The advertising maxim “it doesn’t matter if they say good or bad about me, the important thing is that they do” gained notoriety with Oliviero Toscani, the creative who revolutionized Benetton’s campaigns in the 80s and 90s. His approach deliberately broke with the standards in force at the time, replacing well-known personalities or flashy models with raw but impactful images: AIDS patients, convicts on death row, newborns still attached to the umbilical cord.
Toscani argued that causing discomfort was a more effective way to attract attention. For him, this advertising was not limited to promoting clothing, but making society look at what many preferred to comfortably ignore. In this way, Benetton became what is today called a “brand with purpose”, a concept that was unknown at the time.
The advantages of this strategy are evident. In a world saturated with messages, capturing attention is an art. By challenging taboos, Toscani has achieved global recognition for Benetton without relying on traditional advertising approaches. In this way, the brand gained free media space, gaining a bold but strong identity – that is, a level of notoriety only normally achievable with large budgets.
Of course, such a strategy is not without drawbacks. Shock as a communicational instrument tends to wear out and, over time, generates saturation. The line between provoking reflection and exploiting suffering is fine and Toscani was often accused of instrumentalizing tragedies to obtain commercial dividends. For many audiences, the essence of the brand became secondary to the controversy; and for many others, it has become simply intolerable. Indeed, the risk of this approach is that the noise will overwhelm the content, transforming communication into a permanent spectacle – which will, without a doubt, drive away many customers.
Interestingly, the use of controversy as a driver of visibility is closely associated with contemporary dynamics of political communication. We could talk about the MAGA movement in the United States, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, the Northern League in Italy, but let’s focus on Portugal. It is known that Chega adopts a stance that favors a high impact on public opinion. Instead of avoiding confrontations, it seems to seek them as a way of reinforcing its presence on the media stage and mobilizing disillusioned voters who reject the wokismo and political correctness.
Take the recent campaign “This is not Bangladesh” and “Gypsies must obey the law”. Any sane and dispassionate spirit will say that phrases like these are complete nonsense. This is, in fact, what countless competent, serious and respected analysts did: explain rationally – that is, based on reason – the obvious, exposing the contradictions of the campaign.
But André Ventura’s objective is not to be right, but to create buzzeven if for this it is necessary to appeal to the nonsense that induces the most primary passions. And then the whole line wins: the more competent, serious and respected analysts criticize the campaign, the more Chega gains in media presence. I’ll open a parenthesis here and give my hand to the crowd because, with this article, I’m another one who “goes to the polls”.
From a communicational point of view, all that remains is for some court to order – possibly based on the most solid legal arguments – to remove the posters. In this case, Ventura, revealing the false indignation that he is a master of, will rejoice in another two or three weeks of controversy with Chega at the top of the media space.
Now come the presidential and the show must go on. The far-right candidate, despite not wanting to be President of the Republic, will remain the same as himself: aggressive, controversial, theatrical; the other candidates and most analysts will spend time, words and brain cells refuting their untruths and nonsense; and at the end Ventura will boast that he was the candidate who attracted the most audiences in the debates and the most attention from commentators.
What Toscani and Chega’s campaigns show is that shock generates attention, builds public loyalty and forces society to discuss topics that would otherwise remain marginal. Of course, risks arise here too: communication can turn into a cycle of continuous outrage, where visibility becomes more important than substance.
The boundary between democratic debate and calculated noise becomes dangerously blurred, meaning that politics runs the risk of being reduced to a simple media spectacle. Something that, like Toscani’s advertising, fascinates, but ends up tiring. The question is: until when?
President of the Order of Economists – North