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World Leaders Make Out In Controversial Benetton Campaign

by Julia Rubin | 3:14 pm, November 16th, 2011

Benetton is no stranger to controversial advertising, and its latest campaign is sure to get lips flapping.

In promotion of the company’s UNHATE Foundation, they’ve just released a striking set of photos featuring world leaders kissing each other. The Photoshopped images are pretty awkward — these are not sexy kisses — but they’re fairly compelling (and certainly provocative) nonetheless. Who made the cut? For starters, Barack Obama locks lips with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and China’s Hu Jintao. Also featured are Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestine’s Mahmoud Abbas, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel, and South Korea’s Lee Myung-bak and North Korea’s Kim Jong-il. Interestingly, the Huffington Post also has an image of Pope Benedict kissing Imam Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb, though it does not appear on the UNHATE website.

Explains Benetton:

The UNHATE Foundation, desired and founded by the Benetton Group, seeks to contribute to the creation of a new culture of tolerance, to combat hatred, building on Benetton’s underpinning values. It is another important step in the group’s social responsibility strategy: not a cosmetic exercise, but a contribution that will have a real impact on the international community, especially through the vehicle of communication, which can reach social players in different areas. The Foundation will organise initiatives involving different stakeholders, from the new generations to the institutions, international organisations and NGOs, right through to civil society.The Foundation also aims to be a think tank, attracting personalities and talents from the fields of culture, economy, law and politics, and people who have gone from simple citizens to leaders of movements, distinguishing themselves through their ideas and actions against the causes and effects of hatred.

Benetton is having “groups of young people” post these images “on the walls of locations symbolic of the desperately-needed peace process: Tel Aviv, New York, Rome, Milan, Paris”. Hmmm. We’re not sure how symbolic all of those locations are, though they are certainly commercial cities.

Check out the photos below. Do you find them effective?



 



  • Anonymous

    I am waiting for the photo of Larry Sinclair and Barack to show up one of these days.

  • TruDat

    More truth than poetry with those Obama pictures.  He loves him some commies, that’s for sure.

  • Kid Dynamite

    Waiting with your pants around your ankles and three fingers stuck up your ass.

  • Anonymous

    This is the first time I have seen these pics. Seriously…. wtf. Bush holding hands with the Saudi King( I know it’s a cultural thing) was bad enough but these are worse than Obizzles’ multiple bows to foreign leaders captured for the world . These pics will never go away. (until skynet takes control of the grid :)

  • Anonymous

    Someone better call Obama’s “ATTACK WATCH” and report this!!

    Actually, I think the one of Obama makiing out with Chavez is an actual photo…..

  • david r

    FNC has adopted this as the official file photo of President Obama.

  • Nate

    I’m not touching any of this.

  • Tx4Obama

    The folks that PHOTOSHOPPED those photos are disgusting.

  • Anonymous

    My God, is nothing sacred?  I didn’t vote for Obama but he’s still my President and this is beyond disrespectful.  Imagine how Obama’s two young daughters are going to feel when they see this.  Are we not a better country than this?  These ads should be pulled immediately!

  • Jason_in_Vegas

    Are you ready to come out of the closet yet?

  • Jason_in_Vegas

    Bigot.

  • Jason_in_Vegas

    I didn’t vote for Obama, and he’s NOT my president. I find this hilarious. Who cares what his two daughters feel when they see this? They should be ashamed that their pathetic father is destroying the country they live in.

  • Anonymous

    You should move to another country.

  • Anonymous

    Obama and Palin would have got more reaction.

  • http://twitter.com/wavyJACKS Jαcqu℮ℓiη℮

    Obviously, Jason_in_Vegas, you are placing the blame on Obama when he has done nothing but try to clean the HORROR that Bush made in OUR country. I agree with centrist79… you should move to another country, ha.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_T5MYYTNKJCPTXRAK4H5BY5D5B4 the truth

    That is how republi-cons roll. Forget the facts, it’s a bash and blame mental midget agenda. 
    Let’s talk about the 9% approval rating of the republi-con led congress. Stick that in your BEATCHES come next Nov your DONE. ASK Kasich in OHIO how it’s working out for him because his A$$ is gone too.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks for the laugh Jacqueline… :)

  • Kahlid Shiek Yerbouti

    Is Vegas anywhere near Uranus because that’s where it appears your head is.

  • Kahlid Shiek Yerbouti

    Yea, like that foreign leader of the city of Tampa, Florida, Pam Iorio, who he leaned forward to hear because it’s so loud on a tarmac.  Seriously, you folks are deranged. 

  • Anonymous

    Somebody doesn’t like it when the sheet is pulled back from their Messiah’s ineptness.

  • Anonymous

    To be honest, Obama’s lips are on the wrong body part, isn’t realistic.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Randi-Sanderson/509881965 Randi Sanderson

    I see the don’t ask, don’t tell being practiced here???? hmmm.

  • Anonymous

    Jason must’ve been asleep during the Bush Administration because this is when the collapse took place. Righties tend have problems with dates and times. That’s why they like to rewrite the history books.   

  • Anonymous

    Somebody likes to stick up for their buddy “W”. 

  • Anonymous

    I think you forgot the loving embrace between Bush and his Prince.  

  • Anonymous

    Priceless AND hillarious both at the same time…LOL…LOL…LOL

  • Nomobeeho

    What, no tongue?

    Spose BeeHO saves that for the ATM.

  • bozekmm

    I think people are taking this the wrong way. They’re seeing it as a romantic gesture, rather than as an act of respect and friendship. Is it provocative? Sure. But provocation gets people talking and thinking. I like it.

  • Marie

    President Bush was holding his hand because he was having a hard time walking and he was just assisting him.   But the slime is actually showing his true identity and with his eyes closed yet.  We knew he was GAY, because of his classmate in college that had an affair with him along with others.   Just look at the way he walks with that “feminine swagger” and sticking his a$$ out.  He is the Fag in President.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=511026504 Anonymous

    I find it hilliarious people in this “World” the usa are so fkn serious what’s up no one has a sense of humor.  Is the government gonna start to tell us what is funny now? The internet is already going to get censored. We as a nation are going to have nothing left

  • http://twitter.com/cairokid cairokid

    blah blah blah blah It’s FUNNY NOT serious!

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