Subject: For 2 Revealing Europeans Ads, Overexposure Can Have Benefits Date: Published: 6/17/93 (107 lines) Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Marketing & Media -- Advertising: For 2 Revealing Europeans Ads, Overexposure Can Have Benefits ---- By Lisa Bannon and Margaret Studer Nudity still shocks, but two revealing European ad campaigns demonstrate that beyond capturing attention, bare bodies can be good for the bottom line. Even the usually more liberal Europeans are blushing at new advertising efforts from Benetton Group SpA and Swissair. Swissair has found an odd mascot in an anonymous naked man; Benetton, on the other hand, is staging yet another publicity play with an ad that mixes naked adults with naked children. Though neither ad will likely be used in the U. S., Bennetton ads are generally already well known world-wide for their shock value. The Italian clothing giant has built its hugely successful communications campaign on pushing the limits of taste in ads from Benetton creative director Oliviero Toscani. But last week's ad featuring 56 close-up photos of male and female genitalia -- of blacks and whites, adults and children -- has ignited criticism and stirred up industry debate about the difference between advertising and pornography. For Benetton, this is of course the aim. Perhaps it was, too, for Swissair, Switzerland's national airline, which calls its "nude man" campaign the most successful ad campaign in its history. Swissair launched its new business class April 1 with a seven-week "teaser" campaign that showed a naked, carefree man flying through the skies. The first ads showed only his legs, to be followed at intervals by other parts of his body, until the whole man appeared in the last ads. The man's derriere was shown, and so were his hairy legs -- but there weren't any frontal glimpses. The campaign ran in magazines in Europe, North Africa and Turkey, and on television in the United Kingdom and in European newspapers. "The response was incredible," said Konrad Korsunsky, Swissair advertising manager. He claims the campaign resulted in "solidly booked seats, even though capacity in business class was increased by 30%." Critics described the Swissair ads as pornographic, sexist and unworthy of the carrier, said Hermann Strittmatter of Graf Bertel Buczek Strittmatter, the agency that created the campaign. But "we expected 25,000 unfavorable responses and only got 25 negative letters, some of which may have been coordinated," he said. The ads also ran in magazines in Islamic countries with no complaints received, he said. The campaign is a rare departure from traditional airline advertising, which tends to show smiling hostesses serving happy customers trays of food. Swissair says it likes to see the mascot not as a man but as a human being. "We created something unconventional and unique," says Mr. Korsunsky. "We created a renaissance person -- not only a man flying totally unencumbered, without hassle, with freedom to move. Passengers understood the message. We will be doing this sort of advertising again." In reactions to the Benetton ad, however, Mr. Toscani sees nothing less than a debate between advertising and art. The ad in fact originated as a submission to the Biennale art exhibition in Venice for its avant garde section. The work was conceived as "the most anonymous portrait of society we can get," a spokeswoman for Benetton explains. "Mr. Toscani wanted to explore the limits of art and advertisingwhere one begins and the other ends and how tolerance shifts from one realm to the next." Mr. Toscani's argument is that in the art world, debatably offensive images, such as those by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, are accepted while in other realms such as advertising they are not, the Benetton spokeswoman said. "Anyway, there are a lot worse things on newsstands," she adds. Benetton explains that Mr. Toscani's children were used for the ad, so as not to prompt allegations of exploitation. Aware that the ad would incite scandal -- and potential legal action -- in the U. S. and the U. K., Benetton proposed it only to magazines and newspapers in Italy and France. The Italian media refused the image. In France, among the only places it ran was in the daily Liberation. Benetton says it has no plans to run the ad again. Benetton's advertising tactics have provoked protests before. The company has seen fit to feature in its ads such images as a black man's hand handcuffed to a white man's, African tribesmen carrying what appeared to be human bones, and an AIDS patient and his family moments before his death. Some U. S. media rejected those ads, and critics accused Benetton of exploiting sensitive social issues to sell sweaters. The debate on art vs. advertising is lost on France's Bureau de Verification de la Publicite, a self-regulating advertising body, which is threatening to sue Benetton for violating rules of decency. "The argument is more like decency vs. perversity," says Pierre Constant, BVP's attorney. "Advertising vs. art or whatever, Benetton always has an explanation. Not just one explanation but 20 of them. That's not the point," Mr. Constant says. "The point is they've broken the rules." But maybe Benetton will get the last laugh, yet again. "From my point of view it's a little obscene," says Marcos Golfari, managing director of J. Walter Thompson in Italy. "But they have a superb vision of communication. Sure they've made some mistakes, and this is probably one of them, but the reaction they receive multiplies the advertising by hundreds and by thousands." He adds, "The point is not negative publicity or positive publicity, but publicity." 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