Keep an Eye on Jacob Whitesides

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No need to duck and cover from the newest fragrance grenade by Viktor & Rolf. For Spicebomb Night Vision, its second men’s fragrance, the brand focused the campaign on the sultry pursuit that begins when the sun goes down. Teaming up with rising musician Jacob Whitesides as the face of the fragrance, the campaign makes a voyeur out of all of us, watching Whitesides from afar during the night. Through the green-toned light from the night vision lens, it becomes clear that we’re not the only ones watching.

The video, directed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, reveals the seductive game at play, showing someone else watching Whitesides, too. With alternate endings to the video, Viktor & Rolf presents a progressive approach to the stereotypical heteronormative flirtation that fragrance ads promote. One ending shows a woman tracking Whitesides’ moves, and another reveals a man doing the watching, letting anyone’s imagination take over. Through a sequence of shots of the target—an undressing Whitesides—and the one watching, it becomes clear that Whitesides has caught onto the voyeur.

The digital component of the voyeurism in the campaign relates to Whitesides’ own career. The singer-songwriter used YouTube as a platform to get his foot in the door of the music industry from his Nashville home. In a sense, he’s used to being watched by strangers. Hundreds of thousands of people, and for some videos, even millions, have viewed his covers and original music videos. As dedicated fans have followed his career since he began posting videos when he was 14, Whitesides is familiar with what it feels like to be tracked in the digital world and is surprisingly comfortable with it. “I feel like I’ve always been a fairly like genuine person, so I never felt like I had a whole lot to hide,” he tells CR. “That made it little bit easier for me.”

For Whitesides, now 21, the sophisticated and masculine scent is a step up from what he wore when he started posting on the internet. According to the musician, he began wearing fragrances when he was 12 or 13, but admits that the scents he gravitated towards then were for a less developed palate. “All the kids—I grew up in the dirty South—and all of them smelled bad, and I feel like [wearing cologne] gave me a sort of edge,” Whitesides says. “I started really, really young and I got a better appreciation for nicer fragrances as I’ve gotten older.”

Spicebomb Night Vision offers a sophisticated, yet fresh scent for Whitesides and other men looking to develop their fragrance portfolio. The provocative nature of the campaign is reflected by the fragrance through its emerald-accented bottle that recalls the virescent glow of a night vision scope. Reflecting on his experience on the set of the video, Whitesides says: “I’ve always been super detail-oriented when it comes to my live shows and production so I definitely saw similarities in the creative world, like how much of a perfectionist [Viktor&Rolf] wanted to be, and it was really awesome.”

As the star of the Spicebomb Night Vision campaign, Whitesides is introduced as a person of interest and an object of desire, viewed through the darkness. In reality, however, as Whitesides continues to grow in his music and career, with a record deal on the horizon, his audience can watch him from the safe distance that social media allows–no night vision scope required.

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