Ad Nut doesn’t drive or wear makeup, and is very aware of the dangers of trying to do both at the same time, so Ad Nut was very surprised to see L’Oreal Paris pair the two activities in a campaign to promote its newest lip product.
The campaign video, posted on Tuesday, shows a car driving through the streets of Paris with a bright red line trailing behind, drawn by none other than a giant model of L’Oreal’s Infallible Matte Resistance lipstick.
The video left Ad Nut racking Ad Nut’s brain. How bold of L’Oreal to create such a mess. Such a stunt has to be a violation of traffic laws. If Ad Nut had a car, Ad Nut would not like to get red lipstick all over it…Did L’Oreal get a permit from the city council for this? Who is going to clean all that up?
Ad Nut couldn’t understand how such a stunt could go unchecked. That is, until Ad Nut read the comments under the video post, shared on LinkedIn by the brand’s global social media director Christopher Motta, to see if other viewers are similarly perplexed.
Lo and behold, it turns out Ad Nut has been a silly squirrel. This campaign is not IRL! It is of course part of L’Oreal Paris’ new obsession with CGI ads, following the success of Maybelline’s viral mascara buses.
The car in the ad is real, according to Motta, but the mess is simply digital. Ad Nut was bamboozled.
Still, the realism of the video has sparked debate on whether L’Oreal Paris has an ethical duty to disclose when it uses CGI in ads, so no more squirrels are harmed in the making. Ad Nut will leave that to Ad Nut’s human friends at Campaign US to investigate. Ad Nut has important cashews to attend to.
