I hate the advert but I'm so far away from their target customer that it's probably a ringing endorsement for the strategy.

They've just returned from holiday and are walking through their garden, past one of their children's toys.

would it still be so stupid?

Probably.

That luggage is as vulgar as it comes. It screams conspicuous consumption and is beloved of the nouveau riche. Like Bono.

you are expected to believe! and you will..it's Bono and he's Goddo!

they've had to make an emergency landing and are stranded in the bush, oh, and the radio's gone down too. Trouble is, Sting and Trudie will probably be passing and rescue them...

This is my first post after a few weeks of lurking.

The advert does not seem have the context that you imply.

See the Link.

http://www.luxist.com/2010/08/30/bono-and-ali-hewson-are-latest-vuitton-...

Not that I'm their greatest fan, but I hope that the post is not just another U2 shit kicking excuse from The Word.

That's all.

on the crass phallic imagery.

Sometimes these things are just wrong in every way imaginable. You saw this one over the summer, I presume?

A brand created to boost manufacture in and encourage trade with Africa, with only 15% of it's range made there.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870435890457547831050459387...

It's so wrong, it's right.

If Gorbachev in the back of a smoky cab - gazing nostalgically at the remains of the Berlin Wall, as you do - was rather strange, then Pele and Maradona, playing table football in a smoky Madrid café (with Zidane roped in as the ref, his bag having been embossed "ZZ" in gold in case anyone thought it was Howard Webb), was none-more-"huh?"

But, as we know, Annie Leibovitz does need the money.

They're carpet baggers, was my instant reaction. With their own carpet bag.

Bono: "Wait a minute, this isn't Cannes..."

Mrs Bono: "Do you hear lions?"

doesn't Mr Bono just stick to making music with the popular beat combo U2 and save himself a lot of silly bother?

...to do his back in carrying his bag like that.

There'd be another plane in the distance coming into land carrying Bonio's hat.

I suppose that full proof that I'm not in the target demographic is the fact that I would have had no idea who the woman was and just assumed she was a hollywood actress whose films I hadn't seen. I only read the thread because I assumed it would be a good forum for unjustified but amusing Bongo baiting.

Reminds me of the Russell Brand character's pop video in the opening scenes of the film "Get Him To The Greek."

Dreadful movie.

a Masai's purloined loincloth draped over Bono's shoulder, or are they perhaps Masonic entrails?

The more you look at this picture the more it keeps on giving.

Can't quite work out what, but the proportions look all wrong.

He has precious little use for it normally. Perhaps he's off to donate it to an orphan.

Do either of them have one?

It's different in the two pictures.

Louis Vuitton luggage have 'Luncheon Vouchers' written all over it?

Horrible, vulgar stuff.

"George Osbourne" in my books but dear ol' Keef also posed for this awful brand. Any naysayers on that front?

Love the round applause at the end. Well done you managed to walk 10 yards without tripping up : )

in view of my (recovering) spacehead status, I quite liked this one:

and its print partner, in spite of myself

“Hurry boy it’s waiting there for you...”

Bono’s hand paused in mid pen-stroke. The nib of his Mont Blanc dawdled over a half-finished poem he had commissioned himself to write for an upcoming issue of Q magazine that he was guest editing. He gazed out of the window of the light aircraft at a herd of Zebra as they thundered across the parched savannah, stirring low clouds of red dust.

The small plane was not properly airborne. A team of men and women dressed in the traditional business attire of the PR caste bore the fuselage on their shoulders, filing across the Serengeti in two columns, at a walking pace. When they reached their destination they knelt in unison. The moment the aircraft touched down, two of the group broke away and began to hastily anoint the tyres of the landing gear with African soil. The remaining lackeys formed themselves into a human staircase by the door.

Bono and his wife stepped out into the African heat and began a leisurely descent of the PR pyramid. When they reached the bottom they both dropped to their knees and reverentially kissed the ground.

As a gesture of solidarity with the starving African continent, the couple had dressed themselves in tight-fitting corsets designed to dramatically reduce their waist size. Bono’s hand luggage had been woven from locally-sourced materials by a species of African condor hunted to near extinction by white supremacist groups during the apartheid era. The fabric was decorated with abstract designs that Nelson Mandela had doodled on some Hilton Hotels notepaper during an hour long telephone conversation with the UN goodwill ambassador - Geri Halliwell.

The arrival of Mr and Mrs Hewson had not gone unnoticed. A pride of lions shading themselves, in the name of love, under a nearby baobab tree watched them closely. An old male with a receding mane, plugged with russet implants, rose up on his haunches and padded over to them.

“Aslan!”

The hackneyed Christian anachronism and the politically disgraced lion embraced each other warmly.

“Great album, sorry I couldn’t make it to the rooftop performance.”

“I was going to call it: No Lion On The Horizon.”

“Heh.”

“About the whole political exile thing...”

“Ah, you know, shit happens.”

Privately Aslan was still smarting from his landslide defeat in the Narnian elections that had seen him declared a war criminal by the incoming fawn government and unceremoniously bundled into the nearest wardrobe. In the UK the weather was cold and he had been forced to live in reduced circumstances as male nanny to a group annoyingly perky children who had been sent to live with their uncle by their exasperated parents.

“Did anything come of that whole child mauling incident?”

“Diplomatic immunity is a wonderful thing my friend.”

“So what are you doing in Africa?”

“Backpacking... You know just getting my head together... Reconnecting with my lion roots...”

(I'd save Ali obviously)

This is beyond parody. Get a grip Bono

...that "Michael Bublé Being Stalked By A Velociraptor" was replaced with "Bono Being Stalked By A Lion".

"I see you're still going out with the same old bag."

'Yes, you too?'

And ads are meant to be aspirational. Whatever we may think of them, to the kind of audience that either can afford Vuitton luggage or aspire to buying it, Bono and his wife represent perfect role models.

I don't think it's designed to be a realistic picture of a plane landing in Africa but just a bunch of images that conjure up glamour and romance and something slightly unreal. So in answer to the original question I don't think it's "wrong" in any way particularly - may even be quite right in a lot of ways.

about the charitable gestures that underpin this advert but it still doesn't stop me from thinking the ad itself is a laughable crock of shit on so many levels. In fact I'm fed up with shite final products in the advertising world being defended by virtue of charitable gestures on the part of the stakeholders involved. Crap is crap whatever the motive but it actually becomes more worthy of piss-taking because the PR machine tries to head off ANY criticism by trying to declare negative comments a no go area simply because Bono Tarzan and Jane have not taken their cut in the ad's budget and have instead given it to charidee instead. I mean it's really important we know that because if we didn't have that sobering thought in our minds we'd all have died laughing wouldn't we at the live action "reimagining" of Madagascar courtesy of this photo?

I can live with commerce and charity blurring the lines because I can see the that ultimately charity gains simply because money from hollow souls - who can't define themselves unless they wear a label bought by Keef or Bono or would die of embarrassment unless they were seen to have paid top whack for a Vuitton bag in which to put their soiled pants and smelly socks after a few night's stay in a hotel on Park Lane - is as valuable as money from chaps like me who mock and jeer from the sidelines. They give more and more people benefit. Hurrah! But I'll be damned if I can't continue to think these things through rather than just lap up the spin that accompanies such advertising ventures these days.

But let's not kid ourselves. Those same hollow souls massaging their egos by associating their purchases with images of smiley happy black children in Africa will also marvel at what Mrs. Bono is wearing, imagining themselves and their Hedge Fund managing husbands in Bono's attire. Lo and behold, as they luxuriate in the fug of doing something good in the world by associating their buys with some charitable cause they've been simultaneously lulled into a level of suppliance that means they extend the PR-driven goodwill into making purchases from Bono's clothing range. And oh look, Vuitton, who has a 49% stake in the Bono's Edun clothing range, will also gain a bit more. So, hit them with charity and side-step them with the clothing range. Job done.

Oh, I'm sorry ETHICAL clothing range. For god's sake please don't anybody forget that the clothing range is ethical: we must keep guilt in the equation at all costs. Heaven forbid I might buy a pair of pants that aren't "ethical". I've looked at the Men's range on the Edun site and a jumper (sorry, an oversized twisted striped crew) is 225 Euros/£196. Wow, production costs have really gone through the roof in those "ethical" factories in Tanzania.

Lifestyle advertising makes me laugh whatever motivates it and this ad is no exception. Being right about what you do and the motivation behind doing it is not in itself a sufficient argument to deny the fact that a pop star looks like a bit of a cock nor the fact that Annie Liebowitz is slumming it and compromising her art, nor that the PR machine for the fashion industry is the last organisation to be claiming some moral high ground to justify making us feel guilty about what we buy and from whom given their track record in how they get their stuff made.

And no, I don't buy into the argument that gestures and actions like this make a difference in the long run because it "raises awareness" and it "sends out the right message". That's an overstated and simplified argument to a complex issue of which one factor is the question of the sustainability of the economic model into which the charity/ethical angle is positioned.

So, in summary. Picture + me = Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

he still hasn't found what he's looking for?