Simona De Iulio

The Americanization of Italian advertising during the 1950s and the 1960s: Mediations, conflicts, and appropriations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on the Americanization of European advertising in the post‐war years as a phenomenon of cultural transfer and it aims to explore the interaction between the USA and Italian advertising traditions during the 1950s and the 1960s.Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is in two parts. First, the role of those cross‐cultural mediators who contributed to changing marketing communication strategies of many Italian companies during the 1950s and the 1960s is studied. Second, the ways in which US advertising rules and patterns are combined with the local tradition in order to fit the Italian context of the post‐war years are looked at. The research is based on a study of the main USA and Italian marketing and advertising literature of the post‐war years, and on an analysis of press campaigns and TV commercials.Findings – This research shows that during the 1950s and the 1960s, the conflict between the American approach and the Italian approach to advertising did...

The construction of fun in food advertisements targeting children

Purpose – This paper aims to explore how the discursive strategies used in advertising contribute to bringing food products into the childrens world, to transforming them into childrens food – fun food in particular.Design/methodology/approach – The analysis focuses on a sample of advertisements on food products that appeared from 1950 to 2005 in Le Journal de Mickey (France), Micky Maus (Germany) and Topolino (Italy). The paper aims to study the social implications of food advertisement targeting children through the analysis of their graphic composition, verbal language, visual language, and narrative structure.Findings – This research shows that, since the 1950s in France, Germany and Italy, advertising discourse targeting children has tended to emphasize the pleasure dimension of consuming foods, linking the products with fun and play and making the break with the tastes, norms and expectations of adults.Originality/value – While extensive research has been conducted on television food commercials, ...

Toy commercials across Europe

Compares toy commercials in France, Germany and Italy in relation to globalisation, which is claimed to produce a uniform consumer culture. Investigates the roles performed by different territories (international, national, regional and local) in advertising directed at children of these different nationalities. Focuses on the apparent tendency towards universalism in the form and content of TV commercials aimed at children, based on a comparative analysis of 163 commercials for toys. Finds that the commercials in the three countries used the same types of persuasion, with toys linked to fantasy worlds, different depictions of boys and girls, and reference to a widely shared extra‐textual body of knowledge; international commercials were much more standardised than for other types of products, and images crossed national boundaries more easily than language, with various reinventions of voiceovers and other verbal messages. Concludes that transnational toy advertising cannot escape local obstacles linked to sociocultural variables.

The Representational Intertwinement of Gender, Age and Uses of Information and Communication Technology: A Comparison Between German and French Preteen Magazines

Gender, preadolescence and the use of information and communication technology are not stable and static entities in the field of media. Rather, they are constantly shaped by images and texts. This chapter aims to examine their representational intertwinement and to cross-analyse gender and age imaging with ICT use. The primary issue treated in this paper concerns the way preteen magazine imagery ‘marks’ ICT use according to gender and age (and vice versa). Are certain technologies and their usage patterns associated with a particular gender? How does media imagery participate in the mutual shaping of gender, technology and age group? In different national contexts, to what extent does imagery of computers and video game use contribute to modelling preadolescence, an age category that did not exist even a few decades ago? This text seeks to respond to these questions by drawing on the results of an exploratory research on ICT imagery found in German and French preteen magazines over the last 30 years.

La messa in scena della merce nello spazio metropolitano : manifesti, vetrine e insegne luminose tra Otto e Novecento

l’industrializzazione, diventa indispensabile per il fabbricante rendere visibile la propria merce. Mentre nella società pre-industriale esisteva un contatto diretto tra produzione e consumo, e le relazioni interpersonali giocavano un ruolo essenziale nella vendita, l’avvento del sistema industriale determina un processo di spersonalizzazione della relazione commerciale ed una ridefinizione del rapporto con la merce. In questo senso, la nascita della pubblicità e dei moderni dispositivi del merchandising è una risposta all’esigenza del produttore di disporre di nuovi strumenti di mediazione con il consumatore. Tra Otto e Novecento i moderni mezzi di comunicazione commerciale agiscono prevalentemente all’interno dello spazio della metropoli: essi si rivolgono «alla città tutta, al pubblico tutto, alla folla, all’immensa folla che vive, si muove, che si agita, che corre, che si moltiplica intorno». A cavallo tra i due secoli i manifesti, le vetrine dei negozi, le insegne luminose diventano il tratto dominante del paesaggio della città industriale. Secondo il pittore futurista Umberto Boccioni, è proprio la pubblicità – e non i materiali grezzi o le tinteggiature delle facciate degli edifici – a dare colore alla città moderna: i dispositivi pubblicitari si sovrappongono all’architettura e mostrano il volto nuovo della città. La metropoli otto-novecentesca è anzitutto una «metropoli pubblicitaria».