'UNHATE' and Social Media

United Colours Of Benetton has proved themselves to be really bold by making the world leaders smooch in their 'Unhate Campaign.' Yes! Barack Obama giving a lip locking kiss to Venezuela's leader Hugo Chávez in one ad and paramount leader of China in another, chancellor of Germany kissing the president of France, supreme leader of North Korea kissing the president of South Korea and president of Palestinian National Authority kissing the prime minister of Israel.

Benetton's 'Unhate Campaign' is the beginning of series of communication tools set to role out for the entire world to communicate its message of creating a new culture of tolerance. Benetton speaks for its value of combating hatred through this campaign. Benetton has founded 'The UNHATE Foundation' as a part of its social responsibility strategy and is basing all its new communication on this. It has further plans of creating a global 'UNHATE' day with a communication mascot of UNHATE DOVE. Its also creating a 'Global Tolerance Index' which will analyze the global extent of accepting diversity and various groups by countries, communities and groups.

Watch the 'UNHATE' ad film - Click Here

UNHATE is using social media tools to create its reach. It has developed a 'Kiss Wall', 'Unhate List' and 'Unhate Gadgets.'

The 'Kiss Wall' lets you update your picture in a kissing pose and share your unhate feelings with the world. The wall randomly attachs two people in a pic and creates a similar 'ad' like picture with the caption 'UNHATE'. In the 'UNHATE LIST' you can share your thoughts about global hatred by logging onto it through Twitter. For all the gadgets freaks there is the 'UNHATE Gadget' section where you can download desktop wallpapers, unhate soundtrack and video.

UNHATE has truly had good results with social media. It has been on the top of the list of trending topics on Twitter. Their interactive social media tools will help them know their online quantitative reach by the number of kissing pictures uploaded, the number of people who share their unhate feelings and the number of downloads of their gadgets.

Benetton has created a very strong campaign for its brand revival. The shock value that they intended to create has been created. 

Read about the Benetton controversy with the Pope on TheNewMedia Byte - 11/18/11.