• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, August 15, 2024

Primark, the international clothing retailer offering “fall in love fashion at take-me-home prices,” introduced itself to America this week via “That’s so Primark,” its first branding campaign targeted to the U.S. market.

Launched in Dublin, Ireland, 55 years ago, the retail chain is a familiar brand in Europe, with some 457 stores throughout 17 countries. And while hardly a household name in the States, Primark plans on operating 60 stores on our shores.

So for Primark virgins like myself, living under a rock, two hero spots offer a calling card for the shopping experience.

So what’s “so Primark?”

It’s all about love—love for the brand, and love for your closets, according to Michelle McEttrick, Primark’s global chief customer officer. “We want to give American consumers the chance to fall in love with their closet over and over again,” she said.

The love runneth over for Brett Edgar, too. As CEO of VCCP US., the agency that created the campaign, he explained: “We wanted to show American consumers what the hype is all about across the pond. ..It’s all about falling in love with the brand and its unique products again and again.”

Two hero spots  will run across CTV, OTT and digital.  

The music underscoring the videos is clever and used to great effect.  Jazz vocalist Nancy Wilson (not the blonde rocker who was a partner in Heart)  sings  ”My love has no beginning, my love has no end,” from “You Don’t Know How Glad I Am.” 

“No front no back, my love won't bend
I'm in the middle, lost in a spin
Loving you.”

And “Window with a View” sure gets viewers lost in a spin.  There’s no warm embrace in sight. Rather, it’s set at night, in an empty, very dark parking lot. We see two women, their silhouetted faces lit up with joy and expectation, wearing attention-getting hair, makeup and accessories (including one with a blonde wolf cut) approaching something. The darkness and harsh lighting make the scene seem haunting, with these two acting a little zomboid. 

It turns out they are not headed for each other, as some of the early shots might suggest. Rather, they’re in love with a big glass wall that they both not only approach, but smash into.

Talk about a nose pressed into a window -- one of the women gets hers and her lips completely squished, and the other gets her cheek sucked into the glass, while drawing a little heart. Then the camera pulls back to reveal that they are in front of an empty Primark store in a little shopping center, clawing through the glass at the outfits displayed in the windows, price tags and all.

It's a small thing, but I was disappointed with the empty and generic look of the price tags, which are also supposed to be alluring, since they are in the low two figures and these women are fired up.

Then we see more middle-of-the-night shoppers joining them, wailing at the windows in the darkness.  Was the "Night of the Living Dead" suggestion part of the joke?  Would shooting the spot in the daytime have killed the 2 a.m. danger vibe? 

At the end, the phrase “Pieces you love, prices you want,” pops on screen.

The love is requited in the second spot, “Fall Again,” as we see a woman who made it inside a Primark store.

The music “My love has no beginning, my love has no end” swells, and then abruptly reverses, as the price hunter goes from object to object, dancing and hugging the merch.

It reminded me a bit of the “I Feel Pretty” scene in "West Side Story." While it’s warmer than the first video, it’s also shot in the dark of night, in sometimes-harsh light. And the store is curiously empty. Of course, our shopper gets lost to the outside world anyway, alone in her low-priced-fashion-finding reverie.

The spots do convey a sense of otherness and mystery.

But I think I’ll wait ‘til morning to check a Primark out.