United Colors Of Benetton Advertising Analysis

Over the past century the way products and services are advertised has significantly changed. In the ancient times, products were promoted by word of mouth. Thousands of years later, the Industrial revolution transformed the structure of society and pushed companies to a completely new level of advertisement. First, the success of an advertisement is measured from an economic point of view, meaning how effective in terms of sales increase it was. The primary goal of an ad campaign is to increase profit and market efficiency. However, ethics may be put aside. Sometimes the quality of ad campaigns shifts either to really professional or to explicitly cynical and unethical ones. Companies use shocking campaigns which are believed to be more
The slogan of the company is assonant with its full name- ‘All the world’s colors!’ and it became the new approach towards making the name United Colors of Benetton a worldwide recognizable brand. For his first ad, Toskani photographed 6 people of different races; since then the color varriation has become the company’s distinctive mark with the initial goal to proclaim race equality, tolerance and friendship among people. The first ads raised interest to the company and immediately made it notorious regarding the controversial approach to the brand’s marketing policy. Whenever Benetton raised the race issue there were always those who would find its ads to be unethical. For example, in the USA one of the most famous Benetton‘s ads presenting an afroamerican woman breastfeeding a white child was found to be discriminative and disparaging in relation to that woman particularly and all africoamerican women in general. At the same time in European countries such as France, Denmark and Italy the ad was awarded several times because it was considered as a praise to racial harmony and etnical unification (Hatfield,
Not even showing its products, and focusing on visual representation of controversial and generally tabooed topics, Benetton made itself to be associated with conflicts, pain and discomfort while working in the fashion industry. The company has broken habitual perception of modern people about comfort and overall well-being, and crushed the patterns, language and specification of classical approaches to advertisement that had been maintained for many years before. Mass Media has been making us accustomed to such topics as deaths, ecological catastrophes, and genocide. This list of terrible topics which are being covered by mass media nowadays is very long. However, in the Benetton case a lot of people confronted its marketing stratégy because they were not able to comprehend that such topics were used in commercials with a goal to promote the company. There are many non-governmental organizations that also make profits taking care of people’s well-being, safety and health (for example, ….), Benetton’s attempt to hold socially beneficial debates, for example, on Aids‘ prevention, was perceived to be intolerable. In many cases the brand was accused not only in voicing about tabooed issues but also that it did not have a legitimate status to speak about them. I also belive that those who advocated for prohibiting Benetton’s ads just did not want to see the picture of reality and