The Comic Strip as a Fashion Statement

Perry Ellis has replaced its handsome leading man approach with a campaign that follows the adventures of a cartoon character

By JULIE BOSMAN

THE sportswear company Perry Ellis has long employed the traditional formula for men's fashion advertising: take one handsome man, photograph him posing in an exquisite setting, and repeat.

But now Perry Ellis has decided to replace its leading man (most recently, the actor Jerry O'Connell; before him, the actor Paul Rudd) with something less predictable: a comic strip.

The new campaign features a male character in a series of settings that emulate real life, from pondering a job offer in a new city to approaching an attractive woman in a bar. (Naturally, the star of the comic strip is trim, good-looking and dressed in what appears to be Perry Ellis.) The ads are scheduled to run as four-page inserts beginning in the March issues of more than a dozen magazines, including GQ, Cargo and Esquire.

Using comics in advertising is an old strategy that may be on the verge of a revival, thanks in part to the rising popularity of graphic novels among young men. Even Hollywood has caught on in recent years, adapting the graphic novels "Sin City" and "A History of Violence" to commercially successful films. And the customer Perry Ellis aims for is typically a 30-something man the company hopes will be drawn to the playfulness of a comic strip with the grown-up content of a graphic novel.

"Our guys are right on the fringe of Gen X, and they've grown up with this type of thing right in front of them," said Neil Powell, the chief creative officer for Margeotes Fertitta Powell in New York, which created the campaign. "And we were also looking to create an ad campaign that was a form of entertainment."

The $15 million campaign is the most visible effort for the agency since last summer's merger of Margeotes Fertitta & Partners with Powell. It is also the first major fashion account for an agency that is known mostly for its creativity in other areas, including work for Bacardi, Coca-Cola and Starbucks. (Margeotes Fertitta Powell's parent company is MDC Partners, the same holding company that owns part of Crispin Porter & Bogusky and Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, two agencies known for their quirky creative work.)

In addition to running in magazines and on billboards, the comics will eventually appear in a nontraditional place: imprinted on escalator handrails in about 20 shopping malls in major cities nationwide.

Pablo de Echevarria, the senior vice president for marketing at Perry Ellis International, said that while the company had created three installments of the comics so far, it hoped that the strategy would be effective enough in the long term to continue the series.

"It can become our own language," Mr. de Echevarria said. "But when you do something, however groundbreaking it might be, the consumer becomes inured to it. One of the problems with originality is that you have to keep being original."

Comic strips in advertising peaked in popularity in the 1930's and 1940's, catering largely to people whose grasp of English was poor, but could follow the actions of comic strip characters. More recently, comics have appeared in campaigns to promote less-wholesome products (R. J. Reynolds once tried to lure away Marlboro smokers to Camels with comic-striplike ads, and the Miller Brewing Company ran a short-lived ad campaign for Miller Lite in men's magazines).

But in today's advertising climate, most marketers are condensing their messages to match the shortening attention spans of readers. Perry Ellis is asking readers to do the opposite: linger over a comic strip to absorb the message and even follow the continuing series in several monthly installments.

"We're challenging several conventions about fashion advertising and communications in general," said Michael Kantrow, the president and chief executive at Margeotes Fertitta Powell. "It's hard to get people to pay the same attention to advertising that they do to content, but we're hoping that this will blur the line there."

Later this spring, the comic strip "Dilbert" is to appear in a direct-mail advertising campaign for the Postal Service. Scott Adams, the creator of "Dilbert," said in an e-mail message that comics can be effective for advertising a service that has no obvious physical form.

"The comic makes visual some aspect of each service so people can get their brains around it," Mr. Adams said. "And if they laugh, that's a good association too."

"Comics are a good match for products that are not inherently fascinating," he added. "Men's pants look pretty much alike to me."