Why Sanremo is the Italian Super Bowl

Rai Pubblicità has been overbooked for months in the run-up to the Sanremo Festival. Whether it's Baci Perugina with the commercial Dolce & Gabbana signed to celebrate the centenary of the chocolates, or Swarovski, Netflix, Dior, Airbnb, Amazon Prime, and many others, the brands that have decided to invest in the five evenings of the Ariston are more than fifty. This is also confirmed by the record figures of the 73rd edition reported by La Repubblica: fifty million in advertising, that's how much the Ariston stage is worth to Rai, a figure that has increased compared to the previous edition (42 million) and far exceeds expectations. According to Omnicom Media Group's findings highlighted by Il Sole 24 Ore, the average list for tabular advertising for the event shows a growth of 28.1 percent compared to the previous edition.

The focus of Rai Pubblicità's offer to investors has shifted to shorter maturities, especially 15-second spots, precisely because you have to please everyone. This situation is further complicated by the new Testo Unico, which from 1 January 2023 has lowered the advertising load on Rai's networks to 6 percent in the 18-24 period (from 7 percent last year), resulting in less availability of the advertising pool. «Sanremo is our Super Bowl,» reports one of the main sponsors. Just as with perhaps the most representative and important event for American culture, references to the festival itself can be found in some commercials, an example of the mise en abime of advertising.

At the end of the third block of episodes, among the new additions to the prime-time Sanrmese commercial block is Netflix Italia's new "Coming Soon" spot starring Luisa Ranieri, Matilda de Angelis, Michele Rech aka Zerocalcare, Giacomo Ferrara and Christian De Sica, in which the protagonists turn to their colleagues without finding them, only to find that they are all glued to their TV devices to watch the festival, as is the whole of Italy. Spotify, on the other hand, has used the second commercial break to release the playlist for the 2023 edition of Sanremo. Simultaneous events are added, from the Suzuki Stage to the Costa Smeralda in front of the lagoon, the scene of Salmo, Fedez, and Gue Pequeno's performances, and framed by two short commercial breaks.

On the other hand, as far as the new Liguria Region commercial is concerned, after the previous debate with Elisabetta Canalis, we now have the debut of the new advertising format with Maurizio Lastrico and Alice Arcuri as testimonials on the famous galleon anchored in the Porto Antico of Genoa, already used by Roman Polansky for the filming of the movie "Pirates" The fourth break Paramount+, which will be broadcast with a new campaign conceived and produced by Utopia, bringing the historic "Signorine Buonasera" spokespeople back to the small screen to share their program, all in streaming of course, on the occasion of the Sanremo Festival.