The United Colors of Courage

For those of you who think advertising and marketing is nothing more than a corporation's way of conditioning our minds much like Pavlov did his dogs, I ask you to take a look at one of my favourite advertising campaigns, one that I think took great acts of courage to promote, and that even helped break stereotypes and encourage many of the positive humanitarian sentiments we have today. When the Italian company United Colours of Benetton decided to hire Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, and give him carte blanche they probably had no idea what genius and ground breaking work would take place. What followed were years of advertising that promoted more than just coloured sweaters and instead pushed social limits and brought to the lime light issues that many wanted to sweep under the rug. They did what was right in their eyes despite the fact that they knew they would be alienating potential customers. There provocative and controversial ads started in September of 1989 with an ad simply titled “Handcuffs”, which showed two male hands, one black and the other white, handcuffed together effectively making a point about racial equality. Notice that the “United Colours of Benetton” logo is not the focal point of the ad, but rather almost an afterthought, the main message being the political one they tried to get across. This ad was quickly followed by “Black woman breastfeeding white baby” which would prove to be the most awarded of the Benetton ads. This would only prove to be the beginning of more than a decade of revolutionary and socially ethical ads, such as the Olympic condom ad, the Angel and Devil ad, as well as the “Container” ad which was part of the 1992 change the company made to publish real pictures taken by photo reporters that promoted and confronted themes of social concern. The “AIDS – David Kirby” ad which showed a gay activist, David Kirby, dying of AIDS surrounded by his family is by far one of the their most touching and controversial ads, and although it garnered much resentment and anger from many groups who thought Benetton was exploiting the family (despite Kirby’s family’s protest to the contrary), proved that the company was willing to take great risks to get their social message across. In 1994 they released an ad titled “Bosnian Soldier”, which showed the blood-stained T-shirt and pants belonging to the soldier Marinko Gagro, who was killed during the war in the former Yugoslavia, this ad would later become a symbol of peace. What follows below are picture of the ads described above as well as many others, and I hope you agree with me that what Benetton did took great courage to do.