White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 10Chapter 10Communications, Advertising and Branding10.1 The background toItalian communications andadvertisingWhen considering Italian creativity inthe field of communications andadvertising, those who remembersharing a long season in Italy’s postwarRepublican history will smilefondly on hearing a phrase once usedin the upbringing of millions of Italiankids: “after Carosello, bedtime!” Thisphrase flags up the greatest factorbinding television, consumption andnew audiences in contemporary Italianhistory: a ten-minute televisionprogramme called Carosello.Carosello was broadcast every day on thefirst channel of the Rai from 8.50 pmto 9 am from 3 February 1957 to 31December 1976 – almost 20 years. Theprogramme had a great emotive holdon audiences and was only eversuspended twice: the day JohnKennedy was assassinated and theevening of the bomb attack in PiazzaFontana, Milan.Carosello was a show combining Italianstylefilm comedy, cartoons, aforerunner of what was to becometelevision fiction, together withnonsense, kids’ games, and a newlanguage (Matusa & Capelloni). Theadvertising message only came at theend of the sketch in the so-called codino(short coda). Carosello thus sent out twopowerful contradictory messages: onone hand, it captured large audiences;and on the other, it set limits to thepure use of television as a factor indriving consumption.This was in fact also the anomalousnature of the phenomenon. Italianpolitical culture was wary about thecentral role of enterprise in public life(indeed the word “enterprise” is noteven mentioned in the ItalianConstitution) and, most importantly,very wary about transforming a vehicleof education (or rather “pedagogy”),like monopoly television (with its fastgrowing power, it was already as robustas the school) into a machine with toomuch emphasis on the function ofexpanding markets. But as regards the“communication process”, Carosellobecame the workshop of a culturalindustry (advertising) providing theopportunity to experiment withlanguage, techniques and an “identitaryculture”, thanks to the extraordinaryprocessor of the concise, almost flashlikeformat of a short show. Theprogramme was supported byresources from outside television andtherefore the large investments for thetime were paid for by manufacturersWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 230