Will a picture of the Pope kissing Ahmed el-Tayeb, Sheikh of the al-Azhar mosque, encourage fashion savvy shoppers to ditch Uniqlo and buy their brightly coloured jumpers from Benetton instead? Probably not. But it does remind the public that the Italian brand has quite a history of provocative campaigns.
A Benetton clothing store window covered by posters as part of the launch of a publicity campaign with photo montages showing Pope Benedict XVI kissing Egypt's Ahmed el-Tayeb, imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, and Barack Obama with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, 2011
An HIV Positive advertising campaign in Paris, 1993: Benetton's Aids campaign also included a picture of David Kirby, an HIV Positive patient, as he lay dying in hospital. Kirby's parents said: 'We don’t feel we’ve been used by Benetton, but rather the reverse: David is speaking much louder now that he’s dead, than he did when he was alive''
A Food for Work advert, 2003: Benetton says of the campaign: 'It highlighted the problem of hunger, which is still the greatest humanitarian emergency around the world even though it has, to all intents and purposes, been forgotten by the media and the general public