.Critical Cues--Some Thoughts on WODR

One of the words that will always come to mind when Benetton comes into any conversation is controversy. Particularly in the 1990’s, the company took a look at many controversial issues with their campaign advertisements. The company takes issues such as AIDS and turns them into a way to build revenue-often without ever showing their product. This link has a good picture of a man in a 1992 advertisement as well as some comments on their campaigns. http://www.altculture.com/aentries/b/benetton.html

You may not know it by the number of stores in the United States, but Benetton is Europe’s leading clothing manufacturer. The company is a rags to riches success story of a sister and brother who started the company in 1965. They developed an interesting way to dye the sweaters they produced. From sweaters it went to watches, hats, jewelry and just about everything else that was marketable. This link explains the method they used to dye the sweaters as well as an interview with Luciano Benetton.

http://www.made-in-italy.com/fashion/fashion/bene/bene.htm

Those of us in the communications field are quite familiar with the term shock advertising. In the recent years this is the method that Benetton has taken with their advertising campaigns. But shock advertising is just one way emotion is used in advertising. In fact, emotion is used in almost all advertising that we come into contact with on a daily basis. The University of Texas has done an excellent job showing the different types of emotion used in advertising in this study. Click on this link to discover more about emotion and advertising. http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~ad382jv/ez/index.html