In this critical analysis I aim to identify and examine how the Benetton Group (BG) capitalise on their image using the concept of racial integration, as well as cultural, social and ethical approaches to equal opportunities and human rights through thei

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MD3118: Issues in Contemporary Media and Cultural Studies: (1000 words) 40%

Explore the interconnectedness of contemporary media and culture, and the ways in which any cultural text or event is situated within a network of similar texts which seek to interpret and define it.

Critical Analysis of the Benetton Company

By Elisha Morrison 

In this critical analysis I aim to identify and examine how the Benetton Group (BG)  capitalise on their image using the concept of racial integration, as well as cultural, social and ethical approaches to equal opportunities and human rights through their website.

The global fashion company The Benetton group was formed in 1965 by siblings Luciano, Giuliana, Gilberto and Carlo Benetton in Treviso, Veneto Italy.  Along with the fashion photographer Oliviero Toscani in the Eighties they came up with the idea of communication campaigns such as the infamous All the Colors In the World campaign where ‘Toscani was using the language of racial harmony to transcend the cultural barriers to the same global image that Luciano was seeking by the company’ (Mantle 1991:131). 

This is when the United Colors of Benetton slogan was created as ‘the ‘united’ colors of its sweaters soon became a metaphor for the united skin tones of the youth from many different countries for whom the sweaters were designed’ (Benetton Group 2010).  The concept was so strong that it became the trademark and Benetton slowly stopped using the clothes as their main focus and started concentrating on social issues and they used their website as a vehicle for doing this.  With the use of ordinary people as a true representation of the world in which we live, they rejected traditional advertising strategies to communicate to the culturally diverse population.

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According to their website Benetton UK (2009) states that:

‘by addressing an individual rather than a customer, the brand can identify its target on the basis not on age or income, but as a shared vision of what’s important starting from a set of common values’.

Currently the home page of the UK website has an image of 6 teenage boys from various ethnic extractions.  I used semiotic analysis to establish what identity formations are mobilised in its representations of the product/company.  One has long hair and appears to have a feminine nature about him as he has one ...

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