MMS Master Programme 2009

CCT course – Fall 2009

Assignment Seminar 1

Name: Luigi Servadio

Date: 9 November 2009
Seminar Group: nr. 4

Reading and watching the material for the assignment made me positively
attracted because besides all the material that I have read and watched a
central question appears, in my point of view: the role of Advertising.
According to Goffman (pag. 128, Schroeder) we can point out that “ … ads are
part of the real world and a powerful influence on our self-concepts, how we
view right and wrong, and how we conceive of living a good life. … Ads
influence how we think about sex roles”.
In fact, he was referring to “CK One ad”, as this new advertising art work was
able to change or to evolve the way the ad usually communicates to the
consumer, treating the gender matter in a controversial and let’s say powerful
way. It seems that there is no female or male, hetero or homo sexuality,
nothing is true or false but it is always relative (Scott 1988:2).
Following Goffman, the “art” of advertising is able to influence and in certain
cases, as CK’s one, even manipulate our thoughts and perception of what is
true and what is false, what is social accepted and what is not (specially talking
about the sex role).
In my personal point of view ads are like a big mirror of the society. But at the
same time it is one of the most democratic tools in the contemporary society: if
the consumer and the society does not agree with or just don’t accept the
commercial message it will be eliminated.
I will take an example.
About 10 years ago Benetton launched a “shock” campaign representing the
“Dead men walking” on the US market (see attached image). The
photographer Oliviero Toscani visited the US Penitentiaries and he caught
some portraits of men that were about to be executed – so called “dead men
walking” – and the headline was “Sentenced to Death”.
Benetton decided to invest a lot of money in this campaign in order to
consolidate and expand their business in the US and the communication
strategy was trying to communicate a “new freedom of consuming” which
stressed and let’s say shook up the American public opinion.
The result of this campaign was quite a disaster for Benetton as a brand and as
a corporate and because of this Benetton had to close more than 100 stores in
one month. Simply, the public opinion did not accept the trial of Benetton to
speak about something very deep and important using the “strategic role of
the scandal” – as Schoeder calls it (pag. 134).
I mean it seems that the CK one case did work, but “Benetton’s Dead man
walking campaign” did not.
In my view the difference is just the limit of the power of advertising. In other
words, if the advertising art work would be able to influence the society, as
Goffman says, the Benetton case would be an exaggeration that did not work,
because the society just refused to see that kind of image. On the other hand,
in the CK campaign, the society – maybe because it was more intellectual
Luigi Servadio Seminar Group 4 1
prepared to talk about it – not just accepted the message but also the “hidden
society/consumer” begun to take the power discovering a new way of life and a
way to legitimate themselves.
Another very interesting matter that rises to the surface is the “commodity
difference”. According to Goldman advertising always “reproduces the
appearance of the difference” in order to indicate, in the CK One ad, the
stereotypes of difference that stand in contrast to the usual representation of
white, heterosexual consumers that have dominated advertising imagery
(Schoerder pag. 134). This theory is very contemporary and relates to this
“need to consume”. As Grant McCracken writes in his book “Culture and
consumption” (Chapter 9:133) “radical groups use consumer goods to declare
their difference, the code they use renders them comprehensible to the rest of
society and assimilable within a larger set of cultural categories”.
In a way, I could say that a good advertising work is able to provoke the society
in order to fill up a “need to consume” through which each person create his or
her own identity. It is just like Mr. Revlon (the inventor of the lipstick) used to
say to his sales clerks: “You are not selling a lipstick, you are selling hope”.

Written References:

Schroeder, Jonathan E. (2002), “Marketing identity, consuming difference” in

Visual Consumption, London: Sage, chapter 6, 115-140.

McCracken, Grant (1988), “Culture&Consumption”, Indiana University Press.

Benetton corporate website – “our communication” section.
http://www.benettongroup.com/en/whatwesay/fabrica.htm

Video References:

Exclusive Video: Artist Guy Ben-Ner’s IKEA Sitcom

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2008/02/exclusive_video_artist_guy_ben.ht
ml
ART:21, Episode: Consumption.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1237601764

Image References:
http://pandakingdesign.com/files/gimgs/15_b.jpg
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall01/braun/death.html

Luigi Servadio Seminar Group 4 2

Image attached.
From the Benetton Campaign “Dead men walking”.

Luigi Servadio Seminar Group 4 3