Chapter 6 reading response

           

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     One of the largest clothing corporations, Benetton, has been exercising a very controversial marketing scheme for years.  Frequently, Benetton Ads feature disturbing or offensive images that are not relevant to the product they are selling. In other words, they are using shock advertising in order to increase their sales. Such action raises the issue of ethics in the communications business. Sometimes major companies just use sensitive topics and personal tragedies in order to benefit themselves. The history of the one of the most shocking Benetton Ads is a good example of this type of marketing. 

  In 2005 Benetton used a photo of David Kirby, an AIDS victim surrounded by his mourning family during the last moments of his life. The photo originally was published in Life magazine and attracted Benetton’s advertising teams attention after it won multiple international awards. So only after the photo turned out to be successful source of attention and became well known internationally did the company consider using it.  According to Kirby’s family, they allowed the company to use the photo because they wanted to raise AIDS awareness around the world (P8). Even though the representatives from Benetton stated that the purpose of the ad was to inform and spark a commentary about the serious issues, the company didn’t educate the viewer about the disease at all. The posters didn’t include the phone number for AIDS information or any other detail that would tell the public more about AIDS. They simply had a Benetton logo on it. This once again proves that the purpose of using controversial images is not to spread a positive message or to raise awareness, but to make more profit for the company.

   The shock advertising brought Benetton over $100 million in nineties alone. It is effective and they have continued using it while the ethical side is ignored. Unfortunately, Benetton has developed ways to justify the publishing of such images. For example, after using Kirby’s picture for commercial purposes, Benetton executives donated $50,000 to the hospital that took care of him, in order to imply that they were trying to make a difference in curing AIDS. However, as mentioned above, the ad itself didn’t have any reference whatsoever to Kirby or his story.

  The chapter’s section called  ‘Criticism and the industry’s response’ is about the public relations field, the field of communications in general, and how sometimes professions in this field get a bad reputation. The main argument of this section is unfortunately very vague. It says that the industry is filled with many bright and intelligent people that will not go against ethics and use access to the pubic in a bad way. It also mentions the Public Relations Society of America and the code of ethics it established to better the industry. However, as mentioned above, companies still manage to increase their profits in the most unethical ways. The main problem is stated in the beginning of this section; The PR department of companies frequently hide their commercial intent from the viewers, and use the guise of trying to educate the society and to promote the charity. Nevertheless, in most of these cases the interest of the company comes first.