Bartle Bogle Hegarty has extended its ’dress to kill’ press
campaign for the retail chain, Wallis, in to the cinema.
Shot in grainy black and white, the suspense-filled ad continues the
theme that a well dressed and beautiful woman can unwittingly provoke
accidents. The commercial opens on an expensive car gliding through an
industrial landscape. The vehicle arrives at a high-security
installation, where the car and its mysterious occupant are waved
through.
The vehicle then pulls up at a helipad, where a young man, checking the
helicopter for departure, is the only one to see that the passenger is,
in fact, a beautiful woman. The woman transfixes the man as she moves
towards the helicopter. In his daze, he is unaware that he’s moving into
the path of the helicopter’s revolving blades.
The endline reads: ’Dress to kill.’
Breaking this week, the commercial was written and art directed by
Graham Watson. Directed by Olivier Venturini through Godman, the ad will
run for a six-week period alongside the remake of Dial M for Murder,
called A Perfect Murder.
The ’dress to kill’ campaign was launched back in September 1997, when
it provoked a number of criticisms for being offensive, but these were
dismissed by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The ads went on to win several awards, most notably at the Campaign
Press Awards.
