Lil Nas X is as real as it gets. Imma, not so much.

The music star and virtual influencer dive through the looking-glass with other human celebs for Coach’s spring collection campaign set in a colorful CGI universe.

This approach embraces an increasingly blurred line between physical and digital worlds. Notably, it gives Imma—a pixelated marketing powerhouse—equal billing with living, breathing endorsers. In the cyber realm, among young adults, she’s a bankable draw.

Agency Marcel, director Vallée Duhamel and photographer/art director Charlie Engman led creative development. The work also features Camila Mendes, Youngji Lee, Kōki and Wu Jinyan.

Imma meets each, beginning with Lil Nas, in separate spots, and tries to learn their “superpowers.” The X man teaches her to rewrite rules and play by her own game.

“Envisioning Spring, I was inspired to explore the archetypes of American style and the codes that define Coach’s legacy through the point-of-view of today’s generation,” says Coach creative director Stuart Vevers. “‘Find Your Courage’ expresses the feeling I wanted for the collection, where our heritage is the foundation for exciting new possibilities for self-expression.”

Does exploring notions of courage feel a tad haughty for a maker of snazzy bags and purses? For some, perhaps. Then again, we are what we wear—and how we choose to accessorize says a lot.

It’s a lively fusion of realities, a brand-boosting meeting of worlds that feels natural here in 2024 and should only accelerate in the short term.

Thankfully, living talent still fuels and adds dimension to such initiatives. For now.

“Lil Nas was amazing while interacting with a virtual character,” Marcel global creative director Remy Aboukrat tells Muse. “Maybe because he is embracing his different personalities—the one he is in real life and the one he is online. This is also the meaning of this piece: showing our audience that it’s ok to be both until you’re true to yourself.”

As for Imma, she represents “the perfect ambassador to tell this story because she is challenging the notion of what we consider ‘real’ today,” says Coach Global CMO and N.A. president Sandeep Seth. “Her journey in our campaign takes us into a new world that pushes the boundaries of self-expression and inspires us along the way.”

More spots will roll out through May.

“Imma,” as we observed when last we saw her, is Japanese for “now,” and the Ikea work is certainly a reflection of complex times, if not all our complex feelings. Covid gives Imma a nice pretext for staying inside nearly all day, promoting homewares in a typically small apartment for urban dwellers. 

In harmonious silence, she vacuums, learns to cook, does yoga, and Instagrams her dog, Einstein, eating her socks. This marks the first time Imma’s ever “existed” outside the virtual world … and the moments when she looks directly at the shop windows, almost as if she’s a little bothered by people peering in at her, are a nice touch.

She even has a quote for us. “My day-to-day changed a lot since we started social distancing,” she faithfully reports. “It was challenging, but I explored different ways of finding happiness at home, and I realized the importance of creating my own personal space. I’m so glad I can share a little insight into my new home life with the world.”

We don’t want to begrudge Imma her happiness. But given she only exists to serve as a marketing curiosity, it’s not as if she has to spend Covid working or raising kids (or, honestly, even eating!). As far as we know, she has never known the abject sensation of pitching business on Zoom one minute, then awkwardly dancing for others in a Zoom social the next.

But like all challenges she’s risen to so far, we suspect, given the chance, she’d play-act this aspect of our lives with equally upbeat grace, a model to us all. (Then again, even if you’re not a totally fictional person, many aspects of life feel funner when they’re only pretend.)

The Ikea Harajuku installation combined physical space with LED screens, with the color temperature of the LED panels adapting in real time, making it difficult to see the seams where the real and digital worlds met before onlookers’ eyes. Light meters tracked color temperature outside, then reacted to daylight and the weather.

Imma’s bedroom appeared on a large screen on the store’s façade, which is visible from Harajuku Station (and its 110,000 daily commuters). Those who couldn’t visit Imma in real life could watch her via livestream on Ikea Japan’s YouTube channel:

And of course, Imma went on updating people via social media. Everything she did in the real world was augmented with a digital connection, from her window doodles—which appeared on Instagram—to the music she danced to in her living room (which you could listen to on her Spotify Home playlist). And when she wasn’t onscreen, she was walking her dog around Yoyogi Park. (Luckily, he too has an Instagram.)

One goal in working with Imma was to appeal to a younger demographic, which Ikea Japan confesses it’s never much addressed.

“We’ve been working on the launch of our new Harajuku shop for a long time and had to change things up a little due to Covid-19, but the purpose remains the same,” says Anna Ohlin, Ikea Japan’s country marketing manager. “We want to inspire and help the youth of Tokyo to find their own happiness at home. With the pandemic still top-of-mind, this need has become more relevant than ever. By partnering with Imma, we can share a new vision of the home with a demographic that Ikea has never spoken to before.”

It’s hard to deny the brand did its homework. So much of Imma’s life reflects a certain generation’s behavior that it’s almost a weird mirror into ourselves. We, too, have learned to cultivate digital “windows” into so many aspects of our lives, it almost feels like a complete picture: Together we learned to bake, do more yoga, and film our lonely living room dances for a larger audience. 

And frankly, whose dog doesn’t have an Insta?

The three-day campaign ran at August’s end. Additional 15-second videos of Imma engaged in mundane tasks appear below.

Witness her nightly mask routine:

Watch her patiently customize furniture:

And behold as she vacuums:

CREDITS

IKEA Harajuku with imma
CLIENT IKEA JAPAN
PROJECT NAME IKEA Harajuku with imma
LAUNCH DATE August 28, 2020
URL www.ikea.jp/imma

WIEDEN+KENNEDY TOKYO
Executive Creative Director Scott Dungate (スコット・ダンゲート)
Creative Lead Max Pilwat (マックス・ピルワット)
Copywriters Max Cameron (マックス・キャメロン)
Haruto Murata (村田遥人)
Art Director / Designer Shohei Kawada (川田翔平)
Creative Tech Director Kyoko Yonezawa (米澤香子)
Head of Production Kerli Teo (カーリ・テオ)
Agency Producers Kosuke Sasaki (佐々木洸介)
Yoko Onodera (小野寺陽子)
Reiko Kawaguchi (川口玲子)
Siyun Kim (シユン・キム)
Hanako Adams（アダムス華子）
Account Team William Smith (ウィリアム・スミス)
Becky Levy (ベッキー・レビィ)
Naoko Okada (岡田直子)
Chelsea Hayashi (チェルシー・ハヤシ)
Asako Takahashi (髙橋朝香)
Strategic Planner Hasse Lemola (ハッセ・レモラ)
Comms Planner Justin Lam (ジャスティン・ラム)
Eri Hirose (廣瀬 衣理 )
Studio Manager Kiki Bowman (キキ・ボウマン)
Aiwei Ichikawa (市川アイウェイ)
Translator Toshiko Iida (飯田 淑子 )
Agency Editor Vinod Vijayasankaran (ヴィノドヴィジャヤサンカラン)
Jacob Kim (ジェイコブ・キム)
Event Photographer Alexis Wuillaume（アレックシ・ウイオム）

Virtual Human PRODUCTION
(Talent / CGI) : Film
PRODUCTION COMPANY Aww Inc.
Executive Producer Producer M
Producer Yuna Hori (堀 有那)
CGI AnimationCafe

PRODUCTION COMPANY
PRODUCTION COMPANY 株式会社ヘリクシーズ (Maxilla)
Producer Daichi Tanaka (田中大地)
Director Tetsuro Abo (阿保哲郎)
Production Manager Ami Murata (村田英美)
Cameraman Tomonobu Kasai (葛西知伸)
Gaffer Takamasa Furukawa (古川 隆柾)
Production Designer Emi Kaneko (金子恵美)

DIGITAL INTERACTION PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION COMPANY undefined Inc.
Tech Director / Programmer Ken Murayama (村山 健)

STILL / PRINT PRODUCTION
Producer Naohito Nishitani (西谷 直士)
Shion Kimura (木村 史園)
Photographer Kisshomaru Shimamura (嶌村 吉祥丸)

PRODUCTION COMPANY 第一製版
Print Coordinator Tsutomu Kawakami (河上 勉)
Hitoshi Sugita (杉田 仁)
Masayuki Uno (宇野 正幸)

LED SCREEN PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION COMPANY SystemRASA,ltd
Tech Director Kazunari Takashima (高嶋 一成)

SOUND DESIGN PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION COMPANY MassiveMusic Tokyo (MassiveMusic 株式会社)

Imma’s world is beautifully designed and maximally controlled. Her style will always be on point, and she will never have cellulite. She will always be calm and reasonable. She will never have a racist rant, or get caught stumbling out of a club. And she won’t get creative blocks, act like a diva, or desire something different from what is intended for her.

She will never err. Much of her perfection relies not just on her impeccable look but on her capacity to feel relatable while remaining aspirational. She reads beautiful coffee table books by Yoshi Rotten to “stimulate” her brain, moves house with help from Ikea, believes in LGBTQIA+ rights, and learned to cook in confinement.

 

 

 

 

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Are you guys cooking for yourselves at home? I started cooking more when I was social distancing. They say you’ll be happier during the day if you eat breakfast? Chef imma?‍??‍??‍? みんなお家でご飯作ってる？あたしはステイホームをきっかけに、今まで作ったことのなかったレシピにも挑戦するようになったよっ。朝ごはんを食べると幸福度が上がるんだって? 朝ごはんは抜かないでねっ！ シェフimmaより?‍??‍??‍? ＃あたしCGらしい ＃得意料理はまだないよ＃この家が好き＃IKEA原宿 #ithinkimcgi #nospecialityyet #happytobehome #IKEAharajuku

A post shared by imma (@imma.gram) on Aug 27, 2020 at 6:08pm PDT

Her cooking post is a triumph of perfectionist realism. She looks like influencers we envied before they learned to disappoint us—immaculate, comfortably chic, but stunningly human. A secret smile sits on her face, and her hair, casually tied back, betrays just a kiss of “natural” roots. Her kitschy, slightly oversized apron features a smiling planet with the words “Save Our Home.”

Yet in Magnum’s work, she seems less real than in her social posts, sitting flush in the uncanny valley—that weird place where something that imperceptibly feels not-human looks nonetheless so much like us that it creates an itchy sensation of unease.

In a way, that feeling—so often shunned, avoided or feared in the past—makes her an ideal ambassador for Magnum’s matcha flavor. The ice cream’s chocolate shell, once broken, reveals an almost grassy green interior instead of standard chocolate or vanilla.

If matcha isn’t part of your culture, it’s a novelty, like Imma. But matcha is also familiar enough among Asians that many can vouch for its taste. 

In this way, Magnum finds an acceptable pretext for our uncanny valley syndrome. We can conflate any odd feelings we have about Imma with the jarring appearance of green ice cream in a Magnum shell. And because a lot of Asians have tasted matcha-flavored candy before, they know they can grow past the strangeness of green ice cream … and, by sneaky extension, synthetic people.

Imma, crafted by virtual-human company Aww Inc., was one of the first-ever computer-generated influencers. The curious, but not necessarily negative, press surrounding her paved the way for others, giving marketers a means to work around the human risks inherent to collaborating with, well, brands that are human.

Virtual influencers apparently attract three times more engagement than real ones, and increasingly cross the barrier between what we consider fantasy and our shared digital “reality.” In June last year, virtual musician Lil Miquela, who boasts 2.7 million Instagram followers, appeared in a Calvin Klein ad, kissing supermodel Bella Hadid.

We’ve finally made it to a world as depicted by Roger Rabbit! To mock the trend, KFC released a douchey virtual Colonel Sanders, young and muscular, with gray beach-swept hair and tattooed abs. The intention was to mock the virtual influencer trend; instead, or maybe because of that, a lot of people found the avatar hot. (In any event, he made a more positive splash than the brand’s attempt to digitally revive the actual late Colonel Sanders.) 

The uncertainty Covid brings is only likely to advance interest in synthetic brand collaborators. Never mind the messiness of human growth, which can’t be planned for, and which often spirals out of PR control once the world catches wind. What better solution than virtual icons in a world where travel isn’t so easily assured, and people can no longer approach each other with ease? There’s no better time to create an entire fantasy economy, one where non-people can enjoy gorgeously appointed lives in our place.

Back to Imma. According to a pressie from Fred & Farid Shanghai, Imma is interested in Japanese culture, film and art, “which totally fits with the Magnum Ice Cream brand.” Her name is a play on the Japanese word “ima,” meaning “now.” She also recently launched a TikTok channel.

CREDITS

Agency: Fred & Farid Shanghai
Client: Magnum Ice-Cream
Chief Creative Officers: Fred & Farid
Executive Creative Director: Feng Huang
Associate Creative Director: Jean-Baptiste Le Divelec
Copywriter: Sihan Jin
Art Director: Dagny Rozniak
Brand Strategists: Karen Ge, Si Liu
Agency Supervisor: Chelsea Lin, Sherry Zhang
Agency Producer: Tilda He

Client: Unilever / Magnum China
Vice President, Food & Refreshment North Asia: Benny Xu
Marketing Director: Terrence Wu
Senior Brand Manager: Aubrey Xu
Assistant Brand Manager: Min Lim
Assistant Brand Manager: Vicky Xu
Production: Nion Tokyo
CEO: Moriya Takayuki
Producers: Yumi An/ Yuna Hori/ Kosuke Onishi/ Lin Yin
Line Producer: Nobuki Ogawa
Print Producer: Shion Kimura
Director: Chris Rudz
Director of Photography: Andrzej Rudz
Photographer (Key Visual): Genki Ito
Photographer (Social Posters): Yusuke Kusaba
Art Director: Motty
Post-Production: Cutters studios
Editors: Luc-Yan Picker/ Ruri Abe
CGI artist: Ani-cafe

Credits (Magnum global footage):
Director: Martin Werner
D.O.P : Nicolaj Bruel
Production Company: Proppa
Executive Producer: Pablo Martínez
Art Director: Peter Grant/Pancho Chamorro
Wardrobe: Melanie Buchave/Lucia Lopez Spinola
Editor: Filip Malasek / Robota
Post House & Colorist: Bacon X