Benetton

Introduction

Advertising texts and images seem to be the most visible and ubiquitous icons of consumer society. The Advertising industry indeed has simultaneously become one of the most powerful and apparently most uncritical institutions of today as well as this, people seemingly have accepted billboard advertising as an usual part of their environment. Nevertheless there sometimes develop certain advertising campaigns undergoing general ideas about what ads are supposed to show and they hence provoke controversial public debates. So called controversial advertising has often been claimed to somehow subvert conventional advertising's practice by the audiences, justice, advertisers, companies, advertising industry's self regulating institutions and so forth. This now rises the question how far industrial advertising as an institution that has to promote consuming goods, can be subversive.

This essay will work out, that advertising hardly can be subversive, because it is to much characterised by its function. It nevertheless firstly is necessary to formulate a working-definition of subversion, a notion that has been used in very different senses, before two example-cases of controversial advertising can be investigated. The integration of ad-alien contents within the Benetton-campaign then will be analysed as a form of aesthetic subversion to subsequently question exactly the image's ad-alien and supposed subversive form and content. Thus, it will be shown that Benetton's subversive potentials are overshadowed by their functions as advertisements.

This works second part will look at two campaigns developed for French Connection. By investigating two campaigns it will be shown that the only form of subversion that might be claimed for advertising could possibly be described as a temporary phenomenon of charming subversion.

Controversial advertising : subversive avant-garde or variations of conformity?

The notion „subversive" has been associated with political issues and revolutionary activities intending to change the entire political, economic and hence societal order by slowly destroying the present system from its core. Simultaneously the notion has been used in a less ubiquitous sense, that might be more appropriate for this work's purpose. Vogel for example in Film as a Subversive Art established the notions of Subversion of Form and Subversion of Content and means that there had been particular films, that managed to challenge the entire film-making-philosophy by deliberately breaking the system's conventions. (Compare Vogel 1997) Subversion in that case characterises an aesthetic act of infiltration, that indeed redefines certain subsystem-conventions, but that nor threatens the subsystem's existence neither really concerns the entire order of society.

In order to answer the question, how far advertising can be subversive, I therefore suggest to differentiate two notions of subversion. Referring to Vogel, I assume subversion as a mainly aesthetic presumption on its low-level. Considering the notion's political connotation, even on this stage the aesthetic redevelopment at least has in any way to be able to reflect the own subsystem. Otherwise it only can be regarded as system's extension. As high-grade subversion I suggest to assume the recruitment of a subsystem in order to entirely destroy it. In its most extensive perspective that second meaning includes revolutionary subversion as the intentional destruction of the entire society.

Since nobody would seriously claim the advertising-industry's contemporary intention was to destroy capitalist society, the second definition of subversion can be neglected, in order to investigate, how far controversial advertising campaigns contain subversive potentials. It is hence necessary to analyse if and how controversial advertising manage to reflect the subsystem of advertising by challenging its rules and aesthetic conceptions.

Commodifying or communicating social issues: the Benetton-campaign

In 1984 Luciano Benetton, conservative Senator of Italian parliament and head of the franchising-company Benetton, hired photographer Oliviero Toscani in order to develop a sustainable promotion strategy. One year later the brand-name United Colors of Benetton was used in connection with Coca-Cola-like ads preaching racial harmony by showing multi-national children dressed up in Benetton clothes. (Falk 1997, 77) Between 1989 and 1996 the company changed its strategy: Instead of praising mediate or immediate product-(meta-)qualities, Benetton as the first company completely eliminated the actual product from the billboard advertisements and focused instead on general social matters (ibid.). They hence replaced traditional advertising pictures with polysemic photographs that refer rather to an art-like documentary genre then to what was associated with advertising images (Tinic 1997 , p.3)

Benetton's integration of ad-alien contents and forms: reference-less signs and social issues as subversive elements

Especially between 1991 and 1994 many Benetton-advertisements simultaneously were admired and condemned within different countries, interest groups and publicising individuals. The patterns of argumentation were quite similar in every case. Benetton/Toscani-sceptics either accused the ambiguity of the pictures or they found the shown picture with its content inappropriate for the form of advertising, while Benetton constantly declared intending to evoke awareness for social problems.

In 1991 the company ran its most controversial advertising showing a photography of a dying AIDS-patient named David Kirby, who was surrounded by his suffering relatives or friends (compare: Benetton-homepage). It first was printed in Life-magazine, before Benetton with the permission of Kirby's family added their United Colors of Benetton-label and thus utilised it for their campaign. The French advertising watchdog organisation, arguing that „publicity should not show human distress, disarray or death" (Tinic 1997), accused it to be inappropriate. At the same time AIDS-organisations all over the world supported Benetton's AIDS-campaign including the Kirby-picture, because they assumed that exactly the claimed exhibition helps to enlighten audiences and hence to increase societal tolerance for the victims and their members. Benetton and Toscani of course argued, that this had also been their