Italy’s dubbing industry is one of the largest in the world, meaning that it’s often quite difficult to find movies being screened in their original language. Or, at least that’s the case here in the Eternal City.
The practice goes back to the nationalistic biases of Mussolini and continues today, though, slowly, things are changing. It’s that change that’s attested in the advertisement above for Warner Village Cinema.
We see a giant Fay Wray holding a very small King Kong, while the tagline reads “A Translated Movie is Not the Same.” In this very clever way, the multi-screen mega-theater Warner Village announces that it will be screening original language films.
(By the way, we’ve just checked the newspaper and discovered that no original language movies are showing at the Warner Village. Ahhhhh….Rome)
Advertising Agency: D’Adda, Lorenzini, Vigorelli, BBDO Rome
Creative Director: Luca Scotto Di Carlo
Art Directors / Copywriters: Alessandro Fruscella, Letizia Ziaco
Photographer: Alessandro Bavari
Account: Andrea Brustia
Published: May 2008
Copy: “See your world in a new light.”
To promote Earth Hour and remind people that it is a global, worldwide event, Leo Burnett Sydney created an ad campaign that featured worldwide iconic buildings lit by the Moon. (For other monuments seen by moonlight, click here.)
Of course, Leo Burnett and the innovators of Earth Hour aren’t the first to recommend gazing upon the Colosseum by the light of the moon. Praise for that idea goes to Lord Byron, who started a fad in the early nineteenth century when he described a nocturnal foray into the Colosseum. In his poem, Manfred, Byron described the Roman arena as seen under a brightly-lit moon. From this point on, nighttime visits to the Colosseum became de rigeur for nineteenth-century travelers, many of whom had committed Byron’s lines to memory:
When I was wandering, - upon such a night
I stood within the Coliseum’s wall,
Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome!
The trees which grew along the broken arches
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars
Shone through the rents of ruin; from afar
The watchdog bay’d beyond the Tiber; and
More near from out the Caesars’ palace came
The owl’s long cry…
Ivy usurps the laurel’s place of growth;-
But the gladiators’ bloody Circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!
To read more about moonlight visitors to the Colosseum, click here.
Ad seen above created by:
Agency : Leo Burnett Sydney,Australia
Executive Creative Director: Mark Collis
Creative Director: Stephen Coll
Art Director: Nils Eberhardt
We’re spending the morning laughing at these hilarious ads for Otrivin nose spray that come out of Saatchi & Saatchi in Milan. The copy reads, “Very Blocked Nose?”while the paintings show perfectly posed hunting dogs unable to find their prey due to nasal blockage.
Advertising Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, Milan, Italy
Company Name: Saatchi & Saatchi Simko, Geneve
Executive Creative Directors: John Pallant, Roger Kennedy, Olivier Girard, Jean-François Fournon
Creative Directors: Guido Cornara, Agostino Toscana
Art Director: Luca Pannese
Copywriter: Luca Lorenzini
Illustrator: Rob Perry
Photographer: Davide Bodini
We’ve spent this afternoon laughing at these Lamborghini advertisements. In an effort to convince us that driving a Lamborghini is the sure-fire way to achieve the hipness and elegance of the Italian lifestyle, the ads superimpose a bit of oh-so-Italian culture on scenes that are decidedly of other places.
Above, two guards at Buckingham palace assume a relaxed slump against a building and communicate more with gestures and body language than with words. The copy reads, “Feels Italian Wherever You Are.”
In other expressions of the same message, a hard-core biker sits delicately atop a Vespa scooter (above) and two American good ole boys perch outside a diner sipping from tiny espresso cups (below).
Advertising Agency: Philipp und Keuntje, Hamburg, Germany
Creative Directors: Diether Kerner, Oliver Ramm
Art Director: Sönke Schmidt
Copywriter: Daniel Hoffmann
Photographer: Arthur Mebius
Published: February 2008
Nice advertising campaign for Par 5 Fashion Sportswear - a reminder of how ubiquitous is the playing of soccer in Italy. Any public space will do - as long as there’s a ball! And anyone can take part - from the toddling two-yeaR-old (how is it that barely walking Italian tots are already so good at soccer?) to the well-shod grandma strolling down the street.
In this case, however, it seems that the golf-club-toting wearers of Par 5 have not yet mastered the art of getting the ball inside the goal!
Advertising Agency: DDB, Milan, Italy
Creative Director: Vicky Gitto
Art Directors: Hugo Gallardo, Francesco Guerrera
Copywriter:Vicky Gitto
Photographer: Francesco Guerrera
We’re laughing hard at these graphics from an ad campaign for Ceserani Exterminators. Love the cockroach coffin with antennae sticking out of it (look closely) - almost as much as the mouse-hole tombstone!
Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, Milan, Italy
Art Director: Gildo Rapetti
Wacky wacky ad for Koleston Hair Color by Leo Burnett in Milan.
Creative Directors: Sergio Rodriguez, Enrico Dorizza
Art Director: Alessandro Padalino
Photographer: Studioros
Published: March 2008
Just stumbled upon these great ads for MUF, the Museo Nazionale del Fumetto e dell’Imagine (the Italian Comics Museum) in Lucca.
The copy in the golden frame reads, “Comics are art. Just funnier.”
Advertising Agency: JWT, Milan, Italy
Creative Director: Pietro Maestri
Art Directors: Cristiana Boccassini, Flavio Mainoli
Copywriters: Bruno Bertelli, Paolo Cesano
Photographer: Corbis
Published: January 2008
We haven’t eaten there, but we’re digging the creative advertising campaigns for La Carbonara at Via Panisperna 214. We’re especially taken with the artichoke serpent above. Anyone been there? Do let us know how it is.
Sometimes the wind is against me.
I breathe it only because I have to.
I suck it in and spit it out cursing.
But today we’re going the same way.
And it’s everything I can do.
To stay on the ground.
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (see below) seems to be the most advertised artwork of the year. The painting was cleverly remade in an advertisement for Renaissance Hotels and now the Zephyrs or Winds that blow Venus to shore in the original painting star in an inspiring ad from Reebok (see above).
Agency: mcgarrybowen, New York, United States
Creative Directors: Lew Willig & Mark Koelfgen
Art Director: Lew Willig
Copywriter: Mark Koelfgen
Photographer: Kai Uwe Gundlach
