“A thumbs up comes in handy when we’re doing these campaigns,” says Ryan Gosling, giving it his best Fonzie impression. “You can only do so much pointing at things that aren’t necessarily there, so the thumbs up solves a lot of problems. There’s also the thumbs down situation, too,” he adds, demonstrating the kind of versatility that’s got him to where he is today. “Either one works well for the watch.”
As TAG Heuer’s leading man, striking the right pose is clearly something Gosling takes seriously. We are catching up about his latest campaign with the watchmaking giants, one commemorating the 60th anniversary of the iconic Carrera. It’s taken a different turn to what you’d usually expect from standard advertising campaign. Like Daniel Craig and that viral Belvedere ad, TAG Heuer and The Gos have taken a bold approach.
Instead of just “using an image to put on a billboard campaign”, TAG Heuer CEO Frédéric Arnault wanted to go deeper with this campaign. “Ryan is an amazing actor, one of the best in Hollywood, but he’s also a creator so he was very involved in the script and helped us choose the other actors, and the director,” says Arnault.
That director is David Leitch, who has worked on everything from John Wick and Deadpool to Bullet Train. He is a seasoned pro, and also a big TAG Heuer fan so was happy to be involved. “I was directing The Fall Guy [in Sydney] starring Ryan and he’s like, TAG really wants to do this thing for the Carrera 60th anniversary but it’s happening right in the middle of our shoot. Can you help me with it?’ I was thinking how can we get this done while filming a big $200 million movie?”
Mike Christensen
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