Why Angelina Jolie for Louis Vuitton?

“A sin­gle jour­ney can change the course of a life”

Angelina Jolie is the lat­est out­stand­ing per­son­al­ity to be pho­tographed by Annie Leibovitz for Louis Vuitton’s Core Values adver­tis­ing cam­paign. It was shot in Cambodia, a coun­try with which the actress has close emo­tional ties. 
She vis­ited Cambodia in her role as a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Goodwill Ambassador, and sub­se­quently adopted her eldest son Maddox. In 2005, she was awarded Cambodian cit­i­zen­ship for her human­i­tar­ian work in the coun­try through the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation.
The Core Values cam­paign pic­tures Angelina Jolie sit­ting bare­foot in a tra­di­tional wooden boat. Next to her is a vin­tage Louis Vuitton Alto in Monogram can­vas, a bag the actress has owned and loved for many years. Angelina Jolie’s fees for this cam­paign are being donated to charity. 

Something we see or hear (signifier) activates a mean­ing node and we expe­ri­ence mean­ing (sig­ni­fied). A good ad cam­paign aims to cre­ate the right mean­ing for the right customer. 

After read­ing this lines and look­ing at the ad cam­paign we can grab which are the sym­bolic val­ues that LV is miss­ing and wants to get from Angelina Jolie. Below we pointed out a few adjec­tives that instantly came to our minds.

So… LV wants to step aside from it’s image of van­ity and osten­ta­tion, and be more in synch with the world­wide con­cern for human­i­tar­ian issues, tak­ing care of nature, recy­cling and hav­ing social respon­si­bil­ity. Likewise, Angelina Jolie could change rad­i­cally her image, from the Hollywood sex bomb sur­rounded by scan­dal to this almost “saint”.

Do you think Angelina Jolie was a good choice for the brand?

To watch the inter­view with Angelina Jolie on how her visit to Cambodia was a life-changing experience

To know more about the pho­tog­ra­pher of the ad cam­paign Annie Leibovitz 

To know more about LV check out this inter­view with Marc Jacobs