Wow or whoops? (B)advertising

Many brands step on toes to catch consumer attention — wow or whoops?

KARACHI:

We understand that selling a brand to gratification-seeking consumers is even more difficult than keeping track of “The Bold And The Beautiful” but what we do not understand or accept is why brands like United Colours of Benetton (UCB) have to bash religious, social and political dogma to get their point across?

Controversy is the easiest way to be remembered by consumers, who obviously respond well to hard-hitting advertisements like, for instance, a cow setting fire to a canon (Gayey soap ads on PTV anyone?) but UCB has surpassed all boundaries over the last couple of years. From showing human private areas of different skin colours to promoting death row criminals, the brand has gone to some outrageous extremes to show that racial disparity is a nonsensical idea.

The brand’s most recent advertising explosion is the ‘Unhate Campaign’. The campaign features a half-dozen purported political leaders in lip-locked embraces, including President Obama and China’s Hu Jintao and Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy. Even though Benetton pulled back the image of Pope Benedict XVI kissing Ahmed Tayeb, leader of Al Azhar in Cairo, it still ignited fury in the Vatican, which now intends to take legal action, reports guardian.co.uk.

According to the latimes.com, Benetton has ripped down its posters of the pope getting cosy with an imam, but otherwise the Italian clothing company is holding steady in its insistence that the controversial ads of world leaders kissing are focused on spreading tolerance and love.

Back in June 1993, the sales of British newspaper The Independent fell by 1,000 copies because they published an advert by Benetton that depicted 56 sets of male and female genitalia. In 2001, frozen dessert brand Walls introduced Magnum ice cream  with a much too scandalous-for-Pakistani-society campaign which showed a woman eating the ice cream stick rather too seductively. The campaign obviously had to be changed after it sparked violence in cities like Peshawar, where conservative groups set fire to the billboards and threw ink bottles on the model’s face, as a result of which Walls had to withdraw the campaign, reports kidvai.blogspot.com.

Previously, the Catholic Organisation for Relief and Development Aid popularly known as Cordaid, released a ‘People In Need Campaign’ which attacked extravagant, economically ignorant people. The NGO juxtaposed prices of high-end products with the price of living in Somalia, Africa and other underdeveloped countries, leaving thousands of consumers feeling guilty for their extrvangant spending. The campaign was well-received as it proved to be hard-hitting in a subtle way, something that brands like Tom Ford, UCB and Dolce and Gabbana do not seem to believe in.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2011.