"United colours of Benetton". Who has not heard or read this slogan some time? Everybody knows Benetton, either through their advertising campaigns or through the press. But what is the secret of this company? How is it that this clothes firm is almost as known in the world as McDonald's is? Is it possible that a company that is only forty years old and that originally was born in a small Italian village, is as known as it is today around all five continents? The purpose of this project is to analyse the changes and trajectory that the company and its advertising has gone through since 1963. Maybe this way we will come closer to Benetton's secret, which could become a basis for effective modern advertising.
To understand better the concept that we have today about Benetton, first of all we have to get to know the birth and the growth of the company. Luciano Benetton was born in 1945 in a small town in the north of Italy. His father died very soon, and as Luciano and his sister Guiliana grew, they decided to earn some money knitting pullovers and selling them to the small neighbourhood. In a time when the trend was made up by acrylic pullovers, "Luciano went to England to study a technique whereby one knitted in off-white yarn, only dying the wool at the last minute, thus keeping up with ever changing fashion trends". In 1963, they made up their first, own company, and as it started to become famous, three years later Lison Bonfils moved into Benetton's headquarter at Villa Minelli. He would stay with the company for ten years and help to consolidate its growing popularity. But still, the main corps of the company was made up by the family members themselves. Each of the four brothers had a permanent task. While Luciano was the responsible person for marketing, Guiliana (born in 1937) directed the design department, Gilberto (born in 1941) handled administration and finance and Carlo (born in 1943) managed production. Today, all family members are still directly involved with the production and design of Benetton garments Lison Bonfils was also the one that helped to realize the project of moving opening the first Benetton shop in Paris, in 1969. The wide range of colours and the production style made the brand popular for the young French people. In 1972, the company's incomes were big enough to change from their small Italian advertising agency to ELDORADO, in Paris. Ten years later, Oliviero Toscani would start working for the company.
The big secret of the company was (and still is) using a system so that the sweaters were made first, and then were dyed in the bright colours afterwards, according to demand. This allowed the faster delivery of the desired product. "If the demand was red, the already colourless knitted sweaters were dyed to suit demand on short notice, therefore catapulting Benetton ahead of the competition. Demand was high and Benetton stores began to sprout all over the world." At this time, Benetton had extended its production also to shoes, to children clothing, and was sponsoring a rugby-, a basketball- and a formula-one-team. Only five years later, the company was sponsoring also the volleyball-team, and had several more labels (each for a different target consumer). Benetton International Holding moved its headquarters to Luxembourg, having also nine factories operating in Italy, France and Scotland. Their garments did not include only knitted pullovers anymore, and as production of other clothes in a wide range of bright colours appeared, the company changed its name to UNITED COLORS OF BENETTON.
In 1986, Benetton launched its cosmetic line, which was followed in 1988 by its first perfume: "Colours". At the same time, a great number of new shops were opened all around the world. "Every one of the Benetton shops was conceived by Italian architect Tobia Scarpa along the same lines of clarity, simplicity and order, so that clients can grasp the collection's trends at a single glance."
In the nineties, the company concentrates on launching new products and services on the market. In 1992, a magazine called COLOURS was available in all Benetton stores. It consisted of a collection of a great selection of pictures from different advertising campaigns accompanied by a short commentary. A year later the perfume TRIBOU was launched, and a number of new labels were taken over by the Benetton corporation, each of them directed to a different public: SISLEY for a more conservative public, AND for a new line of T-shirts and INEDITO for image production (founded by Oliviero Toscani). BENETTON SPORT SYSTEMS, created in 1989, manages all the different labels of the company, and since 1992, the variety has widened. Besides the labels already named, it also includes ASOLO, EKTELONN, GRAFALLOY, KţSTLE, KILLER LOOP, LANGERT, NORDICA, NITRO, PRINCE and ROLLERBLADE. Nowadays, the Benetton corporation has grown to the point that it also invests in other small and industrial companies of all fields and areas. Its variety of products, services and enrolments has grown enourmously. It is known by thousands of people around the world. In the year 2000, Benetton was the official clothing supplier of the Italian Olympic Team for the Summer Olympics in Sydney. Beyond its unique advertising campaigns, Benetton is also engaged in direct humanitarian action, having raised donations for African countries (together with the French anti-racist association, SOS-Racisme), for war victims (through the "Italian Associazione per la Pace") and even for school children.
Luciano Benetton: "The purpose of advertising is not to sell more. It's to do with institutional publicity, whose aim is to communicate the company's values (...) We need to convey a single strong image, which can be shared anywhere in the world."
"Tradition of campaigns centred on images intended to promote peace, tolerance, multiculturalism and to challenge stereotypes. Through posters, billboards, ads in the media and its own magazines, Benetton has tried to take its message to a global audience. At the same time, it has grown into Italy's fourth largest company with an annual turnover of nearly 2 billion dollars."
Some people say that Benetton's advertising first really started when Oliviero Toscani started working at the company. Others disagree with that hypothesis and say that Benetton's advertising first started when Luciano and Guiliana first conferred its advertising to the ELDORADO agency. In general, we can say that the company's communication strategy divides into four clearly identified time periods, through which Benetton's advertising has gone through a change of 180 degrees.
From 1972 (Benetton starts making advertising) until 1982, Benetton's campaigns were very much like any other casual wear brand for young people. The billboard and magazine ads were pictures of simple, realistic representations of groups of young, professional models wearing Benetton clothes. Seen from today's perspective, it seems almost impossible that this campaign is about the same brand as Toscani's photographs later on. The main purpose of these ads was to emphasize on the product, and then connect it with a pretty and golden youth. The photographs of this period of time are always made up by a group of young boys and girls of different races and looks but with the same characteristics: they are all young, handsome and happy. All of them wear Benetton clothes. With this, Benetton wanted to give a double message: On one hand, Benetton is strong enough to unify a diverse group and make all of them equal, and on the other hand it has such a big range of products and colours that it makes each person in a group different from the others. Benetton wanted people to get to know the product and its values, and that is also the reason for not using any famous models for the campaign. A model has to make the clothes stand out without taking its protagonism away. In conclusion, in this period of time the brand's advertising is based mostly on objective and real information.
"Nothing more is more like a fashion photograph than another fashion photograph. You show some lovely looking models and that's it. With Benetton, we started out with the notion of colour. By definition, Benetton means colours. So, to convey this idea of colours, we showed a group, made up of people with different coloured skin. It was fantastic, so exhilarating to show the products in such a new and simple way." (Bruno Suter, Eldorado's director, 1982).
But from 1982 to 1983, the communication style would change. In 1982 Oliviero Toscani started working for Benetton, and although at this time his ads were not as aggressive as ten years later, we can already see his influence. It was in these two years when the style and the visual identity of the brand were created and organized. This means that the particular image of the brand was hammered into their consumers' head so that people would know the brand and would start to identify themselves with the brand. This period is very important to stay in a good position on the market for a long time.
First of all, the design of the ads changed gradually. The pictures seem to get a more graphic style; they are less and less realistic and look more like a drawing. The layouts are clear and full of details and the actors can be easily recognized. Each of the women and men that appear in the ads stand for only himself or for a group of people. The actors don't have yet the symbolic meaning they would have a few years later, but represent only their particular social group, with its own values and traditions. In the previous communication period, the actors would pose in front of buildings, landscapes or other backgrounds, but since 1983, the background would just be blank. The purpose of it is to give a greater importance to the clothes themselves and the bright colours of the dresses. The actors would still communicate health, good looks and happiness, giving the brand a totally positive image.
The colouring would be the main characteristic of the brand from now on, and also the slogan adapts to this change. On all the ads would now appear the phrase ALL THE COLOURS OF THE WORLD. The main idea of variety and heterogeneity is the same, but is now transmitted through the colours instead of through the figures of the photographs. The result of the combination and mix of different colours is the combination of all kinds of different people that also mix and get homogeneous. To make this possible, the company in these years worked even more on the production system, creating a complete internal culture of producing uncoloured garments so they could be dyed in the most fashionable colour in the right moment.
The result of the campaign of these two years is a new identity of the brand. Now, Benetton is the brand that puts all differences of the world together, it assures the coexistence of diversity. The wide range of colours made it possible to appeal to a wide range of target customers, giving each of them the feeling of being equal to everybody else through his or her clothes.
We now get to the third communication period of the company, which would last from 1985 to 1990. It is in these years when Benetton starts to change its advertising and the brand first appears in the press and produces controversy among the people. Although the blank background of the photographs remains, the main structure of the ads changes. The main object is not anymore a group of people but pairs of two opposed persons. For example two little girls sharing the same sweater, or two little black boys kissing each other, with little US and USSR flags in their hair and painted on their cheeks "United Colours of Benetton". The consequence was that people got a totally different interpretation of the brand. The campaign is not based anymore on a group that identifies through its values, but on the confrontation of two different beings, creating a concept of duality. The photographs of these years are always of two persons -men or women- that are somehow confronted. They have either racial differences, different political or religious believes, or are moral or social enemies. In 1986, all ads contained two persons of a different country (England and Argentina, Israel and Germany, Iran and Iraq, Israelis and Arabs) and a small globe that symbolized the peace on Earth. In 1988, the dualism was represented by famous people, like Adam and Eve, Joan of Arc and Marilyn Monroe, Leonardo de Vinci and Julius Caesar…, all captioned with the slogan: "United Superstars of Benetton". One thing that stands out in this period is that the product disappears from the posters. There is more importance given to the values of the brand than to the product itself. Unlike the last campaigns, the characters are not anymore dressed with Benetton clothes and the brand is only present by its identity values in a general and abstract way. In general, the rational part disappears from the ads, making place for bodies, emotions and senses.
The message is much more serious than in the previous campaigns. It gives a sense of warranty of dialogue between two conflictive identities, destroying the barriers that separate them. Benetton still is the brand that homogenizes everybody, creating a unity, but the field on which it works is now much more serious. Also the slogan was changed in this period. It would now simply be UNITED COLOURS OF BENETTON, which remains today. In 1989, Toscani won the Lion d'Or at the Cannes Festival, and the "United Colours of Benetton" campaign of a black hand and a white hand linked by a handcuff and a black woman breast-feeding a white baby was awarded the 16th Grand Prix for best Poster. The campaign of the following year was based on the dualism between black and white: A white wolf and a black sheep, nose to nose, a black child sleeping among a pile of white teddy-bears, a little black hand on a big white hand, a piano duo showing little white hands being helped by big black hands, two children facing each other (one black, the other white) sitting on their potties, tubes of personality tests, several young couples of chimney sweeps, miners and bakers united by the black of the soot or coal, and the white of the flour…
In 1991, another change would take place. In this fourth period, the mentality of confrontation and dualism disappears. For the first time, less importance is drawn on the systematic structure of the subjects, which will get more diversity and less continuity. The idea of a group or a pair of people in the middle of the poster looking into the camera was a stable ingredient of all the Benetton ads until now. The general tone of the message changes. While in the third period two persons were confronted to show Benetton's will to make that confrontation disappear, in this fourth period the message is much more negative and cruel.
Until 1991 the photographs always showed that there still was a hope to change things; there was always a possible solution showed by the smiling faces of the happy characters of the ad. But now, since 1991, the ads are pessimist and aggressive, showing the suffering and the pain of the main characters. With this, Benetton tries to change its image, substituting the elimination of differences by the search of the things that we all have in common. These are mainly the moments of birth and death. It does not matter how different we are but we will all go through these two moments in life.
"Three young ethnically varied faces sticking their tongues out figured on huge billboards throughout cities, a series of wooden Pinocchio marionettes running behind each other, a cloud of multi-coloured condoms, multi-coloured dead leaves floating on the surface of an oil spill, rows and rows of crosses in an American cemetery, a poster showing a priest kissing a nun on the lips - hovering between the chaste kiss of friendship and something sexier, a new born child, covered in blood, still with its' umbilical cord. Shock images to startle us, shifting from a serene, positive aesthetic sense (beauty of rich colours, or the green and white of peace) to negative backgrounds (black of the polluted oil spill, so many post war deaths). The point being that we are all equal in face of life, death and illness." In 1993, for the first time words were used on Benetton's advertising posters. The campaign showed close-ups of various parts of the body tattooed with the English abbreviation "H.I.V. positive", evoking veterinarian's stamps on meat about to be commercialised, or numbers tattooed by Nazis on concentration camp prisoners.
At last, Benetton has discovered and tries to communicate that the synthesis of diversity cannot be obtained neither by putting all differences together nor by making these differences disappear. This unity of all mankind is only latent in the first and last fundament of life. Even we all seem to be different, deep inside we still are all the same. This is the message that the company tried to make people realize. The poster of this campaign focused on the bad moments in life, showing people, places and real scenes full of violence, desolation, illness, pain and death.
Although since these last campaigns were used to advertise Benetton, the controversy among press and human rights associations started, Oliviero Toscani and the company have also raised a great number of prices for their work almost every time a new range of posters was published.
OLIVIERO TOSCANI AND THE WORLD'S RESPONSE TO HIS ADS
"Labelled by many the "bad boy of advertising," he is opinionated, irreverent, sometimes bombastic and often contradictory."
Oliviero Toscani is the responsible person for Benetton's advertising campaigns since 1982, and therefore also the responsible one for the controversy created by his ads. But who is this man that seems to be cold and hard enough to take pictures of the most desolated and cruel landscapes of the world for a marketing result? My interest was to get to know some more about this person, almost as famous as any Hollywood star. This is the result.
Oliviero Toscani was born in Milan and today lives in Tuscany, Italy with his wife Kirsti and three Children. He studied photography at the 'Kunstgewerbeschule' in Zurich from 1961 to 1965 and begun working with fashion magazines then. His photos have appeared in all the major international magazines, including Elle, Vogue, Vogue for Men, Lei, Donna, GQ, Mademoiselle, and Harper's. He has done various expositions around the world and has won many prices. In 1982, he started to work as a photographer at the French advertising agency ELDORADO and took over all the campaigns for Benetton. But his protagonism really started in 1990, when he introduced a whole new way of producing advertising. The posters and billboards we have already talked about before have been, since they were published, some of the most discussed advertising campaign of the world. But what is it exactly that causes this controversy?
"Once I noticed Benetton's little green rectangular logo floating discreetly on the bottom of the billboard, I thought, Oh, this is advertising. Or is it? What exactly is Benetton doing here? Selling knitwear? Is Toscani waging a social crusade or has he simply found the perfect shock-value advertising strategy to bolster Benetton's corporate brand identity? Is he exploiting the sick and the dying or is he legitimately increasing public awareness of critical social issues?"
As we can see, the problem of Toscani's advertising is not the photograph itself, but the fact that the pictures are distributed by a company which aims to gain income. It is the fact that such a small family corporation like Benetton, which has itself used children in one of its factory (this is not confirmed, but affirmed by various press releases) uses images of people suffering to make money. One of the most polemic cases was the image of Jeremy Sheets, a young American man in his deathbed surrounded by his family, producing responses like "Benetton makes money out of other people's death". Some of Toscani's campaign were even censured and demanded, for example by the French Agency for the Fight against Aids. Unable to prohibit Toscani's campaigns, it got together with other agencies like the advertising agency B.Mad to boycott Benetton. They made a campaign with the same characteristics as the company itself did, as a call for media agencies and magazines not to post anymore Benetton ads.
But on the other hand, a big number of critics like Toscani's campaigns and defend it. They argue that Benetton is the only company that shows things how they are, and it does not matter if they make benefits out of it or not. They defend the idea that maybe some time in the future advertising will be as strong and credible as politics and science are now. So why should the reality not be shown also in advertising? Is it not the same as they can see in the news every day? Are people afraid of getting the great, perfect advertising world dirty with reality?
Either if you think one way or another, the polemics around Benetton's advertising and Oliviero Toscani have come to a definite end. In March 2000, Toscani was fired from Benetton by Luciano himself. The reason? A new campaign that showed death penalty in the U.S.A. It was greatly criticized (especially by American journalists), and it seems as if Luciano Benetton did not want to loose the benefits he gets from the American market. That way, and after 20 years of work together, Oliviero Toscani lost his job at Benetton. Could it be that, at the end, Benetton's company philosophy is not as solider as we thought it to be?
'Somebody who buys a top model
and uses them as a symbol is making a social political choice. It's actually
more extreme and eccentric than mine. Hitler wanted Aryans. That's what they
do with Claudia Schiffer, those fashion companies. That's what fashion magazines
do. I call them the Fourth Reich publishers. You get all the rich and beautiful.
All the alienated have to disappear. Style and culture magazines are like
that, and so you are going to have a society that is intolerant.'
OLIVIERO TOSCANI
"Adiós a la publicidad" Oliviero
Toscani
"BENETTON: Los "colores unidos" jamás serán vencidos" 04. 03. 2000 AULA. EL
MUNDO
"Show Me Your True Colours" Gina Janelli http://www.ultimateitalian.com/site4/style/benetton/main.html
"The World of United Colours" http://www.wired.com/news/culture/ http://www.ad-lines.com/artists/otartex.htm
http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2000/04/17/toscani_int/
http://www.benetton.com
http://www.ucad.fr/pubgb/virt/mp/benetton
Le Canard Enchaîné. Mercredi 18 septembre 1991
BŕT, n°155. Septembre 1993
Médias, n°342. Décembre 1993
Libération. 16-17 Septembre 1995
Cosmopolitan. 1er Novembre 1995
Le Point, n°1226. 16 mars 1996
Elle. 16 septembre 1996
Deborah Binder, March 7th 2002
