Advertising has possibly become the fastest growing media in terms of its sheer size and capacity to intrude into the lives of the ordinary citizen and potential consumer.  From opening the morning paper, turning on the television, driving past billboards, listening to the radio, to surfing the Internet, one could not even start to think of the number of advertisements that we are subjected to every day.  Advertising in such profusion means that in order to keep our heads in the realms of reality, we have naturally desensitised ourselves to the vast majority of it.  It is this desensitisation alongside the competitiveness that now surrounds the industry, that is the biggest disability to advertising agencies and could be a real reason why an increasing amount are applying ‘shock tactics’ to win our attention.  Since 1993, almost half of the dozen most complained-about television advertisements have been aired this year.  (Cozens, December 17, 2003) This simply reinforces the idea that advertisers’ taste for controversial campaigns is on the increase despite, if not for the very reason of creating uneasiness in the consumer. 

Infamous campaigns have used aesthetically spectacular imagery in their aim to communicate social awareness, to play up to taboos, to establish advertising as ‘art’ and to use advertising as a tool for secondary circulation.  This in effect is the media frenzy, which explodes from the ‘catastrophe’ advertisement giving way to free publicity on an astounding scale.  This essay will look primarily at the campaigns of Barnardos and Benetton.  It will evaluate on what basis these campaigns work, (if they do succeed) and moreover, to what extent the aims of such notorious advertising campaigns can be seen to be ethically sound.  To support these arguments and to update some current views, I seek to interview two members of the public:  Jane (51)[1] and Richard (53),[2] so that I may elicit first hand reactions to these controversial advertisements. 

Barnardos

The Barnardos campaigns of 1999 ‘Giving Children Back Their Future’ and of 2003 ‘Child Poverty’ used visually disturbing images to expose how neglect and abuse bring horrifying consequences to children in the UK.  By using graphic images they believe they are re-inventing themselves as a contemporary, fearless charity with a new target audience of the ABC 1 category aged 30-55 (a younger, more affluent supporter base.) (Barnardos, accessed 20/12/2003)  It may be that Barnardos feel they can be more daring with their use of images to a younger age group (less likely to insult or alienate) and also this group is likely to have children of their own and so is more susceptible and vulnerable to the messages. 

The most controversial image of the ‘Stolen Childhood’ campaign was that of a 10-month-old baby injecting itself with heroin,[3]  ‘Heroin Baby’ shows us a child sitting in a dark cold corner, on a concrete filthy floor surrounded by rotting damp walls.  Our eyes are immediately drawn to the baby’s face, to his mouth, which is grasping a strap and then to his tiny hand holding a syringe.  His eyes are looking up, almost as if he is looking at someone who is just out of our view, pleading with that person to protect him from the dangers of drug abuse.  The text above: ‘John Donaldson: Age 22’ implies that John at 22, is now a heroin addict from having had a disadvantaged childhood.

In this image, Barnardos uses the powerful emotion of empathy to get its message across.  According to Hoffman, it is through empathizing with a potential victim, someone who is visibly in distress or at risk that moves us to help the sufferer.  (Hoffman cited in Goleman, 1996, p.105).   Both Richard and Jane (members of the key target audience) were caught by the message.  “It makes me feel ashamed of what a good life I have, he’s a cold distressed baby picking drugs up off the floor” (Richard)  “ It’s very disturbing, I want to walk into that room and pick him up off the floor, get him away from danger.”  (Jane)  This point that Jane makes corresponds perfectly with Hoffman’s theory that empathy leads to moral action when a bystander is moved to intervene on behalf of a victim. (Hoffman, cited in Goleman, p.106) Barnardos has placed us in the role of an eyewitness to inhumanity; we are that person just outside the picture who the baby is looking to for help.  We are positioned into looking into the pleading, desperate eyes of the baby in this very intimate image.  The disturbing, realistic imagery pushes us to feel guilty if we turn that page of the magazine or walk past the billboard without deciding to donate to the charity. 

In disturbing campaigns it is nearly always the pictorial content, which leads to controversy, this may be understandable since Goleman argues, “one rule of thumb used in communications research is that 90 percent or more of an emotional message is nonverbal.” (Goleman, 1996, p.97)   Both Jane and Richard found the wording in ‘Heroin Baby’ ambiguous but despite this they both said that the imagery alone would encourage them to donate.  The power of the horrific image is enough for a basic preferred understanding to be conceivable; that there are children in great distress who need our money. 

This advertisement was banned for being too controversial however this added further to its success.  Manipulating emotions has been the most powerful tool for advertisers, creating controversy whilst doing so, is the biggest bonus a campaign aims to achieve today.  Barnardos boast that the number of articles written about the charity has risen by 40% due to their more ‘contemporary’ advertising. (Barnardos, accessed 20/12/2003)

Following up from this campaign, is the most recent one to date, targeting ‘Child Poverty’.  It could seem that Barnardos took encouragement from the success of the disturbing images used in ‘Stolen Childhood’, and so implemented this tactic further into their new campaign.  The result was three unpleasant images of newborn babies with poisons in their mouths[4] including a cockroach, a syringe and a bottle of methylated spirits.  In an interview with Barnardos about this campaign, the charity is adamant that their intention was not to shock people but simply to grab the reader’s attention and to end misconceptions       about    poverty. (Barnardos,     accessed 20/12/2003) Richard gave a preferred reading to this advertisement: being slightly shocked and gaining a bigger understanding of the horrendous poverty that exists.  Jane however, viewed the images as sensationalised, simply as ‘horror’ without being able to digest the social politics surrounding them and to critically respond to them.  Giroux supports this reaction in talking about the ‘aestheticization of politics’ where spectacle is at the forefront of our curiosity with the hyperreal. (Giroux 1994, p.18)   Jane described the images as “extremely disturbing, infact they’re going past disturbing into grotesque, unreal, they look like something from a movie.” 

In all of their campaigns, Barnardos encourages the eliciting of the emotion of ‘fear’ in order to wake the public up to children’s distress.  Goleman analyses ‘fear’ as ranging from ‘concern’ to ‘terror’ (Goleman 1996, p.289) and it seems that in Jane’s case, the advertisers’ aim of creating concern has this time gone too far and spilled over into terror.  She gives an oppositional reading to the campaign as the feelings of sympathy, which she should be experiencing, are second place to the feelings of repulsion and physical sickness which encourage her to push the image out of her mind.  Disgust has dissuaded her from looking at the pictures for long enough to register the charity’s name and to find out how she can help.  Charities often believe that nothing short of a hard-hitting shock campaign will have an impact.  This may have a certain truth to it but they must also consider that the human mind is complex, and that people do not always react in the hoped way.  This is emphasised by Giroux who argues that individuals produce rather than receive meanings. (Giroux 1994, p.19)  The uncertainty of how an individual reacts is underlined again in relation to Jane.  After her initial feelings of horror and fear towards the ‘Child Poverty’ campaign, her attitude turned to that of irritation as she felt that this type of advert was abusive as it is ‘accuses you of not caring’.     

Benetton

Italian born company, Benetton is set in the minds of consumers as a market leader in the production of multi-coloured jumpers and as a social force in exposing society’s taboos.  It was the collaboration of the company president Luciano Benetton and an experimental photographer Oliviera Toscani that brought about the strange and often controversial mix of commerciality and social issues.

The overriding feature of many of the advertisements is that they do not feature a product.  This could deem them as an example of a ‘not-ad’, that is a campaign that is rather disinterested in selling anything and in this case is more preoccupied by social propaganda.  One of the main social concerns that Benetton has addressed is that of racial equality, a clear example is that of the angel/devil image.[5]  The stereotypical angelic white girl with blond ringlets is contrasted with the black boy with his hair twisted into devil horns. At first glance it appears to be a shocking racist illustration but on reflection, Benetton seems to be challenging our deep-rooted racial prejudices.  Through this risky advertisement, Benetton sets itself up as a fearless preacher of racial equality.  However, to what extent Benetton is truly socially aware and not simply a company commodifying social issues is a question to be looked at carefully.  Through dealing with racial issues, Benetton has created a powerful brand of ethnicity.  Whether people have actually readdressed their feelings towards racism because of these campaigns is debatable.  What is certain though is that approval is gained from being ethical and through purchasing Benetton items consumers feel that they are buying into an ideology and becoming part of a club for human betterment.  Salvemini supports this when he says that through acquiring the clothing, the consumer feels an achievement of emancipation. (Salvemini 2002, p.17)

It would be interesting to know how much Benetton did research into methods of combating racism or if it simply used the most provoking and sensationalised images possible so as to gauge a reaction.  Concerning Benetton’s Kissing ‘Priest and Nun’ advertisement,[6] Toscani readily admitted that his interest was ‘to see if the reaction aroused by looking at (the image) could overcome the taboo of knowing about a recognised fact.’ (Salvemini 2002, p.50)  Therefore this is a scene, which was created purely to provoke.  It does not help socially as the vow of celibacy is purely of choice, not through societal oppression.  Salvemini says that the photographer is ready to pay the price of censorship and bad publicity in order to make way for freedom and the destruction of prejudices. (Salvemini 2002, p. 47)  In Benetton’s case, the censorship price is willingly seized upon as it revels in the free publicity. 

Through Benetton’s history, the company has used many diverse advertising techniques.  Those which I feel should be congratulated are the ones which actively help society and at the same time do not attempt to hide their simultaneous commerciality, these are more truthful.  A crusade against the taboo of AIDS, included ‘the coloured condoms campaign’[7], followed up by Benetton giving away free condoms in every one of its stores.  Released at a time when the world was particularly devastated by the spread of HIV, this to me is the sign of responsible and clever marketing.  This too is naturally commodifying social issues but this time it is done in a mature unsensationalised way.  The fact that the campaign was followed up with practical help gave the company an innovative and worthy image, which was vital to their triumph.  This is underlined by statistics in their company magazine, which state that consumers are equally as concerned about what a company stands for as they are about the price of a product. (Colors, 1992.2). 

Benetton continued its AIDS awareness movement in 1993 through a new kind of advertising that has been dubbed pseudo documentarism ‘documentary photography’ (Back and Quaade, 1993).  It was Toscani who created a new artistic form of advertising for Benetton by using news photographs essentially taken by others. (Salvemini, 2002, p. 86)  This section will look at the image of AIDS patient David Kirby just before he dies.[8]  Referring back to my interviews, neither Jane nor Richard had seen this image before and their first reaction was that of confusion. “ Is it a child?  No, an older person, someone dying?  What is it about?’  (Jane).  It is not surprising that the text seems ambiguous, as the image is decontextualised.  In order for the codes to be deciphered the image has to be read in connection with the media environment of the time, from the images and discussions that were circling around the David Kirby case. 

This image, which was first printed in Life magazine, was reproduced again for Benetton with the permission of the dying AIDS patient in order to circulate AIDS awareness.  After understanding the context, Jane and Richard saw the image in an approving light, praising the company.  However, the fact that the Benetton image only has meaning after the public is exposed to the context from other media sources, leads us to question if anything new has been learned from the campaign.  It might seem that the company abused the vulnerable AIDS victim to gain another boost for Benetton’s brand image of human rights and ethics.  This is the point where the ‘politics of representation’ and the ‘representation of politics’ as given by Giroux (Giroux, 1994, p.64) become intertwined.     

The inclusion of the Benetton logo has come under heavy criticism; that the logo transforms any social awareness propaganda into a marketing tool for profits.  This image has been further criticised because Benetton did not donate any of its profits to charity.  In explaining these arguments to Richard and Jane, they were very surprised disappointed and annoyed that the company gave no donations to support AIDS awareness as they had assumed it had.  In this way they saw the company with a less worthy image.  This highlights Benetton’s tactics that by taking on the form of a charity appeal, it automatically profits from all the associations of what a charity means even if this is not the case. 

Benetton did not only provoke controversy from the content of their pictures but by stretching advertising’s form.  According to Back and Quaade, using documentary photographs as advertising is a violation of the documentary form.  They say this with the mindset that documentary should be a representation of reality and that advertising is on a par with fantasy. (Back and Quaade 1993)  To say that ‘documentary’ means ‘reality’ seems to be a misguided opinion since documentary has always been as John Grierson (the very founder of the documentary form) put it, ‘the creative treatment of actuality’.  In taking this view, Benetton should not be seen as violating documentary’s form but simply using it to push the boundaries of how creative advertising can be.  Apart from their jumpers and their involvement in social propaganda, Benetton should be seen as a strong player in developing art.  

Conclusion

It would seem that ‘controversial advertising’ is on the increase despite its unpredictable outcome.  Agencies’ needy obsession for campaigns to play in the news media is only growing and it is getting to such an extent that some are losing sight of their basic objectives.  In their (frequent) belief that ‘no publicity is bad publicity’ they overlook how the campaign will affect product purchase.  We have seen this in Barnardos’ ‘Child Poverty’ campaign.  It quite probably generated much free publicity through press articles; however to what extent it actually gained support for the charity is questionable. The images proved to be too sensationalised and unrealistic for Jane to take seriously, and as Marsh suggests, extreme images are easy to dismiss as mini movies or fiction.  (Marsh, The Times, Fri Jan3rd 2003)

An interesting point that was made in The Times recently was that shock images have been said to irritate rather than change attitudes. (Marsh, Jan 3rd 2003).  I believe this has a lot of truth to it.  Whereas ‘Heroin baby’ drew us slowly into a disturbing image of truthful reality that led us to emphasize, the ‘child poverty’ images are more like a sudden smack in the face.  The public thinks, ‘how dare they make us feel guilty with their shock tactics?’  Consumers now demand more, and take offence to being expected to react like an automaton.  Advertisers should not simply presume that the audience will react in a certain manner.           

As for Benetton, their application of social conscience in their campaigns was a shrewd technique and very innovative for the time.  Challenging taboos was seen as a brave step, which gave Benetton a respectable, and contemporary brand image.  Whether the same techniques would work today, however is debatable.  The public is now immensely media literate and very acute in telling the difference between reality and image.  This is not to say that the tool of social conscience is dead, in fact in this ever unstable and commercial society the public is searching more and more to support the do-gooders of the world.  Campaigns can still be controversial; indeed rebellion in the name of social good (and free publicity) is always applauded.  But at the same time companies need to show that they are responsible enough to make their moral image to some extent reality, like we saw when Benetton followed up their AIDS campaign with giving away free condoms. 

The days of the ‘ad man’ being dangerously influential, are giving way to the sceptical public, who are reluctant to spend.  Pasi Falk, says ‘the commodity marriage is not consummated until the act of exchange or intercourse has taken place’. (Falk, 1997, cited in Nava, Mica et al, 1997, p.67) The consumer is only going to do this if the company’s advertising is fresh and attention grabbing but more importantly respectful, truthful and unpresumptuous in its style.   

References

Back, Les and Quade, Vibeke (1993): ‘Dream Utopias, Nightmare Realities, Imagining Race and Culture within the World of Benetton Advertising’ pp.65-80, in Seppänen, Janne (2000): ‘Young People, Researchers and Benetton – Contest Interpretations of a Benetton Advertisement Picture.’ URL:

http://www.nordicom.gu.se/reviewcontents/ncomreview/ncomreview101/seppanen.pdf

Colors Magazine Spring-Summer 1992.2 , Benetton Group SpA TREVISO

Cozens, Claire (Wednesday December 17, 2003): ‘ ITC Reports Increase in Shock TV Adverts’ The Guardian

Falk, Pasi (1997) ‘The Benetton-Toscani Effect: Testing the limits of conventional advertising’ in: Nava, Mica et al. (Eds) (1997): Buy This Book – Studies in Advertising and Consumption.  London: Routledge pp.64-83.

Giroux, Henry A. (1994):  Disturbing Pleasures – Learning Popular Culture.  London: Routledge (Chapter: ‘Consuming Social Change: The United Colors of Benetton’)

Goleman, Daniel (1996): Emotional Intelligence, London: Bloomsbury Publishing,

Hoffman, Martin, Empathy, Social Cognition and Moral Action.  In Goleman, Daniel (1996): Emotional Intelligence, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Marsh, Stephanie, (Friday January 2^nd, 2004) ‘Are we becoming immune to shock tactics?’ The Times

Salvemini, Lorella Pagnucco (2002): The Benetton Campaigns United Colors.  London: Scriptum Editions.

Web Resources

Barnardos, (www.barnardos.org.uk) accessed 20^th December, 2003

Benetton, (www.benetton.com) accessed 20^th December, 2003