Gucci Guilty

As I watched TV the other day, I noticed an ad for a new perfume called

Gucci Guilty. The communication shows one girl questionably cheating on her

partner and then takes a breath of guilt as she stands on top of a skyscraper at
the end. Here's the ad:

I was confused by this message and the fact that it was promoting adulterous

behaviour so decided to see what the Gucci brand was all about. It turns out

that Gucci in fact has quite the history of controversial marketing messages

and has caused a fair amount of consumer uproar in the past. I stumbled upon

a website that contained a collection of controversial ads and Gucci seemed

to dominate it. 

After a little more analysis, I understood that this is what Gucci is all about.

The brand has always been one to push the envelope. Gucci has always

maintained a forbidden sense and hasn't been afraid to get in trouble. It's a

fearless brand. In this regard, Gucci's target audience is likely to be very

receptive to these bold types of communications. The target market

sees fashion as pushing the envelope and would not expect Gucci to do

anything conservative in it’s actions. Gucci displays a "Break the rules"

leadership approach with all ads being relatively innovative and unusual. This

leads back to the core brand values of breaking the rules, being forbidden and

fearless. This is very much an identity brand that users purchase to help

express their ideal self concept. They see the gap between their current self

identity and the brand’s target profile as displayed in the ads.

Although this ad positively helps to build the fearless and forward Gucci

brand, there are some moral and ethical considerations here. Brands like

Gucci need to be conscious of the boundaries between what is acceptable

brand building marketing and what marketing messages should not be

promoted to the general public as they are a source of many social issues. In

this case, I think Gucci's actions are still acceptable because the ad is subject

to interpretation and lacks explicitness. Whereas if the brand explicitly shows

the woman cheating on her partner in an obvious manner, this ad would be

unacceptable and could face a large backlash from the general public.

Another famous controversial Gucci ad from the past: