Do we really need to hear another word from Marla Maples? She was in the headlines again, for a recent interview with the New York Daily News, in which she said that ”Ivana is out every night in London and New York while Donald is home with the children.”
With inappropriate P.R. moves like that, it`s a good thing she has the No Excuses endorsement, orchestrated by Lois/GGK for New Retail Concepts, to fall back on. It breaks soon, starring Marla Maples, gal environmentalist.
In the past, No Excuses spots had a tawdry ”Married With Children”
sensibility. The concept-hiring endorsers who were the cream of the country`s bimboisie-got enormous free exposure for the brand. (Still, I never understood why anyone would want to buy the jeans.)
But this is a far more sophisticated ad than the previous ones with Donna Rice, or even Joan Rivers. Now that most of the symbols of the greedy, self-serving `80s have been exploded, we`ve abruptly moved into the do-gooder, socially conscious `90s. And Marla`s committed.
But Maples is a role model on so many levels. Not since Brigitte Nielsen hooked up with Mark Gastineau has there been an out-of-wedlock love story as beautiful as hers with the Donald.
Before this most recent interview, she was coy-almost virginal-about her relationship. That certainly would fit the tone for her leap into advertising as eco-Marla.
Obviously, this is sheer video cynicism. Maples shows up as the new Euell Gibbons.
The spot had the potential to be even more nauseating than Andrew Dice Clay`s tearful moment on Arsenio Hall`s show.
But the bad news is that this commercial actually makes Maples look good. She`s not allowed to blather. Instead, she does what`s bearable: She makes fun of herself.
”The most important thing that we can do today is clean up the planet,” she says, sounding earnest but tinny, like an aerobics instructor making her first video. ”And I`m starting with these,” she says, throwing a bunch of tabloids-including the Star and the National Enquirer, with its headline
”Mistress Close to Suicide”-into the garbage. (It`s an environmentally correct can.) ”Things look better already,” she says.
The genius of the spot is in George Lois` art direction. The setting is lush, like Eden, with Maples a modest Eve. With a waterfall behind her head, she`s Botticelli`s Venus in freshly pressed jeans.
The setting is everything, obscuring the essential hypocrisy of what she`s saying. The joke that she`s cleaning up by throwing away tabloids was a great idea-she could appear as a woman wronged, laughing at her detractors.
Yet Maples` own mother sold her daughter`s story to the Star, complete with pictures; her father held a news conference; and now she has really blown it by talking to a New York tabloid about how ”cold” Ivana is.
As a commercial, it`s terrific. But now there`s a credibility gap you could drive a casino/resort through. Sometimes, even an ultracynical operator like New Retail Concepts outsmarts itself.
