According to an article published today in the Media & Advertising section of The New York Times, Rihanna’s not just slapping her name onto a bottle of perfume and shipping it out–she’s embarking on a seriously major marketing campaign!
The promotion for Reb’l Fleur, Rihanna’s debut fragrance, will officially kick off this Friday with the release of a brand new video clip that boasts a neat little twist–literally. From the article:
For half of the one-minute video, by Droga5, a Manhattan agency, Rihanna lounges in an oversize flower and glides around a lush topiary garden wearing a peach dress and smiling. Then, Alice-like, she steps through a mirror and is suddenly wearing a black dress and a come-hither expression, and is embraced by a dark stranger wearing a tuxedo.
A specially designed video player enables users to choose to run the video in either direction, which of course conveys different situations, such as the singer stepping toward the man in one mode and backing away from him in another.
But unlike, say, the “Day” and “Night” versions of Rihanna’s video for “Who’s That Chick,” the Reb’l Fleur video takes the ‘dual nature’ idea and makes it even more complex:
What viewers may find mind-boggling is that the video was choreographed to make it difficult to determine in which direction it was originally filmed. There are no obvious giveaways — say, flower petals being plucked in one direction and the petals being reattached in the other.
Misha Louy, an executive producer at Droga5 who worked on the video, explained that in some shots Rihanna was even filmed walking backward, or was directed to walk forward in such a way that when the video was played in reverse it “wouldn’t look like she was moonwalking backwards.â€
Also palindromic, as the agency refers to the video, is the soundtrack, which was composed to play the same notes for each frame, irrespective of direction.
Along with the reversible video, the fragrance will receive billboard advertising in Sunset Boulevard and Times Square, as well as a full national magazine campaign.
Perhaps most impressive of all, Reb’l Fleur will also be advertised in movie theaters beginning in April, where fragrance representatives will directly hand out samples to women between the ages of 18-24 as they exit the theater.
Now that’s a promotional campaign!