Benetton Group: The History of Brand

Today Benetton group is one of the well-known fashion wardrobe in the world, present in the most important market places in the world with a huge network of over 5000 stores; a responsible group that plans for the future development and lives the best in the present, with an eye catching products to the environment, to human dignity, and to a society that enhances transformation. The Benetton group comprises four basic elements: Colour, Authentic, fashion, and Quality at democratic prices and passion for its work. These values are highly reflected in the strong, dynamic personality of the brands United Colors of Benetton. For buyers choosing Benetton is a form of self-expression and self-satisfaction. Customer will take pride in owning the amazing and take comfort in knowing he/she made a smart, informed decision.

Since its origination in 1965, the Benetton brand has challenged some of the social norms and championed issues that affect humanity; communicating this stance through images that shock, make people think and raise awareness for causes the brand believes in. They include famous print and poster ads by photographer Oliviero Toscani- one featuring three human hearts and another depicting a newborn baby still attached to the umbilical cord, for example campaigns have included images of the pope kissing an imam; same sex parents; people affected by war; and depictions of diversity- whether pertaining to race, religion or gender. Throughout the 80s and 90s the brand’s penchant for courting controversy fanned the sales fire, leading to Benetton’s chain of shops hitting 7000 worldwide by 1993.

But then its fortunes changed, and while brand awareness was still high, sales were not. Benetton’s business model of not following fashion trends and only changing them seasonally meant it started to fall behind its trendier fast fashion rivals such as Zara. Sales were sluggish, rising only 2% between 2000 to 2011.Benetton’s new campaign therefore features advertising that promotes a diverse group of women sharing experiences of their life-changing events, while wearing the brand’s knitwear. It is certainly tamer and more product-driven than their previous ads, but ties into Women Empowerment programme that launched last month. So Benetton acme up with two factors that will play a greater role in the new phase of communication and social engagement: younger consumers and campaign measurement.

According to Benetton, youths are their main target as young women can bring out a change more they are aware and sensitised on these issues. The company agrees that young people and young families play a crucial role for the brand because they are more aware and more willing to deal only with companies that act responsibly. Thus the group of Benetton chose young people up to age 30 as their fruitful audience for their campaign. Finally the launched the campaign with wordings like “end violence against women now!” were they allowed lot of young women under the age of 30 to get participated wearing a Benetton red colour t-shirt that shows that even women are strong in every aspect with respect to men. And their campaign was welcomed whole heartedly by many of the nation that supports women empowerment and which causes Benetton to reach up to their limits that they had lost few decades before. The Benetton Group’s ethos is to combine business growth with social commitment, competitiveness, care for the environment and ethics.

In response, Benetton created a stronger brand identity on 27 July,2017 launch of a new creative platform and marketing strategy named Clothes for Humans that aims to celebrate “the beauty of everyday moments and everyday emotions”. The retailer has split its product lines in to three categories; Dress up, Dress down and Dress to move, which the brand is hoping will still reflect its social mission of valuing the lives of ordinary people. The shift is being supported by a $16.8m marketing campaign around the brand’s manifesto and will include digital and social activity, print and in-store messaging, as well as the launch of a new “magalogue”, a publication that will contain “50% product and 50% quality content. Then after this strategic move the Benetton group made an ad that was very real they creatively looked in to an insight based on emotions and what people feel. Even they tried to paint a picture of life that is extremely authentic and real. Some moments were great, some were not great, some were light, some were heavy and they tried to shoot that in a way that is never shocking but always real. This ad created a major impact in the fashion industry as it clearly explains the real faces of the people that participated in their campaign and how they were taken care by Benetton Group. The impact the Benetton creates is that they do all the things based on the real feelings of the consumer rather than thinking only about the transformation ion the fashion technology.

Benetton believed in greater level of identity was that our market has become extremely competitive to a point where consumers have many choices and we feel that the most important thing in this changing climate is to clarify and amplify the reasons for being at that Benetton level. Being created a shocking controversial ad in the early decades the group of Benetton made an strong overcome by their campaigns that has a stronger degree of personality, a wide range of emotions being shot, and a lot of real life shooting opposed to studio. This creativity in the past 7-10 years had a strong focus on product with a crisp, clinical, background and they had an approach to human beings that was heavy on stylisation and mainly studio shots with picture perfect casting.

Since moving from Shockvertising Benetton focused on three things: knitwear expertise, colour innovation and social commitment. The focus on knitwear emphasise manual expertise and the fact that Benetton was built and will continue to be built by craftsmen. Colour innovation is the brand’s creative side. They created an impact such that the brand is “extremely committed to colour diversity, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religious diversity”. And social commitment relates to causes that affect humanity, including the latest effort to empower women.

Benetton is clearly not the only brand taking a stance on the subject of women’s equality. Procter & Gamble’s feminine hygiene brand always has been running its “Like a Girl” campaign for more than a year, aiming to question social attitudes that harm girls’ confidence. But being a first mover in such kind of campaign Benetton acquired a better place in the mind-sets of people. Focusing mainly on colour innovation and diversity among the people the United Colors of Benetton developed their creative style of advertising that naturally attracts people and allow them to connect emotionally with the ad which made Benetton a popular brand in the Fashion technology.

Benetton’s digital platform has also undergone a revamp to give it a better balance between “commerce and brand” and will for the first time feature a series of online films with each focusing on a specific emotion or activity.