Project report : Benetton Unhate advertising

Résumé du document

This document is a Benetton Unhate case study answering the following instructions: to analyse the problem of this advertising campaign, to see how criticism can affect the e-reputation of a company, to put in place corrective social media management actions with social media management tools, to make the link between several concepts and to set up a social media management strategy.

Extraits

[...] However, by the time, only the were only 1,5 times as many people talking of H&M than of Benetton. Thus, Benetton has made much noise regarding its original fan base. The Unhate kiss wall has been viral and has highly contributed to the success of this campaign. Several hundreds of people lent themselves to creating their own "kissing picture". Unfortunately, Benetton didn't give the exact number of participations. Benetton also settled a "Unhate list" on Twitter which allowed people to create and share the list of thing that cannot be hated according to them. [...]

[...] A really short time after the campaign had been launched, Benetton had to cancel the picture showing Pope Benoît XVI and Imam Al-Azhar. According to the Vatican, this advertising campaign was a high lack of respect towards the Pope and Christians. The Vatican's spokesman, Frederico Lombardi, brought lights on the fact that this use of the Pope's portrait was unacceptable and that the picture of a religious figure shouldn't be use for commercial purpose. Consequently, the company had to apologize. [...]

[...] Indeed, United Color of Benetton was unable to totally cancel the pictures of Obama or of Benoît XVI on the internet as the communication means they chose to use was so viral and so democratic that once the pictures had been displayed on social networks, they didn't belong to them anymore. But how has this "Unhate" campaign been perceived by customers? Several organizations and websites asked their communities. On l'Express's website, one can read comments congratulating Benetton for their creativity and their involvement in the fight against racism. On the contrary, many comments criticize the fact that they use this fight for commercial purpose. [...]

[...] A single goal All in all, this "Unhate" campaign has been an undeniable success. Only with a few photomontages and and light software creating "kiss" pictures, they managed to grow viral. This success is mainly due to the clear goal they had set: creating involvement and "love brand". They focused on two intermediate goals: to shock people to create emotion so that people talk about their campaign and to make their fans be part of the campaign thanks to the "Kiss Wall". [...]

[...] Others underline that some reactions are even more chocking than the campaign itself. Examples of controversial comments on the Unhate campaign. Although the campaign has been controversial, it has reached its goal as thousands of people talked about it and as it has grown viral. In section you will produce a reflection paper pages) focused on your findings from the Social Media Management Research Report and how you position them in the field of social media management, suggesting possible future research directions. [...]