Italian ads that wouldn't fly in the States, Part I

Usually, I notice a whole bunch of these... ads that are, by most Americans' tastes, usually too sexually explicit, or sexist, or both. Then there are the ones that just particularly "Italian," like the advert for the dehumidifier so that the salamis hanging in your kitchen don't get moldy... But this year, for what reason I'm not really sure, there haven't been any at all that have leapt out at me.

That is, at least not until I saw this car ad reprinted in the paper. Scroll down to the bottom of the pdf page to see what I mean!

It's not really super offensive or anything... It's the Italian attempt to appeal to a female market, so I think it's ideally supposed to be very emancipated (or "ewomancipated," as the case may be!) Still, I just can't imagine Madison Avenue churning this one out stateside.

I hope this is merely the first in a series... My summer's not complete without them! :-)

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not that I watched a lot of TV when I was in Italy, but I can remember two television commercials very distinctly.

In the first, a young woman is running around a city... probably Rome... and everywhere she goes, other beautiful women swivel to look at her, like hungry cats. She gets on a bus, 2 or 3 women turn to gaze at her. She runs through a cafe, same thing. She
sprints down a sidewalk, same thing. It's freaking her out. At the end, she's back to her apartment, jabbering angrily at her boyfriend. Turns out he has accidentally/on purpose put his cologne into her perfume dispenser, and the scent on her has been driving all these women into heat...

In the other commercial, seemingly a LA DOLCE VITA homage, in black and white, a beautiful young woman is at an outdoor cafe with an older, wealthy man. A young stud
walks by in sunglasses and jacket, he gives her a come-hither look, and she immediately comes-hither. She gets up and abandons the old fart, much to his annoyance. As she leaves, a thread of her little black dress gets caught on the table somehow, so as she walks away, her dress is slowly unraveling, revealing her behind to the old guy.

(The ad may have been to promote the sunglasses!)

Michelle-aneous Musings said...

Actually, the "Dolce Vita" style commercial was for Campari Soda!