Clothing ads, eh? Always a laugh. They show you some model looking like a million bucks in a plain t-shirt, and suddenly you need that t-shirt. As if it’s the shirt doing the magic, not the six-figure paycheck and personal trainer.
I actually waded into this murky water myself a while back. Thought I’d try and sell some gear I’d designed. Jackets, they were. Was pretty proud of them, put a lot of work into making them unique.
My Big Idea for Ads
So, I had these jackets. Good stuff. Solid. Thought, ‘Right, let’s take some photos, make ’em look irresistible.’ I’d seen all the ads, you know, the glossy magazines, those quick flashy videos where everyone’s effortlessly cool and the clothes just pop. ‘Easy,’ I thought. Famous last words, of course.
What Really Happened When I Tried
Well, the reality was a bit different from the dream. Here’s the lowdown:
- The ‘Model’: My mate, let’s call him Kev. Kev’s a good lad, always up for helping, but he ain’t exactly runway material. More like ‘just rolled out of bed and needs a coffee’ material.
- The ‘Studio’: The park down the road. And then my back garden when it started drizzling, which wasn’t exactly the high-fashion backdrop I’d envisioned.
- The ‘Creative Direction’: That was me, mostly shouting things like, ‘Try to look… you know… aspirational, Kev!’ He mostly just looked confused, or like he really needed that coffee.
The photos? Well, they were photos of Kev wearing a jacket. No mystery, no allure. Just… a jacket, looking pretty ordinary. My DMs weren’t exactly blowing up with orders, you know? My mum said they were ‘nice’. That’s usually the kiss of death, isn’t it?
The Hard Truth About Selling Threads
Then it properly hit me, like a ton of bricks. These big companies, these massive brands? They’re not really selling clothes, are they? They’re selling you a dream. A complete fantasy. You see some bloke in an ad, looking cool and moody, leaning on a ridiculously expensive sports car, wearing a £200 hoodie, and you think the hoodie’s the key to all that. It’s absolute nonsense! It’s the car, the perfect lighting that took hours to set up, the ten-grand camera, the team of stylists and makeup artists fussing about just out of shot.
They talk about the ‘quality of the ad’. Yeah, what that really means is ‘is it shiny enough and distracting enough to make you want it?’ And ‘relevant to your target audience’? That just means ‘do we know precisely how to poke at your insecurities to make you feel like you need this item to be complete?’ It’s all about making that simple outfit a ‘must-have item’. And how do they do that? By making you believe, even for a second, that it’ll somehow transform your life.
I saw an influencer the other day, right? Wearing some ridiculously cheap, unbranded top. Probably cost less than my lunch. But they filmed themselves laughing with a bunch of equally good-looking friends, sunshine blazing, perfect picturesque life unfolding. And suddenly, everyone in the comments is asking, ‘OMG, where’s that top from?!’ It wasn’t the bloody top they wanted. It was the life, the vibe, the effortless cool they were dangling in front of everyone’s faces. That’s the real ‘creative’ part of it, the big con.
My jackets were decent. I stand by that. But I was just a bloke trying to sell a piece of clothing. I wasn’t equipped, nor did I have the budget, to sell the illusion of a better, cooler, more exciting life in 30 seconds or a single glossy photo. I didn’t have the resources to make my stuff ‘instantly memorable’ unless it was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
So, yeah, that’s my little adventure and what I figured out about clothing ads. It’s a racket. A very clever one, I’ll give them that. They’re not just trying to dress you; they’re playing with your head, making you want the story, not just the shirt. And most of the time, it works. Damn them.
