Benetton's Most Controversial Campaigns
As the provocative art director Oliviero Toscani returns to Benetton after a 17-year hiatus, Vogue looks back at the Italian photographer's most controversial advertising campaigns IN APRIL 2000 United Colors of Benetton fired its art director Oliviero Toscani over his advertising campaign about the death penalty, entitled "Looking Death in the Face". At the time, Rory Carroll of The Observer speculated that Toscani "almost certainly will never again reach a worldwide audience on the scale of his Benetton billboards” but last week it seemed that he had spoken a little prematurely. Toscani has joined Benetton once again, along with Luciano Benetton, the founder. For 18 years Toscani had been pushing the limits of advertising. With each campaign came a new round of backlash, censorship and, of course, a hefty amount of press. But this final campaign, released in January 2000 and depicting 26 death row inmates staring blankly into the camera behind the inauspicious stamp, SENTENCED TO DEATH, proved to be Toscani's undoing. Murder victims’ families lobbied retailers and consumers, and sales consequently plummeted. Department stores dropped the brand; the state of Missouri filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit claiming that pictures of inmates had been taken under false pretences. It was the nail in the coffin for the Italian photographer and marked the end of the partnership between Toscani and the Benetton empire during which some of the most groundbreaking and experimental advertising of the late 20th century had been conceived. From AIDS victims to the bloodstained clothing of a dead soldier, interracial and homosexual relationships, non-white or LGBTQ+ people – Toscani shied away from nothing. It paid off both culturally and financially. Now, he’s back, with a new campaign featuring 28 school children from four continents and 13 different countries, all of whom will “shape future society”, according to Toscani. Although this partnership doesn’t look to be as scandalous (read: exciting) as some of the brand’s previous campaigns it still adheres to Toscani’s stated principle that advertising should reflect the real world. As he has quipped in the past, “when we talked about AIDS it wasn’t controversial, it was the reality”. And with fashion in a moment of flux, forced to confront its demons and adapt to a increasingly vocal and diverse customer base, it could be prime time for Toscani to re-enter the conversation. Here, we take a look at some of Oliviero Toscani’s most scandalous ad campaigns for United Colors of Benetton.
- S/S 1991, “Condoms” Photo: Oliviero Toscani1/8
The coloured condoms campaign was a nod to the AIDS crisis which was ravaging the younger generations in the late Eighties and early Nineties. In November 1997, Benetton began selling "a complete range of coloured, reliable and up-to-the-minute condoms" in the UK, manufactured and sold under license by Ansell, an Australian company and sold at Boots and in Benetton stores. "I have found out that advertising is the richest and most powerful medium existing today," Toscani told the New York Times at the time, "so I feel responsible to do more than to say, 'Our sweater is pretty.' "
- F/W 1991, “Priest and nun” Photo: Oliviero Toscani2/8
Another of Benetton’s ads which commented on the religious and sexual conflict of human nature, showing a priest and a nun in clerical vestments, kissing. This sparked outrage from the Roman Catholic Church. Toscani had previously upset the Church for his 1972 Jesus Jeans ad, for a sexually-charged image and name it deemed blasphemous. But as he told the Times, the message was intended to reach a younger, core Benetton customer. In Spain, he said, "which is alive with young people, they see the priest-and-nun ad and smile about that. In Italy, where there are still old journalists, old institutions, they are upset."
- F/W 1991, “Newborn baby” Photo: Oliviero Toscani3/8
This image of a newborn baby, "Giusy", still attached to the umbilical cord, was intended, according to Benetton, to represent an “anthem to life”, but it was not met with such praise by consumers. This is said to be the company's most censored image.
- F/W 1990, “Blanket” Photo: Oliviero Toscani4/8
This image suggests an interracial, homosexual family at a time when advertising was almost devoid of such depictions. Most images of lesbian relationships used for advertisement to this day are fetishised and heavily sexually suggestive.
- S/S 1992, “AIDS – David Kirby” Concept: Oliviero Toscani Photo: Thérèse Frare5/8
In November 1990 LIFE Magazine published journalism student Therese Frare’s image of gay activist and AIDS victim David Kirby as he lay on his death bed. Two years later Benetton used the image, coloured by artist Ann Rhoney with oil paint, for its campaign. Despite a backlash by many AIDS activists who believed it spread fear of sufferers and commoditised suffering, and launched a global campaign to boycott the company, Kirby’s father Bill stated, “Benetton is not using us, we’re using Benetton…If that photograph helps someone…then it’s worth whatever pressure we have to go through.” It was, according to Benetton, the first public campaign to address AIDS. That year the disease had become the number one cause of death for US men aged 25 to 44. Benetton claimed it wanted to “go beyond purely preventative measures and touch upon subjects such as solidarity with AIDS patients”.
- F/W 1993, “HIV - Positive” Photo: Oliviero Toscani6/8
Various AIDS groups sued Benetton over their “commercial exploitation of suffering”.
- S/S 1996, “Hearts” Photo: Oliviero Toscani7/8
These ‘human’ hearts were later revealed to be pig’s hearts but that didn’t stop people all over the world calling the image, taken by Oliviero Toscani himself, racist. Toscani used his advertising to address racism on numerous occasions.
- S/S 1992, “Murder” Concept: Oliviero Toscani Photo: Franco Zecchini/Magnum8/8
In 1982 the Mafia killing of Benedetto Grado in Palermo, Italy, was captured by Franco Zecchi. Ten years later the image was featured in Benetton’s spring/summer 1992 campaign. Various publications refused to publish the image and the dead man’s daughter claimed she would sue, asking: “How does my father’s death enter into publicity for sweaters?”
