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United Colors of Benetton
United Colors of Benetton is a worldwide clothing retailer and by 1995 they had some of the most talked about and highly controversial advertising campaigns. The company was started in a small Italian town in 1955 by the Benetton family. The four siblings split up the different aspects of the company and each took charge of marketing, design department, administration and finance, or production. As the company grew, the first store was opened in 1969 and was instantly successful. In the same year, they moved overseas and opened a store in Paris. Benetton is recognized as one of the strongest brands in the world, and has a very unique advertising strategy. United Colors of Benetton didn’t focus their campaigns on their clothing line like nearly all of their competitors but they wanted to bring awareness to social issues, current problems and debatable matters (Ganesan, 2002).
Their advertisements are known across the world as being controversial and borderline inappropriate. Their strategy is to work with shock value to make their name memorable and to promote issues face the world. Instead of capturing merchandise in the advertisements, they feature political and social issues such as AIDS, racial integration, war, poverty, child labor, death etc. The company is more focused on making the public aware of their issues rather than selling merchandise when it comes to their advertisements. Some of their advertisements have received praise for encouraging diversity and social issues in some countries. While the same advertisement in another country may be under scrutiny. United Colors of Benetton’s advertising strategy is stated as “Benetton believes that it is important for companies to take a stance in the real world instead of using their advertising budget to perpetuate the myth that they can make consumers happy through the mere purchase of their product” (Ganesan, 2002). This idea is a revolutionary idea because every other company to date has taken on the exact opposite motto for their advertising strategy. Others advertisements want to convey that you can not live without their product and their product is the “it” item to own.
Up until the 1980’s, Benetton’s advertising could be classified as traditional in the sense that they centered their campaigns on their products. The typical advertisement seen would have been a group of young people having a good time and all wearing colorful Benetton clothing. The company decided to make changes to their strategy in order to make their brand standout from all of the other competitors and to be remembered in the minds of the consumers. The jump start to their highly disputed campaigns was in 1984 featuring “All the Colors in the World”. The first theme was having children from a variety of different cultures dressed in colorful Benetton clothing. This was supposed to promote world peace and diversity among nations. The campaign lead way to the name United Colors of Benetton, which up until this point was known as Benetton Group (Johansson). This campaign caught many off guard and upset many people.
The next advertisements were very similar to the previous campaign in showing teenagers of different cultures wearing Benetton clothing with the logo at the bottom. They showed two young black children kissing each other with a USSR and a US flag in their hair. The boys appeared again in the next year with a globe, a chain, and a peace symbol binding them together. The globe was then featured in the rest of the advertisements for that year. In an effort to endorse world peace and harmony, the company featured rival countries such as England and Argentina, Israel and Germany, Iran and Iraq etc. The next theme was titled “united superstars of Benetton” and featured Adam and Eve, Joan of Arc, Julius Caesar, Leonardo de Vinci and Marilyn Monroe. Following that was a campaign centered on animals with the theme “united friends of Benetton.” Animals such as a white wolf and a black lamb were pictured together to give the message of social unity. The company then moved to advertisements that pictured things that would support thinking and did not picture the logo, but rather just the words “United Colors of Benetton” somewhere small on the page.
Some of the more famous advertisements from the 1980s included a black and white hand being bound by a handcuff, a black woman breast feeding a white baby, a black child sleeping with a bunch of white teddy bears, and a white baby made to look angelic sitting with a black baby with horns made from his hair. This last advertisement created a lot of controversy among Black Groups in the U.S. because the advertisement could be taken that the black baby was portrayed as a devil. African Americans also thought of this advertisement to be a reminder of slavery, when the African American women would often take care of their white slave owner’s young children.
United Colors of Benetton next targeted social issues in 1991. The first issue they attempted to tackle was the use of proper sexual protection. They displayed a billboard with brightly colored condoms in a colorful, playful manner. This was disputed by people saying it was discrediting condoms. Shortly after, Benetton tried to bring awareness to love as the underlying reason for all life. They attempted to do this by displaying a billboard of a priest kissing a nun. Many had problems with this ad, including the Pope and other religious groups, while others found it touching. An image of a baby with an umbilical cord offended many groups but was also used in the Flemish museum as a show to support motherhood (Johansson). The baby advertisement was to show people that we over look the severity of death each day in the media, acting like it is becoming no big deal. Benetton’s aim was to show people how it is the essence of life and depict how death is hard to look at.
Most of the company’s advertising was scolded by the media and public, but the company continued their campaigns despite the opposition from others. United Colors of Benetton’s next highly disputed campaigned was launched in alertness to the issue of HIV and AIDS. There was a billboard displaying a butt, arm and crotch all stamped with HIV positive. This was not accepted by the Italians because they saw it as not respecting the dignity of human beings. They later launched a picture of a young man who was in a hospital with his family surrounding because he was dying of the AIDS virus. This advertisement led to boycotts of the clothing store, which was a huge hit on retail sales which the company was not expecting. Other advertisements in this campaign featured an African guerilla holding a human leg bone, a car in flames after a Mafia bombing, and a family crying next to a bloody corpse of Mafioso. Another powerful picture was three identical hearts lying next to each other labeled white, black, and yellow. This showed that no matter what color we are on the outside, we all look the same on the inside.
In 2000, a campaign was released featuring convicted death row individuals (Ganesan, 2002). The billboards shown in Europe, America, and Asia portrayed inmates sentenced to death with their name and execution date printed on the bottom. United Colors of Benetton created a video and booklet with the pictures of twenty six inmates and interviews with them about their life and punishment. The idea of this was to get people to see the inmates as human beings and realize they too have feelings. Many government groups and the families of the inmates protested against these photos. As a result, many countries refused to print Benetton advertisements in their newspapers (Ganesan, 2002). The refusal to print their advertisements was not a new struggle at this point for the company, they had dealt with many issues like this in past campaigns.
The following were just a few examples of the world wide impact Benetton was trying to bring to the world. They are not advocating their clothing or advocating for or against an issue. All they are doing is to bring a message of awareness so better educated choices may be made to prevent some of these issues in the future. Benetton faced many challenges from groups forcing them to fight in court and had many opportunities to back down but never did. Their persistence to try to make a change was admired and respected by many.
In 1989, Benetton changed their name to “United Colors of Benetton” and took up a six year plan to change the way people viewed conventional advertising. Before 1984, Benetton advertised only in France and Italy, despite having stores located elsewhere. Some of the advertisements were considered too controversial to be shown in the United States.
In the 1990’s, the United Colors of Benetton opened stores located in 120 countries around the world. They produced about 160 million garments each year and had a network of over 5,500 stores around the world that generate a total turnover of over 2 billion euro (Tinic, 1997).
The retailer has a variety of different brands for each target customer. United Colors of Benetton is a global brand, and is one of the most well known in the world. It has womenswear, menswear, childrens wear, and underwear that can be used to work, casual, leisure, or outdoors. This brand also has baby items, cosmetics, perfumes, and home collections all available. Under Colors of Benetton is a branch that comes from United Colors of Benetton and offers underwear, beachwear, sleepwear, and accessories for men, women, and children. Sisley is known as the retailer’s most fashion forward brand. It provides very elegant collections with a focus on shape and fine materials. Sisley Young is a branch from this line for children 8-12 years old. Playlife is the sportswear brand. It is a twist on American college and traditional sports clothing (Tinic, 1997). United Colors of Benetton offers an array of different clothing and accessories of any age group.
They have a staff of over 300 designers from all over the world that create merchandise for all of their various lines. The design team is always working on targeting new customers such as children and expecting mothers in order to diverse their lines even more. United Colors of Benetton puts a lot of stress on high quality. They do not cut any corners starting with the use of high quality raw materials and ending with the quality finished product. The retailer’s specialists have recently created a machine that can produce a completely seamless sweater in half an hour (Dapiran, 1992). This technology has helped them in the beginning of product development. Special attention is given to the production phase, and all systems and equipment are completely renewed every five years to keep up with the latest technology and the technological curve. Keeping up with technology is an important part of United Colors of Benetton’s business plan.
Benetton currently has a website titles BenettonTalk that is a place where you can find the latest news around the world. It is considered a blog, which is a place where people can log on and talk about what is important to them. The website talks about such issues as earthquakes in Italy, to the reasons why people own guns. It is a great place to have debates or discussions dealing with a forum of different topics with many of people from around the world. There are many different categories on the website ranging from art, marketing, sport, technology, and world health. This is another way United Colors of Benetton is trying to reach out to their consumers and get them interested in issues that are taking place all over the world (BenettonTalk, 2009). It is also helping people make connections with a free flow of ideas and opinions.
United Colors of Benetton recognizes that their campaigns are very different from traditional advertising. They claim their advertising is not just used for communication, but also an expression of our time. They are not trying to stir up trouble and make people mad on controversial issues, they want to shine light on issues. They pride themselves on having their advertisements stand out from all the other companies trying to get their message to the consumer at the same time. Their campaigns have received many awards worldwide as well as much ridicule but they set each aside and focus on the task at hand, which issue they will try to bring forward next. They acknowledge that they are a target of discussion and have very confrontational ideas (Tinic, 1997). This has been useful by simply helping Benetton get their name out there no matter the means of media.
United Colors of Benetton’s motives behind their billboards for bringing to awareness human suffering issues have good intent. Topics such as the ones the company is using for their advertisements are significant for the world to be aware of. There are other ways one can bring awareness to AIDS that does not include a photograph of a victim on his deathbed. A photograph of an African American child whose hair depicts horns is not the only way to bring consciousness about racism to the world.
United Colors of Benetton has in fact apologized and defended their position in many cases around the globe. To better explain their reasoning behind them using these issues for promoting their clothing brand, Benetton should be more active in raising funds or donations. Acts of giving will be demonstrated that they are interested in not only awareness but to physically help out these causes. The billboards would be less controversial if people knew the company had good intentions from the beginning. Similar to the clothing drive United Colors of Benetton conducted several years ago, the company should focus on giving back to the community. This retailer should hold clothing drives for the victims of all these world issues they feel passionate about on a regular basis. By doing so, the world would know that United Colors of Benetton really does in fact care about people and is trying to resolve the hurt they caused from the previous advertisements.