The question, of course, is: Why Keith Richards? The choice becomes even more interesting since he follows in the footsteps of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, tennis greats Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf, and legendary French actress Catherine Deneuve in Louis Vuitton’s core values campaign.
Granted, the Rolling Stones founding member is part of the band that wrote and recorded 14 of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” and his Gibson Maestro opening riff for I Can’t Get No Satisfaction is one of the most recognizable in the world. Yet the question remains: Why Keith Richards, of all the possible endorsers for a brand known for luxury and heritage?
After all, the musician has, in recent years, been the subject of late-night comics for his drug use, his fall from a coconut tree in Fiji which cancelled their world tour, and decades of the rock-and-roll lifestyle. Okay, maybe Johnny Depp brought him back to cool when he revealed that Richards was his inspiration for Captain Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean.
Louis Vuitton being what it is now — at least since Marc Jacobs assumed artistic directorship of the house 11 years ago — Richards does seem to be a great choice for a brand that’s both cool and traditional, luxurious and collaborative.
The answer then is, well, why the hell not Keith Richards? Especially since Annie Leibovitz was to shoot the project that interprets travel as a “personal journey, a process of self-discovery.”
Jean-Baptiste Debains, president of Louis Vuitton Asia Pacific, says that the core values campaign really goes back to what the brand was created for: traveling. “You just take one look at Richards’ face and you know that he has traveled a lot, in the physical and emotional sense. He has taken a lot of journeys in his life.”
Was he a controversial choice when his name was first floated around? Philippe Schauss, senior vice president at Louis Vuitton Malletier, couldn’t be more emphatic when he said, “No.” They were all excited about signing up Richards, a friend of Jacobs.
In the ad, Richards is in a hotel room cradling his guitar, a custom-made monogram guitar case sitting on the bed with a cup of coffee atop, a half-eaten sandwich and orange juice on the desk. Literally on a journey — on the road perhaps for a concert tour with his band — and the lines on his face and his eyes, with their signature kohl eyeliner, as Debains says, express inner journeys past and present.
This is the first time Richards has done an ad. Louis Vuitton head of communications Antoine Arnault says, “Keith Richards needs absolutely no introduction. He is a global icon, an inspiration to millions and we are honored that — after Mikhail Gorbachev, Catherine Deneuve, Steffi Graf and Andre Agassi — he has agreed to represent Louis Vuitton. It’s hard to imagine a more compelling embodiment of a personal, emotional journey.”
Pietro Beccari, senior vice president for communications and marketing, says that when they came out with the Gorbachev ad — seated on a limo with his Keepall by his side driving by a still-standing section of the Berlin Wall — they “collected an equivalent of about a million dollars’ worth of free editorials” because people were talking about it. The Richards ad, released just last week, has generated the same interest from newspapers and TV shows.
Beccari relates that when he met Richards, the musician “was in a good mood.” He had with him the guitar that John Lennon gave him a week before the Beatle was shot down. “My first impression of Keith was that he was very energetic, very alive.”
On the musician’s drug use (and he is undeniably infamous for it), he says, “We are not here to judge their personal choices.” Some creative people, he adds, make choices that are not always safe or right — I forgot the exact words he used — I was still tossing in my mind a picture of Richards and Vuitton.
The surprise choice is not uncommon for a brand that’s constantly pushing the envelope in its collaborations with artists and designers such as Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, and even supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
One of the most memorable collaborations, according to LV executives, is a Christmas window they did for the Champs-Elysées store with Ugo Rondinone.
President and CEO Yves Carcelle relates that when they were planning the store windows, he was in a meeting with six or seven colleagues and they asked the artist, “Okay, so where will we put the bags, the merchandise?”
Rondinone’s reply: “You must be joking, man.”
And so it was that the biggest Louis Vuitton store in the world came out with Christmas display windows that did not have a single piece of merchandise. “We’ve never had more traffic in the store than on that Christmas,” says Carcelle. “We respect completely the spirit of the artist. Artists just don’t think like us — and that’s what makes it interesting.”