Rocawear to Release New Commercial Featuring Jay-Z

Post by Portia Williams, Feb 7, 2012 at 10:59 am Speak Up2

Jay-Z will star in a new commercial to promote his Rocawear line in an attempt to pull the clothing company out of the downturn that it suffered over the past year. The ad spot will be the first televised promotion that the line has run in its 21 years of operation.

The commercial, which is titled ‘From Marcy to Madison Square,’ is expected to debut in the spring on stations such as MTV, BET, and TNT, where it will be shown during NBA basketball games and on the cable channel’s website according to  US Magazine.

The line is looking to remind fashion fans of the clothing line’s roots by retelling the story of Jay-Z’s career from his early days when he sold CDs out of the trunk of a car in the Marcy Projects to headlining at Madison Square Garden, and the spot could include footage from the ‘Watch the Throne’ tour as the commercial was filmed in November.

Rocawear has seen better days and was forced to lay off half of the employees at its Manhattan office in early January after the company experienced a global drop in sales that amounted to nearly $500 million. On top of the company’s economic misfortune, Rocawear came under scrutiny last November when plans for a t-shirt which sought to capitalize off of the Occupy Wall Street movement were leaked.

The company is well aware that an advertisement won’t be enough to recover from last year’s poor sales and is looking to expand its children’s line as well as its placement in international markets in order to help make up for the shortfall.