Where It All Began

I was eleven, sitting in the class room of my primary school and for some reason hanging on the lips of my teacher. I didn’t like the teacher that much, but most of the time he did manage to grab my attention with one of his life relevant and interesting stories he shared with us a lot. This time it was about the truth and honesty in advertising. And this was also the very first time I got introduced with advertising as being an industry. He talked about the ‘do-s and don’t-s’ in the scene. Not the commercials consumers would like or dislike but what was legally approved and what was not. He shared with us the case of the how you can’t lie in your ads about the quality of the product: Samsonite suitcases that are strong but not strong enough to resist the twenty ton weight of a truck (that ad had to be pulled down back then) and some glue brand I don’t remember that actually was able to hang a guy upside down on the ceiling (and so the ad could stay on).

He had my attention.

Then he came to the case of Benetton and how the CEO was so rich and didn’t give a fuck about regulations. How the guy laughed at those regulations and made it into some kind of game to see how far he could go with his Benetton communication. And how he spread so much controversy with the ‘United Colors of Benetton’ ads. This was one of those brands to live on the idea that bad WOM among lots of people could be good WOM among others and for your company sales and brand personality.
I L-O-V-E-D it. The idea you could create controversy and help your company grow with it? Brilliant! In those days I wasn’t physically able yet to have an organism but if I would have been able, I think I would have gone home with wet pants. As far as I can remember, that was already the moment I realized there could be a future for me (in that environment).

And here we are today … But I’m not going to give you the story about “all my life I have wanted …” because that’s simply not true. As an adolescent I HATED brands. I didn’t hate the companies, but I hated the people how would pay a shitload more for a Polo shirt instead of an H&M shirt. I simply didn’t see the point. Do I now?

But enough about me.

I had to think of this story yesterday as I saw the brand that got my very first interests in advertising doing again what it used to do: sparkling controversy.
Finally after years of silence Benetton released this week a new campaign ‘Unhate’. The focus is on world tolerance and spreading prints showing world leaders kissing. Because I’m in Shanghai I suppose my favorite one is Obama kissing Chinese President Hu. But I definitely love the one where we can see our holy pope pressing his old man’s lips against those of Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb (the current imam of the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo) which by the way has so far been the only party treating with a trial and labeling them as ‘totally unacceptable’. So Benetton already pulled this one down. Once again, we see who’s evolving and who’s not. Never been a really good combination, the church and evolution.

I already read a lot love/hate statements on the new campaign from in- and outside adland. To me, it’s pure nostalgia. And apart from that I have to confess: I just love them. Perhaps because of the reason I’ve always been attracted to the controversial side of communication.

See all the ads and learn more about the Unhate campaign on unhate.benetton.com/ and watch the campaign video here: