Benetton Case Study

Benetton Case analysis.

Summary

The case study is describing the Benetton Group Global marketing campaign and whether it influenced company's profit declining pattern. The controversial ad campaigns brought a lot of attention, in most cases negative (even though there is no such thing as a bad publicity in the marketing world). Different countries reacted differently on "shocking" printed ads that were exposing the most urgent social and political problems. It is clear that the negative reaction of the rest of the world outweighed positive, even though there were some award winning ads across the campaign.

Problem

To identify if the decrease in profit and sales occurred due to the new marketing strategy of the "reality advertising", where the printed ads are not connected with the company's products and showing images that are reflecting social and political problems of modern society (war, AIDS, racism and sexual problems). In most cases those images are shocking and outrages, exposing people's grief and pain.

Analysis

Despite all the negative publicity that Benetton campaigns occurred, they created a strong message that Benetton is not just another closing brand it is a "life style accessory". Benetton stepped "outside the box" of normally excepted advertising style and created a shock, I can even say, scandal around its advertising images. It neglected the standards and penetrated into people's minds, by breaking their taboos, their conventional way of thinking, their attempts to neglect real world with its real issues. By doing that Benetton got a lot of publicity in most cases negative because people don't want to see the realism of present life in the advertising images. All they want to see is a promise that every product they buy is making them one step closer to their perfect happy life. But still, it got publicity and it made people talk and think about Benetton.

Nevertheless Benetton earned worldwide recognition by creating advertising themes that promote diversity and various other social issues. The company strived to promote itself as a socially responsible business by supporting social organizations and discussing moral issues in its print campaigns throughout the world. And it succeed in creating a company's image as a company that cares of what is going on in the world and doesn't turn its back on urgent issues in order to earn its profit.

It is impossible not to admire Oliviero Toscani for being brave enough to go against the rules and create the revolutionary campaigns that are standing apart from the competitors; the campaigns that are so different that will stay in people's mind for decades and will be studied in many schools all around the globe.

While analysing Benetton marketing strategy and what happened with it I caught myself on a thought that it reminds me of a gambling phenomenon. As a gambler can never stop when one's winning and keep playing until all money are lost, Benetton didn't stop at a winning stage, gone too far and lost.

I can't help myself but to respect Senior Toscni's creative ideas, shocking images and innovative advertising approach, but from the marketing point of view his latest campaigns had a lot of flows.

One, and on my point of view the major one, is that being consumed by the new "reality advertising" idea and promoting the company's image, Benetton totally neglected the real purpose of advertising campaigns and marketing as a whole: …to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organization goals. "Nobody ever told me that my job was to sell anything. I am responsible for the company's communications; I am not responsible for its economics. … I am aware that, having a relatively big budget, it would be like throwing money away if we only explained that our product is better than competitor's…" (Oliviero Tscony, Benetton's art director and photographer). But on my point of view that is exactly what happened, the money were just thrown away, by concentrating on social and political issues and totally pulling away profit goals from marketing. I do agree that nowadays it is really important to create a positive company image, by it is critical not to be consumed by it and totally forget about the company's product.

From all of the above the second issue becoming really clear: the company's product was totally separated from print advertising. After a series of socially and politically concentrated campaigns people knew the name "BENETTON" but in many cases they didn't know what the company sells. I think even if the