PART NINE:

The legacy of Oliviero Toscani.

Olivier Toscani the Italian born photographer made his mark for having a particularly controversial style during his time working for united colours of Benetton between 1982 – 2000. He utilised controversy to create publicity for the brand whether it was positive or not. For example, A campaign using a young male suffering with aids, surrounded by his family in a hospital bed, Toscani wasn’t afraid in discussing topics which were sensitive at the time as his opinion is that brands are “important as they have social impact” (Kiefer, 2016). This campaign was viewed as controversial due to the fact the man looked edited to resemble Jesus. Aids in 1990’s was stereotyped to be contracted through homosexual relationships and at the time society was majority homophobic, the topic of aids was rarely spoken about especially within religion even though the photo was completely consensual with the featuring family, it still caused outrage and a global campaign to boycott the family’s places of work (Duffy, 2017). Controversial advertising is not easily regulated as interpretation of visual content is different for everyone, grabbing the attention of consumers to misleading and causing offence are very different however brands use this to their benefit and create campaigns with a shock factor to gain publicity. The shock tactic begins to backfire for Oliviero Toscani in the end losing his role as art director at Benetton in 2002.

PART TEN:

Rebranding Bershka: differentiating the brand from the Inditex stable.

Branding creates a narrative and message for a brand with a sense of storytelling (Tungate, 2012) however rebranding of a company can take place such as Burberry which reinvented themselves for the designer market since its popularity with the “chav” culture (Moore and Birtwistle, 2004) Bershka is one of the fashion retailers which make up the family of brands run by Inditex. The seven brands run by Inditex all have very similar visual communications of wordmark logos, stylistic art direction and sleek websites, rebranding is a way to distinguish the brand from its parent company (Inditex, ND; Lopez and Fan, 2009). Bershka’s main difference is there logo redesign the original logo was a San serif font with a lower case formatting where there updated logo continues using San serif font but an upper case formatting, visually the new logo has a more powerful and modern look along with its logo the brands website has also had a rebrand, it’s taken on a more urban and youthful look compared to its sister brand of Zara which has a more millennial classier look differentiating the brands by having a different consumer groups along with the garments there selling