Welcome and welcome back to my blog!
In this new article we talk about the evolution from the historical point of view of art as a marketing tool. The focus is, as always, on the world of art and artists.
Art /ɑːt/ noun Any form of human activity as proof or exaltation of his inventive talent and expressive capacity.
Historical notes on marketing and the evolution of art as a marketing tool
1700 Advertisements appear and occupy the fourth page of newspapers for free.
1890 In Paris, during the Belle Époque, the advertising poster was born. Jules Chéret advertises the Paris Casino through an artistic and captivating image.
1904 In Paris, the first advertisement for Moet et Chandon Champagne appears in the form of a poster in cinemas.
1920 The Jingle is born in radio advertisements.
1921 Leonetto Cappiello exponent of Art Nouveau for the first time in Italy
brings the avant-garde advertising poster where an image replaces the product to be sold, the Spiritello for Campari.
1931 Fortunato Depero, master of Italian futurism, publishes the Manifesto of futurist advertising art1 and claims that "by communicating one's products or services with ingenuity and inventiveness, one produces nothing other than art, the purest and truest possible."
1940 Bulova watches. The first television commercial in history is born.
1957 Carosello represents the arrival of advertising in Italy.
1960 Bob Noorda establishes himself in Italy as the greatest exponent of Italian graphics, combining art with advertising graphics and brand communication in an indissoluble and revolutionary way.
1968 Salvador Dalì made an advertising film for the chocolate brand Lanvin, the following year he conceived and designed the Chupa chups logo and was responsible for the advertising campaigns for the Eurovision Festival
1985 For the first time, opera enters commercials. This is the Overture to La gazza ladra by Gioacchino Rossini in an advertisement for Grana Padano. A few years later it will be the turn of the choir Va, Pensiero from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco for the British Airways commercial.
Traditional Marketing in Art
If Art becomes a manifesto when it represents political, ideological or characterizing messages of a brand, when and how does advertising become a manifesto for Art itself?
When advertising represents the possibility of making known the content that it intends to convey to an audience and succeeds in doing so, it becomes a tool.
The posters in the cities and outside the theatres, the brochures in the conservatories and high schools, the flyers distributed in strategic places, the radio and television advertisements of local and national broadcasters, the articles and short paragraphs in sector magazines or newspapers are the traditional channels and tools that allow you to reach as many people as possible.
The artist who finds his name on the poster jealously guards it as a curricular test and as a reminder of that moment in his artistic and personal life.
Artists generally do not use marketing directly in their promotion, but rather actively participate in the marketing strategies of their agencies and the structures that host them through collaborations, guest appearances, articles and interviews.
Some examples in the world of music:
Matteo Bocelli, son of the famous Andrea, appears in a commercial for the new electric Fiat 500 in May 2022, an excellent marketing strategy for an emerging son of art in the musical field.
Jennifer Lopez was the protagonist of a Fiat 500 commercial, combining the image of the pop diva with that of the "glamour and fashion" city car.
Cecilia Bartoli lent her image in 2000 for the Rolex advertisement and her voice in 2014 for a Conad commercial while in the same year a commercial for her production company Universal Music was broadcast on TV throughout Europe starring Cecilia Bartoli and his tour.
Digital marketing in Art
International music stars were the first to be projected by their agencies into the digital world.
Led Zeppelin and Eros Ramazzotti (the first Sanremo winner with Ora tu in 1986 to have a website) purchased their own domain2 in 1996, followed in 1998 by Bobby Solo, Aretha Franklin, Metallica, Madonna and Placido Domingo, Riccardo Chailly and Ludovico Einaudi in 1999, David Garrett in 2000, the duo 2Cellos in 2001, Anna Netrebko in 2002, Riccardo Muti in 2006, Zubin Mehta in 2006 and Cecilia Bartoli in 2012.
The birth of the internet and its definition3 dates back between the beginning of the 80s and the end of the 70s, in 1991 CERN announced the birth of the World Wide Web and today thirty years later in Italy, we are still far behind in terms of digital, not only in the artistic environment.
In the 2018 ISTAT4 knowledge report it emerges that 72% of companies in Italy have a website and only 10% of them sell online, while according to an Audiweb-Nielsen5 survey in 2020 there was a 13% increase in freelancers in accessing platforms and work tools on the web.
The Department for Digital Transformation of the Italian Government has, by the year 2026, important objectives for the digital transformation of the country such as bridging the digital skills gap, with at least 70% of the population being digitally skilled and achieving, in collaboration with the Mise, 100% of Italian families and businesses with ultra-broadband networks6.
For the world of art there are no sources of statistical data on which to rely, moreover specifically, the musical artistic world outside the institutional environments of schools and universities, foundations and recognized bodies, is not well regulated by regulations and fundamentally the figure of the artist is not recognized as a profession.
Therefore, it is up to the artist himself to acknowledge and be aware that digital tools are within his reach today, they represent an indispensable opportunity to avoid falling behind in global digital evolution and self-promotion.
There are various ways to promote yourself on the various platforms, starting from the website up to the various social networks and digital streaming and reproduction platforms:
Articles on the Blog or Vlog, Infographic
Thematic podcasts
Reels, short videos and Stories
Video performance
Streaming live conference e Streaming live performances
Pics, NFT
In the next article I'll tell you about the statistical data that emerged from a survey of artists from different countries around the world regarding their digitalisation!
Thank you for reading this far, leave a heart if you liked the article and write to me here, by email or on social media Instagram\Facebook\TikTok\LinkedIn if you have questions on the topic of digital transformation that you would like to learn more about.
1 M. Scudiero (ed.), Fortunato Depero through Futurism. Works 1913-1958 (exhibition catalogue), Florence, Galleria Poggiali & Forconi, 1998
2 Data collected through analysis of individual domains with the WEBIDOO Spa digital test tool. The online release date of the first version of the website is not available.
3 Internet (or The Internet) /Ìn·ter·net/ — noun — Network of computer connections on a global level that allows local computer networks and databases to connect and communicate with each other, making information available to users in the form of images, films, hypertexts, music.
4 IIstat, Knowledge Report 2018 - Economy and Society
5 Il Sole 24 ore, L'Osservatorio article, 12 January 2021
6 Italian Government, Department for digital transformation, The objectives of the recovery and resilience plan
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