{"id":5587,"date":"2018-10-01T09:04:12","date_gmt":"2018-10-01T08:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/?p=5587"},"modified":"2018-10-01T09:04:12","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T08:04:12","slug":"oliviero-toscani-takes-issue-with-advertising-agencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/?p=5587","title":{"rendered":"Oliviero Toscani Takes Issue with Advertising Agencies"},"content":{"rendered":"

29\/09\/2018<\/p>\n

Benetton\u2019s long-time collaborator was provocative as ever speaking at Serviceplan\u2019s Innovation Day this week<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week, Oliviero Toscani sounded eerily like Bill Hicks<\/a> as he addressed a room in Munich full of marketers. \u201cWho is in marketing here?\u201d His question provoked a forest of raised hands. He stopped short of inviting suicide though. His version: \u201cbe ashamed.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The 76-year-old photographer, well known for his collaborations with the Benetton fashion brand, creating their ad campaigns in the \u201880s and \u201890s, was speaking at Innnovationstag 2018 (Innovation Day) in Munich – an event organised by the creative agency Serviceplan at its headquarters there. He was on stage with Serviceplan\u2019s chief creative officer Alexander Schill, who valiantly persevered with the interview, laughing it off.<\/div>\n
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After returning to the fashion brand last year following a 17-year hiatus, Oliviero’s recent campaigns have provoked discussion true to his form. After putting a Benetton logo on a picture of migrants in life jackets being rescued from the sea by volunteers, the campaign was condemned by the rescue charity in the photo, SOS M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e, as well as the Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini and many of the public<\/a>.<\/div>\n
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He defended that work and his motivations for the decision, diagnosing what he sees as a great problem with today\u2019s world: \u201cA Rolex watch is welcome wherever, but [I] as a human being [am] not\u2026 The future merchandise of humanity is humanity itself.\u201d Later in the discussion he added, in defence against the \u2018provocative\u2019 label he is so often lumbered with: \u201cProvocation is not a bad word. I can provoke peace and love.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Speaking in an age where so many brands seem to be searching for social issues to align themselves with or \u2018join the discussion\u2019 on, Alex suggested that Oliviero\u2019s early work with Benetton – associating it with subjects such as AIDS, religion and racism – was ahead of his time in this respect.<\/div>\n
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The photographer\u2019s response was that advertising should not be seperate from the rest of the world and its ethics. He stressed that people are \u201cnot Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde\u201d but noted that he had never worked in an ad agency and suggested that such companies are less well equipped to create work that truly moves people because they create ideas via a committee. In the end the idea is inevitably a mediocre compromise, he said: \u201cnobody will like it; nobody will hate it.\u201d<\/div>\n
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His criticism of the industry continued onto a more personal track later: \u201cAnybody who says \u2018I am a creative person\u2019 is an idiot,\u201d he declared, not phased by the fact that his interviewer\u2019s job description has contained the \u2018c\u2019 word for over 20 years. \u201cBut you still call yourself \u2018art director\u2019, you call yourself \u2018creative director\u2019. Sorry. Not even God directed creation. He did everything by himself, alone. I think this is nonsense.\u201d Alexander took this with great dignity and good humour, which is fortunate because it was a theme Oliviero returned to throughout the discussion. \u201cI would never call myself \u2018creative director\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cI would be embarrassed. You should change your title.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Another comment from the photographer (who has often been described as Benetton\u2019s art director) later in the discussion: \u201cArt director? If you can direct that art, that art is lousy, mediocre.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cCreativity cannot be secure,\u201d he mused. \u201cYour highest moment of insecurity is probably your highest moment of creativity. Marketing people, advertising people, they want to be secure. So they cannot produce creativity.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Although respectful throughout, Alexander wasn\u2019t entirely passive. \u201cDid you ever receive a brief for a Benetton campaign?\u201d he ventured. The Italian\u2019s response was clear: \u201cI don\u2019t work with Benetton. I work with Luciano Benetton. There is nothing between.\u201d<\/div>\n
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After a sustained barrage of accusations against ad agencies, Alexander offered a defence of the work that Serviceplan and companies like it do. \u201cArt and advertising are mirroring society. In advertising we try and do it good,\u201d he said. \u201cWe try to grab what\u2019s going on out there and take it to another stage.\u201d<\/div>\n
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His interviewee seemed to believe this. \u201cYes, you do, but you don\u2019t do it. The most interest you have got is [in] your budget. And for that you gave up your morality as an artist.\u201d<\/div>\n
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The Q&A session was lively too. One audience member wondered how the photographer feels about the work of vocally commercial artists from Andy Warhol to Ridley Scott, provoking something of a backtrack from Oliviero. \u201cI\u2019m not against advertising,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is not advertising? The Sistine Chapel is advertising! I\u2019m against what is generally what you understand when you say \u2018advertising\u2019 – that segment of communication that is totally mediocre, hypocritical and not intelligent enough to be [part of] the society they are interfering [in].\u201d<\/div>\n
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Make of it what you will, but it wasn\u2019t a boring hour\u2019s discussion. And if nothing else, Oliviero Toscani upheld his reputation for being \u2018provocative\u2019.<\/div>\n
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fonte: lbbonline.com<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
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29\/09\/2018 Benetton\u2019s long-time collaborator was provocative as ever speaking at Serviceplan\u2019s Innovation Day this week This week, Oliviero Toscani sounded eerily like Bill Hicks as he addressed a room in Munich full of marketers. \u201cWho is in marketing here?\u201d HisLeggi →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,811],"tags":[805,1074,1073,44,20,163],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5587"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5589,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587\/revisions\/5589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olivierotoscanistudio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}