000ooo000ooo 4/21

The Benneton advertising strategy has always been a very confusing one for me. I cannot figure out if it is endorsing the idea of unity, commodifying the "Other", exploiting people from other countries, commodifying the idea of unity or a number of other interpretations. To make this more confusing, I'm not even sure if all of these things are good or bad. Is it bad to unity created by commodification better than no unity at all? Are the social issues used to sell Benneton clothes being exploited or should I be happy to see them get whatever attention they can? Benneton clearly creates confusion and there is no easy way to understand or judge their advertising campaign.
At first, I want to support Benneton because at the very least raising social awareness is infinitely more responsible than degrading women and selling sex. Advertisers have to do something to sell products, their will never be a time when advertisements consist only of the statistics and functional information about their products. There is going to be some image used so why not have it be something regarding social action? However, the more I think about this the more I question it.
I do not know enough about Benneton to rush to any conclusion but as far as we have read and talked about in class I have not come across anything saying that Benneton gives money or provides any other aid to groups supporting unity or trying to solve social problems. All they do is use the images to sell products. The idea of unity and the way it plays out in real life is taken out of context and this can make it hard to people to understand or take action through it. Further, people may think that just because they buy Benneton clothes they are doing something to fix social problems, even though in reality Benneton is no different than anything else and spending money there does nothing to further causes of social unity. So, while I originally though that depictions of unity had to be positive, regardless of the reason for them, I now question this assumption and wonder if Benneton is actually undermining the goal of unity.