Saturday, March 18, 2017

The Cartel (Dubai) uses social norms to their advantage

The Cartel concept store, with the help of Y&R, lands itself a gem. In a society where women are to wear Abayas (specifically the locals in the UAE, and all females in KSA), where veils are the norm and even the Niqab (the head covering veil) can be a suggested attire, it might be difficult to do advertising for a concept store which also sells wearable art.
Before I go on, this reminds me of an incredible ad for a male lingerie brand in Saudi Arabia which was done by Links agency (which I had seen in 2003). For your information, when magazines go inside KSA they are given to prisoners to censor the bits of female and male flesh which are showing by the use of a black marker. So Links had the genius idea of shooting the model wearing the underwear, slashing it everywhere with a black marker pen, and then headlining with "so hot it should be censored".
So going back to the ad above, Y&R go with the master coup of using fully veiled models but with shoes, sunglasses, make up and bag (not pictured above) totally visible on them. This hits two birds in one stone - it respects local social norms and it makes the product so predominant and visible.
What more can one ask for?