Oliviero Toscani is an Italian photographer, best-known worldwide for designing controversial advertising campaigns for the Italian brand Benetton from 1982 to 2000. For 18 years, Toscani had been testing the limits of advertising. With each campaign came a new round of backlash, censorship and plenty of press (Duffy, 2017). From AIDS victims to the bloodstained clothing of a dead soldier, interracial and homosexual relationships, LGBTQ+ people – Toscani was provocative in that he was not shy with any topics.

Toscani’s stated principle is that advertising should reflect the real world. As he has explained in the past, “when we talked about AIDS it wasn’t controversial, it was the reality”.

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 for its campaign.

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. 

Companies must be extremely strategic with the content of their ads. Many times this involves decisions centering around values and ethical behavior (Paulins and Hillery, 2020).

With attention to the visual messages of advertisements themselves, attendant ethical issues concern underlying messages that can possibly be read into the advertisement. Obviously, this is content that is not easily regulated. There is often a fine line between allowing images to capture the attention of consumers and misleading or offending them. 

References:

Duffy, E. (2017) Benetton’s Most Controversial Campaigns. Vogue, [online] Available at: <https://www.vogue.co.uk/gallery/benettons-best-advertising-campaigns> [Accessed 23 May 2022].

Paulins, V.A. & Hillery, J.L. (2020) ‘Advertising and Promotion’, in Ethics in the Fashion Industry. (pp. 144–163). New York: Fairchild Books.