How far Benetton have fallen
I saw a post on everyone’s favourite social network, LinkedIn, about how people are hating on Benetton using AI in their latest campaign. And then I, inevitably, as someone who remembers the 90s loud and clear, thought of their advertising heyday. How the mighty have fallen.
Here’s the latest campaign, overly ecstatic faces and all.
But do you remember the old ads?
The ones that stopped you in your tracks (or from flipping over the page in whatever physical magazine you were reading)? The ones that made you feel physically or emotionally uncomfortable and made you question what the hell they were thinking but why are you feeling the way you feel? I do.
And I’ll tell you what, that AI garbage will be instantly forgotten. No stopping in your tracks. No pause in page-turning. No stopping the scroll.
It’s blink and you’ll miss it. It’s shitty product marketing vs balls-to-the-wall branding. It is, as my friend Kate so rightly said, “a bucket of slop that they’ve thrown at their visual heritage and the space they once stood so proudly in.”
