Date:         Tue, 29 Mar 1994 16:24:51 EST
Reply-To: dionisio@INFINET.COM
Subject:      Benetton banned, again...

GERMAN COURT BANS BENETTON HIV POSITIVE AD

    FRANKFURT (Reuter) (3-23-94) - A German court Wednesday banned an
advertisement by Italian fashion group Benetton that showed naked
human buttocks and limbs tattoed with the words ``HIV Positive,"
saying the ad was obscure and tasteless.

    The Frankfurt court said the campaign, which focused on the plight
of AIDS patients, breached German advertising laws and was in bad
taste because it evoked memories of World War Two concentration camp
victims.

    Jews and others imprisoned in the Nazis' death camps were stamped
with serial numbers for identification.

    The court said the connection between the advertisement and
products sold by Benetton was ``not obvious" and said the firm was
putting the problems of AIDS victims in a ``distorted light that did
not correspond to reality."

    France's anti-AIDS AFLS agency failed last November in an attempt
to sue Benetton for $180,000 over the advertisement.

    The campaign was banned in Italy last year by the country's
professional organization of national advertisers, which draws up
ethics codes for its members and the media.

    The Swiss cities of Zurich and Lausanne also succeeded in having
posters of the campaign barred from public property.

    After a complaint from a human rights group, German courts are now
considering whether to ban Benetton's latest advertisement showing the
blood-stained clothes of a soldier killed in Bosnia.

    Like many of the Italian firm's advertising campaigns which use
controversial tactics to sell the company's brightly-colored clothes,
the Bosnian advertisement has aroused considerable outrage and has
been banned in Italy and Croatia.