'The Italian Job'

The Italian firm, Benetton was forced to pull one of its images (the photograph featuring Pope kissing a senior Egyptian imam on the lips) from its new 'Unhate' campaign, after the Vatican denounced it as an unacceptable provocation. While, Benetton maintained that its 'Unhate' campaign was aimed at fostering tolerance and 'global love' however the Vatican seems to be miffed with the same and felt that the ad offended “not only the dignity of the Pope and the Catholic Church, but also the sensibilities of believers.” The campaign's adverts include digitally altered pictures half a dozen world leaders to show them kissing.


The protest and the resulting controversy have ensured that the ad is all over the media and social media. Those who did not see the ad or did not know about the campaign want to see and know about it. The ad could not have reached to so many people, in so very few days, across the world without the protest and the controversy. Benetton’s ROI on the ad would definitely be much more than estimated or perhaps they estimated this controversy.

The key is to understand who is the target of Benetton’s ad – it is the youth or more precisely today’s rebel youth who predominantly is a non-conformist. Does he/she care about the protest? No! Will this protest help Vatican or Benetton? The answer of course is Benetton.

As Benetton Executive Deputy Chairman Alessandro Benetton said in an interview published in The Economic Times today – “We are conscious of the fact that the images that we have used are strong. But anyone who wants to make a positive impact has to make it in a way that gets attention. We did not mean to be disrespectful or provocative in any way - all of them are performing a gesture. There can be differing points of view on this; some could call it homosexual too. There are worse things that show up on the internet nowadays. But the point is stimulating a discussion in the right direction. You as a viewer have to draw your own conclusion. Our campaign is about unhating, not lobbying. The true judge will be the reaction that we receive from the public.”

A leading Indian IT company made the same mistake last year, when after their introduction of a ‘role and career enhancement’ policy received flak from the employees & they went on to fill the social media with protest messages, the company decided to introduce a social media policy to gag the voices of the employees. This fuelled the controversy more and the news spilled all over the mainstream media. The company’s image as ‘employee-friendly company’ took a severe beating. Better sense prevailed upon the company later and much to the contrast of their earlier move, they actually started a company social networking-site, designed on the lines of Facebook.

Cutting the story short, organization must understand that the young population today rules over the world with new tools like social media. Any communication, whether a policy decision, campaign or a protest, must be made keeping in mind their reaction to the same; otherwise it shall always benefit the competitor or the rival, more.

Last I heard, was that Vatican is contemplating a legal action against Benetton. So Benetton can be assured of more headlines, free publicity in the days to come, to laugh all the way to the bank.