Benetton AIDS Campaign: IMC Strategy for David Kirby Photo

Introduction: David Kirby and the Benetton Campaign

The photograph of David Kirby dying of AIDS in 1992 is one of the most powerful images in the history of social advertising. The United Colors of Benetton used the photograph to raise awareness about the disease and educate the public. This paper aims to develop a message for this image, analyze the targeted audience, and outline the advertising strategy that would be used to promote that message. The final goal is to elaborate an integrated marketing communications plan designed to promote the ideas of the photograph to the targeted audiences.

David Kirby was an AIDS activist who contracted AIDS while living in California. He returned to Ohio to spend the last weeks of his life with his family. He became increasingly active as an advocate while in Ohio, particularly as his family — and he himself — grew appalled by the way AIDS patients were being treated in hospitals and medical facilities across the state, largely due to a lack of public education about the disease.

Campaign Objectives and Core Message

In order to define the campaign objectives, it is important to consider the historical moment in which this campaign occurs. In the early 1990s, AIDS had been active in the United States for at least a decade, but it was widely perceived as a targeted, marginal disease — one that would not affect the broader population, but primarily the gay community. For much of the mainstream, religiously conservative population, the gay community was still seen as a group being punished for its sexual orientation.

Interest in the disease and in addressing it properly — including from a social standpoint — was very limited. The fact that the disease was also transmissible through other means, such as blood transfusions, was still largely unknown. It was simply regarded as a "gay disease" and, as a consequence, something that the general public felt no need to learn about.

With this context in mind, the campaign objectives are clear: to raise awareness and to educate the population about the disease. The core message for the campaign is "AIDS Kills!" There are several components to this message, aligned with the proposed objectives. First, it needs to convey the devastating effects of the disease. The photograph of David Kirby is striking, in part, because of his visibly emaciated state. It is likely to resonate deeply with viewers, making them acutely aware of the terrible toll the disease takes.

The underlying message — also consistent with the objectives — is that death from AIDS can affect anyone. There are several ways in which this message is supported. One is that viewers of the campaign might ask themselves, "What if this happened to me?" Psychologically, a powerful image can trigger exactly this kind of self-reflection. The second reinforcement comes from the presence of the family in the photograph. It demonstrates that AIDS affects not only the person who is dying, but also those who love and surround him.

Building on this, a further objective is to bring AIDS sufferers out of the isolation into which communities had pushed them (Kubacka, 2012). Kirby and his family had been appalled by the way medical staff treated individuals sick with AIDS — including wearing special anti-infectious suits when interacting with patients. The campaign therefore also aims to bring people living with AIDS back into public view, and the most powerful way to do that is to show the love with which a family surrounds a dying member.

As Macleod (2007) pointed out, this is a campaign that aims at "consciousness-raising." All of its underlying features need to point in that direction and appeal to something deeper than rational thought — which, in this case, was distorted by the prejudice of seeing AIDS exclusively as a disease of the gay community. The image of the father is particularly resonant in supporting this. Several articles and analyses have noted a "Pieta moment" in the photograph.

There are two distinct components of the "Pieta moment." First, the dying man resembles Christ: he is emaciated, visibly tormented by his suffering, and his face carries a resemblance to traditional depictions of Christ. Second, the father — taking on the role that the Virgin Mary plays in Michelangelo's Pietà — grieves over his dying son.

This moment is deeply powerful and closely tied to the consciousness-raising objective mentioned above. Moving the subject beyond disease and prejudice, the image connects with viewers on a profoundly personal level: filial love, and the particular anguish of a parent losing a child. The theme is also religious, and the underlying assumption is that this religious resonance could help communicate the message more effectively to strongly Catholic communities.

For many countries — such as Paraguay — this photograph represented their first real encounter with the reality of AIDS. The campaign's underlying Catholic reference (the Pietà as a symbol of salvation and eternal love) could make the message more accessible. Reactions were divided, however, and many Catholic communities were in fact horrified by the implications of the image.

Advertising Strategy: The Funnel Model

Umeno (2010) proposes a funnel-like approach to advertising strategy that includes the following stages: awareness, interest, desire, and action. This model is typically applied to products or services, but it can be adapted to a social awareness campaign such as this one.

In the awareness stage, the recipient notices and becomes acquainted with a reality they have not previously encountered, or about which they had only limited knowledge. In this case, that reality is the fact that AIDS exists differently from what most people believe — it is a disease that hurts families and communities, not just marginalized groups. It causes isolation and harm far beyond the individual sufferer.

Beyond awareness, the second phase is interest. The photograph alone operates at the awareness stage; the campaign must go further to generate interest. This means providing more detailed information about the disease. As noted earlier, a critical problem is not only that people do not care about AIDS because they believe it does not affect them, but also that they know almost nothing about it. Information about how the disease is transmitted, how to recognize its symptoms, and what its implications are needs to be communicated clearly. One practical approach is to include a short bulleted list alongside the photograph — in brochures, posters, and other formats — with short, accessible sentences such as: "AIDS is transmissible through unprotected sex, blood transfusions, and the use of hypodermic needles." Viewers already engaged by the image are likely to read accompanying text, making these bullet points well-timed and effective.

The third level is desire. This phase is crucial because it marks the shift from passively receiving information to actively considering personal involvement. Just as desire in a product campaign signals intent to purchase, in this campaign it signals that the individual is beginning to think about what they can do about the AIDS crisis. This naturally paves the way for the fourth and final level: action.

In a product campaign, the action phase corresponds to a purchase. Here, it means mobilizing individuals to take concrete steps — whether in support of those living with AIDS or against the social stigma surrounding the disease. This phase would require the involvement of NGOs and other organizations that can direct private individuals toward meaningful contributions. These aspects are developed further in the integrated marketing communications plan below.

Bibliography

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Kubacka, Natalia (2012). Thesis — Degree Program in Industrial Management.

Macleod, Duncan (2007). Benetton Pieta in AIDS campaign. The Inspiration Room.

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