Controversial Advertising

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Introduction

Advertising texts and images seem to be the most visible and ubiquitous icons of consumer society. The Advertising industry indeed has simultaneously become one of the most powerful and apparently most uncritical institutions of today as well as this, people seemingly have accepted billboard advertising as an usual part of their environment. Nevertheless there sometimes develop certain advertising campaigns undergoing general ideas about what ads are supposed to show and they hence provoke controversial public debates. So called controversial advertising has often been claimed to somehow subvert conventional advertising’s practice by the audiences, justice, advertisers, companies, advertising industry’s self regulating institutions and so forth. This now rises the question how far industrial advertising as an institution that has to promote consuming goods, can be subversive.

This essay will work out, that advertising hardly can be subversive, because it is to much characterised by its function. It nevertheless firstly is necessary to formulate a working-definition of subversion, a notion that has been used in very different senses, before two example-cases of controversial advertising can be investigated. The integration of ad-alien contents within the Benetton-campaign then will be analysed as a form of aesthetic subversion to subsequently question exactly the image’s ad-alien and supposed subversive form and content. Thus, it will be shown that Benetton’s subversive potentials are overshadowed by their functions as advertisements.

This works second part will look at two campaigns developed for French Connection. By investigating two campaigns it will be shown that the only form of subversion that might be claimed for advertising could possibly be described as a temporary phenomenon of charming subversion.

Controversial advertising : subversive avant-garde or variations of conformity?

The notion „subversive“ has been associated with political issues and revolutionary activities intending to change the entire political, economic and hence societal order by slowly destroying the present system from its core. Simultaneously the notion has been used in a less ubiquitous sense, that might be more appropriate for this work’s purpose. Vogel for example in Film as a Subversive Art established the notions of Subversion of Form and Subve...

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...ox, Henri, A. (1994): Disturbing Pleasures - Learning Popular Culture. London, Routledge.

Jäckel, Michael (2002)(no title given) URL: http://www.uni-trier.de/uni/fb4/soziologie/faecher/amk/folien/ss02/folien4_m.pdf (Visited 12.12.03)

McLuhan, Marshall (1968): Die magischen Kanäle. Understanding Media. Düsseldorf, Wien: Verlag der Kunst.

McLuhan, Newton P. (1996) Care Fakers URL: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/02.01.96/corp-care-9605.html (Visited 12.12.03)

Tinic, Serra A. (1997): Unitied Colors and United Meanings: Benetton and The Commodification of Social Issues. URL: http://joc.oupjournals.org/cgi/reprint/47/3/3.pdf (Visited 12.12.03)

Toscani, Oliviero (1995): Die Werbung ist ein lächelndes Aas. Köln: Bollmann.

Vogel, Amos (1997): Film als Subversive Kunst. Kino wider die Tabus -von Eisenstein bis Kubrick. St. Andrä-Wördern: Hannibal.

White, Roderick (2000): Advertising. Fourth Edition. Glasgow: McGraw-Hill.

Wilson, Neil (1995): A Study Of The Relationship Between Benetton And Its Franchisees And The Impact A Controversial Campaign Can Have On The Association And On Company Sale. Aberystwyth: University of Wales, Centre for Business Studies.

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