Uhh Hi Phil

This week I’m bringing you yet another Revlon nail polish ad. This one, however, is all wrong. Like the Parfumerie ad, Revlon stepped out of the box and did something different, they featured a man in a nail polish ad. Unfortunately, it was poorly executed.

I need to start off with the big, awkward elephant in the room. This poor, scruffy man in the ad being shrouded by a woman’s hands just looks confused. I’m not sure why he’s there and he doesn’t seem to know either. The text in the bottom left hand corner says “’Divine’ disarms Phil. Find out more at youtube.com/Phil”. Divine being the name of the nail polish being worn by the hands smothering Phil’s face. Of course I wanted to learn more about Phil and what on earth is going on in this photo so I found the clip they were referring to on YouTube. The 15 second video features Phil describing himself as shy, British, awkward, and embarrassing, all the while these same hands are rubbing all over his face, awkward is right. That’s all, no explanation as to why Phil is in this video or the ad for that matter, he doesn’t even mention the nail polish nor does the video offer any information on the product. In case you want to watch the video for yourself, here’s the link http://youtu.be/cpU0LAOUbwY?list=UUXGVsie-SIk3e3wJmUTyEhw

Aside from perplexed Phil, the right page doesn’t have much going for it either. They’ve gone for the obvious pun in the headline, “64 shades that nail the trends” not very clever or witty, they could’ve polished the headline a little more.  The copy at the bottom is also a little perplexing. They say, “Others may try to imitate our innovation.” They don’t, however, explain what innovation they’re speaking of, it looks like a pretty standard bottle of nail polish if you ask me. The next sentence puts the nail in the coffin “But the power of originality has always been in our hands.” And there you have it, another pun. And again, what originality are they referring to?

This ad is just so odd to me. It did intrigue me enough to send me to their YouTube page albeit the video only left me more puzzled. Sorry Revlon, you can’t win ‘em all.