When Business Becomes Art: Humor in English and Italian Advertising

As Ugo Volli asserts, "advertising is a mass, aesthetic and ideological instrument, a reservoir to which we draw our way of looking at things, to discover the beauty to have fun and to dream." 1 The author gives the ability to overcome the art and fashion not only for the spread and the wealth of resources, but also for the speed in changes. If in addition there is the technique of humor, the result is extraordinary: the advertising can become art.
This work aims to explore how humor can operate in the field of advertising as a multi-faceted strategy which involves the consumer in a funny way to undertake him/her to co-produce of the meaning of the message. Specifically, this study will compare throughout the British and the Italian textual and visual patterns adopted in advertising and will illustrate how they can differently use such features as originality, irony, humor. Initially it will be traced out a general profile about advertising and the various styles that characterize it, about the definition of humor, its functions, efficiency, something stirs in the consumer, the elements used and how it is used in advertising and through various types of media.
Subsequently, this study will present the state of advertising in England with a particular focus on how it is spread across different places like transports in London, the Underground, has become over the years more and more a place of strength and an important means of propagation for marketing strategies in England. This is possible because in the Underground there is a large percentage of advertising, and because there is a large influx of passengers that travel every day on this means of transport, so it is possible to reach a target of customers or potential customers numerically high and different.
In the case of Italy, some cases in which the use of humor led to a subsequent action by the Advertising Self-Regulation System to amend or prevent the disclosure of certain spot will be discussed: you will notice that many censored spots have in common precisely the element of humor. An emblematic case is represented by Italian Oliviero Toscani, the famous photographer who has produced some of the most beautiful and significant advertising campaigns distinguish himself clearly in the standardized and not very creative advertising Italian scene. Over and over again he was censored, and many times this has product an echo that made even more talk of his "scandals".
Still on the way "alternative" to advertise, it will be explored the unique world of guerrilla marketing, an intelligent and low cost way to do advertising, which affects the individual with the weapon of unexpected and overwhelming humor. Finally, will be considered two advertising campaigns that have proved very successful: advertising campaign of Absolut vodka and the Nike one, realized for the victory of Italy in football World Cup2006.
To demonstrate how the humor can be effective in advertising, my consulting reference sources were books and essays in English and Italian about the humor in advertising, from different schools of thought, although there is not an extensive bibliography on this subject. Internet, however, has proved a mine of information and pictures about it. After an analysis of documents, it was done a reworking and a comparison between the two realities taken into consideration, the Italian one and the British one. The English prefer irony and humor, all of which constitutes an own style that distinguishes it from others. These features unfortunately are not yet present in Italy.
The choice of completing the thesis in English is simply dictated by a desire to challenge myself, and I must thank my supervisor for the trust placed in me.