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Lady Gaga & Tony Bennett Team Up In Barnes & Noble Festive Ad [Video]

By Anne Sewell
Published on: 23:10 PST, Nov 14, 2015

As we head closer to the festive season, Barnes & Noble has released a new, musical television ad showing Lady Gaga and veteran singer, Tony Bennett, meeting up in a bookstore.

To keep up with the heavy competition during the upcoming holidays, bookstore giant Barnes & Noble has released a commercial showing Lady Gaga and the veteran singer meeting up in a bookstore and bursting into song.

Leonard Riggio, the 74-year-old original boss of Barnes & Noble Inc. has been keeping a low profile in recent years. Reportedly Riggio has not been CEO of the world’s largest bookstore chain for over a decade; however, he did remain as chairman of the company and is still the largest shareholder.

Riggio has decided to give Barnes & Noble an image makeover in time for the upcoming, and hopefully profitable, holiday season. He came up with a brand new ad, featuring two well known, and professional singers as its stars.

Retail revenue at the bookstore giant has reportedly declined 1.7 percent in the fiscal first quarter. Even the company’s digital content sales, a vital aspect in this modern technological age, had dropped by 28 percent.

Traffic on the company’s website during September was reportedly smaller than it was back in September 2013. Despite this, Riggio is optimistic that he can make a difference, and increase sales during the coming hectic shopping season with his new advertising campaign.

The Hollywood Reporter quotes Riggio as telling the media he had been thinking about “physical books, digital books, future store concepts, and the essence of what it is about us that makes us who we are.”

“The idea of the meeting place, the piazza, is so much of what we’ve become across the country.”

Wanting to tap into the emotions of his audience and draw them into Barnes & Noble stores, he came up with the new TV ad and is reportedly working on several new store prototypes he hopes to debut in 2016.

Barnes & Noble has massive competition from the book retail and multiple product selling giant, Amazon.com. Amazon’s share of both physical and digital book sales is reportedly still increasing steadily, and at present, stands at 68 percent of the market.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Riggio is a long time personal friend of singing star Tony Bennett and he asked him if he would be willing to participate in the new TV ad. He further asked if Bennett would mind joining Lady Gaga in the new commercial, as the singing duo had released a collection of classic duets dubbed “Cheek To Cheek” back in 2014. Riggio had reportedly seen Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga perform together, and enjoyed the personal chemistry the two singers shared.

Danny Bennett, son of the veteran singer and his long-time manager, said the personal chemistry is “something you can’t fake,” adding, “Your job is 90 percent done with that alone.”

In the video, included above, Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga can be seen entering a Barnes & Noble store while snow drifts festively outside the windows. They both separately break into song, singing the classic 1944 song “Baby It’s Cold Outside” while browsing the festively decorated shelves in the store. Eventually the pair bump into each other and exchange gifts. Lady Gaga gives Bennett a jazz book, while he, in return, hands her a fashion book.

With the tagline “You never know who you’ll meet at Barnes & Noble,” the company hopes that the ad will attract new customers. Loretta Volpe of GMLV LLC, the company responsible for purchasing airtime for the commercial, said millions of people will see it over the holiday season.

For more of the singing duo, enjoy Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga singing Cheek To Cheek in the video below.

[Photo by Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images Entertainment]

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