There's nothing special about the ad. In fact, it is too androygynous, and Coco Mademoiselle is a light anf fruity scent.
I suppose products need to be sold, and Knithgly is right now the "it" celebrity girl, having recently acted in Anna Karenina.
But, the interesting thing about the commercial is the view of Place Vendome. When I first saw the commericial, I thought it was in Rome. I have written about the Roman Trajan column here:
Trajan's Column (Italian: Colonna Traiana) is a Roman triumphal column in Rome, Italy, that commemorates Roman emperor Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars. It was probably constructed under the supervision of the architect Apollodorus of Damascus at the order of the Roman Senate. It is located in Trajan's Forum, built near the Quirinal Hill, north of the Roman Forum. Completed in AD 113, the freestanding column is most famous for its spiral bas relief, which artistically describes the epic wars between the Romans and Dacians (101–102 and 105–106). Its design has inspired numerous victory columns, both ancient and modern [Source: Wikipedia].
And more from the posting:
Pope Sixtus V crowned this Roman column into a Christian monument, replacing the figure of Trajan with that of St. Peter in 1587. St. Peter reaches out to the gates of heavens with his keys and his judgement, atop this tall column.
There is replica of this column in Paris, in Place Vendome. And sitting atop the Parisian version, rather than St. Peter, or even the Emperor Trajan, is Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte.
The original column was started in in 1806 at Napoleon's direction and completed in 1810. It was modelled after Trajan's Column, to celebrate the victory of Austerlitz; its veneer of 425 spiraling bas-relief bronze plates was made out of cannon taken from the combined armies of Europe, according to his propaganda (the usual figure given is hugely exaggerated: 133 cannon were actually captured at Austerlitz)...A statue of Napoleon, bare-headed, crowned with laurels and holding a sword in his right hand and a globe surmounted with a statue of Victory (as in Napoleon as Mars the Peacemaker) in his left hand, was placed atop the column
After the Bourbon Restoration [the name given to the period of French history following the fall of Napoleon in 1814 until the July Revolution of 1830], the statue was pulled down and melted down to provide the bronze for the recast equestrian statue of Henry IV on the Pont Neuf...A replacement statue of Napoléon in modern dress (a tricorn hat, boots and a redingote), however, was erected by Louis-Philippe [King of the French from 1830 to 1848], and a better, more augustly classicizing one by Louis-Napoléon (later Napoléon III).
The complicated story of the removal and restoration of Napleon - read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_Vend%C3%B4me