Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe this week airs its new work for Emap’s
teenage girls’ title, J17, unveiling a television campaign that was
postponed for more than two months because of the death of Diana,
Princess of Wales.
The commercial is a pastiche of the death-bed scene from the film,
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, which shows the dying heroine
surrounded by hundreds of candles as she lies on the altar of a
magnificent church.
In the ad, the handsome young hero - a Leonardo di Caprio lookalike -
enters the church, dripping wet from the rain outside, and approaches
the altar, asking: ’Juliet, when thou art so fair, why must I find thee
here in this tomb of spirits past, in this palace of dim night?’
A storm rages outside as he walks up the aisle towards the young
Juliet.
As she rises to embrace him, she reaches down and pulls a copy of J17
from his delivery bag.
The whole set-up, it seems, has been based on the girl’s elaborate
recurring fantasy, and Romeo walks off muttering: ’Why can’t I just
deliver it to her house?’
A second spot uses the same scene with an alternative plot to promote
the magazine’s free ’top totty calendar’. Both executions were written
by Richard Beesening and art directed by Andy Blood. Media for the
campaign, which will run throughout next month, is through Universal
McCann.
Louise Matthews, the executive publishing director of Emap Elan, said:
’This is the start of a new branding campaign, and we will use this ad
as long as the imagery is relevant.’
The campaign was directed by Laurence Dunmore through Great Guns.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was selected as the subject for
the ad because it was recently voted favourite film of the year by J17’s
readers.
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