Live Young.

Living young aparrently means drinking a lot of water.

Evian’s Live Young ad campaign, recently launched, features rollerblading babies as its primary selling point. What babies have to do with drinking a lot bottled water is anyone’s guess. While it would seem at first that Evian is trying, much like Pepsi has in the past, to make themselves more youth centric in the hopes that they can catch on to that ever elusive youth market, this is not actually the case. Instead, the babies are being used as to represent the idea of the escaped youthfulness that those on the shadier side of twenty may often feel that they have lost.

There are several different wings to the ad campaign, but I shall focus on a set of six print ads. These ads feature attractive people of various ages standing around wearing shirts depicting a baby’s body in such a way that the models head fills in for the baby’s. The models are invariably all holding an Evian bottle, and the Evian logo features into the top corner along with the text “live young”.

A look around the more subtle aspects of the ads reveal much what would be expected from an ad designed to sell water. There are six ads, targeting a wide variety of North American demographics, each featuring attractive models. The most prominent colors in each of the pictures are blue, peach and white. In many cases there is some accessory, such as a blue bracelet or bandana, which further emphasises this. These colors, of course, correspond to the colors of the Evian logo and bottle; blue, white, pink. The blue and white creates a very cold effect which dominates heavily, something clearly desired when selling cold beverages, and the skin tone is often sufficiently dwarfed by the white of the background and clothing that it presents itself as a compliment color rather than a major focus while still managing to create a very effective and eye catching contrast.

The important visual element here though is the illusion created of the baby with the model’s head, or the model with the baby’s body, depending on how you want to view it. This, of course, stands as a metaphor for the ad campaign’s slogan, live young. It implies that while the person is Cleary not a child, by drinking Evian water, they can have a youthful body. Again, this is metaphoric. The baby is not being used as a baby in the literal sense. They are not saying that drinking Evian gives you the body of a baby, weak and feeble, but rather that drinking Evian gives you the metaphorical youth. The baby is being used as a symbol for youth that can still apply no matter what the viewer’s age. This use of symbolism is very effective as not only are babies rarely used in advertisements except as attention grabbers, but also because it manages to prove such a wide catching symbol in its own rights.

The advertisement goes back to Evian’s roots, as one of their first advertisements featured strangely CGIed roller skating babies. This can be seen as a nice little in-joke for those who are familiar with the company’s long history.

Traditionally, the idea of having the body of a baby, or trying to be more like a baby, or even (if one misinterprets the ads) a baby trying to be older, would prove difficult to sell. These ads do a remarkable job of it though through their effective use of contrast. By eliminating the baby’s head and instead creating a stark disconnect when a full grown adult’s head is where we would expect the baby’s head, the advertisement no longer focuses so much on the idea of infants, freeing the symbol to be used as the advertisers intended.

The campaign, while having its problems, certainly does a lot of things right, and stands as a solid example of what can happen when risks are taken with metaphoric imagery and the hilarious use of t-shirt design.