According to Women’s Wear Daily, the brands reacted with “puzzlement and consternation” when scans of their ads appeared on the likes of Modelinia, Fashionologie — and the WordPress-hosted blog of Conde Nast-owned Love. That magazine’s editor in chief, Katie Grand, told WWD that “practical steps have been taken to ensure no unauthorized campaign content can appear on the blog at any point in the future.”
The campaigns that have been taken down appear to be Dior’s, Balenciaga’s, and Celine’s, although they can still be easily found on other, less institutional blogs. (Love‘s blog still has authorized advances of Spring/Summer campaigns from Burberry, Givenchy, Valentino, Loewe, Gianfranco Ferre, and more. The accompanied commentary from creative directors and photographers is a sign of how hard it is to talk intelligently about visuals, or maybe how many fashion people aren’t much with words. Example: “It was all the things I expected it to be and it was super fun doing it!”)
The impact of premiering a campaign in a key print buy has already been lessened by the digital age, crowded with other visual amusements and almost impossible to control. So shouldn’t these houses be happy anyone wants to look at their ads at all? Especially when they’re being posted free on the sites of magazines they normally have to pay to display their campaigns? Then again, giving these companies the benefit of the doubt, trumped-up controversy is its own selling strategy.
Runaway Ads [WWD]
