If pressed, most of us here at the eCool Compound will admit to having a fondness for food porn. We love a good food magazine — particularly one with a lot of big, beautiful photos — as much as anyone. Thus, we’re always happy to get our hands on a copy of La Cucina Italiana, whether the Italian edition, available on newsstands across Rome, or the American edition, recently revitalized when Michael Wilson ascended to the post of editor-in-chief.
Despite our admitted weakness for any publication that elevates Italian cuisine, we were surprised to discover recently that La Cucina Italiana is celebrating its 80th birthday. In honor of the big event, they’ve produced a series of witty ads with the tagline, “Our cuisine is our culture. For 80 years you’ve been savoring the changes with La Cucina Italiana.”
The campaign, which centers around major events in Italian social, political, and cultural history, is a brainy one that seems intended to remind readers that while the world shifts and changes, food remains a constant in Italian culture. The ad above, in which cookies spell out a message pertaining to an Italian grandfather, reassures us that food is the thread that binds generations together, while the ad below questions the significance of the fact that the refrigerator became a common appliance in homes at the moment that the Cold War began.
Another ad, below, takes us to the 1980s, asking (in pie crust) why that decade did away with ideological content without giving us an alternative filling.
Our favorite of them all, however, is seen below. Words smeared in a splash of tomato sauce cleverly ask, “What would have happened to finger food without mani puliti or clean hands?,” making reference to the 1990s investigations that revealed to the public shocking levels of corruption in Italian politics and finance.
Advertising Agency: D’Adda, Lorenzini, Vigorelli, BBDO, Milan, Italy
Creative Directors: Federico Pepe, Stefania Siani
Art Director: Pier Giuseppe Gonni
Copywriter: Lorenzo Crespi
Photographer: Andrea Melcangi
Ad published on I Believe in Advertising.
