| Dear Advertising Standards, Iam Writing to inform you of my opinions on the Benetton advertising campaign which as you know has already been a widely controversial and highly debated topic. Their advertising campaign strategy was a complete shock to everyone when it was seen and each different advert in that campaign has had many different views cast on it by many different people. In my opinion i think that all these views have their own rights, and most see the adverts from the same angle but now I am writing to share my view and give reasoning behind them. I think that although the Benetton adverts have done exactly the purpose of an advert, which is publicising themselves. They have approached the whole campaign in completely the wrong way. They are a clothes company and they should be advertising their clothes and trying to advertise themselves based on their product. Instead they went about it addressing uncomfortable subject matters ranging from adverts such as a young child being born to pictures and messages about people who are on death row in America. Although their unique adverts may be able to be linked with their clothes in the way that it may be suggesting that, like their adverts are unique and stand out so do their clothes from other manufacturers.This is one of the only ways I can see how these kind of adverts can be at all relevant to their product that they are trying to sell. One of the adverts used by Benetton showed a coloured military man from the army carrying what looked to be a human bone acroos a desert. This is one picture that I have particularly strong views against as this as well as being off the point of what Benetton is about also displays quite a brutal picture and plants a horrific image of war in your mind.Bearing in mind that this picture is blown up on huge billboards all over the country, and children of all ages are confronted with this image when they go anywhere, this might include just a small walk to school every morning and is not a very pleasant subject matter to have presented to children.This picture I think may also promotes war to younger children. Some main newspapers around the world refused to print Benettons images in their papers and one of these papers argument for this action was to point out that Benneton were trying to make money out of the blood of war, which is an argument that I myself strongly believe in. Another image of theirs that I also believe to be completely distasteful is the image of a newly born baby who is so young he still hadnt even had his ambilical cord cut. This picture I believe is again much like the soldier holding a human bone is a terrible image for young children and any other age for that matter to be subjected to when they try to walk down the street or open a paper to see. Although the birth of a new human is also a wonderfull thing in itself and should be much celebrated it is still itself a rather grusome image to be portraid in an advert for clothing as it does not have any real value in that environment. If these kind of adverts werent made highly controvertial and action wasn taken to try and stop these kind of adverts being produced by them again or other companies, then you have to ask yourself how long would it be untill you couldnt look up while walking down to your local newsagent without the surroundings being completely full of uncomfortable subjects and images that would shock you. The advert that Benetton have released showing members on death row is a topic that is so controversial that not only is the image itself debatable over the reasons why it was chosen, the controversy has also been shown by the US government, who have made Benetton make a substancial charitable payment after they accused the company of misleading officials to gain access to the the inmates. This goes to show that Benetton will go to any lengths to get the most controversial material available to them. This I think is obviously just a way of grabbing peoples attentions and them trying to get their name to be such a household name like other companys like "Virgin"etc... without worrying about what they are doing and the opinions that people will form about their company. In my opinion these adverts also give off the impression that maybe Benettons products arent good enough to sell themselves so have to use radical advertising campaigns to grasp peoples attentions. If other people share this view then not only have Benetton offende many people they have also failed to gain more customers even though they have became quite a famous name out of all the publicity. I am not sure how you passed this advertising campaign of Benettons to be alright and to be showed to many different people but I am sure that after the huge response in all areas of the media and just individual people like me voicing our concerns you will be more carefull in the future and not let this same mistake of tasteless and horrific pictures gracing our adverts happen again. Yours Sincerely Jonathan Dicken |