So, What Do You Think?

Benetton’s advertising alliance with Talk magazine--a supplement packaged with the magazine’s February issue that features photographs of and interviews with 26 American death-row inmates--has had its intended effect: The debate over the clothing maker’s controversial anti-death-sentence ads is raging on the airwaves, in print and in Internet chat rooms.

But it has also prompted a debate Benetton didn’t expect--with a major retailer, Sears, Roebuck and Co.

Benetton is in the business of selling sweaters but also is known for its edgy photo spreads addressing social issues. The company seems to thrive on shocking consumers. But this time, Sears, which began selling the moderately priced Benetton USA line in its stores last summer, was shocked as well.

Sears officials said they hadn’t seen the ad before it was printed, and that calls from angry customers, including relatives of murder victims, prompted the giant retailer to begin discussions with Benetton.

“We don’t as a company take positions on social issues, but I think we did feel that we did have a strong negative reaction to this campaign,” said Tom Nicholson, director of public relations for Sears, headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Ill. “All I can say is that when we saw the campaign, we knew that it would not be well received by Sears’ customers.”

And, he said, the giant retailer had received a lot of customer response, none of it positive.

Mark Major, director of communications for Benetton USA, said the ads, launched first in the U.S. as part of a global campaign, are scheduled to run through the spring. The company also says it made no concessions to Sears about curtailing its scheduled buys. The ads are already slated to run on three billboards in New York City through February as well as in the Feb. 7 issue of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair for March, Rolling Stone for Feb. 17 and three other magazines.

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Benetton said it hoped the ads would stimulate discussion about the death penalty. It was, Benetton said, an attempt to put a face on death-row inmates and also to draw attention to continuing executions in America, but apparently many people have taken offense, including families of murder victims and members of victims’-rights groups. (One Web site refers to the inmates as “The United Killers of Benetton.”)

“We were aware of their reputation and certainly their philosophy on advertising,” said Nicholson. “Still, having said that, this campaign took us by surprise.”

Critics decried the absence of information about the crimes and the victims. The interviewer, Ken Shulman, asked such questions as “Were you ever in love?”; “Did you ever love an animal?”; “Who are your favorite boxers?”; and “How’s your appetite in here?” along with inquiries about their opinions on the death penalty.

In an unscientific poll on the CNN Web site, 44% of the roughly 11,000 people responding found the ads “utterly offensive,” and 21% said they thought the campaign was a ploy for attention.

The “We, On Death Row” campaign, estimated to cost $20 million, was created by Oliviero Toscani, the creative force behind Benetton’s other unconventional ads that have tackled such issues as AIDS, the war in Bosnia, and racism (Toscani was recently appointed creative director of Talk magazine, where the ad campaign began). Some of Toscani’s earlier ads, including one featuring a black horse and a white horse mating, and another with body parts tattooed with the words “HIV Positive,” have been banned in some European cities.

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“We’re not the only ones using emotion for commercial gain,” Toscani told USA Today in 1995, around the time a court ordered Benetton to pay damages to French citizens infected with the HIV virus, saying the company exploited human suffering.

That’s how some people in this country felt about the anti-death-penalty campaign.

“This is not a death-penalty issue, it’s a human issue,” said Nancy Ruhe-Munch, executive director of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, which does not take a stand on capital punishment.

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She said the ad campaign is “a slap in the face to survivors, to the police who investigated these crimes, to prosecutors who prosecuted these crimes, and to the jurors who said, ‘Whatever my beliefs are, these crimes are so heinous that they deserved the death penalty.’ ”

The Benetton ad supplement apparently was much sought after in the magazine world. A Talk spokesman said revenues from the 100-page booklet were in the seven figures but would not be more specific.

“Many people wanted this ad campaign, including publishers of some very big magazines,” Joe Armstrong, vice president and director of strategic planning for Talk, said last Thursday. “The purpose of Talk was to have a magazine that was going to lead to a national conversation, and the magazine is really about creating debate,” Armstrong said. “Benetton has had this tradition of wanting to do advertising that challenges thinking.”

Armstrong said Talk would continue the debate in its upcoming letters columns.

Unlike a magazine that lives for “buzz,” Sears sees no upside to the controversy. “I think I’d be much happier,” said Nicholson, “if I were not talking to you right now.”