Selfridges Takes Over Bond Street To Promote Winter Sale

Selfridges is to promote its forthcoming winter sale by taking over Bond Street Tube Station with an innovative outdoor advertising campaign designed to turn it into an art gallery.

The campaign will launch on the 26 December and will feature a series of specially-commissioned compositions of phrases and graphics, which will also emblazon the Selfridges windows and feature throughout the store on sale swing tags, posters and banners.

The creative has been designed by Barbara Kruger and contains powerful observations about today’s consumerist society. Ads include words of warning, such as ‘Buyer beware’ and ‘We are slaves of the objects around us’, as well as philosophical quotes on consumerism from Malcolm X, Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe.

Commenting on the campaign, James Bidwell, marketing director at Selfridges, said: “Working with Barbara Kruger is a real coup for us. There seems to be a standard template for sale advertising amongst retailers, but we wanted to do something completely different. Barbara’s work engages on several levels and will add to the overall Selfridges sale experience.”

Luke Williamson from Mother added: “We wanted to work with Barbara because she gets right to the heart of consumer behaviour. Through Selfridges, we were able to use the traditional media of point of sale as a canvas for her work, bringing art to a consumer level where the message is at its most relevant and biting.”

Earlier this year the Advertising Standards Authority has refused to uphold complaints against Selfridges for a series of outdoor and press ads that featured a range of naked body parts (see ASA Dismisses Complaints Against Naked Selfridges Ads).

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