Luxembourg-based Ferrero International, the chocolate giant, is using art to sell its coconut candy “Raffaello”—perhaps not surprising as Ferrero is by origin an Italian company, and the Italians are not modest about their artistic achievements. Ad agency Jean & Montmarin have hired artist Thierry de Cormières to create a vast fresco, eight metres high and five metres wide. The mural combines Raphael’s colours with Correggio’s style, they say, although the still shown here seems to depict Mrs Thatcher. The work has been transported to a 12th-century abbey, suitably done-up for the ad, where a female artist (natch) is filmed working on the painting. She chats with angels in her picture, they build up a relationship, and the angels are seduced into sharing a Raffaello. This kind of hooey may go down well with the upwardly mobile classes on the continent, but in the irreverent UK it is likely to meet with the same scorn as the previous Ferrero advertisement in which its chocolates were handed round at a Ruritania-meets-Dynasty ambassadorial ball.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Raphael candy ad schlock'