Yang Gu's Blog

Now what do you think of this?

Source: http://www. cbc.ca/ news/ business/ story/ 2011/11/16/ benetton -pope- vatican- kissing- obama. html

Benetton released similar photoshopped images of Obama, Merkel, Chavez, Sarkozy, Netayahu, and many others.

In this ad campaign, “Unhate”, Benetton claims that it hopes to improve people’s tolerance and lessen their fears in the unfamiliar. (1) Benetton is not a social enterprise, but this campaign, with a premise on tolerance, seems like it is part of a corporate social responsibility agenda.

This campaign is striking me as a cheap ploy to generate publicity.

Benetton’s images are disrespectful to the subjects of the pictures. It already withdrew the above image of the Pope upon the Vatican’s request. (2) While Benetton chose the images that drew fierce reactions, the “intended” message is lost to most people amid the political turmoil. People’s reactions ranged from bemusement to confusion to outright disgust – toward those politicians kissing, not the issue of tolerance.

However, this ad campaign succeeded in putting Benetton’s name across every news media once again. Even so, those images added no value to the Benetton’s primary commodity: clothing.

This ad campaign – all the negativities it associated with the issue of tolerance – left me a very poor impression of Benetton. I don’t think I’m
shopping there anytime soon.

References:

(1), (2) “Benetton pulls ad with Pope kissing imam.” CBC News. 16 Nov 2011.  Accessed 16 Nov 2011. <http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2011/11/16/benetton-pope-vatican-kissing-obama.html>.