Pictures, brands and meanings (part 2)

[Kevin McLean]

Breaking news, we were right, they are models, not tennis players. There are many games going on here, but none of them is the game of tennis. (Fantastic thinking! Thank you very much.)

Wimbledon is in full swing and Andy Murray is still in it (1 July am), having beaten Wawrinka in a five-set thriller and even survived the post-match interview with Gary Richardson (surely the model for fake sports interviewer, Alan Partridge?)

But what is really going on in the new poster for Evian? On the principle that the author is dead (in this case the creative/art director), we can see that this is all about sex, gender politics and corruption.

The picture shows a triangle with a man at the top, represented by his legs and two women beneath him, one in a bikini holding a bottle on her legs and clearly enjoying something, the other looking down demurely, as if concerned with her tennis racquet or embarrassed by the nearby performance.

The onlookers who are nearly all male, are impassive and self-centred, like viewers of porn, not a sporting spectacle. Everyone is waiting, time is suspended, while the woman on the right does her thing. Sisters are doing it, for themselves.

The woman on the left represents the obedient one, dressed primly in virginal white, who does what daddy says and disapproves of her rebellious, shameless sister, but is secretly jealous of the attention she gets and of the way she blatantly goes against everything their father has taught them.

And of course the scene links back to The Great Gatsby, in which a bunch of privileged and morally bankrupt characters swan around, drinking heavily and bitching about each other, in the oppressive heat, under the symbolic gaze of the spectacles (here replaced by a pair of legs).

What this all means for Evian and its sponsorship of Wimbledon is also multi-layered. Their sponsorship is a clever recognition of the sexualisation of women tennis players and a celebration of the inauthentic nature of our interest in the tournament.

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They held an event in the car park with fake umpire and pink flamingos, pretending it was Centre Court (pictures by Evianinsiders).

Evian also sponsors the Evian masters women’s golf tournament, so taking on Wimbledon is an assertion of the power of the feminine and of imagination in an age of male domination and predictability.

It is also, of course, a campaign to support fellow Swiss player Roger Federer in his (possible) final battle with Andy Murray.

Andy is sponsored by Highland Spring, a rival water brand.

Evian saying they are ‘the only water on Centre Court’ is saying, there’s only one winner here, and it’s not the masculine Andy Murray, nor Andy Roddick, for that matter, both of whom look distinctly uncomfortable with Evian in their hand.

No, it is a subtle support for 'golden boy' Roger, who is so at ease with his Evian.

And so in touch with his feminine side.