deal with the fact that United Colors of Benetton is exploiting a serious issue to sell sweaters" (Barnum, 2000).
The pattern of Toscani's work suggests that he and Benetton's assume there is no inherent moral contradiction in mixing sales promotion and social activism. The death-row campaign challenged "the right of the state to execute its citizens" (Clark, 2000, p. 43). Sympathetic to the campaign's social message, Clark implies a more general critique of the US penal system, citing the essay text's "credits" section, which gave "ambiguous thanks" to "'prison guards who searched us, frisked us, stored our belongings, stamped our hands, opened and closed gates for us and made our visit secure'" (Clark, 2000, p. 43). Since presidential candidates have ignored the issue of capital punishment, Clark adds, "it would be churlish not to welcome Benetton's intervention."
The campaign's creators and advocates assumed that capital punishment should be interrogated as public policy and that Benetton's and Toscani were well positioned to structure such interrogation. Negative public response to the campaign suggests that others did not share that assumption. An ad agency owner criticized the mixture of "heavy politics and light fashion" (Benetton, 2000, p. 10). Victims' rights organizations, among others, complained that the text portrayed the inmates as lonely and deprived without "reveal[ing] the nature of the inmates' crimes or anything about their victims" (Offman, 2000). For example, Barnum criticized the ads' laconic description of inmate crimes such as "aggravated murder," and provided case details, e.g., of an inmate's rape-murder of a three-year-old.
Complicating the pro and con attitudes toward capital punishment and the campaign were irreconcilable reports of how access to inmates was obtained. Gonzaga University law professor Speedy Rice contacted death-row prison officials around the country, requesting access to inmates fo...