Religion and advertising in Italian media. A love/hate relationship?

Catholic faith and values are amongst the main cultural roots of Italian society; the public image of advertising, however, is still widely affected by the conception of the “hidden persuaders”, almost cheaters profit-oriented at all costs, and appears to be as far as possible from Catholic values. The paper presents the results of the first two phases of a qualitative research aimed to understand how the relationship between advertising and religion takes shape in the Italian media landscape, and in particular to identify its main critical issues. The researches show that religious contents can certainly be considered as a possible tool to achieve an effective advertising, but this represents also a double risk: for the advertising system, to go beyond what the audience is ready to accept; for the audience, to be exposed to the will of provoking and shocking through vulgar, pauperised, specious, misleading or offensive message. The challenge for advertising is to capitalise the opportunities coming from Italian society religious roots in defining a brand’s character, and at the same time to avoid trivializing religious values and hurting believers’ feelings and values, which backfires in terms of effectiveness.