• The Los Angeles Times, Monday, September 25, 2006 12:15 PM

As part of its new "Keep It Simple" campaign, the Gap has introduced a commercial for its slim black pants that features Audrey Hepburn in a clip from the 1957 romantic comedy "Funny Face." Dressed in a black turtleneck and black pants, Hepburn is shown leaping from her chair in a Paris nightclub, exclaiming: "I rather feel like expressing myself now. And I could certainly use the release." She starts a goofy Bohemian dance, and then springs from the frame onto a white background as the AC/DC song "Back in Black" blares. Reaction to the ad has been "polarizing," but at least people are talking about the Gap again, says Kyle Andrew, the retailer's vp of marketing. "Any time we can do anything that elicits passion is great," he says. Hepburn joins many dead colleagues--Fred Astaire (Dirt Devil), John Wayne (Coors) and Humphrey Bogart (Diet Coke)--in her posthumous marketing career. Steven Levitt, whose firm measures the "Q score"--name recognition and likability--of celebrities, says that Hepburn ranks in popularity behind only two other deceased women: Lucille Ball and Katharine Hepburn.

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