Louis Vuitton ad shoots for goal with soccer greats Pele, Maradona and Zidane facing off in foosball
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Over here at All The Rage we’re consistently in awe of Louis Vuitton’s ability to land a mind-numbing assortment of stars from the global constellation of celebrity for its ad campaigns. Some of the more memorable ones featured Mikhail Gorbachev, Keith Richards and Catherine Deneuve (not in the same ad, mind you) and astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Jim Lovell and Sally Ride (very much in the same ad, and gazing up at the nighttime sky).
The newest print ad, which will appear in June issues of various international glossies, is another group effort -- and this time the luxury brand has managed to wrangle three of the greatest soccer (that’s ‘football’ to the rest of the world) players of all time for its Core Values campaign: Pelé of Brazil, Diego Maradona of Argentina and France’s Zinedine Zidane -- just in time to capitalize on the mania surrounding the month-long 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa, scheduled to kick off on June 11.
Shot by Annie Leibovitz in a Madrid bar called Café Maravillas, the shot captures the holy trinity of soccer engaged in a spirited game of foosball, while Zidane’s double Z-emblazoned LV luggage lounges near the bar.
Apparently we’ll have to wait a week or so to find out who’s the better athlete when it comes to table soccer, the accompanying website teases that footage of an epic match between Pelé and Zidane will be posted on May 10 (though a viewer survey at the site currently favors Pelé over Zidane 54% to 46%).
We’re thinking that the ad will probably generate more interest overseas where soccer has a larger following than it does in the U.S., but we like it for a couple of reasons.
First is the sharp-looking Louis Vuitton Pégase cabin case personalized by the company with Zidane’s double Z initials. It’s part of Vuitton’s relatively recent Mon Monogram program through which the company will add your initials and a couple of signature stripes of your color choosing (we’ve been told the most popular color combinations have been ‘fuchsia,’ ‘rouge,’ and ‘moutarde’ paired with ‘blanc’ or ‘ivoire’) to a Pégase, a Keepall or a Speedy bag.
We say ‘relatively recent’ because, while the service has been available in the U.S. since October 2008, the pieces could only be ordered directly through a Louis Vuitton boutique -- until the whole process went online just three months ago.
And the other reason we’re excited? There’s finally a luxury fashion ad featuring a soccer player that’s not David Beckham.
‘Gooooaaaallll!’
-- Adam Tschorn
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