Gucci Hallucination Campaign
Not another campaign but monumental digital art
In September 2017 during the Gucci Spring Summer 2018 fashion show, the notes for guests explained: “Creation is a poetic act. It’s an eruptive process emerging from a magnetic core inhabited by urgencies, ghosts and desires. A whirl in which vital strengths; once trapped, are finally revealed.” The quote explains the season itself, and what has inspired Alessandro Michele — creative director of Gucci — to envision this astonishing campaign.
Ignasi Monreal, a Spanish artist, also added his own mythical vision to Gucci’s latest ads since he was the one who took over the new digital project for the House of Gucci. Mermaids on a rock taking “selfies”, Snow White, women fishing in the clouds for airplanes, Ophelia and a golden knight carrying a handbag definitely add a level of fantasy into the surrealism leaning to a mythical exploration of a “Utopian Fantasy”.
This campaign was released without photograph usage but featured images from Monreal instead.With no limits to the fantasy that can be created with illustrations, the images take us on a journey through the three elements earth, sea and sky. For the Gucci Hallucination campaign, I. Monreal was commissioned by Gucci to reinterpret the House motifs and products in his own vision and media. He in turn used digital painting tools to render ironic portraits with pop culture references which are then printed onto essential Gucci silhouettes. Also, there are some famous artworks that anyone might recognise like Van Eyck’s “Arnolfini Portrait”, Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights” or the instantly recognisable “Ophelia” by John Everett Millais.
Inside Gucci’s art gallery video, Ignasi Monreal plays the curator, walking the viewers through his campaign illustrations for the Spring Summer 2018 collection. Describing the paint colors used in his works, the video campaign is an ironic twist on reality. At the end of the film, Ignasi steps into the lily covered pond his own painting — inspired by the work Ophelia (1852) by John Everett Millais — to help the tragic beauty dressed in Alessandro Michele’s gold sequinned dress — out of her watery grave.
And there is more fun as Gucci has made Monreal’s artwork interactive for customers and supporters. The Spanish artist’s signature surreal artwork is on display as sticker artwork, the backdrop of store window displays, and for a new digital activation project that connects to the Gucci App. By activating artwork will be printed as tickets for customers to receive with purchase at 52 designated stores, where virtual reality devices are available for use. Each device will show 360-degree panoramas that have been created using Monreal’s campaign illustrations. In various Gucci stores around the world, their windows will be dedicated to the artist’s works created for the Gucci Spring Summer 2018 advertising campaign and projected onto a big screen, like a work of art displayed in a gallery.
Gucci has raised the bar with this unique campaign that gives customers a deeper sensory experience through art, fashion, and tech. And if people can’t make their way into a Gucci store for the virtual reality experience, 15 of 20 illustrations from the Spring 2018 campaign will appear in magazines and newspapers and will be scannable using the Gucci App to reveal special 3D pages with augmented reality effects. To be honest, with all that innovation, Home of Gucci is about making fashion extremely cool.
And here they are all the evidence. According to data that is provided by the Internet, from 2016, Gucci’s Internet presence has grown with more people searching for the brand online. In 2017, the brand saw a 115% increase in growth, with over $61,798,514 earned in media value. Furthermore, the fashion house saw a 44.5% increase in revenues in the nine months ending 30th September 2017, after Hallucination Campaign launched. This growth can be linked to the success of their digital marketing strategies, which has allowed the brand to integrate the digital world to the in-store experience, and communicate to a larger target audience. The House of Gucci has anyway lots to chip in fashion as Forbes classifies it in the 47th row in the Word’s Most Valuable Brands.
Pro.Ago team: Poppy Kousi, paprikasama, Dimitri Makris, Marissa Moumouri, Ioannis Spiliopoulos, Aris Tzimas, Eirinaios Trapetsas
