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1953: A ‘Golden’ Year for Pirelli Advertising

On the evening of 7 November 1953, at the 4th Advertising Congress in Milan, Dino Villani awarded Dottor Paolo Polese, the representative of the Pirelli Group, with the Palma d’Oro for the best advertisement of that year. “An advertising campaign that has reached the finish line without a puncture” joked the commentator on the La Settimana Incom newsreel. The golden award acknowledged Pirelli as a ground-breaking company in terms of its communication but, in more general terms, it also highlighted the ever-greater importance of advertising in the post-war period. These were years of extraordinary vivacity for Italian visual communication, and advertising reflected – and in some cases anticipated and emphasised – the forward-looking enthusiasm that was a feature of this early period of the economic boom. Pirelli worked closely with graphic designers and artists in these years to create campaigns that made the history of Italian graphics. This can be seen in Joan Jordan and Ezio Bonini‘s advertisement for Pirelli Coria soles, the advertisements for the Stelvio tyre by Franco Grignani, Ezio Bonini, and Pavel Michael Engelmann, the one by Raymond Savignac for Pirelli hot water bottles and many others. To celebrate this important award, Pirelli magazine, under the then editor-in-chief Arturo Tofanelli, commissioned the cover of the sixth and last issue of the year from the graphic designer Erberto Carboni, who designed it in the form of a graphic reworking of the precious palm-shaped trophy. In this issue, an article signed by “V.S.” – the initials of Vittorio Sereni – outlined the “Secret balance sheet of a year of advertising”, telling the story of an intense year of work “at number 94 Viale Abruzzi, second floor” and the secrets involved in creating a good advertising campaign. Here the absolute master is always the product – the object – for it has the graphic artist’s pen and pencil at its service, while the advertiser is “the servant and at the same time the master of this haunting muse who challenges the cinema for its place as the tenth muse.”

On the evening of 7 November 1953, at the 4th Advertising Congress in Milan, Dino Villani awarded Dottor Paolo Polese, the representative of the Pirelli Group, with the Palma d’Oro for the best advertisement of that year. “An advertising campaign that has reached the finish line without a puncture” joked the commentator on the La Settimana Incom newsreel. The golden award acknowledged Pirelli as a ground-breaking company in terms of its communication but, in more general terms, it also highlighted the ever-greater importance of advertising in the post-war period. These were years of extraordinary vivacity for Italian visual communication, and advertising reflected – and in some cases anticipated and emphasised – the forward-looking enthusiasm that was a feature of this early period of the economic boom. Pirelli worked closely with graphic designers and artists in these years to create campaigns that made the history of Italian graphics. This can be seen in Joan Jordan and Ezio Bonini‘s advertisement for Pirelli Coria soles, the advertisements for the Stelvio tyre by Franco Grignani, Ezio Bonini, and Pavel Michael Engelmann, the one by Raymond Savignac for Pirelli hot water bottles and many others. To celebrate this important award, Pirelli magazine, under the then editor-in-chief Arturo Tofanelli, commissioned the cover of the sixth and last issue of the year from the graphic designer Erberto Carboni, who designed it in the form of a graphic reworking of the precious palm-shaped trophy. In this issue, an article signed by “V.S.” – the initials of Vittorio Sereni – outlined the “Secret balance sheet of a year of advertising”, telling the story of an intense year of work “at number 94 Viale Abruzzi, second floor” and the secrets involved in creating a good advertising campaign. Here the absolute master is always the product – the object – for it has the graphic artist’s pen and pencil at its service, while the advertiser is “the servant and at the same time the master of this haunting muse who challenges the cinema for its place as the tenth muse.”

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