I found Yang Gu’s blog post discussing Benetton’s “UNHATE” campaign really shocking, since Benetton is known for fighting racism in advertising by featuring people from every race, size, age, etc. and this campaign seems more like an “eye catcher” than actual advertising. It makes me wonder if they were actually trying to make people UNHATE others or just to get the public’s eye into their next marketing campaign.
I agree with Yang Gu when he talks about it being disrespectful (Pope kissing Imam) for the subjects of the pictures. There are other ways of getting people to UNHATE others without having to make them kiss on the lips, showing other aspects of how you can UNHATE your enemy. My thought is that they were trying to mix different aspects of our lives in one picture, showing tolerance between different political or religious postures while tolerating sexual preferences.
Even though cloth wasn’t featured in the ads, something got across “Benetton” the brand’s name. Even though people showed range and disgust to the images, Benetton got what they wanted “strong reactions” to create debates.
As a company you have to gain permission from the public figures to be featured in such advertisings, since people are not going to think about your brand but about the people involved. That’s why for future advertisings they should do what they do best, be an expression of our time by featuring controversial but respectful campaigns.
Other shocking/controversial campaigns