Benetton, the international apparel brand, which is spreading the idea of love and unity across the globe with its hilarious promotional projects along with selling brightly colored sweaters and dresses, is now rolling out a new international campaign entitled UNHATE and launches a foundation of the same name to cultivate the principle of love and tolerance despite all religious, cultural, governmental, national and individual differences. The new multiplatform campaign developed by Fabrica Italy and 72andSunny includes a series of posters featuring modern political leaders from different ‘camps’ kissing each other (remember the legendary Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker’s smooch?) and an impressive 60-second spot by French director Laurent Chanez, which showcases the moments of love, kissing and embraces closely entwined with aggressiveness, fights and blood.
Photo: Benetton’s UNHATE campaign
“While global love is still a utopia, albeit a worthy one, the invitation ‘not to hate’, to combat the ‘culture of hatred’, is an ambitious but realistic objective,” said Alessandro Benetton, Executive Deputy Chairman of Benetton Group at the launch of the new campaign at the brand’s flagship store in Paris yesterday, November 16. The visuals feature the US President Barack Obama and the Chinese leader Hu Jintao; Barack Obama and the President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu; North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak; the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The original set of posters also included the image of kissing Pope Benedict XVI and Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb, Imam of the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, but within just hours after the campaign’s launch Benetton was asked by Vatican to pull the image from the promotion. The company wrote on its Facebook page, responding to this request, “We reiterate that the meaning of this campaign is exclusively to combat the culture of hatred in all its forms. We are therefore sorry that the use of the image of the Pope and the Imam has so offended the sentiments of the faithful. In corroboration of our intentions, we have decided, with immediate effect, to withdraw this image from every publication.”
The new campaign is the first initiative of the UNHATE project, the new foundation of Benetton, aimed at fostering positive change in communities across the globe and contributing to “the creation of a new culture of tolerance, to combat hatred, building on Benetton’s underpinning values.” The company says that it will be reaching and uniting leaders of politics, art, social field, economy and law, young people who want to improve this world by spreading ideas and taking bold actions based on love, not hatred. So far, the company doesn’t share the detailed plan of what they are going to do, but it says that in the coming days it will commission groups of young people to post the manifestos featuring the kissing leaders in Tel Aviv, New York, Rome, Milan and Paris.
Benetton has also launched the www.unhatefoundation.org website, which showcases vivid stills and videos from the United Colors of Benetton campaign and events across the globe, as well as has two applications, UNHATE KISS WALL and UNHATE LIST, ‘shaped’ by users of the website. The first application matches two randomly selected photos from those uploaded to the platform, and unites them in a kiss, and the second one is a user-generated list of things and people that are not hated.
Benetton will also unveil UNHATE DOVE, the four-meter long installation by Fabrica’s Cuban artist Erik Ravelo made from empty bullets sent over by people from hot war zones across the globe. The symbolic sculpture will feature the Foundation’s message of peace, the image of the love spreading dove will get on display in Benetton stores and online, with the original piece to be exhibited internationally.
Photo: Benetton’s UNHATE campaign
Photo: Benetton’s UNHATE campaign
Photo: Benetton’s UNHATE campaign
Photo: Benetton’s UNHATE campaign