Advertizing: Objectives And Strategies - Benetton's Shock Advertizing

Advertizing Objectives

Question:

Discuss about the Marketing Development and Competitiveness Method.

Advertizing is the most significant part of promotional mix. An organization that advertizes strives to achieve its objectives more easily. Advertizing objectives are the communication tasks that are accomplished when the organization reaches their potential customers. The potential customer is targeted with the help of advertizing within a particular time period (Saad et al., 2015). The advertizing main objectives include trial, brand switching, inform, remind and switchback. Selection of the objective is made after analyzing the product in its life cycle.

The main purpose of trial objective is to make the customers encourage for buying the new products. Creative advertizing strategies are used to gain competitive advantage. By informing the individuals about the products and its price helps in raising awareness about both the company and the product. This strategy is used while launching a new product or re-launching it as an updated version.  Through continuity, the existing customers are targeted and provided latest information about the product to build consumer loyalty (Buccoliero et al., 2018). Brand witching is another technique used with an only goal to make the consumer switch from their competitors brand to their brands. Switchback is the advertizing objective of the company to get back the former users to use its own brand and product.

The main advertizing objective of Benetton includes creating its brand awareness through huge promotions in the public. The company follows shock advertizing since the year 1982 by creating its different image (Benetton.com, 2018). This approach brings out innovative themes that lead to position the company in a completely different ways (Engelbart, Jackson & Smith, 2017). The company’s shock advertizing objective created a new revolution and scenario in the advertizing sector. Benetton used corporate social responsibility as it themes and promoted its brand throughout the world. Benetton promotional strategy highlighted the issue of indiscrimination in society. This objective leads to serve the global audience and the company created its own distinctive image.

Shock advertizing was developed by Benetton, the retailing company of clothing creating line United Colors of Benetton. The advertising is shocking and can be offensive for various reasons. Through shocking advertisement social, political and religious norms can be violated in various different ways (Girling, 2004). The advertisement includes people traditions, practices and beliefs by reflecting the true scenario of the society. The shocking content of the advertisement increases the attention of the people. Shocking advertisement benefits the memory of the people and positively influences their behavior.

Benetton's Advertizing Objectives

The advantages of shock advertizing are that an advertisement with shocking concept itself increases the attention of individuals. This creates a positive impact on the mind of the people and influences their behavior. Consumers generally remember shocking content in an advertisement more over a content that is not shocking. People tend to remember for more time period about a shocking advertizing. This is not in the case of normal advertizing. The advertisement features kids and teenagers from culturally diverse country wearing the clothes of Benetton. They spread the message that different culture all over the world can share its product to encourage harmony. This lead to aware the local people about civil liberties, human rights, social issues and environmental rights.

The major disadvantage of shocking advertisement is that overexposure of individuals can deliberately affect the mind of the consumer. It creates a long-lasting impact on the mind of consumers. Shock advertisement is in a graphic form and its real meaning is shown to the people. The images can be highly sensitive or in a negative form (Dahl, Frankenberger & Manchanda, 2003). Such kind of advertisement can also be offensive for various reasons and in different ways. This creates various controversies and can be considered offensive in nature.

Art is the expression of emotions and the image of world is portrait in the form of certain characters. Art makes the people to think and react to certain situations. Olivier Toscani defended Benetton’s shock advertizing as it constituted only debate between art and advertizing. He argues that graphics and potentially offensive images are acceptable only in the world of journalism and art. Advertisement should not showcase graphics and images that are potentially offensive in nature (Parry et al., 2013). According to the consumer perspectives advertisement is a tool that should convey useful message for the product. It should display the products applicability and usefulness rather than relating it with completely different kind of activity. I completely agree with Olviero Toscani as he has pointed the true facts about shock advertisement.

Oleverio Toscani is popular throughout the world for creating advertizing campaign for Benetton. He is an Italian photographer and generated various controversial photographs for the company. The images that created more buzz around the world as a man with AIDS lying in death bed, surrounded by friends and families around him. Another controversial picture included three identical hearts and black, white and yellow written over it. This was meant to show the people that each individual are same on the inside but different on the outside. This kind of acts mostly gives rise to communal indifference among the people.

Shock Advertizing

Shock advertisement made by the company generally provokes the consumers (Benoit, 2014). Advertisement is a form of communication and its main objective is to inform the consumer about the benefits availed from its product and services. The idea is to persuade the potential consumers to buy the products. On the other hand, advertisement in the form of art by using slogans and images to highlight the products and attract people is unknowingly violating the norms.

Calvin Klein a popular brand known for its jeans has followed shock advertisement to attract more consumers in the past. The brands advertisement featured the explicit images of young teenage models. The models were no less that 15 years and were posed in overly provocative and sexual poses. This led to rise in various controversies of the companies as the campaign was considered to be highly shocking and exploitative in nature (Kireyev, Pauwels & Gupta 2016). Moreover later in the year 1999, Calvin Klein further created buzz and controversy. The company aired its advertisement, which displayed young children’s only in their underwear. Due to public lash out the shocking advertisement was pulled within 24 hours of being aired.

PETA is another company, which uses the similar strategy for advertisement. PETA is also known as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The company uses shock advertisement to convey the message about their services to the consumers. PETA is an organization meant for safety of animals. The company displays graphics images to show the current scenario of animals and their living condition. PETA shows the true conditions of the animal through shock advertisement and its existing situation in the society and throughout the world (Hagenbuch, 2015). It is one of the few companies that use shock advertisement in a positive and effective manner.

Shocking advertisement should be used to promote no cancer campaigns. Images of cancer affected patients can be showcased throughout the countries to prevent usage of tobaccos and alcohol. This measure is used by government of several countries by printing such images on the tobacco products. Shocking advertising is also useful for NGO’s to promote the conservation of nature and wildlife. This advertisement can also be used in other similar marketing segments that require immediate action.

I completely agree that Benetton should drop its decision of applying shock advertisements and shift to conventional types of advertisements. Since the year 1982, the company has used the strategy of shock advertizing to create awareness about its product. The company can promote its brands and product without hurting the values of the consumers. Shocking advertizing is very offensive in nature in various ways. The advertizing for Benetton can be made even without graphics or any kind of horrifying images. Advertizing should be made in such a way that would be helpful to the businesses. It should allow the businesses to spread the organization’s product and services without hurting the sentiments of any individual. It should be done in a very friendly manner not ignoring the individual’s value and beliefs.

Advantages of Shock Advertizing

The Benetton Group with its communication strategy showcased how advertizing can affect a business strategy. Benetton is a vast advertizing company that mostly focuses on its logo and products. Advertisement should make in such a way that would easily persuade the consumers to purchase its products or services. The main idea behind the approach is to create increase in the profit and consumption of organization’s product and services through the branding process (Parry et al., 2013).

It was therefore very good decision by the company to switch the normal and conventional advertizing rather than shock advertizing. Shock advertizing mainly created adverse impact on the thinking and behavior of the company. This type of advertizing is regarded to be deliberate rather than inadvertent. Mostly this strategy offends or startles the majority of audiences as norms for personal ideas and social beliefs are violated. Benetton is a leading and successful business in the recent times and communicating with consumers with such content could affect the business in the long-term.

References:

Benetton.com. (2018). United Colors of Benetton - Official Site | Online Shop. United Colors of Benetton. Retrieved 25 March 2018, from https://us.benetton.com/

Benoit, A. (2014). "An advertising world gone completely haywire": MAC VIVA GLAM. Advertising & Society Review, 15(1).

Buccoliero, L., Bellio, E., Mazzola, M., & Solinas, E. (2018). The role of social marketing communications in influencing “Text and Driving” Behaviors: Theory and Evidence from an international sample. GSTF Journal on Business Review (GBR), 4(3).

Dahl, D. W., Frankenberger, K. D., & Manchanda, R. V. (2003). Does it pay to shock? Reactions to shocking and nonshocking advertising content among university students. Journal of advertising research, 43(3), 268-280.

Engelbart, S. M., Jackson, D. A., & Smith, S. M. (2017). Examining Asian and European Reactions within Shock Advertising. Asian Journal of Business Research, 7(2), 37.

Girling, E. (2004). ‘Looking Death in the Face’ The Benetton Death Penalty Campaign. Punishment & Society, 6(3), 271-287.

Hagenbuch, D. J. (2015). Should Advertising Shock?. Journal of Biblical Integration in Business, 18(2).

Kireyev, P., Pauwels, K., & Gupta, S. (2016). Do display ads influence search? Attribution and dynamics in online advertising. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 33(3), 475-490..

Parry, S., Jones, R., Stern, P., & Robinson, M. (2013). ‘Shockvertising’: An exploratory investigation into attitudinal variations and emotional reactions to shock advertising. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 12(2), 112-121.

Saad, W., Ibrahim, G., Naja, M., & Hakam, N. (2015). Provocation in Advertising: The Attitude of Lebanese Consumers. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 9(2), 92.

Srinivasan, S., Rutz, O. J., & Pauwels, K. (2016). Paths to and off purchase: quantifying the impact of traditional marketing and online consumer activity. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(4), 440-453.

Wang, Z., Deshpande, S., Waller, D. S., & Erdogan, B. Z. (2017). Religion and Perceptions of the Regulation of Controversial Advertising. Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 1-16.