The Catch, a 90-second video ad for Bluefly.com that is running online and on TV is R-rated, with shots of a man undressing a woman and a naked woman walking out of a shower. “Part of their challenge to us is to keep pushing the envelope, the idea is to be as provocative as we can be,” said Bill Lane, creative director of McCaffery Gottlieb Lane/New York, which worked with Independent Media/Santa Monica, Calif., the production company.
Bluefly.com is a high fashion online retailer that targets upscale women 28-32, Lane said. A woman from that group is the hero of the spot, who spends the night with a man she dates and has a package from Bluefly delivered to his apartment the next morning so she has something new to wear to work. “She sets out to catch him and does, he’s been had,” Lane said.
The spot was shot in Los Angeles in three locations–an office, a sushi bar (with an alcove for the lovemaking session) and a loft apartment. The cast featured two attractive models who had never done video ads before. The director was Tony Goldwyn, the actor/director who has directed The Last Kiss and Someone Like You.
“They wanted something that told a really specific story without product in your face, so we shot it very dynamic and loose, like a feature film,” Goldwyn said. “The product drops in at the end of the piece to give it a product placement feel.”
He shot the romantic scene carefully. “It’s not just an erotic encounter, they really connect,” he said. “We wanted a lot of energy and detail, so there was a lot of close stuff and we had to keep the camera moving.”
He said the camera moved in a fluid way through the physical images and there was also a sense of “disorientation, of not being where we are to give it energy and keep it interesting and abstract.”
The sexuality was also communicated in the settings, from the shiny elements and shadowy environment of the sushi bar to the bright, pristine setting in the loft apartment. “It was all art direction,” Goldwyn said, complimenting the DP, Janusz Kaminski, the cinematographer of Schindler’s List, who oversaw the lighting.
“It was an incredible opportunity to tell a story that happens to ulitmately be about a product,” Goldwyn said. “There’s an increasingly common trend in advertising not to put the product in your face. It’s like making a movie, it sets the bar higher.”
The Catch is another great example of a long-form video ad that comes across as a film.
The spot is running at Bluefly.com and YouTube.
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More