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Health & Fitness

If You Believe: Part II

Another look at the JLo/Fiat 500 ad -- from an editing perspective!

A  of mine recently recognized the latest Fiat 500 ad featuring Jennifer Lopez back in the "hood" – as she makes her way from Manhattan to the Bronx – and all that comes with the visual and visceral experiences of New York City. 

As explained on Nov. 1, there was some credibility issues with the concept among the college-aged students who reviewed it in my class, leading me to believe that the creatives behind the spot really didn’t understand the audience to whom they were selling this car.

Then came the latest news. According to The Smoking Gun, not only is Jenny no longer from the block but she failed to show up in the neighborhood where the commercial was filmed.

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If the information is accurate, she stayed in Los Angeles to film the interior shots within the car while a body double drove the car down the beloved streets she waxes poetic about in the voiceover within the ad.

Another referendum on J Lo and realism in advertising – or better known as déjà vu all over again.

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As described in the aforementioned article, Jennifer is “digitally piped into Gotham,” that is, a “… production studio was hired to merge live action footage with computer-generated imagery to make it appear as if (she) was in the Bronx.”

Now this is not unusual for a production house to do to save dollars or communicate the best story from the agency's vision, but this is an extenuating circumstance as all of the scenes, all of the credibility that was possibly left to associate this superstar with the neighborhood she (supposedly) respects, evaporated with this recent news.

Perhaps the Millennials surveyed in the course has a sixth-sense about the ad – and not only failed to buy into the premise, but didn’t feel too comfortable with any of the scenes of the commercial at all.

And whatever it was that made this spot special is now tarnished by a more unfortunate truth: the rich and famous are not only different than you and me, they can be in two places at once, as long as you have the right agency and digital equipment to do so.

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