In 1975 Pirelli announced the launch of the second-generation radial tyre: simply called the “P3”, it was the result of integrated technology that combined the three fundamental features that were to be offered to the motorist: durability, safety, and comfort. Based on a series of innovative solutions referred to as a “unified structure” – the one used for the sporty P7 – the P3 was the tyre for small and medium-sized cars, which meant most cars on the roads in Italy in the 1970s. It was a qualitative leap forward that affected not just the product itself, but also the production process: the machine used for constructing the P3 had been designed from scratch with the aim of creating a tyre with a high degree of uniformity, while also making quality control possible throughout the manufacturing process. The tools used to make the tyres were electronically guided by machines “that receive their control impulses at strictly pre-established intervals from a device that ‘reads’ the work cycle recorded on punch tape”. A new age was dawning, already with its sights on information technology. Pirelli was synonymous with technology and the P3 was an integral part of this know-how: the advertising message viewed the new generation of radial tyres as a logical step for the enormous heritage of technological knowledge that was to take the Group to positions of true excellence.

It was this “unique heritage of energy and intelligence” that allowed Pirelli to create the P3, but also to export the machines needed to produce tyres in the Soviet Union and Iraq, to create rubber pipelines across the Mediterranean, to lay submarine cables in the Atlantic, and to design a tidal defence dam to save Venice: these were the subjects of the P3 advertising campaign in 1975, its first year of life. The same concept of the unique technological heritage, of which the Pirelli P3 was just one aspect, was taken up again the following year, in 1976, with the slogan “Pirelli is technology, P3 is Pirelli”. This campaign was an updated version of the 1975 one, showing the same subjects, in Venice, the United States, the USSR, and the Middle East, but seen through different eyes. In addition to a television commercial, which was released together with the press campaign, a merchandising campaign that played on the significance of the number three also helped create the commercial image of the Pirelli P3. This was a fine example of integrated communication, combining print advertising, television commercials and branded objects to tell the story of a high-tech product in an innovative way.

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In the early 1970s, a new figure burst onto the scene in Pirelli tyre advertisements: the specialist dealer, the point of contact between manufacturer and consumer. The person who can guide the buyer’s choices. By the early 1960s, Pirelli had already created a communication campaign for the winter BS tyres, in a move linked to the opening of tyre shops at the Autogrill service-station chain on the recently built Autostrada del Sole. In 1973, a campaign was launched called La parola al gommista [“A word from the tyre specialist”], which included a series of television commercials produced by DN Sound and a range of promotional materials: “An expert, the only person whose skills and experience means they can advise the motorist on proper use and maintenance and on the best choice of tyres to buy for their vehicle.” In this case, the tyre to buy was the Cinturato CN54.

Full recognition of the importance of the Pirelli-specialist-motorist chain came in 1974 with the campaign called Ti cerco, ti filmo, ti premio (I’ll find you, film you, reward you”). The formula adopted a personality promotion technique, in which a fictional character is used to involve potential consumers on an emotional level in order to guide their decisions. Here, the character was an articulated man designed by Alan Fletcher, who was the frontman of the British Pentagram agency at the time. The silver-coloured figure appeared on a sticker that the tyre dealer gave to customers who chose Pirelli when changing their tyres. Film crews travelled across Italy in off-road vehicles fitted out as film sets, in search of cars bearing the Pirelli sticker, and then filming the motorists and rewarding them. Customers with “Pirelliman” would then take part in the extraction of a 50,000 lire prize in gold tokens. All together, they formed a series of seven Carosello television commercials, produced by RPA and directed by Enrico Sannia. The protagonists – an engaged couple, a sales representative, a family, a mother and son, a husband and wife, and a hostess – were “spied on” in their everyday lives and were then followed and rewarded with their “fifteen minutes of fame” on television. New forms of advertising, and new consumers, were ready for the future.

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The famous editorial of 1948, entitled “This magazine of ours”, in which Alberto Pirelli announced the launch of Pirelli. Rivista di tecnica e informazione on newsstands contains a fundamental point: “In this magazine, we who work in this company will talk from own experience, just as others, who are on the outside, will talk of theirs. The very fact that they are on the outside will make it possible to avoid the fatal trap of excessive technicisms and help bring their topics to life with their art, sensitivity, and imagination.” These lines have the full force of an authentic cultural manifesto. On the initiative of Silvestro Severgnini, in 1947 the company had just opened its Cultural Centre in the Brusada factory in Milan.

The journalist Vincenzo Buonassisi talked about it in the magazine in 1953: in his analysis of the work being carried out by a number of corporate cultural centres in Italy during those early post-war years, the journalist notes that “The sole mission of the Centre is to bring the company’s employees into contact with the appointed places of cultural activities. It does not aim to replace them.” Its purpose was not to “make” culture but rather to bring workers and culture together, to involve “those who in other circumstances would never dare come close to things considered to be so sophisticated and abstruse”. The Centre was “a bridge, a shared means for keeping abreast with cultural life in its most topical, everyday aspects, out of a sincere desire to capture the highest essence of our time”. From the post-war years to the 1960s, Pirelli went through an extraordinary period of “industrial humanism”: it was a time when large Italian companies become centres of production and culture and business executives worked hand in hand with writers, intellectuals, and artists. This was the situation in 1963 when the painter Ernesto Treccani was called in by Arrigo Castellani, then editor of Pirelli magazine, to look for this “highest essence” among the vulcanisers in the Pirelli factory in Milano Bicocca. Treccani makes it quite clear that it was “an experience in the factory, with no strings attached, without being asked to paint this or that” but simply to take free inspiration for his work. The article introduces his stove enamels, with their “splendid colours, and compact, luminous material”. A very personal vision of production and work.

“I, too, visited the factory.” This is how, in 1963, the painter Giancarlo Cazzaniga responded to the request in the caption for the oil pastel work he painted on the shop floors at Bicocca. His factory is one of “highly colourful machines: yellow, red, and green pipes, strange cauldrons, whistles, smells, and smoke, belts here and there folding and unfolding, depending on the movement that the machines made them perform”. Cazzaniga went into the factory with a guide who showed him along the way, sometimes being surprised and at others telling him off for his apparently pointless stops. Art and culture made their way deep into the factory in the pages of Pirelli magazine.

The complex issue of the relationship between operations designed to promote corporate growth and culture is addressed in a thesis

Merging a business to remain competitive, or growing in order to continue to play a central role in increasingly competitive markets. This constitutes part of the reasoning that underpins modern economies. These operations often represent crucial steps, involving the expansion of a company’s team and structure, and as such must also be understood from a cultural point of view as well as a purely organisational perspective. This is the goal that Valentin Zavala has attempted to achieve with a study discussed as part of the Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration at the University of Vaasa School of Marketing.

Zavala’s thesis, Cultural issues that family-owned businesses face in cross-border acquisition processes, is a good summary of the findings of the leading studies relating to the managerial and cultural aspects of mergers and acquisitions, with a particular focus on family businesses. Zavala begins his discussion with a comment on the importance that mergers and acquisitions between companies have assumed in recent years, focusing largely on the motivations that drive businesses to undergo such processes and looking at the reasons behind their success or failure. The author then turns his attention to the tangle of themes that lies between the cultural aspects of mergers and acquisitions and the specific situations faced by family businesses (with the hypothesis that these are the most widespread among entrepreneurial organisations).

The main question the thesis seeks to answer, writes Zavala, is “which cultural factors have an influence on the acquisition process in a family business that spans national borders”. In addition to this, Zavala also examines the differences in behaviour between family and non-family businesses, and looks at which family-related factors have an impact on success in the “pre-combination phase in transnational mergers and acquisitions”, as well as which aspects of the subsequent stages of a merger “are influenced by culture”.

Having provided a summary of the theory, Zavala’s work proceeds according to the classic field research approach: with the implementation of his method and a qualitative survey of a number of businesses that have lived through these experiences. Accordingly, the study adds another important layer of knowledge to improve our understanding of the complex theme of the changes and evolutions that the industrial system is currently traversing.

Cultural issues that family-owned businesses face in cross-border acquisition processes

Valentin Zavala M. A.

Thesis, Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration, University of Vaasa School of Marketing, 2020

A book attempts to summarise the changes that are taking place in the industrial manufacturing system

Man and machine. This is now a historical, controversial pairing, and one that has seen much conflict; a harbinger of disputes, a battlefield of ideological debate, and a synthesis of everyday life for millions of people. In any case, it remains an important issue to address in this day and age. Particularly today – perhaps more than yesterday – due to the rapid evolution of machines and production organisations. Reading “Organizzazioni Emotive (creative e intelligenti). Tra Welfare aziendale, responsabilità, partecipazione e resilienza” (Sensitive organisations (creative and intelligent). Corporate welfare, responsibility, emotional involvement and resilience) by Luciano Pilotti may therefore be a good means of seeking an up-to-date overview of this issue. An issue which, on the other hand, touches all areas of work to a degree, and which is constantly being enriched with new ideas: from welfare to resilience.

The common thread that runs throughout Pilotti’s book (he is a tenured professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy at the University of Milan) is the observation that the strategic factor for ensuring a bright future in companies that are focused on knowledge, practical know-how and digital worlds is the quality of human capital and the relationships that give an organised shape to this, beyond the availability of raw materials or advanced technologies. Still man and machine, then, but in a new and more complex form. The distant horizon we are aiming for is clearly that of a new approach to work characterised by its humanism, but the road leading to this destination is certainly not linear, and is beset by its fair share of obstacles.

The purpose of this essay is to shed light on the path that leads the individual back to the heart of the various processes, focusing on the relationships between organisations, digitisation and emotions. As such, Pilotti wants to reunite what Fordism had separated: machines and human beings, the intellectual and the manual, mind, body and consciousness, intelligence and action, the individual and the community.

In the background lies the identification of a form of corporate welfare and work that is built not only on profit and income but also on something else. Pilotti therefore writes about dynamic organisations that can help us to achieve such a goal by enhancing the emotional factors and the multiple human and collective intelligences that exist in a corporate setting. Among other things, the author indicates his view that this is a necessary transformation that organisations will need to undergo, in order to rebuild a sense of corporate belonging as a common good, which calls for “strong” forms of direct and indirect participation in order to generate value.

The book begins by outlining the “micro and macro” economic context, before going on to discuss the relationship between productivity and corporate welfare, and then examining the relationships that exist between “rationalist” organisations and the new ways of working. The author ends by outlining the need for what he calls a “new social pact” for “the civil renaissance of a shared, supportive, responsible and inclusive form of capitalism”.

Pilotti’s book is complex, and there is certainly no obligation to agree with everything the author writes, but it nonetheless bears careful reading; it is a text that is full of food for thought on how the systems of business and production are changing in our societies.

Organizzazioni Emotive (Creative e intelligenti). Tra Welfare aziendale, responsabilità, partecipazione e resilienza (Sensitive organisations (creative and intelligent). Corporate welfare, responsibility, emotional involvement and resilience)

Luciano Pilotti

Mc Graw Hill-Fondazione Casa della Carità, 2020

The objective is, of course, one that we all embrace: to create an Italy that is “stronger, resilient, and equal”. And so is the drive to promote three key areas: “digitisation and innovation”, a “green revolution” and “gender equality and inclusion”. The robust document delivered by the task force of experts led by Vittorio Colao to Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte – containing the 102 operational proposals to relaunch Italy and lead it out of the crisis caused by Covid-19 and the resulting recession – is the fruit of a detailed expert analysis of the many limits that have been holding back development in the country for some time. In light of this, it provides an indication of the choices that must be made, both to combat the current emergency (the drastic drop in income suffered by millions of families and workers, the paralysis of many businesses) and to finally set Italy on a more positive path towards development, with a major focus on businesses and work. And the decisions that are made in terms of the interventions to be implemented (with regard to digital innovation, infrastructure, training and research, the modernisation and streamlining of the public administration sector, environmental and social sustainability, culture) reflect the approach that has long been championed not only by the most sensitive and attentive players on the economic and social scene, but also by the more responsible forces in politics.

It’s hard to disagree with them. And it is clear that such an expertly-drafted and well-informed document will invite criticism from the corners of the political world that continue to take an adversarial approach against Europe, proposing flat taxes and doors that are barricaded shut by short-sighted economic nationalism, as they pursue the dream of welfarism and fantasise about the “master state” as if it were some kind of panacea.

“A book of dreams”, say the critics of the Colao plan. A catalogue brimming with good intentions. Yet another document that will end up being smashed to pieces by the desire to preserve those political circles that are unwilling to accept change. In actual fact, it is a serious indication of the steps that must be taken. An exploration of the many things that have unfortunately not been done to date, and that are now essential. A plan which must form the basis for concrete, urgent decisions that focus on the future: the responsibility of the government and parliament.

Now, they are awaiting the States General that President Conte wanted to summon at the end of the week, in order to discuss the measures to be taken to relaunch Italy’s development. A runway procession of intelligence and skills, of the highest national and European standard. A review of the well-formed proposals from Confindustria and the trade unions and from a host of social and cultural organisations.

Will they help? Politics has its own customs and ceremonies. Liberal democracy thrives on the transparent acquisition of approval and support. A certain degree of rhetoric and propaganda is unavoidable.

But then, it will be a matter of deciding what, in tangible terms, should actually be done, as well as how and when, with a clear view of the results to be achieved.

So far, we’ve had plenty of announcements from the government. But the results have been poor, particularly with regard to the money from the unemployment fund for workers and the emergency loans for companies (which are anything but “lazy”, whatever Tridico – the president of Italy’s National Social Security Institute (INPS) – may say). We have listened to the pledges to take action from Palazzo Chigi and a large number of ministers. These are clearly ineffectual, however, as the social unrest and challenges to recovery continue to grow.

Accordingly – announcements aside – having listened to the social players and read the plans, documents and projects from their task forces, the government and the various political forces must quickly state what they intend to do, with what resources, with what objectives and according to what agenda in terms of time-frames and results.

In the language of corporate culture, there is a key word that is relevant here: execution. Every entrepreneur, every good manager is confronted with it. Decisions, goals, realisation, measurement of results. And as such, responsibilities. Who does what, and how they will be accountable for it.

But the concept of “execution” remains a mystery in the corridors of power, and in the minds of those who aspire to govern. Laws are made (and these are often unclear, contradictory, badly written), in the conviction that a regulation is enough to improve reality. But nobody really knows how to apply these laws, or when, and with what effects. Nobody is held to account, in the murky world of regulation implementation, bureaucratic obstacles, formalities, wearying checks and controls, and overdue judicial sanctions.

Now, we have an enormous financial endowment at our disposal, with the EU funds (those that we have not yet succeeded in spending, and which have become available to us once more), the resources freed up following the suspension of the Stability and Growth Pact, the cash provided by the European Stability Mechanism (around 36 billion Euros, under particularly advantageous conditions, to be spent on health) and the money from SURE (to finance the unemployment fund), not forgetting the means provided by the ECB to provide loans to families and businesses. And on the horizon, we can catch a glimpse of the “Next Generation” EU recovery fund, a programme which will run over a number of years. Never has there been so much money available to restart Italian development within the wider European context.

The real political challenge will lie in spending it well. The EU has given us some general directions: focus on the green deal and the digital economy, or in other words, environmental and social sustainability and technological innovation. These are indications that are already being followed by the most innovative Italian companies, and they echo those provided in the Colao document, as well as the stance of Confindustria and some of the leading studies in Italian and international economic literature. It’s nothing we don’t already know, even with regard to the details of the choices to be made (infrastructure to be built according to EU standards, as per the new Ponte per Genova bridge, or Expo 2015, for example; or the fiscal leverage for hi-tech Industry 4.0 investments; or again the resources provided to ensure the best use of digital assets, Artificial Intelligence, big data and robotics, from industry to training, and from health to smart services).

Now, then, it’s about action. And there’s no time to lose: we already know that either we get the cogs of the economy moving again (in a country where productivity has been at a standstill for twenty years, despite the efforts of the leading companies to innovate and invest), or public debt will overwhelm us.

Government, then. Decisions. Reforms. Investments. Execution. Beyond the bright lights of the runway, beyond the rhetoric, and beyond the States (more or less) General.

The racing-car drivers Luigi Fagioli and Felice Bonetto were both born on 9 June, the former in 1898 in Osimo, in the Marche, and the latter in 1903 in Manerbio, in the province of Brescia. In many ways, their lives ran along similar lines, for they both made their debuts in motorcycle racing in the late 1920s but soon moved to cars, where they helped write the history of motor-racing before and after the Second World War. Luigi Fagioli started out in 1925 in French cars made by Salmson and later with Maserati, before joining Alfa Romeo with which, in a P3, he won the Italian Championship in 1933. He then moved to Mercedes and later to Auto Union, until the war broke out. Back at Alfa in the glorious year of 1950, together with the champions Juan Manuel Fangio and Nino Farina, Fagioli became one of the so-called 3F trio, who were destined to sweep the board in the first Formula 1 World Championship in Alfa cars fitted with Pirelli Stella Bianca tyres.

Fagioli came third, after Farina and Fangio. But the real record was broken at the French Grand Prix of 1951, when the already 53-year-old Fagioli shared his car with Fangio and won the two-driver race. Felice Bonetto, too, started his career in motorcycle racing. While Fagioli’s opponent was Tazio Nuvolari, Bonetto’s rival was none other than Enzo Ferrari: After many years with Bugatti and Alfa Romeo, all it took for his relations with the entrepreneur to break down was the 1949 season with Ferrari. Bonetto then moved to O.S.C.A. (Officine Specializzate Costruzione Automobili), and later to Alfa, and then Maserati, before taking to the Lancia Aurelia B20 in 1952. With this, he won the Targa Florio and, the following year, he came third in the Mille Miglia. In November 1953, Bonetto took part in the Carrera Panamericana in a Lancia D24, together with Fangio and Piero Taruffi, another eternal rival of his. While he was leading the race, an accident in the Mexican town of Silao cost him his life. Just one year earlier, his colleague Luigi Fagioli had met the same fate during tests at the 1952 Monaco Grand Prix Formula GT race. Two almost parallel lives that went straight into the history of motorsport.

Motorcyclists in space suits preparing to blast off, superheroes with tyre-tread soles, leopards leaping inside a tyre like at the circus, tyres that turn into soccer balls, or into a full moon with a promise of “Pirelli dreams”: this is the imaginary world created by second-year students in classes A and C of the Liceo Artistico Callisto Piazza in Lodi, who took inspiration from the art of the graphic designers and artists who worked with Pirelli to create its historic advertisements. Forty students examined the sketches that are now kept in our Historical Archive and, after some months of analysis and planning, they created an advertising poster of their own. It was a long job and it started with them making faithful reproductions of the original advertisements before going on to create their own personal reformulations. The sketches that most inspired the imaginative young graphic designers were those by Elio, Renzo Bassi, Max Huber, Bruno Munari, François Robert, and Armando Testa, as well as the famous advertising campaign “Power is nothing without control”.

Many of the students’ advertisements, which were made using different techniques, draw elements from original works now in the Pirelli Foundation, with references from the world of cinema and art ranging from The Great Wave by the Japanese artist Hokusai, to the film Ghost Rider based on the comic book character of the same name, through to Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park and the famous fairy tale of Cinderella. “I associated the concept of fire with the power of Pirelli tyres” says Tommaso, while Valentina says: “I designed a road that goes off into an infinite world”.

The kids describe their own creations: “I mainly worked on reformulating the scripts, colours, and materials, so as to pick out the Pirelli logo”, says Paolo, while Samuele explains: “I changed the story of Cinderella… giving the famous carriage a super upgrade with Pirelli tyres”. Bringing the school year to an end, Pirelli Foundation Educational presents the works that emerged from this project, in the hope that it will soon be possible to have the young people back, so that they can have a close-up view of the original works of the great artists who inspired them. See you next school year!

The racing-car driver Giuseppe Campari was born in Graffignana, now in the province of Lodi, on 8 June 1892. With a passion for Alfa Romeo racing cars, he began his career as a mechanic right there, with Alfa , where his great talent as a test driver was immediately noticed. In 1911 he became an “onboard mechanic”, and the role was also assigned to him in the Targa Florio race of that year. In 1923 he at last became a driver in the Alfa racing team: this was the time of the splendid P2 that, fitted with Pirelli Superflex Cord tyres, took every prize in 1924 and 1925. Together with Campari, the trio of Italian drivers racing for the Quadrifoglio included Antonio Ascari and Enzo Ferrari: then came the Frenchman Luis Wagner, and the cars from Portello triumphed on every circuit, on every road. In his Alfa P2, number 10, Campari won the French Grand Prix of 1924 ahead of the Frenchmen in their Delages: his devotion to his work had been rewarded and in 1928 and 1929 he won the Mille Miglia, and between 1928 and 1931 he was crowned Italian Champion and took the Coppa Acerbo three times.

He raced in another two Mille Miglia, three Coppa Acerbo and achieved excellent results in the Grands Prix of France and Monza. A few years later, in 1933, the track at Monza proved to be fatal: during one of the heats for the Italian Grand Prix on the morning of 10 September, he hit a patch of engine oil and skidded off the road at the entrance to the flyover. On the following lap, Mario Umberto Borzacchini met with the same dramatic fate in his Maserati, as did Stanislas Czaykowski in his Bugatti. This tragically legendary event consigned three magnificent drivers to the history of early-twentieth-century racing.

From the mid-1960s, the subject of environmental protection burst onto the pages of Pirelli magazine with considerations about the landscape and urban green spaces, politics, and ethics. The Italia Nostra association had been set up just a few years previously, in 1955, and one of its activists was the young archaeologist Antonio Cederna, whose first environmental battles aimed to save and protect the Via Appia Antica in Rome. The association was promoted by Renato Bazzoni, an architect with a passion for photograph.: In 1959, he had the idea to put on an exhibition to denounce the damage being done to the environment in Italy. It was to be called “Italy, What a Ruin”, with the Touring Club Italiano as a partner, together with his friend Arrigo Castellani, then director of Pirelli magazine, who always had a watchful eye on the great social issues of the day. The exhibition Italia da salvare – Italy to be Saved – opened in Milan only in April 1967. The designer Pino Tovaglia was immediately involved in the project and, working with Castellani, he created the poster-manifesto: the red wound on a black ground invented by the two “Pirelliani” was to make its mark on the history of advertising. Pirelli magazine anticipated the opening of the exhibition in its January 1966 issue, with “Let’s start from scratch”, an article-manifesto by Cederna.

There was a need to go “beyond the nineteenth-century idealism that viewed the landscape simply as a representation, and to free ourselves from the modernism that has us confuse the destruction of nature with civilisation, and territorial disruption with progress”. The systematic destruction of green spaces, in Cederna’s invective, was itself “contempt for man” and for public health. There were many ruined landscapes that would be hard to rectify without a new political, and primarily ethical, sensitivity: this was Italy to be saved. Together with Cederna’s plea came that of the urban planner Roberto Guiducci, who talked in the magazine of a world guided by the concept of “green for living”. Guiducci’s social and town-planning analysis is fascinating, pointing to the lack of green spaces in Italy compared with the rest of Europe: spaces viewed as “empty”, and to be filled, as an unproductive absence to be occupied, in the conviction that land was to be exploited in the service of profit. Guiducci raised the idea that green spaces, too, might be considered as players in the economy, that forests in cities might be an item on the global balance sheet of Italy Inc. Over forty years before the skyscrapers in Milan. The photographs that illustrate Guiducci’s article were by none other than Renato Bazzoni. An architect with a passion for photography, Bazzoni wrote an article called “The earth accuses us” in Pirelli magazine in 1970, denouncing the state of the planet – a matter that is as topical as ever today – and a manifesto for the subsequent creation of FAI, the National Trust for Italy. A century of exploitation of natural resources, with consequences that are still clear to see today.