Advertisement Analysis: Branding The Eternal City

Introduction

Rome, romantically called ‘The Eternal City’, is a capital city rich in culture and history. Since its founding in 753 BC it has gained a wide portfolio of masterpieces, such as the Colosseum, the Sistene Chapel, the list is endless. This beauty attracts millions of tourists and, summed with the almost three-million people that live in Rome, it creates the perfect situation for marketing to a broad amount of people. It is an environment that favours adverts of mass appeal, targeted to the vast population of consumer in Rome. Why is the essay called ‘Branding the Eternal City’? The reason is simple: Rome is covered in adverts and, in a way, it is almost as if Rome has been personified selling herself to companies who want her advertising space. Companies are struggling to overcome the media saturation that makes the audience unresponsive, therefore they adopt new ways of marketing that sometimes border vandalism. Living in Rome I find that adverts are set in very ‘interesting’ and sometimes controversial

The first one is called the ‘Hypodermic Needle Theory’. This theory outlines how the audience of an advertisement is passive, and is forced to be influenced by it. Clearly, this theory had its roots in the years ranging from the 1930s to the 1950s, since they feature the extensive use of propaganda during the second world war period, to the increasing popularity of radios in the post war period, that lead to the first examples of mass appeal marketing. The ‘Hypodermic Needle Theory’ is indeed justified, as the surprise of marketing and its relatively recent birth meant that the human mind was more open and surprised when it came across it. Like anything new, we are automatically curious and attracted towards it. However, more than seventy years have passed since the 1930s, and our perception of advertising has drastically changed, which leads me to the ‘Uses and Gratifications