Abstract

Among the numerous, long-running columns appearing on Giornale dello Spettacolo, which allow one to map the discourses that have come and gone over the years in the AGIS magazine, the column «La fabbrica del miliardo. Panorama tecnico pubblicitario» deserves special attention. Inaugurated in November 1958 and edited first by Artistide Contatore and Leo Magagnini and then by Enrico Messina, the column examines the promotional strategies adopted by distributors and exhibitors to launch films and promote movie-theaters, with the stated aim of stimulating the press offices of the film companies to improve the effectiveness of their communication. The column emerges as a space for the establishment of the advertising tech (tecnico pubblicitario) profession, and reflects the business-to-business logic of its host title. In doing so, it is shaped as critical space dedicated to advertising theory, capable, on the one hand, of focusing on the role played by the trade press in its modernization and, on the other, of fulfilling certain specific functions inherent to the Italian context.