Kookai therefore the antiDim Dim seduced by women

Advertising saga Kookai and its inénarrables pimbêches said that they were luxuriously : "I am pretty but I do express," or even "I am only a poor little slave to fashion", started as a riddle: how to communicate on a ready-to-wear brand almost unknown, from the trail How, above all, aim client of 15-16 year-old girls, target fuzzy par excellence, with a budget of 2 million francs Jean-Lou Tepper, Jacques Nataf and Philippe de Hesdin, the three friends who, in 1984, launched the brand, return the problem in all senses, and in February 1987, go to CLM BBDO and its great sorcerer, Philippe Michel. Post-soixante-huitard, the Creative Director is already the source of creations Eram "It would be crazy to spend more" and is about to sign "Mamie Nova, the Granny that I prefer is in the fridge".

Roster of péronnelles

To bring out the variety of its competitors Kookai, Philippe Michel then chose to borrow the provocation in the second, third, or fourth degree. In press and display, a slightly amazed consumer discovers a skewer of strutting péronnelles: "We the finest, tralalère", or "soon is the opening of the hunting of the boys." In doing so, CLM BBDO transgresses three rules of any campaign of ready-to-wear: her heroines are deliberately antipathetic; early age places more readily with the Nabokov Lolita as the housekeeper of less than fifty years. "Finally, adds Creative Director Pascal Manry (Agency twenty-nine), who worked on the campaign in MLC, before Kookai, no marks not dared say that if women are beautiful, it is to seduce the guys." We still moving in a post-soixante-huitarde era, where it was politically incorrect to seduce as to be in the mode. Kookai, therefore, the anti-Dim: Dim seduced by women. The "kookaïette", as it will soon call it cynically calculated its effect and causes, from the top of its sixteen: "I am beautiful as a Barbie. doll." Even the vocabulary has changed: "in a universe which used the terms"woman","man","beauty", resumed Pascal Manry, we arrived, in 1987, with words such as"girls","boy","beautiful". "It was revolutionary." As revolutionary as the choice of models, "cast" of wild way at the exit of the secondary schools. Before the consecration: the autoparodie which are willing to bend Karl Lagerfeld, artistic director of the House of Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent and Sonia Rykiel: "Kookai, it is unfair competition." But, in 1996, change of scenery. In 1993, Philippe Michel has disappeared. His creature, the "kookaïette", grew up. In the pub, it is passed to another registry, where there is a lessening of the separation of men and women for the benefit of multiple identities: human is sometimes father careful, sometimes with ambiguous sexuality, and, finally, victim of the "girl power" which turns the powerless toy of sadistic females.

Men "chosifiés".

This is precisely the path that will take the new MLC managerial duo: Christophe Lambert and Anne de Maupéou. Campaigns keep the offbeat tone of the beginnings of the saga provocation and transgression but substitute pest initial real predators, captured by the objective of the Guzman couple. On one of the first Visual, a woman, œil critical and deep décolleté observed a few male specimens under cellophane in a vending machine. Another looks on his carpet, the "thing-man" that she comes from offending as a can of beer while a third monitors the gardener that it the Jersey to the lawn mower. Each time, by a visual effect, the human is reduced to the dimensions of a Tom Thumb. In September 1996, the profession will present campaign the 23rd grand prix of the display. But this new chapter in the saga Kookai raises controversy, the campaign being accused of "objectifying" men. In 1997, Christophe Lambert defends itself (): "when working on a brand such as Kookai, following trends either, it was decided to create oneself, by translating company phenomena and reflecting the spirit of the times.". However, if you look at a very popular series such as "Girls" or titles such as "Face" in Britain, they are especially informative: girls are there show ultraviolentes and domineering. The debate on equality is gone for the post-soixante-huitarde generation and we translate this desire to pouvoir.

Change of target

Las! The brand of ready-to-wear sales figures do not follow. The fault of new signs such as Zara and H & M, which renew permanently stock very "trend", at ultra-abordables prices. But also to a communication that had eventually to blur. Kookai joined McCann in 2005: "consumers recall campaigns MLC, they loved, but were unable to say the type of clothing that Kookai sold, says a former head of the budget. The mark was an advertising positioning but not positioning on the textile market. "It had to find an identity." It is targeting a new consumer, more thirty years that post-pubère and above all much wiser, "for a subtle, charming, mode a mode of creators", in the words of Julie Koubi, Director of marketing, Kookai find its marks or its transgressive note. Declined internally since 2007, the campaign has however retained a tip of his initial insolence, with the signature: "I am not pretty, I am worse." A program in itself.

Véronique Richebois

() "Vital", January 1997. Find all the articles in summer series