When Business Becomes Art : Humor in English and Italian Advertising

This work aims to explore how humor can operate in the field of advertising as a multi-faceted strategy which involves the consumer in a funny way to undertake him/her to co-produce of the meaning of the message. Specifically, this study will compare throughout the British and the Italian textual and visual patterns adopted in advertising and will illustrate how they can differently use such features as originality, irony, humor. This study will present the state of advertising in England with a particular focus on how it is spread across different places like transports in London, the Underground, has become over the years more and more a place of strength and an important means of propagation for marketing strategies in England. About Italy, there are some cases in which the use of humor led to a subsequent action by the Advertising Self-Regulation System to amend or prevent the disclosure of certain spot will be discussed. Still on the way "alternative" to advertise, it will be explored the unique world of guerrilla marketing, an intelligent and low cost way to do advertising, which affects the individual with the weapon of unexpected and overwhelming humor.