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Clothing ad campaign shows world leaders kissing
China National News
Thursday 17th November, 2011
• German and French leaders kiss, Obama kisses Chavez and Chinese president
• Palestinian and Israeli leaders kiss, pope kisses muslim leader
• Campaign is aimed at encouraging people to 'unhate'
The global Italy-based clothing brand, United Colours of Benetton, is courting controversy once more with a new 'Unhate' ad campaign that shows world leaders kissing one another.
In a series of posters, the US President Barack Obama is shown kissing Chinese President Hu Jintao, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is shown French kissing Nicolas Sarkozy of France and the North Korean and South Korean leaders are presented in a similar exchange.
As though these images alone were not contentious enough, United Colours of Benneton also released posters showing Pope Benedict XVI and Doctor Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the grand sheikh of Cairo's Al Azhar Mosque in a kissing embrace.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are also caught in a rather awkward looking kiss, while Obama is shown twice, in the second poster kissing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The images are, of course, digitally manipulated and have been credited for their quality in terms of realism, but have created uprorar on message boards across the world wide web. While some praise the ad campaign's message, others call it cheap, tacky and disrespectful to the world leaders depicted.
The Vatican called the pope's poster an "unacceptable" and offensive manipulation of the pope's likeness and it has subsequently been recalled by United Colours of Benetton.
The company is known for its striking and often sensationalist ads, and has in past shown a priest kissing a nun, a white baby breast-feeding from a black woman and three human hearts with the words "white," "black" and "yellow" printed over them.
"Unhate is a message that invites us to consider that hate and love are not as far away from each other as we think," the campaign's website said. "Actually, the two opposing sentiments are often in a delicate and unstable balance. Our campaign promotes a shift in the balance: don't hate, Unhate."
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