Historical and cultural evolution of marketing and advertising, with a look to Italian society and its modernization through controversial campaigns

Abstract

The following thesis has the purpose to expose the historical and cultural evolution that interested marketing and advertising disciplines in the post-modern society. The thesis opens with a brief introduction, over the evolution of the global perception of marketing during the last century. In particular, the essay outlines how the introduction of advertising has firstly made its appearance and then, has evolved in the Italian context. Through the analysis and the comparison of various ads on means of communication like television, radio, billboards, posters on the streets and internet issued on different epochs, the essay assumes to investigate how the Italian society and its perception towards advertising has changed through the decades. An important attention has been given to the post-World-War II period and to the following process of Americanization experienced in Italy. The Americanization process meant for the Italian society a real change, or an evolution, from a peasant to a welfare society. Subsequently, the final part of the thesis is focused on giving a wider attention to controversial advertising, which is a communication method adopted by several business companies, nowadays in Italy and all over the world, in order to boost the impact generated by the ads over the users. Indeed, companies foster customers' attention to the brand or products generally violating moral, social or religious norms socially shared. In the last century, this tendency to excess in publicity contributed to give a jolt to the Italian culture which had always been controlled and influenced by moral stereotypes, taboos and values mostly set by the Catholic Church and the Italian public authorities. Eventually, the last part of the thesis is dedicated to give some useful examples of controversial marketing through the analysis of the most iconic campaigns. These campaigns helps the thesis project and researches made in the previous chapters to better understand the impact got over the Italian population during the long process of modernisation, and above all, how the controversial marketing campaigns helped to change the Italians’ mind-set anchored to the traditional patterns for too long.