White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 10Of course advertising did not comeinto being in Italy in the period afterthe Second World War. It took off(after origins limited by the modestmedia spaces in the 19th century) in thefirst post-war war period withoutstanding illustrators and creatives(including Leonetto Cappiello,Leopoldo Metlicovitz and MarcelloDudovich, who turned it into a genuineart form) and then grew quickly underthe Fascist management of the mediaand propaganda (a subject requiringfurther study). Forms of advertising canbe found, however, throughout Italianhistory and we can even reconstructalmost modern uses in the life of theancient Romans with the help of somearchaeological evidence from Pompeii.Parallel to the history of advertising,communicational cultures grew in therelations between entrepreneurialsystems and society. They includedvarious other means for promotingcorporate identity and especially thecompany’s role in the relationshipbetween local areas and their traditionalindustries, and later between the cultureof innovation and professionalprospects for skilled workers and theruling classes. In the period from the1950s to the 1970s, Olivetti (based inIvrea but with marketing andadvertising offices in Milan)constructed communication modelsinformed by a mix of art, culture,publishing and design. For thenationalised industries, Rome was thecentre for the experience of state-rungroups: in the field of communications,IRI stood out thanks to its magazineCiviltà delle macchine, edited by LeonardoSinisgalli, while ENI devised a verypowerful original logo of pictorialorigin and constructed a long-lastingvisual identity which whenimplemented internationally coincidedwith the national identity.Alitalia, part of the IRI group, createdone of the first and most significantexamples of co-ordinatedcommunications, a field in which theleading Italian companies used thecreative potential consolidated around aspecific experience in the advertisingworld. But graphics applied tocorporate processes, the media andpublishing – with schools and expertiseconcentrated in Milan – alsocharacterised ventures which are nowexhibits in museums of design. Thiswas a time of great masters unrivalledfor their intellectual filigree even inmore industrial contexts. Turin, theunchallenged capital of car designthanks to Fiat, was a powerful centre ofcommunications spurring on anessential product on the domesticmarket. The forms and mostimportantly the images and controlexercised by Cinefiat (Fiat’s own filmproduction company) was anunmatched advertising phenomenon.In the mid-1970s, state-run and leadingprivate companies took part in anexperiment called Firma Italia(“Signature Italy”). This was a touringexhibition of original creative work bygreat painters, sculptors, graphic artists,film directors and artists in general,totally focused on corporatecommunication. The exhibition visitedmuseums in countries interested inindustrial co-operation with Italy (fromIran to Brazil). This hands-on practicalcreative approach highlights an aspectof advertising processes which hadWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 232