March | 2010 | Chichster The Fashionister

Archive for March, 2010

United Colors of Benetton: Branding your Face.

We are bombarded by various types of advertizing every day, and have been participating in the domino effect of Viral Marketing by wearing logo-clad clothing and by participating in online social networks. Given how fiercely they compete for advertising space in which to expose us to their imagery, it’s not surprising that companies have come up with new, effective ways to promote they’re brands. The new trend in Viral Marketing seems to be the creation of online competitions in which participants upload pictures of themselves on a website or bog in the hopes of winning prizes or representing the brand. You can find a substantial amount of these types of competitions online. I’m a bit of a contest junkie and I often enter these in the hopes of getting free stuff (I LOVE free stuff). Brands that have been organizing such competitions are Got2be Hair products, where the most popular hairstyles would win free hair products, and FCUK where participants would upload pictures of themselves in the brand’s clothes in the hopes of winning a fashion spree (this competitions was unfortunately only open to UK residents).

In February, Benetton pushed the online picture-uploading contest concept even further by making it part of a full-scale advertisement campaign. “Its My Time Gobal Casting Competition” is promising the 100 most popular profiles a place in the next Benetton book and a 200$ shopping spree, and promising 20 winners a spot as the new faces of Benetton in the next fall/winter 2010 campaign.

“The Competition intends being a global representation of style, an interactive search for new faces, new looks, new ways of being that fully convey the values of the United Colors of Benetton brand.” writes the Promoter in the Terms and Conditions of the “It’s My Time” competition.

I applaud the “Promoter” who came up with this marketing ploy. Benetton is known for it’s controversial add campaigns photographed by Oliviero Toscani’s. These images had shock-value and were acute social commentary about racial issues, gay and lesbian rights and HIV awareness. In a world where the president of the United States is black, women have equal rights and Gay marriage is being legalized in many places of the world, these adds have sort of lost they’re relevance. This is not to say that the fight equal rights is over, far from it, but these adds do not have the same effect today as they did in the 80’s and 90’s.

With “It’s My Time”, Benetton has found a way to renew its relevance in popular culture by using the ever-growing online community as a means of viral marketing. However, I can’t help but find these new means of advertising slightly disturbing. The “It’s my Time” has reached 48000 entries (including my own), which means that right now thousands of individuals around the world are uploading images of themselves in the hopes of being the one that will “convey the values of the United Colors of Benetton Brand“. Which means we are fully prepared to be branded with the Benetton stamp and will participate in an advertizing campaign for free. Let’s not take into account the prizes we are competing for. Every time we post a link to our competition profile, we are actively participating an the advertisement campaign.

I’m not an advertisement or marketing expert, but I’m pretty sure that the cost of the prizes offered to the winner will come up to a lot less then setting up an international advertisement campaign. Let’s not forget that the “Promoter” plans on including the 100 most popular profiles in the next Benetton Book and that they will already have the rights to all the pictures uploaded by the participants. Maby someone more knowledgeable can enlighten me: I’m not an expert on copy right laws or ownership laws when it comes to publishing, but I suspect that including the following passage in the Terms and Conditions was kind of sneaky:

“All submitted material will be kept by the Promoter and will become the property of the same Promoter, who from that moment on will be free to use the aforesaid material regardless of whether or not the Entrant is selected as a Finalist or Winner. The Promoter may also use the submitted material, should the occasion arise, within the scope of advertising, commercial or communication activities connected with the Competition. With the acceptance of these terms and conditions, Entrants waive all intellectual property rights relating to the submitted material.”

Now I didn’t READ the Terms and Conditions before I created my profile and uploaded my pictures, and I’m pretty sure the greater part of the 48000 participants didn’t either. Which means that close to 50000 people gave away the rights to their image for a company to use whenever they want without really being aware of what it implied. It’s pretty amazing that by creating these contests, companies are inciting thousands of individuals to actively participate in the construction of the brand’s image and help it acquire new spaces for advertising possibilities (your blog, you’re facebook page, your myspace… your entire e-mail address book). I’m not against such marketing strategies, nonetheless I’m disturbed by how easily people can be coaxed into being used in an advertisement campaign for free.

2010: 03/07
CATEGORY: Visual Culture
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Burn Rubber on Me

The idea was making clothes out of recycled rubber.

2010: 03/01
CATEGORY: Fashion Portfolio
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On Alexander McQueen’s Beautiful Monsters

In my opinion, good art transcends criteria for beauty and ugliness established by social norms. If you’ve read my first post about the subject you know how I feel about the relationship between art and fashion creations. In the light of the media storm created by the death of the celebrated designer Lee Alexander McQueen, I thought I should write about him sooner rather than latter. (I won’t use the word “genius” to describe him and if anyone’s curious about why I refrain from ever using the term, please consult Linda Nochlin’s essay “Why have there been no great female artist?” as she explains the issue a thousand times better than I can.)

McQueen’s unorthodox use of the mediums made available to him by the fashion industry is what made him a creative force to be reckoned with and an artist in his own way. He orchestrated every aspect of a collection and it’s presentation to create fashion shows that were a spectacle. He was a master of the mise-en-scene, using technology of lighting and sound as well as multimedia to create an art total production.

The first McQueen show that had me completely enthralled was the Spring 2005 collection which was presented as a giant chess game. I thought that if I were to become a fashion designer, I would want to also be an entertainer and have my work featured in a fashion show that would be on par with an Opera production. Not only were the clothes beautiful, but the presentation was dramatic in itself.

The only one who can top McQueen is McQueen himself, and this spring’s collection entitled Plato’s Atlantis was again an example of art total. An eerie atmosphere was created by Knight’s opening video of Raquel Zimmermann, lying on sand, naked, with snakes writhing across her body and the presence of two sinister movie cameras sliding and rearing on the runway on gigantic black booms (style.com) before the models started walking, looking like hybrids between reptiles and humans.

It’s not his mastery of the mise-en-scene that awes me the most. I think what was most fascinating about McQueen’s work is that he was able to defy traditional expectations of what beauty should look like. One of the spring 2010 shoes are reminiscent of a spine, twisting and writhing in a most unnatural way and another reminds us of an insect’s carapace . How does an object so reminiscent of the sordid become revered as amazing fashion? How does something essentially so ugly become admirable in our eyes?

The McQueen paradox is strengthened by the fact that the fashion industry is obsessed with beauty and perfection and he has more than once surprised the world by sending down the runway creations that were not only out of the ordinary, but completely conflicted with traditional definition for the beautiful. In fact, these past seasons, McQueen has been sending more and more “ugliness” down the runway while still being credited for being an astounding designer. Who could forget the grotesque “blow-up doll” faces painted on his models for fall 2009.

Perhaps McQueen felt the need to expose fashion’s dark underbelly. Afterall, his Atlantis show was far from an allegory to female beauty and elegance. The models were transformed into supernatural creatures by insect and reptilian like structured dresses and engineered prints. The shoes grotesque hooves, conflicting with the natural shape of the body and transforming a elegant gait into an aggressive stomp. He mutated some of the most beautiful women in the world into eerie monstrous creatures far from our ideal of what beauty should look like.

His ingenious designs, entertaining fashion shows and superior craftsmanship are all things that made him a fascinating actor in the fashion industry. But what made him an artist in my eyes was his capacity to completely defy our expectations of what fashion and beauty should be by delivering us objects reminiscent of the gruesome and distasteful all while conserving an aura of undeniable fierceness and mystery around them. In McQueen’s world, even the ugliest of subject matters became a thing of beauty to be envied.