Benetton Set to Use AIDS Photo as Ad

Benetton, the international clothing company, has done it again.

Following controversial ad campaigns that featured war cemeteries, breast-feeding mothers and brightly colored condoms, the company is now set to go with a picture of an American AIDS victim on his deathbed.

News of the planned ad campaign, to be launched next month, has already provoked a storm of protest in Britain, where the Advertising Standards Authority has warned magazines against carrying it.

In the United States, the ad--a prize-winning photograph of dying AIDS victim David Kirby, 32, surrounded by his family--is so far scheduled to appear in the March issues of Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines.

A Benetton spokeswoman in Milan said the company was not trying to shock people with the ad and was simply following its advertising philosophy of focusing on social issues.

“It’s not even called ‘AIDS’, it’s called ‘Family’,” she said of the picture. “We don’t want to shock. We want to provoke discussion.” A number of British magazines have refused to carry the ad.

The editor of the British edition of Elle, which is running a blank double page spread in its March issue after refusing the ad, said the photograph had been given an old-fashioned, hand-colored look that made it look like “a tacky religious postcard.”

“I find an element of preachiness in this campaign,” Editor Maggie Alderson said. “I think our readers are intelligent people who know about the issues of the day, and they don’t need a clothing company to tell them.”

Such controversy is not new for Benetton.

Last year the ASA, Britain’s ad watchdog, ordered the removal of about 3,000 Benetton posters featuring a blood-smeared newborn baby after protests from the public.

The ASA said Friday that the new advertisement was also bound to cause offense.

“If people don’t see the connection between a clothing company and a sensitive subject like death and AIDS, it is almost bound to cause offense,” ASA spokeswoman Caroline Crawford said.

A Benetton spokesman in New York would not predict the reaction in the United States when the ad is unveiled Feb. 13.

“In the past, our controversies have differed from country to country depending on various cultural sensitivities to various images,” said Peter Fressola, Benetton North America’s director of communications.

Fressola noted that an ad showing a black child with devil-like horns next to an angel-like white child has caused more controversy in the United States than elsewhere.

Similarly, an ad showing children sticking out their tongues had triggered a storm in some Arab countries, he said.

Underlining the sensitive nature of the new AIDS ads, Vogue and Vanity Fair both referred all queries to their respective publishers. Neither was immediately available to comment.