In the life of Juan Barbacil (Zaragoza, 1960) the love for wines, the passion for Spanish gastronomy in general, and Aragonese gastronomy in particular, and a care for the literature with which he has shaped their experiences. Brief history of tasting, Vinos de Aragón, with Miguel Lorente, or his participation in The Great Book of Aragonese Cooking are some of his works. This knowledge of Spanish wineries led him to unexpected experiences such as being part of the mythical Freixenet advertisements.
-What is going to call your attention to the reader is how you get to be part of the team of the remembered Christmas spots of the bubbles, with so many stars that passed through them.
-They are not things that come by chance even if they happen by carambola. My relationship with the Freixenet group went back a long time and the closest bond began when 30 years ago I was the national president of specialized wine stores. I am talking about years in which there was no internet, there were not so many large stores and perhaps El Corte Inglés was the only large store that could attend to specific references. The diffusion of the wines, of the denominations, was done with pick and shovel.
-The promotion of wines was then done from store to store, from bar to bar. Selling ‘on line’ was a chimera.
-In my association we negotiated with large wineries to, through the shop windows, make important promotions. One of the companies with which I had to negotiate to be featured in the one hundred shop windows of the one hundred best wine shops in Spain was Freixenet. There I have to speak with the director of communication and marketing and I receive small orders until the matter goes further. I got into advertising at the beginning of the 90s. They had already made an impact with Gene Kelly, Raquel Welch, Shirley McLaine with Miguel Bosé…
-What agency produced those film production advertisements?
-I was lucky to work with the Leopoldo Pomés agency and its production manager, Josep Llorens. yFrom then on, each year was an adventure, each Christmas campaign was an opportunity to get to know great stars up close. It was a test bench and different experiences. It was almost 25 years…
-They were inaccessible edges then, Don Johnson, Kim Bassinger, Demi Moore, Andie McDowell…
-Artists are not so inaccessible in direct contact. The most difficult thing is the managers. And each manager is very different. Then there is a transition to Spanish artists, with the cast of Belle Epoque, with Penélope Cruz, we also work with Montserrat Caballé, Alejandro Sanz, Spanish stars at the heights of Hollywood.
-The bubble girls costume is a classic. But the real ones, how were those girls chosen?
They were all dancers. Dance students or professionals. Pomés went on a route through the dance schools and had the best. She was with a mobile set, with her cameras, in two huge trucks. Different profiles were chosen. In the hundred years of the brand we have one hundred artists so that each of them can interpret one of their own works. They were bottles of Brut Baroque that each one varied in their own style, turned into paintings, sculptures. It was planned for a stand at Alimentaria but in the end the exhibition traveled throughout Spain, in various museums.
-They worked with Penélope Cruz when she had one foot in Hollywood.
-And it was complicated because I was under the influence of Tom Cruise, I don’t know what degree of couple they were. It was absolutely impossible to contact her. We spoke with Bigas Luna, his wife was from a town in Zaragoza, Monegrillo, so that was the link that I was able to take advantage of through a friend. And Bigas tells us, to contact her you have to talk to a certain Luis Alegre. And he was a friend of mine, also from Zaragoza, with whom he had done theater and radio. The world is sometimes that small. Luis put Penelope directly on the phone. With it we made some very beautiful spots, in a very magical tone, in the desert.
-When were those Christmas announcements prepared?
-Production began around this time, late in the summer. The ideas were outlined since the beginning of the year, but to count on the actors it had to be with little margin, looking for holes after the summer. It was recorded in October but at times we were very tight. The premiere, always in December.
-Were there big stars who said no?
-Bruce Willis said yes to us but a crystal jungle came out, the third or fourth, and he had to leave it. We had it within reach, never better said, but in the end it couldn’t be in other years. With Sean Connery we tried several times and he didn’t want to. It was said that he didn’t drink, that he didn’t like alcohol ads.
-More than alcohol it was a matter of money…
-I don’t think so. Maybe she didn’t like appearing advertising a wine. I wasn’t there yet when the Gene Kelly advert was filmed, but apparently, even though he was older, he came to the set and shot everything in a row. It was an amazing experience for others. He asked to change the lighting and the cameras and everything in one day when everything had been planned for a couple of weeks. He was a genius. he played Singing under the rain, with the umbrella, with the girls around. You can see it on Youtube is incredible. He was a genius (it was 1981, Gene Kelly was 69 years old).
-And Banderas with Sharon Stone.
-Set on the Queen Mary. He dressed up as Santa Claus and there is a love story. Who was the scriptwriter? Well, none other than Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The model Laura Ponte really cried in her spot because she was excited about the song by Alejandro Sanz What if it was her?. Maribel Verdú and Ainhoa Arteta were also there. The Ponte thing left us all amazed.
-Besides Gene Kelly, what other star was amazed by its effectiveness?
-Pierce Brosnan fulfilled the contract to the letter, on the set of Barcelona. He is a phenomenon. A seducer, he made jokes like he seemed to drop the bottle and win everyone over. Later he attended the Spanish media with Nieves Álvarez at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s mansion in Florida. That was a memorable trip that the journalists who went can remember. It was always shot in Barcelona but the press conferences were held where the stars were working, because it was cheaper. In the expedition were journalists from the economic press and the heart, what a mix. With Demi Moore we went to Berlin, so she was with Ashton Kutcher. At the party there was cake like at a wedding. And the next day the economic data was presented, all very serious.
-The premiere of the Freixenet spot was even announced in the press.
-As if it were a program. Versions of three minutes and another of one minute were made. They were released on Christmas Eve.
-But it will be Christmas as soon as we hang up the bathing suit.
-The Christmas campaigns are already from October. Times have changed because everything has changed a lot.
-Why don’t Christmas ads work as well as in other times?
-Everything was easier to dose when there were few channels. Now we disperse between screens. There was a campaign that went digital for that reason.
2023-08-07 16:05:43
#Sean #Connery #Freixenet #Christmas #drink
