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Unhate' Campaign By Benetton
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In the fall of 2011 Benetton started the advertisement campaign featuring pictures of the world leaders kissing each other which they called "'Unhate' campaign".
On November 17, 2011 Vatican has announced that it would take legal action against Benetton after the company used a photo purportedly showing Pope Benedict XVI kissing Ahmed Mohamed el Tayeb, the imam of the Al Azhar mosque in Egypt. The image offended "not only the dignity of the Pope and the Catholic Church, but also the sensibilities of believers." In response, Benetton pulled the photograph and said "sorry that the use of the image had so hurt the sensibilities of the faithful ... The point of this campaign was solely to battle the culture of hate in all its forms."
Benetton also stated that the advertisement using kissing world leaders was inspired by the historic photo of leaders of Soviet Union and German Democratic Republic Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing. However this picture was taken during the cold war era and was meant to instill fear, not 'unhate', in the minds of people of the Eastern Germany suffering under the communist rule.
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