When George Bush began his second presidency by casting a Mexican American man, an African-American woman, a white woman and a Cuban American man in key roles, one analyst called it the Benetton-ad presidency. Its impact on the global lexicon is just one example of the vast cultural reach of the multiracial ?United Colours of Benetton? campaign. We know it well in India, where the brand boasts 400 stores. It has even won praise from the UN. Today, as a new Benetton campaign raises a tide of controversy, we look back and see that there is actually nothing ?new? about the current hullabaloo. So, North Korea?s Kim Jong-Il and South Korea?s Lee Myung-bak, America?s Barack Obama and China?s Hu Jintao, the Vatican?s Benedict XVI and Cairo?s Sheikh Ahmed Al Tayeb, etc have been photoshopped into locking lips. The last image has been withdrawn on complaints of ?the unacceptable use? of his Holy Father?s image manipulated with a commercial purpose. Commentators have been climbing over each other to dismiss the campaign as a simplistic ploy to flag the sagging fortunes of a brand that?s been losing ground to the likes of H&M and Zara?because it failed to keep up with new technologies, fabric innovations, fast-fashion trends and leaner management solutions.
Now flash back to the early 1990s, to Benetton ads with a black man and a white woman handcuffed together, a priest kissing a nun, an emaciated anorexia patient and a skeletal Aids victim. Each of those created tensions, and a conversation about the relationship of advertising to raising awareness, going ?viral? before social media went virtual. Today, we are spammed by digital manipulations dozens of time a day, and we are still fussing away at Benetton, which is still defending itself as only trying to promote reconciliation. The great Oliviero Toscani, who really breathed life into the company?s iconography, once said: ?It shouldn?t be the photos that shock, but the reality.? Where reconciliation is chimeric.
