On that John Boyega H&M Commercial

After watching it the first time, I wasn’t sure what was going on. However, the highlife music, more than other elements, caught my attention. The guitar flex from any Osita Osadebe number is a non-medical cure for a drab day.

I figured a lot was going on here, as in many things about marketing. It features a brand, a celebrity endorsement, a cultural trope, youthful exuberance, the timing within culture wars, the choice of creative direction. And Naija swag!

Expectedly, the Yoruba smattering would offend some proficient speakers of the language. I wondered, actually, if Nigerian pidgin English wouldn’t have been a better option since it sits well with urban culture and youth in general. I still wasn’t sure.

I also suspected that Boyega might be attempting to smuggle his admiration of his ethnic origin into a grand pop cultural space. But I wondered if it mattered to him to deftly handle the language to avoid what might appear as diluting or trivialising its essence.

Is the brand taking a risk by offering its platform as a ground for tedious cultural conversations? Is it daring the woke crowd about cultural appropriation?

Regardless of the above and all the pontificating, a brand identifies an audience and speaks to it in a language the audience understands. Maybe the audience here is just the cosmopolitan African/Nigerian youth of immigrant origins that cares about showcasing cultural origins without much concern for dexterity in the culture. Sometimes, clumsiness has its merit. And it might just be H&M’s goal to appeal to youth of global orientation with ethnic toppings.

Or as suggested from Boyega’s monologue and the choice of song, maybe defiance and non-conformity are really the points of the ad, a rallying call for everyone to ignore naysayers, forget cultural or political correctness, damn language nitpickers, and do you!

In whatever H&M wool fits!

I like the art direction.