Working From Home, Eva Longoria Made This L'Oréal Ad on an iPhone

Eva Longoria starring in an ad for L’Oréal is hardly headline news. The spot below, however, is something special. The actress not only appears in the :90, but she also shot it herself at home, using a pair of iPhones.

With salons closed during lockdowns, demand for home hair-color treatments spiked, and L’Oréal—working with McCann in Paris and New York—sought to leverage that trend for its Excellence Crème line, even with commercial production at a standstill. So, they asked longtime brand spokesperson Longoria to serve as auteur, and she delivered a perky, self-aware and wholly relatable experience:

It’s basically a product demo, with Longoria using Excellence Crème to cover up the grays, and providing cheerful commentary at every step. (We learn that conditioning is her favorite part of the hair-color process. There, now you can win a bet.)

McCann provided pre-production notes, guidance via Microsoft Teams, and the actual phones. Longoria handled all aspects of the shoot on site. The fact that she’s directed a lot of episodic television—Grand Hotel, Black-ish and The Mick—probably helped.

“Given the current climate, we’ve had to find creative solutions and adapt our advertising and production,” Julien Calot, executive creative director at McCann Paris, tells Muse. “For this project, we decided to go with a 100 percent real, homemade film, respecting the rules of isolation.”

The team chose Longoria, who’s worked with L’Oréal for 15 years, because “she’s got a true element of authenticity and simplicity that we were looking for,” Calot says.

They also admired the former Desperate Housewives star to “go off script but stay on message,” he says. As it turned out, much of her ad-libbing appears in the final cut. “During the editing, we basically decided to kill everything that looked too commercial or too pushy in order to keep the purest form of natural energy,” says Calot.

All told, from pitching the concept to launching the spot across TV, social media and e-commerce assets, the process took 10 days.

“It’s a challenging time for everyone right now as we try to juggle all of our responsibilities and the needs of our loved ones, but it’s also important to remember to take care of ourselves,” Longoria says in a statement. “In this commercial, viewers can see how easy it is to get expert results and the confidence boost they deserve while at home. Self-care is self-worth—and now, more than ever, we are all worth it.”

CREDITS

Agency: McCann Paris and N.Y.

Global Business Leader: Charlotte Franceries
Executive Creative Director: Julien Calot

Copywriter: Gina Winsky
Art Director: Emmanuelle Miquel
Big thanks to Rob Brown: Executive Creative Director McCann London

Chief Marketing Officer: Anne-Sophie Carbo
Business Director: Pierre Bédère
Account Manager: Sarah Rocle
Project management: Nadia LAsfar

Producer: Thibault Blacque-Belair
Post-Producer: Julien Gence
Post-Producers: Sandrine Goncalves, Marie Prouvé
Production: QUAD
Post-Production Sound: Capitaine Plouf