Benetton Group

Benetton is a global fashion brand, which was founded in Italy in 1965.  Benetton consists of clothing brands United Colors of Benetton and Sisley. The Group has a network of about 5,000 stores around the world.  Benetton became widely famous due to its advertisement campaigns designed by Oliviero Toscani .  Throughout each campaign they wanted to shock the public and they do so by using photography.  Their main idea is to use shock-advertising.  In their controversial advertisements they deal with issues that people don’t really want to talk about or deal with like HIV, wars and even hunger.

Benetton’s remarkable success story starts in 1965 at Castrette in the Province of Treviso, Italy. The firm was founded by 4 brothers (Luciano, Carlo, Gilberto and Giuliana) all born in the town of Treviso in Veneto. Their father owned a bicycle shop.
The brothers were very creative and thanks to their original ideas and strategies, the firm gradually began gaining larger and larger shares of the market in the knitwear sector. Instead of using coloured yarn, for instance, plain wool was employed and the finished knit-wear items were then dyed according to fashion trends, thus permitting to quickly replenish retail outlet assortments.

Brothers Benetton

The first trade-mark was designed by Franco Giacometti in 1971. It was a clever rendition of the texture of a special fabric called “folpetto” or “polipetto” (“octopussy”) for the local dialect, with original lettering.
One year after, the trade-mark for the children’s apparel line, “012”, came out. In the initial publicity campaigns the product was still the image front-liner.  The photographer Oliviero Toscani, was then about to make history in terms of advertisement and also bring Benetton to the public hotspots due to his audacious campaigns.
Racial integration was the first theme focused on. Toscani began consistently employing models of different nationality in motley colour combinations to advertise brand items. 1989 saw the birth of the famous slogan “tutti i colori del mondo” (“all the colours of the world”) that was to become the campaign headline of the nineties.

Tutti Colori del mondo

The slogan then changed into the “United Colours of Benettton” brand.

• Luciano Benetton (Executive Chairman)
• Tommaso Brusò (Chief Operating Officer)