Agency: Fallon London
Directed by: Leila and Damien de Blinkk

It’s obvious that UK based French Connection is very keen on novel marketing strategies. It starts with their acronym, FCUK, which really wants you to misspell/misread it. FCUK was the first brand to use Chatroulette as a viable platform for brand communication and last month they launched Youtique, the first ever Webshop integrated in Youtube.
Beginning of 2010 they also started to release a series of fashion films for their man and woman collections. Something like two dozen films are already done, all of them starting with the voice of a french man, who declares: “This… is ZEY WOMEN” or (you guessed it) “This is… ZEY MEN”. Very charming, nouvelle vague like imagery and a great cast (like Franco-Spanish rising star Astrid Berges-Frisbee, who will be appearing in Pirates of the Caribbean 4) makes for a lot of fun watching those. But it’s not just pretty people in pretty clothes. They got everything right: a well-thought out concept, good scrips, suprisingly good direction by photographers-turned-directors Leila and Damien de Blinkk and a “viral potential” on top of that.
Spring/Summer was all black and white, the new Fall/Winter season was shot by cinematographer Edu Grau (of “A Single Man”-fame) in color. You can check all of the films on FCUK’s youtube-channel.
Let’s hope more fashion brands show some of this boldness and commitment in embracing the great new opportunities that online communication has to offer.

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