Jeweller Tiffany & Co. continues to try and shake its dowdy, mumsy image and, in doing so, have enlisted arguably the world’s coolest parents – Beyoncé and husband Jay-Z – as the face of its newest drive to attract a younger diamond buyer.
The glamour couple – who typically don’t lend their names to brands such is their staggering wealth – star in the jeweller’s new global campaign called “About Love”.
A teaser image from the campaign launched overnight before the full launch on September 2 which also includes a TVC with Beyoncé singing the classic Moon River from the iconic flick Breakfast At Tiffany’s.
The ad and the song will debut across all Times Square digital billboards on the 2nd.
In the teaser image, Beyoncé wears a 128.54 carat diamond around her neck, which has previously been worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s and by Lady Gaga at the Oscars in 2019. The rock is reportedly worth a mind-boggling $A42 million.
Jay-Z is wearing the brand’s Apollo brooch in yellow gold and platinum with diamonds, which sells for $US40,000 ($A55,400).
insane to me that rich people can just buy art from artists who have passed and no one else gets to see it, kinda gross imo like these pieces should be able to be seen by everyone, thats literally what basquiat woulda wanted https://t.co/GVb3lRSkAE
— 🌷💫 (@__lukec) August 23, 2021
But already the campaign is courting controversy.
The couple are photographed in front of a rare painting by legendary US artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The artwork, a piece from 1982 called Equals Pi, has just been acquired by Tiffany & Co. from a private collector. And this has left some art lovers less than impressed.
On Twitter, Basquiat fans questioned the decision to debut the painting in a luxury campaign with many art luvvies getting in a right tizz.
“They been hiding a Basquiat for decades just to use it for a Tiffany’s ad?” one asked. Another commented: “Jay-Z cosplaying [pretending to be] as Basquiat is hilarious to me.” Another added: “He wanna be Basquiat so bad.”
“Basquiat wasn’t the type of person or artist to approve of his pieces being used in an ad from multiple billionaires (uncontextualized, at that),” scoffed another detractor on Twitter. “His art was all about pain and beauty in low places, so, it comes across as a tone deaf and flippant flex on his legacy.”
But to be fair to the couple, they do own their own Basquait painting – his Mecca that they acquired for $A6.2 million.
And it’s not the first time Tiffany & Co.’s attempts to attract a younger audience has hit a snag.
Earlier this month B&T reported on a street campaign in New York and Los Angeles called “Not Your Mother’s Tiffany” that was universally hailed as one of the wost ad campaigns ever devised.
Clearly aimed at the under 30s, the campaign merely pissed off Tiffany’s core audience – women over 45.
Advertising guru, author and legend Bob Hoffman led the chorus of complaints about the campaign, labelling it “the tiredest, most derivative and thoroughly clichéd campaign of the year”.
“If you’d asked a high school advertising class to come up with a campaign to ‘youthify’ the Tiffany brand, this is exactly the shit they’d come up with,” Hoffman railed.
The campaign was reportedly the work of LVMH’s (owner of the Tiffany brand) communications director, the 29-year-old Alexandre Arnault, who also happens to be the son of the company’s billionaire owner and third richest person in the world, Bernard Arnault.
On the latest Beyoncé and Jay-Z collaboration, Arnault said the couple are “the epitome of the modern love story.”
“As a brand that has always stood for love, strength and self-expression, we could not think of a more iconic couple that better represents Tiffany’s values,” Arnault said.
On the Basquiat painting and its similarity in colour to Tiffany’s famous emerald blue, Arnault said: “We know he loved New York, and that he loved luxury and he loved jewellery. My guess is that the painting is not by chance. The colour is so specific that it has to be some kind of homage.”
At the beginning of the year, LVMH purchased a 50 per cent stake in Jay-Z’s Champagne, Ace of Spades.
Tiffany is also donating $US2 million ($A2.7 million) for internship programs and scholarship programs for Historically Black Colleges and Universities in partnership with Beyoncé.
