Laundrette & postmodernism

Explain why Laundrette can be described as a piece of postmodern advertising and see if you can find a contemporary example. Substantiate your findings.

The 1985 Levis advert 'Laundrette' by BBH could very much be described as a postmodern ad! From the irregular time scale - filmed in the 80's, set in the 1950's (we can tell this from the fashions of the people inside the launderette, to the solider in his uniform and from the cars outside the laundrette) with a 60's song (Marvin Gaye's 'Heard it through the Grapevine'). To not mentioning the product until the snapshot at the very end. The ad uses sexuality in a new way, there hadn't been much reference to male sexuality in advertising before (usually left to the degraded women!) and under the 80's Thatcherism rule, life was fairly conservative, which meant that undressing in a Launderette would be very frowned upon. The advert promoted the American dream and capitalism to a fairly Anti-American Europe, with astounding results - the 501 jeans sales sales had soared by 800% within a year of their relaunch.

An example of contemporary postmodernism in advertising would be the 2012 'L'Odyssee de Cartier' advert created by Paris agency Marcel. It features a jewelled panther, that comes to life and races across various landscapes (desert, mountains, snow etc.) before returning to Paris  - evidently on an epic mission. The message below on the youtube page reads "Discover the new Cartier film, a journey between dream and reality. For the very first time, Cartier has decided to create a cinema epic focusing on its history, its value and inspiration, its artistic and universal scope." The video is accompanied by an entire website dedicated to the advert, detailing the advert's inspirations, and how the epic advert was made. http://www.odyssee.cartier.co.uk/#/home

I would say that this advert is postmodernist because of the hyper-realism featured in the ad. Jewellery comes to life in an epic way (Giant rings rolling down a hill through snow, through to a forest made out of glittering jewellery) which is representative of the jewellery's inspiration, and of the Cartier customer's luxurious lifestyle.

Refences - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT4DR_ae_4o

http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/thework/895156/
http://www.odyssee.cartier.co.uk/#/home