A thing that influenced fashion

Benetton advertising campaigns

Since the 1980s Benetton has gained a reputation for shock-advertising that has whipped-up controversy and stimulated debate - and helped boost the brand recognition of the Italian fashion giant

 “We did not create our advertisements in order to provoke, but to make people talk, to develop citizen consciousness,” Luciano Benetton assures us. Whether or not they began in this way, many Benetton advertisement campaigns have ended with controversy. 

    These graphic, billboard-sized ads included depictions of a variety of shocking subjects, one of which featured a deathbed scene of a man (AIDS activist David Kirby) dying from AIDS. Others included a bloodied, unwashed newborn baby with umbilical cord still attached, which was highly controversial. This 1991 advert prompted more than 800 complaints to the British Advertising Standards Authority during 1991 and was featured in the reference book Guinness World Records 2000 as 'Most Controversial Campaign'. Others included a black stallion covering a white mare ,close-up pictures of tattoos reading "HIV Positive" on the bodies of men and women, a cemetery of many cross-like tombstones, a collage consisting of genitals of persons of various races, a priest and nun about to engage in a romantic kiss, pictures of inmates on death row, an electric chair, an advert showing a boy with hair shaped into the devil's horns, three different hearts with "black", "white" and "yellow" written onto them (from March 1996), and a picture of a bloodied T-shirt and pants riddled with bullet holes from a soldier killed in the Bosnian War (this one appeared in February 1994). Most of the advertisements, although not all, had a plain white background, and in most the company's logo served as the only text accompanying the image.

It is clear that Benetton uses advertising as a way to make people see and talk about world issues. It draws attention to political, ethnical and social issues, which is good, but at the same time it can cause agitation, feud and abomination.