Ad Campaign Review: El Palacio de Hierro (México)

One of the biggest players in the Lifestyle advertising in Mexico definitely has to be El Palacio de Hierro. This time they had portrayed different personalities throughout the world. They go from models, actors, commercial directors among others. You might recognize some of them but the interesting thing is that they go by telling stories and creating their own tag lines.  One of them is: "Fortuna es estar aquí y ahora" which means, fortune is here and now. Another one is "Entender de moda es desdentenderme de ella" meaning, to understand fashion is to misunderstand from it.  The phrases are accurate to what this company has been doing in the past. El Palacio de Hierro has had one of the most recognizable advertising campaigns in Mexico during the last two decades. The company can represent itself as the luxury retailer for designer brands and does it quite successfully.

One of the characters that is featured here and caught my attention is David Atrakchi which has done films for Unicef and also directed commercials for fashion brands such as Chanel, DKNY and D&G. He is the first picture on top.

The execution is very good and reminds me a lot of Annie Leibovitz and here is where the problem for me lies. This kind of story telling and character based stories has been done by Louis Vuitton in the past and several times. They feature important characters such as astronauts, celebrities, musicians and so on.  Also the aesthetic of the pictures are pretty similar to the ones that Leibovitz has shot before.

But needless to say this is a very cool ad campaign that found on the magazines I just got from Mexico. Pretty exciting to see that efforts of bringing luxury advertising even though the situation of the country doesn't seem to get better. My suggestion to them would be to feature more real life characters and not international but mostly Mexican.

You can access the website and see what it is about here: www.soytotalmentepalacio.com.mx