All of this Levis advert-watching has reminded me of my first experience of focus groups. I must have been 17 and was asked to sit in a small room and watch adverts. I stopped stuffing my face full of free crisps and coke just long enough to be shown a selection of new Levis commercials (including this one above).
I’m afraid I panned this ad. All of their previous ads had actually made me want to wear Levis - this one seemed to be saying that Levis could make me look like a woman. And talk about an unflattering product shot at the start.
A couple of weeks later I saw it on air and felt a bit stupid - “it must be good after all,” I thought. “The people sitting behind that mirror must have thought I was a bit of an idiot. Why didn’t I just say I liked it…”
But I look at it now and I still think it’s bad. Levis didn’t need to make ads like this in those days. It felt like a cheap gag then and it still does now.
