Every now and then those of us who are scrabbling around in the foothills of luxury marketing have to cast our eyes upwards to see how the big beasts are slugging it out up there in the rarified air of the Himalayan peaks.

Now is one of those moments.

Ralph Lauren have put together a film which shows off their products in a new way (well, it’s basically a catwalk show in a new setting), but more than that, they’re showing off the creative work of their advertising agency.

Take a look:

Now at almost eight minutes long this is never going to be shown on TV during an ad-break in the X-factor. But that’s the point: luxury brands almost never do TV advertising – it’s just way too mainstream and scattergun for their target market.

Instead they use press advertising (think Sunday Times Style magazine, FT How To Spend It, the monthly glossies… that sort of thing) and of course they use PR.

This can be seen as a PR event: the film itself is the event, and those in the know are invited to attend, to view the film, to admire it, to talk about, link to it, write about it, and – they hope – to make it go viral (well, I guess I’m doing my bit…).

But not too viral — just viral enough to reach their target market. Sometimes marketing is not so much about talking to the right people as it is about not talking to the wrong people. This is especially true in luxury.

Anyway, there’s no doubt that it’s a very impressive piece of work.

And if I have any problem with it then that is the problem: it’s very impressive. Because that means that it’s more about the creative work and the skills of the advertising agency than it is about the product: we don’t actually get to see Ralph Lauren’s clothes all that well.

(As an aside, Guinness are also guilty of this: they make films to win awards, but do they sell the product?)

The advertising agency can’t help themselves – they’ve made one of those ‘How It Was Made / Behind The Scenes’ videos to accompany the film (you can see it here), which basically is an advert for the advertising agency: “Look how clever we are!”.

And that’s a shame, because I think we should be left alone to enjoy and admire a groundbreaking film such as this without having someone pull back the curtain to show us how it was done, thereby de-mystifiying the wonder of the film itself.

UPDATE: The video above is the New York version – featuring the Ralph Lauren store Over There. They’ve made another version featuring their Bond Street building here in London, and here it is. Enjoy.

Oh, and you can read what some other people think about the Ralph Lauren films here (3D TV Watcher), here (Business of Fashion, including an interview with David Lauren, son of Ralph, who calls this a “game changer”), and here (New York Times). WARNING: these articles may include the word ‘merchantainment‘.

RL followed up the release of the films with a couple of live events in New York and London where they projected the film onto their flagship stores. Forbes has a report & video of the New York event here, and Fashion Scout has a report with photos of the London ‘performance’ here.