THE LOST ART OF COPYWRITING: Benetton
Benetton.
Back in the 80s they were famous for selling casual sweaters in umpteen pastel shades.
Their ads were bright and breezy, and full of happy young people of every skin tone, all radiating energy and positivity.
They were all about the United Colours of Benetton.
The campaigns, created by Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani shouted integration, inclusion and diversity.
These ads, like the one above, that featured in the magazine Mademoiselle in 1983, were part of a campaign called ‘All the Colors of the World.’
Some of these ads gently addressed politics, like this one which ran during the Cold War in 1986. It featured two athletes embracing, one American, one Russian.
Then in the early 90s, Toscani took a different direction.
The imagery began to reflect the most urgent social, political and environmental issues at the time.
It became one of the most controversial campaigns ever and was called shock-vertising.
They had no products, no headline, no copy.
Just the UNITED COLOURS OF BENETTON logo panel next to increasingly disturbing images.
In the next ad, the line-up of happy, smiling teens was replaced by a line-up of test tubes all filled with blood. Each vial was labelled with an ethnically diverse first name – Fidel, Kaifu, Helmut, Jiang, George and Mikhail.
Diversity but with a sharper edge.
Future ads would continue to promote inclusivity, but the imagery became increasingly shocking.
They depicted a wide range of social and political imagery, including dead soldiers in the Bosnian war, a baby with its umbilical cord still attached, Mafia victims, a nun and a priest kissing, a dying AIDS patient, two horses copulating, three human hearts, the Pope and an Imam kissing, a black woman breast feeding a white baby and many more.
The choice of Pope Benedict XVI and Imam Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb makes a strong case for love and reconciliation.
But hours after being put up, Benetton had to take down this poster and apologise to the Vatican, who were taking legal action.
In 1994, Benetton showed the clothes of a fallen Bosnian soldier covered in blood and riddled with bullet holes. This was conveniently at the height of the Balkan war and its blanket coverage in western media.
This image showed a dying AIDS patient. The Catholic Church thought that the brand was mocking the historical image of Virgin Mary holding Jesus Christ in her arms, following his crucifixion.
It also enraged both AIDS and gay activists, who called for a boycott of the brand. They were furious that Benetton was using death and grief to sell its garments.
Throughout the 1990s, Benetton ads seemed to be more focused on shock value than clothing. The ads were often met with backlash, calls for a boycott of Benetton goods, and even with censorship.
Toscani justified these ads in an interview with The New York Times, saying that, “I have found out that advertising is the richest and most powerful medium existing today, so I feel responsible to do more than to say, ‘Our sweater is pretty.’”
He went on to say, “Why would you want to see clothes in an advert? If you want to see the clothes, you can see them in our shops. On a billboard, I can show you how the company thinks, what it believes, what it represents. Advertising is primitive and powerful – it is more than art. People can look up and see it. And if they don’t like it, they don’t have to look at it.”
Strong words. But then these were strong ads, which became increasingly challenging and thought-provoking.
Even as recently as 2018, two Benetton ads attracted fierce criticism from politicians and consumers in Italy and around the world.
They repurposed two photos from migrant rescue operations by the Franco-German charity SOS Méditerranée for a Benetton advertising campaign.
One image captured charity workers handing out life jackets to migrants on an overflowing raft off the coast of Libya.
The other showed migrant women and their children at an aid station in Italy.
The charity criticised Benetton and denied having anything to do with the advertising campaign.
So were all of Toscani’s Benetton ads about raising social awareness, using awful events for commercial gain, or simply a way to make a name for himself as the enfant terrible of fashion advertising?
You decide.
But one thing’s for sure.
Benetton’s campaigns pioneered the modern phenomenon of brand activism - companies standing up for something and having a purpose beyond just turning a profit.
In February 2020, Toscani was sacked after distasteful comments he made about the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy, that killed 43 people.
It was a sad end for someone who inspired many creatives with his view that “Creativity is not based on security. Once you’re secure, you’re doing something that’s already been done.”