Why Desigual’s Latest Campaign Born to Disobey Transcends Marketing and Enters into a New World Entirely
Smart advertising taps into a feeling. Incredible advertising taps into the zeitgeist and becomes its own political commentary.
Desigual’s new advertising campaign ‘Born to Disobey’ has taken over the internet this week as Vivian Wilson, who if you don’t already know, is Elon Musk’s trans daughter who has publicly and openly opposed her father for years due to his ideologies and his blatant homophobia directed towards her.
The campaign features Wilson putting a robot (which in this case is actually a human actor, through a series of contradictory scenarios, where the robot ultimately always ends up on the floor, sparking or being beaten into pieces by a golf club.
The core message of the ad, ‘he was born to obey’ ‘I wasn’t’ speaks directly to Vivian’s heritage as her entire identity as a trans woman sits in direct opposition to what her father, one of the most powerful men in the world, envisioned for her.
Her strength, her identity, her beauty and her power comes from this deeply human place of spite and resistance, a feeling that is felt by mankind the world over as we see daily stories of hardworking people losing their jobs to algorithms and more concerningly, the power that these programs have on the world stage.
The fear and distrust of big tech companies is only growing as we are slowly waking up to the terrifying reality of mass surveillance, stolen personal data and AI-powered defence systems that are wreaking havoc on the middle east.
This backdrop is what makes the advert so powerful. Vivian’s identity is resistance in itself so pairing that with visuals of her overpowering these machines built solely to obey their master creates a powerful message that is in complete contrast with the ai-slop that are constantly being shown.
As a consumer, it's refreshing. The message is clear and choosing Wilson to become the face of the campaign is ingenious.
So what can we take away from this? Gemma Andreu, head of marketing at Desigual has leveraged a powerful undercurrent in the current geopolitical climate and brought it to fashion and by creating a campaign in direct opposition to the constant stream of Ai-Slop, with the daughter of one of the biggest tech moguls in the world she has created an advert that feels like resistance, whilst celebrating what makes us human.
