The Netherlands-based Clean Clothes Campaign, the garment industry's largest alliance of labor unions and non-governmental organizations, has already convinced apparel retailers and designers including Armani, Versace, Gucci, H&M and Levi Strauss & Co to ban sandblasted jeans for endangering workers' lives.

As the CCC's website details, giving denim that "lived in" look by high-pressured sandblasting contaminates the air and can contribute to silicosis, a fatal lung disease. Now Target has announced it is joining the global ban on the technique; find out more in the budget retailer's blog post. Still under pressure by labor activists to join the ban: Dolce & Gabbana.

Below, watch a Levi Strauss video featuring chief supply chain officer David Love marking the company's first anniversary of no-sandblasting last September.Continue reading...

Unilever has posted a video of model Lucy Pinder apologising for the Lynx internet campaign in the UK that was banned by Britain's Advertising Standards Authority as "degrading to women."

Lynx, known as Axe in other markets, apologized in this video posted Friday on its YouTube channel. The description: "This week we got a fair few complaints about our online Lucy Pinder stuff, and had to pull the lot down. We wanted to apologise and show that we wouldn't make the same mistake again. So we gave Lucy a call, and asked for our stuff back..."

In fact, last week the brand was hit with a double ban "for separate outdoor and internet campaigns after the advertising watchdog upheld complaints that they objectified women and were inappropriately located where they could be seen by children."

In the era of the Internet, turns out banning billboard ads for alcohol, cigarettes or drugs is ineffective.

Strictures on such traditional advertising are superseded by the ubiquity of online ads, which actually make the latter more effective according to a recent study entitled Advertising Bans and the Substitutability of Online and Offline Advertising, published in the April issue of the Journal of Marketing Research.Continue reading...