We went to a holiday to Italy in 1980. We
realized there was a Dolce and Gabbana shop
there, so we went in to look around. We saw
very nice clothes there, but they were too
expensive. We got some brochures about the
history of this famous fashion brand. Then we
left the shop and went into a Benetton shop,
either. There the shopkeeper was talking about
Benetton…
The two famous fashiondesingers
The so-called Dolce and Gabbana brand was created by two
men, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbona, and known all
over the world. They are stylists who were able to
accomplish their Italian identity, while they had unique style.
They are loved by famous people from Hollywood, they have
been dressing rock and film stars. They are the stylists of
Madonna, Monica Bellucci, Beyonce és Kylie Minogue,
Victoria Beckham.
Today, the
Benetton
Group is
present in 120
countries
around the
world.
Benetton’s advertising history resembles the
company’s history…
1972: Benetton conferred its' advertising
campaigns to the Eldorado agency, who opted
almost exclusively for a poster campaign.
1982:
Photographer
Oliviero
Toscani (b. in
1942 in Milano
in Italy) from
the
Eldorado
agency started
working
with
Benetton.
1984: The press
and poster
campaign were
simple, joyful and
colorful, six visuals
of adults, and six
visuals of kids, in a
festive display of
ethnic and clothing
colors "All the
world's colors!"
1985: The visuals changed, from
groups to couples, to show the
products to advantage, if in an
eccentric way : for example two
little girls sharing the same
sweater, and gradual hues shown
by super-imposed pullovers, five
at a time...
Other posters showed two little
black boys kissing each other,
with little US and USSR flags in
their hair and painted on their
cheeksÉ "United Colors of
Benetton".
After a visit form a U.N.E.S.C.O.
official, who stated "This is the
United Colors here!", Benetton
decided to uses the name
officially.
1986: Two little black boys figured again on
a newspaper ad, united by a globe and a
chain with the peace symbol. The globe
became a symbol of unification, and
appeared on all the posters that year with the
message : all colours are equal, just as all
men are equal. Stuffed animals dressed in
Benetton clothes advertised the new 012
collection.
1987: Benetton. World of Jeans." became
the company's jeans slogan.
1988: The new campaign mixes
cultures and legends : Adam and Eve,
Joan of Arc and Marilyn Monroe,
Leonardo de Vinci and Julius CaesarÉ
all captioned with the slogan : "United
Superstars of Benetton". The 012 label
showed masked children in pairs : a
wolf and a lamb, a cat and a dog :
"United Friends of Benetton".
Benetton brought out a eau de
toilette : "Colors", whose name
was written out by hand by Bruno
Suter, Eldorado's president, in
yellow, red, green and blue on the
rectangular bottle's four sides.
The poster presented two
feminine hands, one white and
the other one black, enlacedÉ
handing each other the perfume:
"Perfume of the World".
1989: caption "United Colors of Benetton".
A commercial made by Toscani won the
Lion d'Or at the Cannes Festival, and the
"United Colors of Benetton" campaign was
awarded the 16th Grand Prix for best Poster :
a black hand and a white hand linked by a
handcuff, a black woman breast-feeding a
white babyÉ these photographs were
symbols of brotherhood in the world, and a
desire for communication, with one's
differences. A photograph of a choir, with
children dressed identically, singing "Oh
Christmas Tree..."
1990: Publicity played on the theme of
confrontation between black and white
this year, through a series of posters,
but did not present the clothes at all.
1991 Three young ethnically varied faces sticking their
tongues out figured on huge billboards throughout cities.
Pinnochio: a series of wooden marionettes running behind
each other… a cloud of multi-colored condoms… multicolored dead leaves floating on the surface of an oil spill…
rows and rows of crosses in an American cemetery… shock
images to startle us, shifting from a serene, positive aesthetic
sense (beauty of rich colors, or the green and white of peace)
to negative backgrounds (black of the polluted oil spill, so
many post war deaths). Toscani played more than ever on the
contradictory note of duality, that "dividing line between two
waters" : "war/peace, flirtation/sex, beauty/pollutionÉ Such
posters had an ethical dimension, but refused to impose a
moral. The message was ambivalent, and left us free to come
up with our own answers to the questions they raised :.
1992: French billstickers refused to post the
Benetton campaign, which they decried as "realityadvertising" or pure sensationalism. The subjects?
David Kirby, Aids victim, dying, his family at his
bedside, an African guerrilla holding a
Kalachnikov and a human leg bone, a boat
overcrowded with Albanians, a group of African
refugees, a car in flames after a Mafia bombing, a
family weeping before the bloodied corpse of a
Mafioso, two Indians caught in a flood in
Calcutta,É Toscani's photographs provoke a wave
of debate each time, and of course make people
talk about BenettonÉ through press debates, etc.
1993: „Don't wear people who need them
most." A massive campaign was carried
out, and the Benetton family was
presented, all smiles, "Thank you!".
Luciano Benetton even posed in the nude
for the poster with the slogan " I want my
clothes back".
1994: The campaign was very diversified : a
mosaic of a thousand photographs of people and
the same message : Aids . A Pair of bloodied
trousers and shirt, a young Bosnian sniper's
clothes, killed in combat. A white hand holding
out the relay baton to a black hand.
Oliviero Toscani presented twelve years of advertising
photography in an exhibition at the Contemporary Art
Museum in Lausanne (Benetton by Toscani). Since
1984, Benetton and the photographer Toscani had
received numerous awards and prizes for their
publicity campaigns.
Luciano Benetton : "The purpose of
advertising is not to sell more. It's to do
with institutional publicity, whose aim is
to communicate the company's values (...)
We need to convey a single strong image,
which can be shared anywhere in the
world."
Oliviero Toscani pursues this : "I am not
here to sell pullovers, but to promote an i
mage"... Benetton's advertising draws
public attention to universal themes like
racial integration, the protection of the
environment, Aids...
…In Italy we met a rich Norwegian men and we asked
him how he had become rich. He let us know that he
had an oil-business in Norway and that is the reason
of his richness. We found this story very interesting
and the man took us to Norway and talked about the
history of Norwegian oil…
The Norwegian oil-adventure.
In the late 1960´s, scientist found oil outside the coast
of Norway. This started an era that has made Norway
one of the richest countries in the world.
In 1966 oil prospecting began in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.
By the autumn of 1969 Philips Petroleum company decided to bore, the
drill steam of the Ocean Viking ring struck an oil field. It was actually
amongst the ten largest in the world. Norway had become an oil nation!
In the 1960`s the Storting had put together a legal framework that gave
the state strict control ,and a large income, from oil operations. To
prevent Norway becoming simply an exporter of crude oil and gas, the
authorities aimed to build up a national oil industry.
To prevent
Norway
becoming
simply an
exporter of
crude oil
and gas, the
authorities
aimed to
build up a
national oil
industry.
The maritime oil business could be a risky one. In
1997 there was an uncontrolled blow-out in the
Ekofisk Field that caused an oil leak and pollution
alert on the Norwegian coast.
1990 Norway overtook Britain as
Europe’s largest oil producer, and by the
mid-1990s Norway had become the
second largest oil exporter in the world
after Saudi- Arabia.
The oil trade posed great challenges for industry and
research. The most spectacular monuments to this new
technology were the gigantic rigs. In the summer of
1995 the world’s largest oil rig was towed out to the
Troll Field, which at the time was Europe’s largest
maritime gas field.
The new industry
demanded a highly
qualified labour
force using modern
high techology. At
the start of the
1990s about 20,000
people were
employed in the oil
industry, about 1% of
the total labour
force. Many of them
lived in Stavanger,
which became the
country’s oil capital.
…On the way home we were
listening to Nena in the car, we
liked it very much and since we
were just approaching Germany,
we jumped in and visited a Nena
concert…
A Song of a girl from Ingolstadt, Bavaria goes to the top of the American
charts.
The 44- year-old Nena
edited and published a new
album and went on to a
tour.
Undoubtedly this lady is a pearl of German
pop life, a miracle of the ´80s. She is cool,
clever, and kind. She broke into pop world
with her song called ˝ 99 Red Ballons ˝. She
became the first in the pop list in England and
the second in the USA.
She was born on
24th March in
Hagen. She attended
primary and
secondary school
here. After leaving
secondary school she
studied between
1977 and 1979. She
had her first record
in 1979 with the
band called ˝The
Stripes˝
The End