Cash or concern? Or, put another way, do the familiar United Colors of Benetton advertising campaigns provide a public service by way of highlighting controversial issues, or are they merely intelligent gimmicks intended to sell more clothes?
The question is not new but it came to mind last weekend when the multinational Benetton Group SpA, Italy's biggest clothing company, announced a parting of the ways with Oliviero Toscani, the gifted photographer and designer who has masterminded the projection of the Benetton image since 1982.
Millions of people around the world have been amused, annoyed, distracted or infuriated by Toscani's United Colors of Benetton campaign. A bloodstained new-born baby; a man dying of AIDS; the bullet-torn and bloodstained clothes of a Bosnian war victim; a priest kissing a nun; a white baby suckling at a black breast; multicoloured condoms floating through the air; these and thousands of other pictures have been used by Toscani to create what Luciano Benetton likes to call "a global image". Successfully, too.
The United Colors of Benetton campaigns have often caused uproar. All manner of pressure groups from the Catholic Church to gay rights activists have expressed their dismay about the different and shocking images brilliantly fashioned by Toscani.
Yet, while commentators have pondered whether the United Colors campaigns have been prompted by humanitarian or commercial considerations, the bottom line has always been that the campaigns make sound business sense. As Luciano Benetton admitted candidly to Reuters in a February 1992 interview, "Certainly, the idea is to make yourself noticed . . ."
And Benetton has been "noticed". Yet, this is where we come to last weekend's announcement. In a low-key statement, Luciano Benetton thanked Toscani for his "fundamental contribution to a new form of advertising", while Toscani spoke of the having the "courage to end something that was fantastic".
This all sounds civilised and plausible. Yet, it leaves one large question unanswered. Namely, could it be that the Toscani-Benetton parting of the ways is totally unrelated to the most recent Toscani-inspired Benetton campaign, "We On Death Row", featuring the faces of US prison inmates awaiting execution.
This latest campaign, featuring the faces of (mainly black) inmates and bearing the words "Sentenced To Death", reads like a strong indictment of capital punishment. In that sense, it is at one with majority public opinion in Italy (and in much of Europe) in its rejection of capital punishment.
The "We On Death Row" campaign may, however, not be quite so closely attuned to the views of Middle America. In recent months, Luciano Benetton has found himself at the centre of a storm of disapproval prompted by the campaign and has had to apologise both to the families of the prisoners' victims and to the company's US sponsors.
Furthermore, the state of Missouri (home to one of the prisons featured in the campaign) launched a legal action against the company while, perhaps most painfully of all, Sears, the second largest retailer in the US, announced in February that it would no longer sell Benetton USA clothing. Sears said it found the "We On Death Row" campaign "objectionable".
Now, all of this prompts a thought or two. Could it be that Oliviero Toscani has this time simply gone too far? After all, his previous campaigns featuring new-born babies, Bosnia, AIDS, etc, touched on a variety of socially respectable and oft-times politically correct themes, which either attacked soft targets (the Catholic Church and unnamed Yugoslav war tyrants) or promoted solidarity (with the victims of racism or AIDS).
Toscani's previous campaigns, while provocative for many and offensive to some, did not clash head on with the US, with all those US states which practise capital punishment and, more importantly, with a US public opinion traditionally overwhelmingly in favour of capital punishment. This time, the target was distinctly not soft. This time, the bottom line is that the "We On Death Row" campaign probably did not make commercial good sense.
Benetton said last weekend the time has come to adopt a new advertising approach, based on team spirit rather than relying on a talented individual. Here's hoping that the offloading of the talented individual (Oliviero Toscani) does not mean the end of an enlightening, apparently self-contradictory but quintessentially Italian style of social conscience plus business profit advertising.