. There's a picture of her on a sailboat, where the tag of her jacket very visibly shows it's from The Gap. Though it's too small to see here, the 7th picture from the top is what I'm referring to:

http://www.sylvieguillem.com/sylvie/book/invi

If it's good enough for a glamourous Parisian ballerina ...

--Andre

Thanks for the preview. I’m waiting on the book from Amazon. There was something so genuine, so honest, so real about Audrey Hepburn the human being as well as Audrey Hepburn the actress. Audrey would never approve of Gap Sweatshops enslaving fellow human beings.

I think you'll enjoy the book. It's really huge and shows her talent as a photographer.

As for sweatshops, that's why you should shop at American Apparel: sweatshop-free clothes made right in Los Angeles. I also love the fact that they have the phrase "vertically integrated manufacturing" right in their stores: I can hardly see their target demographic responding to that phrase!

--Andre