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Fashion Advertising: Controversy - Where has it gone?

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  • Verdandi
    Senior Member
    • Mar 2012
    • 499

    Fashion Advertising: Controversy - Where has it gone?

    Outrageous, edgy fashion ads that get everybody talking. Where did they go?

    Gone are the scandalous days of Calvin’s rippling abs and come-hither youth; Abercrombie’s S&M Santa; the full-frontal Saint Laurent; Benetton’s kissing clergy, and Jenny McCarthy doing her business on Candie’s toilet.

    It wasn’t controversy that killed them. On the contrary, such controversy successfully put these and other brands squarely into the limelight, for better or worse.

    But after shifts from the shocking and sexually suggestive to the socially conscious and lifestyle aspirational, the fashion industry has entered a new state: tame.

    Blame it on the media. With so much corporate emphasis on having the right social campaign, Instagram, Twitter feeds, videos, Web sites and the goal of accumulating “likes” on Facebook, not to mention global, cross-cultural sensitivities, the edge that cuts through the advertising clutter has been dulled.

    To be sure, there’s no shortage of talented photographers who take beautiful pictures, but some observers argue that intensely image-conscious companies, public or otherwise, are so intent on controlling how they’re perceived, advertising has simply become too safe. And safe equates with boring.

    That’s not to say controversy is absent from the fashion industry, but it can extract a steep price. The recent ouster of Dov Charney, chief executive officer of American Apparel, over concerns about his personal and professional conduct, continues to make headlines. And his sexually charged advertising images, often depictions of young women in suggestive, sometimes vulgar poses, may end up being the least of his troubles. While one might debate whether Charney is a marketing visionary connecting to his customer’s sexuality or a peddler of soft-core porn, his brand of advertising stands out in that it’s controversial, intentionally or otherwise. In this particular case, that isn’t helping Charney’s cause to regain his standing in the company he founded.

    The granddaddy of advertising controversy, Benetton, certainly didn’t have a great future following its shock advertising campaigns. The company came under harsh scrutiny for the use of shock in its campaigns, resulting in public outrage and consumer complaints. At the same time, the ads won kudos for raising public awareness of important social issues. Benetton’s ads, when not tweaking mere convention, featured women’s bodies with tattoos that said “HIV Positive,” or a black woman breast-feeding a white infant. They also showed scenes of war as well as a man dying of AIDS surrounded by his family, an image that ad professionals widely cite as the most controversial in the history of fashion advertising.

    The man behind these images, Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, still stands behind his approach, most noted for Benetton during the years 1982 to 2000. In an interview with WWD earlier this month, he said, “If an image does not provoke, then you’ve thrown your money away.” Toscani emphasized that provocation is a positive force, and said images that provoke or shock encourage people to think about the world and to be creative. He also cited a preponderance of boring imagery in recent years. “These images are all devised by marketing executives without intelligence or culture,” said Toscani, still clearly unafraid of tweaking the fashion establishment.

    Benetton continues to use pointed advertising in its campaigns to raise awareness of social issues, although they may not be quite as inflammatory as those in Toscani’s day.

    Its Unhate campaign, launched in 2011, featured images of world leaders in passionate lip-locks with some of their biggest adversaries. There were shots of President Obama kissing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Pope Benedict XVI making out with Egypt’s Grand Sheikh Ahmed el Tayeb. After the Vatican sued, Benetton pulled the ad, apologized to the Holy See and donated to a Catholic charity.

    According to the company, the Unhate campaign was inspired by the notion of tolerance by contrasting faiths and cultures.

    The Unhate campaign generated a bonanza of publicity for Benetton, and was among the first five topic trends that year on Twitter and Google worldwide. Over the year, it garnered five million results, 20,000 discussions and 1,500 blog posts. The campaign, which reached 500 million people, generated more than 4,000 articles in over 60 countries and 600 TV reports all over the world, according to Benetton. The company added 60 percent more Facebook fans and 60 percent more visits to benetton.com from the campaign. The sentiment toward Benetton was 80 percent positive, the company contended. And the campaign received numerous awards at international competitions, such as the Press Grand Prix at the Cannes Ad Festival and Two Gold Pencils at the One Show Awards in the integrated branding and public service — outdoors and posters category. It also won a Gold Clio Award at the International Clio Awards in the print category.
    The rest over at WWD

    http://www.wwd.com/media-news/media-...popular-viewed
    lavender menace
  • Faust
    kitsch killer
    • Sep 2006
    • 37852

    #2
    THANK YOU SO MUCH! Was just coming her to post this - read it on the plane yesterday.

    This is a must read, everyone!
    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

    StyleZeitgeist Magazine

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