The AIDS
campaigns

A collage made of many small passport photos, which together form the word AIDS. It’s just one of the communication initiatives that United Colors of Benetton dedicated to the theme of AIDS in the early nineties. Others were the photograph a terminally ill patient on his deathbed, some pictures of body parts marked by an “HIV Positive” tattoo, a special issue of the COLORS magazine dedicated to the pandemic, as well as a giant condom that was unrolled at night on the obelisk at Place de la Concorde in Paris. In all cases, a part of the public criticized Benetton, say that a knitting company had no right to exploit people’s pain for commercial purposes. Others saw the campaigns as powerful means to get people and the media to talk about a taboo disease and to force politicians and decision-makers to work to defeat it.