We, On The Death Row

Section: Marketing Essays

POSITIVE ABOUT THE MARKETING/ADVERTISING STRATEGY: ' First of all it is important to mention that the reaction has occur only in some places, specially the death penalty states. In other places is little noticed (like for example Washington state). This kind of reaction it is mainly a reaction in the U.S. because for example Italians, longtime opponents of the death penalty, increasingly are crusading against its use abroad. Over the coming year, Rome´s colosseum is to be lighten up for 48 hours every time a death sentence is suspended anywhere in the world or a country abolishes the death penalty. ' The arguments in favor of capital punishment center around: "an eye for an eye". What kind of argument is this? "The campaign is about the death penalty. Leaving aside any social, political or moral consideration, this project aims at showing to the public the reality of capital punishment" (Benetton, Looking). The real goal of the campaign is to put a human face on individuals this country is looking to execute and to create a dialog on the issue of punishment, regardless of the crime the individual committed, Speedy Rice a professor of law at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., who served as NACDL´s point man on the project and coordinated the visits with corrections officials, inmates, and their lawyers explained. This isn´t intended as a slight to the victims or families. We just wanted to focus on the punishment. It is difficult to me to understand what is the real conflict in the people who disagree on the campaign. But the only answer I can put to this is that only here, in the U.S. people feel threaten by having the pictures of the killers in the streets, because they can recognize them as killers. But the real concept behind the people on death row is to humanize the punishment. To treat it not as a name of a game, but make it reality. (Even when reality not always is «nice».) '

The have the support of the U.S Commissioner for Refugees and a human rights activist, which said that campaigns like Toscani's were "Welcome." And this is not the only organization that is in favor of Benetton's campaign but also all of the organization that helped Toscani to realize the project. Such as NACDL. ' Only 200 out of 7,000 stores are in the United States. ' One of the arguments against the campaign is the fact that the campaign was more of a report of the convicts, not covering the crime of the convicts and therefore «glorifies» them, like if advertising was not able to cover those types of issues. At the essence of many of the criticisms surrounding the advertising lie culturally assumed differences between the responsibilities and the ethics of news journalism and advertising. Many people believe that journalists, not the creative director of fashion, are better suited to explore controversial topics. But Benetton's advertising challenges that journalists are in the selling and communications business too. When journalists focus on strange and serious topics, nobody criticizes them for trying to sell their stories to the media. Yet, when an advertisement touches on a real problem, everybody is immediately up in arms and protests that it´s in bad taste. It seems that an advertisement that misleads the consumer with deception and lies is considered more correct. For journalists selling newspapers is the priority. We think that we are buying the truth, but at the end, they are just selling a product. So journalism is at the end selling stories. For Toscani, Benetton's advertising campaigns are equally justifiable. He says that Benetton is selling knowledge about cultural and social problems and at the end somebody else sells the sweaters.

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