“From your First Flip, to your First Big Leap in Life”
Lacoste: “The Big Leap” Analysis
«The Big Leap» ad is part of Lacoste’s campaign “Life is a Beautiful Sport”, launched in 2014, as the official costume sponsor of the French Olympic Team, inspired by the 2014 Winter Olympics and Fashion New York Week. The ad film was awarded at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, getting the Silver Lion.
“Life is a beautiful sport”
A sport involves struggle and engagement in situations of physical, spiritual and mental patience, power, effort, inner coercion, empowerment and pressure.
Life is a beautiful sport, because it offers you a “journey”, either victory or defeat, the whole effort is important. It is the “Big Leap” that everyone has to do, overcoming the limits of self-restraint in every aspect of everyday life and dealing with any kind of challenge, as it happens with the ones of a sporting game.
As in a game, the value of the sporting spirit is the source of beauty, so in everyday life the spirit of the beauty of life is rooted in and out, aesthetically and mentally, based on authenticity, as well as on appearance and elegance. Every life’s game is a challenge that involves the power of courage, the struggle with fears, the call to overcome the unknown, which initially creates a sense of emptiness. And all this is allegorically presented through “The Big Leap”.
«The Big Leap»: Title with metaphorical and literal meaning
Based on the campaign “Life is a beautiful sport,” the title of the ad is precisely the Big Leap:
Two beautiful young people in a cafe. The young man thinks to make the Big Leap and overcome his fear or hesitation: to kiss the girl. And somehow, he begins the whole storytelling of the protagonist’s inner battle with his fear.
The advertising starts in close-ups with the two young protagonists, showing that the game between them, through their eyes, the movements of their faces and their bodies has just begun.
With a continuous transition from the real to the fantastic world, we watch, on the one hand, the young man half naked and barefoot, in the middle of nowhere, lost with closing his eyes and bowing his head to move to the real world, where on the other hand he thinks he is with the girl he likes, struggling with himself, and preparing to show something more: to kiss the girl, an action that makes an internal struggle with himself.
“Dress Lacoste, make the Big Leap”, whether you are athlete in a game or athlete in everyday life, because wearing Lacoste, your life is more beautiful, not only aesthetically but also psychologically. Making the big leap, Lacoste helps you overcome yourself, your limits, without feeling lost anymore, so that you can reach where you want to have the big win and desire, because “victory” is a desire.
The protagonist’s fear of kissing the girl is beaten by his desire of making true the Big Leap, and finally kissing the girl. Dress Lacoste, athletically, casually and at the same time with style, ready to make the big leap, ready to meet the challenges of sport’s life and everyday’s one.
It is a creative concept, with high aesthetic because it is original and includes the element of synthesis: it combines two worlds that even seemingly they look diametrically different, they are essentially directly linked to each other, because the concept plays with the aspects of the soul of the young protagonist. The big leap connects both of the worlds, both real and imaginary one. It is a prototype concept both in terms of reasoning in relation to Lacoste’s philosophy and the way that the whole idea is developed in advertising.
The ad focused on his blue eyes, which at the same time restrain the audience, it shows to express the fear, the hesitation “I want to kiss her but..”. When he closes his eyes, at the same time he opens them again, being in two parallel worlds the real and the imaginary one, where he feels completely lost, half-naked.
This is where Lacoste is involved: he does not wear Lacoste, so he is lost, as if, the inner chaos “has taken him out of his clothes”, he feels naked because of his chaos, since any brand satisfies him, without softening his internal struggle. On the other side, in the real world, dressing up with Lacoste , is the immediate solution that will give the inner power.
And while in the imaginary world he is in a lost world, he is deserted, lonely and he is moving uneasily on the roof of a tall building, at the same time in reality he shows his worry through hand movements and a nod with his finger stating his thought, the moment when at the rooftop he makes a quick backward step before the big start: “to do it or not to do it, to kiss it or not to kiss it, to make the big leap or not”, the girl looks at him, with a way of calling him to kiss her.
He prepares to make the big leap and at the same time the first move:
He touches her hand, starts running and screaming: he will do it and when he reaches at the end of the rooftop, he starts making a literal jump into the imaginary world at the same time as he does a metaphoric one in the real world.
At the moment he jumps from the rooftop to the real world through the movement of his body, he slowly rises from the chair and approaches kissing the girl and with an exceptional slow motion, the rotation of the two worlds is expressed in stunning scenes, presenting the whole struggle with himself. And so in the fantastic world he begins to fall into the void just before he will really kiss her. Falling, he now feels empty — the hands between the two youngsters — they are both anxious now and they are together making the big leap between reality and imagination — fall together in the empty space before they even kiss — and while kissing.
And there is where reality and imagination come together, there is nothing in between them. They are kissed and dressed, with the boy wearing Lacoste, the girl we do not know, but falling together a light in the middle appears to show that now everything is clearer.
It is high aesthetic:
Because of the protagonists’ beauty, who are young, good-looking, with blue eyes and have their own brand. As well as audiovisually, despite the absence of a direct-word dialogue, there is an internal dialogue through the eyes of the two young people, the hands and the movement of the body. At the same time, the close / focus of the two in the real world and the 3D / panoramic images in the imaginary world of the young, and the slow motions, are elements that remain memorable to the viewer and in direct conjunction through the soundtrack of the song.
Despite the slightest of the lyrics of the soundrack “You & Me” by Disclosure ft Eliza Doolittle — Flume Remix looks like he tells the thoughts/story of the two protagonists. The musical and stage alternations are married in such a way as to create reassuring combinations that embody / invite the audience into a feeling that puts the viewer directly into the whole concept. The direction and music accompaniment travel you along with the protagonist in his thoughts, worries, in such a way that either inviting you to wear Lacoste, creating desire, or making you feel like you are Lacoste, through advertising.
“Gonna be you and me”: The girl looks at the young man with anxiety about the moment the protagonist prepares to make the big leap, while in the real world he grabs her hand, preparing for “It’s you and me”
“Gonna be everything you, you’ve ever dreamed”: the young man starts running to make the big leap at the same moment, he approaches to kiss the girl, “you will be all you dreamed of”, but the protagonist is not going to stay in the dream.
“Have you gonna off your love?”: At the end of the ad, you left your love / did you leave your love? If yes, do not make the same mistake, now Lacoste is here for you! If not, do what the protagonist, dress up with Lacoste!
Finally, it is worth mentioning Lacoste’s logo with the crocodile is appeared only in the young’s t-shirt, with the brand the title of the campaign to which it belongs. It’s a seemingly simple ad with two youngsters in a restaurant who are flirting each other without talking, yet it’s creative because advertising gives life to inner desires-fights needs in a highly live way.
The Ogilvies : Danai Lyratzi Xenia Ntavranoglou Stavroula Pollatou Ioanna Thanasi Katerina Tsigarida
Ad and PR Lab coordinators : Betty Tsakarestou Lina Kiriakou
