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"0liviero
Toscani - the Italian photographer, magazine designer and creative monkey-wrencher
- sold knitwear to a whole world, a multicultural Family of Man, otherwise
known as the United Colors of Benetton" (Hank Stuever, The Washington
Post, January 25, 2000).
"Benetton's new 'We,
on Death Row' - a yearlong $20 million global ad campaign - will sympathetically
portray American murderers awaiting execution, conveying what's on their
doomed minds. It has brought on the inevitable apoplexy of death penalty
proponents, and again brings the Benetton name a heap of hype" (Hank
Stuever, The Washington Post, January 25, 2000).
"The question, as always, is why? What do Toscani and his patron,
billionaire Luciano Benetton, gain when they yank the chains of the bewildered
herd?" (Hank Stuever, The Washington Post, January 25, 2000).
"There's a direct message here (death penalty: bad), but also
there is a more subtle, off-color Italian hand gesture flung in our direction:
You and your death penalty are in danger of being disowned by the Family
of Man" (Hank Stuever, The Washington Post, January 25, 2000).
"'Once again, its very hard for people to see what we're doing
and understand that it's not advertising, that it's a way to get people
to think,' said Mark Major, Benetton's U.S. director of communications.
Count Sears, Roebuck and Co. among those not getting it. Sears, which sells
a lower-priced line of Benetton products, announced last week that it had
not known about the campaign and strongly disapproved. Sears officials said
Thursday that Benetton had agreed to curtail the campaign a bit. But Benetton's
spokesman said the campaign is going ahead on its global schedule, which
will include billboards and magazine ads in Talk, Rolling Stone, Vanity
Fair and the New Yorker" (Hank Stuever, The Washington Post, January
25, 2000).
"Seven of the 26 prisoners photographed by Toscani and interviewed
by freelance journalist Ken Shulman have started appearing on billboards,
posters and print ads across the country this month - some not so far from
the communities where they killed, or where they're imprisoned - along with
their quotable sentiments in large type. ('We are still human. We still
have feelings,' is one. Many of the prisoners declined, upon reflection,
to participate in the wider billboard campaign.)" (Hank Stuever,
The Washington Post, January 25, 2000).
"The prisoners (in the correctional couture of hot reds and
oranges) look sad, yet dignified, even when grinning ear-to-ear. Some have
that chilling spark in their eyes, untamed by their cinder-block and fluorescent-bulbed
confines" (Hank Stuever, The Washington Post, January 25, 2000).
"As a condition to gaining access, Toscani and Shulman agreed
not to discuss the specifics of the prisoners crimes. This has created additional
furor from journalism watchdogs, who say the Benetton team compromised the
project by sidestepping the grislier details" (Hank Stuever, The
Washington Post, January 25, 2000).
"'The prison inmates may be objectified, but the people they
killed don't seem to exist at all,' wrote Timothy Noah at Slate, the online
magazine" (Hank Stuever, The Washington Post, January 25, 2000).
"Shuhnan, 42, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., and contributes
to Newsweek and National Public Radio, among others, defended his work on
the project, and wonders if the swell of controversy and anger is genuine,
or if it is a byproduct of the hype: 'I would be ashamed if we'd made false
claims.... So far, the people who are throwing stones don't really have
the right to'" (Hank Stuever, The Washington Post, January 25, 2000).
"Luciano Benetton, who last ranked No. 111 on Forbes's list
of billionaires, and Oliviero Toscani share an ideology as world citizens;
their collaboration has been likened to that of a moneyed pope and his edgy
Michelangelo. ('They are working from the same page on these issues,' Major
says. 'They spend a lot of time together.') They could easily, over breakfast
in the hills outside Milan, decide that dropping $20 million on a striking
death row invective - which could harm their business more than help it
- is not only very exciting, it's also chump change" (Hank Stuever,
The Washington Post, January 25, 2000).
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