Benetton, although a family business, has received its fair share of bad publicity over the years. Instances like trying to adopt RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) into there garments, meaning they could be tracked around the world, and buying up land from under the Mapuche people of Southern Chile, had left Benetton in a fairly insecure place as far as public relation go.
They needed a turn around, a new image, and most of all they needed to retain themselves as a large public company now floated in several countries.
When photographer Oliviero Toscani joined Benetton he was given a blank cheque and free licence for there revamped advertising campaign. Toscani’s reputation for striking, controversial, yet mainly humane images was the gold pass for Benetton.
As previous publicity had drawn their name into disrepute, Benetton counter flanked with Toscani’s campaign featuring many stone cold messages about the state of the world. These images, however
indirect, had an unmistakable message from Benetton. “We see what’s wrong with the world, and we care…”
The striving of social acceptability in the area of environment has been on the agenda of the fashion industry for some time now, and whether Benetton is an environmentally friendly company or not, by having a campaign such as this, on face value it looks like there doing there part.
References for United Colours Of Benneton and Oliviero Toscani were founf at www.wikipedia.com
All images found at www.google/images.com & Benetton a history of advertising at http://www.museedelapub.org/pubgb/virt/mp/benetton/pub_benetton.html
2 comments:
succinct little blurb on the "united talents" of beneton & toscani...left me thinking about the face value of fashion and what impact good design(and shock value) can have in our media savvy world.
you present the big picture of big business its power/ influence over the consumer . great post.
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