Arts and strategic communication in Italy and Spain: from sponsorship to corporate responsibility

The paper investigates the rise of business communication strategies based on culture and arts in Italy and Spain. As previous researches demonstrate, cultural communication can work as a strategic asset to develop corporate identity and reputation, enabling organizations to cultivate quality long-term quality relationships with their stakeholders. From this scenario and considering the lack of a systematic European comparison, the study presents preliminary data from a comparative research on the evolution of cultural communication models (patronage, sponsorship, partnership, investment), in order to evaluate similarities and original features of the phenomenon in the two countries by means of an explorative and multi-case study approach.