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The year I (and the rest of the world) became acquainted with the work of Oliviero Toscani, the in-house photographer for the Italian fashion brand Benetton. Toscani was not only a brilliant and visionary photographer, but he was also a master of shock value avant la lettre.
A kissing priest, a dying AIDS patient, a white baby on a black breast... Advertising became art, it became a clever expression of the United Colors of Benetton. Benetton became world famous with it, which boosted their business numbers. That did not interest me in the least at the time, but it did interest me how Toscani worked, how he advertised atypically with a single image. An image without a product, but with content. This man made sure that I eventually ended up in advertising.
A story I shared with 500 potential creatives during the second edition of the Creatures Festival, early November in Brussels. A one-day festival curated by Creative Belgium and the ACC, designed to inspire the new generation for the profession, featuring the crème de la crème of the industry, all in one room. And of course, me.
I introduced unvertising to those fresh-faced advertising students. The core of it is a brutal truth: no one actually wants to hear advertising messages. Really, no one. Not on TV, not on your radio, and certainly not online.
Babies can already recognize the 'skip ad' button before they can even stand. Young people are only engaged with content for a few seconds before swiping to the next thing, and when even Meta launches ad-free subscriptions, it seems that we, marketers and advertisers, are spreading both the plague and cholera at the same time.
Yes, people do everything they can to skip, block, or ignore bad ads. The creativity (our creativity) lies in reaching them with our message without them realizing it's (paid) advertising. That’s unvertising. What entertains you, you don’t skip. You don’t ignore a good story. That’s the difference between buying attention and earning attention. Advertising should make people happy, and I mean that. Once there’s a connection or dialogue between a brand and its fan: beautiful. The better you understand and know your target audience, the better.
Examples are numerous: from the pearls for Centraal Beheer (just call Apeldoorn), over all the Nike commercials to JCVD's Epic Split for Volvo Trucks.
A recent example (fortunately, there are many)? John Lewis' Christmas commercial. An annual tradition, a worldwide phenomenon. It is a commercial you consciously want to see, not one you have to.
A world of difference. And we make that difference, and hopefully also the new batch of creative people who paid attention during the Creatures Festival. Standing out with your brand in a relevant, smart, original and catchy way: that's exactly what Oliviero Toscani was doing 30 years ago.
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