Valentino Collaborated With Meme Accounts For Latest Campaign.

Image credit: Valentino.

Valentino has collaborated with meme creators for its latest campaign named “Uncensored V Logo Signature”, in an effort to achieve a viral social media moment. This partnership with multiple popular meme accounts includes many of them posting fashion specific memes using pictures of the latest Valentino campaign; including pages like @zero_fucksgirl and @meme_saint_laurent.

Each meme follows a similar format with a shot of the new Valentino campaign with a funny sentence to accompany it. Except, that’s the main issue, these jokes aren’t funny.

Each meme about the campaign is usually a dig at how ‘extra’ or ‘expensive’ the new collection looks, sort of nullifying any cool points that Valentino was trying to score. The enormous watermark on each photo only serves to undermine the campaign’s attempt at internet virality.

This campaign is reminiscent of when former New York Mayor and ex-Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg paid a bunch of Instagram accounts like @fuckjerry or @tanksinatra to post memes about his presidential run.

A quick look at any of these Instagram accounts shows a lack of interactions in comparison to their usual posts. @youvegotnomale, with 144k followers, barely received 1500 likes for their Valentino post, whereas @mytherapistsays, a popular meme account with 5.7 million followers received around 23k likes for their sponsored post, 4 times less than what they usually average on their page.

This isn’t the first time designer fashion brands have attempted to tap into the internet’s funny side to promote their collections. In 2017, Gucci worked on a ‘collaborative meme project’ which saw creative director Alessandro Michele commission artists to adapt memes to use in their new watch campaign. Although Valentino’s intentions here may be better than Gucci’s, it feels more out of touch.

CULTED was able to speak to fashion commentator Louis Pisano and hear his thoughts on this meme campaign. Pisano argues that “Valentino is a beautiful brand and they don’t need to rely on the gimmicks that a lot of designers have to do now.” Pisano argues that Valentino “do not need to do this, it makes no sense and the jokes did not quite land.” Pisano finished by saying “it was doomed to fail, the internet decides vitality and the internet does not like to be force-fed content.”

Memes, unlike advertising campaigns, are a spur of the moment entity. They suddenly gain and lose traction due to the volatility of the internet. Attempting to profit off it or use it to spark your own business agenda is not only cringe but almost always destined to fail.

What do you guys think about this campaign? Let us know!

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