1. Introduction
– Since 1994, Silvio Berlusconi has become - for better or worse - a protagonist of
contemporary Italian history.
– He is Italy’s second wealthiest man, having built a fortune with commercial
television, retail, financial services and soccer, before entering politics.
– He is also famous for his antics, his jokes, his innuendos, his trials and his sex
scandals, making him a controversial media darling and an unprecedented kind of
entertaining “Buffoon King”.
– His advent into politics revolutionized the Italian political sphere, which is now
heavily influenced by the forms and the values of commercial television.
– Berlusconi is the perfect example of the “postmodern restyling of politics” that
Prof. Thussu describes as one of the implications of the global spread of
commercial media and of the rise of “infotainment” as the primary genre of
commercial television.
– In this lecture, I argue that Berlusconi’s rise to power was not simply a product of
the fact that he controlled a large number of television outlets - and thus was able
to prevent opposing points of views from being heard -, although both of these
factors definitely mattered.
– I would rather focus on an often under-analyzed aspect of Berlusconi’s rise to
power. My main argument is that Berlusconi’s power resides in his capacity to
produce and frame political discourses in a whole new way, thus fundamentally
restyling the Italian political public sphere.
– In particular, in this lecture I am going to analyze Berlusconi the entrepreneur and
later the politician as if he was a successful brand, a type of “consumer product”
that he has skillfully packaged and that Italian audiences have bought.
– Twenty years of experience in managing consumer brands, through his television
network and his advertising agencies, have proved essential in his later political
career.
– Berlusconi’s corporate brands have circulated for years among different domains
– from entertainment, to retail to sports - to ultimately enter the realm of politics.
– Berlusconi has gained power by functioning as a unifying feature, a type of
“vector” linking brands in different sectors of society and drawing them together
under one larger meta-brand, Berlusconi himself.
– He eventually was able to develop allegiance to his very personality as the
incarnation of different values, such as entrepreneurship, sports, family values,
celebrity and self-realization.
– Therefore, the visual and linguistic form of commercial television; branding
strategies; and audience management were adapted to politics to create two types
of innovative political products:
1. First Berlusconi’s Forza Italia - an “consumers-oriented” political party
2. And later Berlusconi himself, the political star, the celebrity, the “one man
brand”.
– In my reading brands don’t simply identify products, but most importantly they
are ways of designing communities, which can later evolve into cultural and
eventually political identities.
– In second part of my analysis, I argue that association with different genres –such
soccer or entertainment - can also generate negative political effects.
– Failure and over-exposure of some of the Berlusconi brands have caused the
release of controversial information about him - as in the scandals that broke
between 2006 and 2009 - prompting publics to question the reliability of the
brand.
– I conclude by discussing whether such scandals can result in an irreparable crisis
for Berlusconi, or they will result in yet another transformation of its brand and of
the values associated to it.
2. Berlusconi’s rise to power
– Before entering the media business, Silvio Berlusconi was a real estate developer
and, during his youth, a singer in luxury cruise ships.
– Starting from a small cable station in Milan, Berlusconi’s Canale 5 (Channel 5)
emerged as an innovative force in the chaotic private sector in Italy, which had
been liberalized by the Constitutional Court in the late 70s.
– Entertainment-based programming and innovative scheduling techniques, the
acquisition of well known television talents and the availability of significant –
and controversial - amounts of capital put Canale 5 in the position to take over the
rest of the competition in a short period of time.
– The result was the birth of the network Fininvest, which became the monopolistic
force in commercial television and was therefore able to mount a very effective
competition against the public service television network RAI.
– The key to Fininvest’s success in commercial television was the synergy with the
advertising agency Publitalia - also owned by Berlusconi - which introduced a set
of important innovations in the collection and placement of television advertising.
– Due to nearly thirty years of state monopoly over broadcasting, television
advertising in Italy was a largely underdeveloped sector, compared to the US or to
other European countries.
– In 1986, Berlusconi purchased the then ailing soccer team AC Milan, which in a
short period of time – thanks to innovative management and the acquisition of
prized soccer stars - produced a series of striking victories, both nationally and
internationally.
– This contributed significantly to the rise in general awareness of Berlusconi as a
public figure, given the popularity of the sport among Italians.
– Also, Berlusconi since the early phase of his career had proved to be very skilled
in dealing with politicians. His channels later became hospitable to the politicians
that were supportive of commercial television.
– While seemingly steering clear from the model of politicized media typical of the
Italian public broadcasting tradition, Berlusconi’s channels had nonetheless an
important role in the evolution of political communication in Italy.
– The very language of politics on commercial television had evolved, adopting
most of the stylistic features of the medium, such as the emphasis on the visual
qualities of the candidates, the simplification of the discourse and the
contamination of diverse genres, such as infotainment programs.
– An important historical event was crucial in the entry of Berlusconi into politics:
in the early 1990s, the Italian political class was almost entirely wiped out by the
largest corruption scandal of the post-war period.
– The scandal opened a severe institutional crisis, and created the conditions for
drastic political changes. The post-war ideological order entered an irreversible
crisis. The Italian State was in disarray – both for larger geo-political
transformations and for the widespread corruption scandal.
– Also, Fininvest was suffering the most severe financial crisis of this history, and
the political protection of the party that had previously supported Berlusconi had
waned.
– This was the backdrop to Berlusconi’s decision to enter politics, in 1994. He did
so with a brand new party – Forza Italia – that he created in only 3 months, and
that he launched as if it was a consumer product, with an innovative marketing
campaign and massive media exposure.
– The brand new party was a post-ideological, flexible organization that could offer
in the simplified and catchy language of television – by then the preferred
medium for political communications - a neo-liberal agenda, an attention for the
core values of Italian society and the ability to engender a renewed sense of
national belonging.
– Nearly twenty year of experience with television, advertising and the marketing of
consumer products were the qualifications that made Berlusconi the most suitable
candidate to win the consensus of the Italian electorate.
– In 1994, contrarily to most expectations, Berlusconi was the political elections,
inaugurating a whole new way of doing politics in Italy.
3. Theorizing Berlusconi as a Brand
– Most commentators have focused on Berlusconi’s media ownership as the key
factor in his political success.
– However, I think that ownership of media should not be read solely as a
quantitative factor - the amount of channels he control, the exposure given to
his party – but also as a qualitative factor - as in the “style” of information,
discourses and representation circulating among his channels.
– I argue that if his ownership of television networks was useful to him, it was
also because television provided a model for creating discourses, engendering
beliefs and for managing the economy of attention through entertainment in a
society where media are increasingly central to social and cultural
participation.
– Such knowledge of the functioning of the media translated into a striking
capacity to generate and manage belief around his brands across multiple
markets: from television to soccer, and eventually into the political sphere.
– The entry of Berlusconi into politics thus represents a structural
transformation of the Italian political sphere.
– Berlusconis is essentially post-ideological: his actions in the media are
constantly orientated to create attention around his brands - with an
innovative, disruptive and entertaining language - rather than to produce a
rational coherent political message or ideology.
– He has imported the entertaining, attention-grabbing, pop language of
commercial television into the Italian political sphere, which used to be
managed by professional, highly ideological politicians speaking a complex,
often inaccessible political lingo.
– The structural transformations are not simply linguistic. Berlusconi’s earliest
political strategy involved, as previously mentioned, the adaptation of the
advertising company Publitalia into a network to set up the political party.
– It was the first case of an advertising agency becoming a think tank for a
political party.
– One of the first steps of the political strategy was to organize the new party
around a network of fan clubs, based on the existing network of AC Milan fan
clubs. The idea was to create communities of fans more than of traditional
political militants.
– Also, a type of casting run by his advertising company chose candidates for
the new party.
– Often candidates were chosen for their appearance as much as for their
political orientation. In the Berlusconi brand of politics, appearance and style
matter, and the capacity to manage appearance and style is a virtue rather than
a fault.
– It is important to point out that, Berlusconi’s design of communities of people
around his brands occurred in a society in crisis and in rapid transition, where
the sense of community changed from older religious and political groupings
to identities organized around media, sports and consumption
– Berlusconi’s main political innovation was thus to target specific “audiences
segments” susceptible to vote for his brand with the most accessible,
captivating language that could elicit their consensus.
– Furthermore, not only did Berlusconi turned his party and himself into brand,
but he also persuaded much of Italian public that branding and consumption
were a type of political ideology that could resolve Italy’s problems.
– He celebrates this process selling himself as a type of personification of the
consumer economy, the “magic product” that could solve all problems, and
the person who has satisfied his own desire, achieved wealth and celebrity and
could thus do so for other Italians.
– To mention of his most famous quotes: “And in this book of the memoirs of
Casanova, I found an illuminating idea: 'The man who desires something, if
he really desires it can even become king.”
4. Circulation of Forms between Private and Public Spheres
– As previously mentioned, one of the distinctive elements of Berlusconi’s
innovative political strategy is the restyling of the political language.
– One way of doing this was through the constant use of soccer, religious and
business metaphors, often mixed together.
– Berlusconi’s seductive ability operates by disrupting the Italian political
discourse by mixing symbols from different domains to create a new political
language.
– When he decided to enter politics he used the words: “Scendo in campo”
(Italian for “I am going to run onto the football field”).
– In 1994, on the same night when the Senate voted to accept Berlusconi’s first
government, AC Milan won the Champions League. That very night, his
network Italia Uno screened a newscast program which summed it all up,
showing the Senate voting confidence for the new government cut with his
with his soccer team running around the field in triumph.
– Such images have the ability to attract and mix different types of audiences,
and can be far more powerful than any technique of rational persuasion.
– The other set of metaphors Berlusconi has often used is religious. In one
occasion he said that the Lord anointed him, and he occasionally referred to
his assistants as “disciples”.
– When speaking at the Vatican, he compared the Pope to his football team:
“Your holiness let me say that you resemble my team Milan, you like us, go
around the world to announce a winning idea, God”. In another instance he
compared the Holy Roman Catholic church to a “faith business”.
– Berlusconi’s managerial and political success is related to the ability of stories
to travel from one context to another: television fictions into sports, soccer
stories to politics, his private life into the public sphere.
– This circulation of forms is central to the construction of value and meaning
for the Berlusconi’s brand of politics: value is created in television or soccer,
and then is transferred linguistically or visually into the field of politics.
– Furthermore, this rhetorical strategy of mixing genres has also the capacity to
change the relationship between private and public domains.
– However the economy of attention and the circulation of brand are not stable
mechanisms. They are in constant flux. The interchange of values does not
always produce positive results.
– Also, brands are based also on the work of the consumers producing their own
identities through the allegiance to the brand.
– The relation between consumers and brands is not stable, needs constant
management, and can be exposed to different types of crisis.
5. The brand in crisis: soccer fiascos.
– On the evening of May 25th 2005, Berlusconi’s successful combination of
television, soccer and politics peaked to an unprecedented climax.
– In Istanbul, his team AC Milan was leading 3-0 in the Champions League final
against Liverpool. Berlusconi, in the double role of Milan president and Italian
prime minister, was at the stadium. Canale 5, his own television channel, was
broadcasting the game live.
– The Berlusconi’s brand was in full display, and about to be awarded with an all-
round triumph. Then the unexpected happen.
– In the now infamous “six minutes of folly” Liverpool tied, and then ended up
winning at the penalty shots. The Milan players were in disbelief, the fans
shocked, and Berlusconi, visibly disappointed, commented: “Soccer is like
politics. You think you’ve won, but instead...”
– The Istanbul fiasco inaugurated a period of crisis for the AC Milan brand, and
consequently for Berlusconi as well. Such a spectacular defeat had tarnished AC
Milan’s aura of invincibility, halting nearly two decades of expansion and
success.
– Furthermore, in the spring of 2006, AC Milan, together with other leading Italian
soccer teams, went under investigation for match-rigging charges, resulting in a
severe penalization during the following season.
– In the next two years, trying to restore some of the allure to the team, Berlusconi
embarked on a campaign to revamp the AC Milan brand. The team purchased
several well-known but aging players, mostly for their star quality, including
British footballer and pop icon David Beckham.
– The crisis of the team revealed that Berlusconi’s greatest innovation, which is the
mixing of genres - such as the association between entertainment, soccer and
politics - could also yield negative effects. An image-based politics tied to the
success of a soccer team could backfire if the team did not win enough, or if the
team conduct was tainted by scandals.
– Furthermore, in the spring of 2009 the team management announced the intention
to sell the fans’ beloved Brazilian player Kakà.
– The fans vehemently protested, some even going as far as writing Kakà’s name on
the ballot for the local elections in the city of Milan, an explicit reference to
Berlusconi’s use of soccer for political ends.
– With respect to this, it is very significant that Berlusconi commented the Kaka’
tranfer as follows: “The sale of Kakà has costed me at least 2% of the votes in the
(2009) European Elections”.
– Interestingly, less than a year after the Istanbul debacle, Berlusconi lost the
political elections of 2006 to center-left candidate Romano Prodi.
– In the summer of 2006, Italy won the soccer World Cup, and Prodi celebrated the
victory in Rome with the players, among them several top AC Milan players.
– Berlusconi reportedly complained that Prodi had used the victory as an
advertisement for the government, and that he should have been the one
celebrating the World Cup victory.
– One might argue that Berlusconi felt betrayed by the very game he had
contributed to create. While the ‘soccer as politics, politics as soccer’ metaphor
and brand had begun to increasingly circulate within the Italian political sphere, it
had become harder for Berlusconi to retain full control over it.
6. The Berlusconi Brand, Up Close and Personal
– Reportedly, the soccer related setbacks and the defeat in the 2006 presidential
elections dented not only Berlusconi’s brand, but also his self-esteem.
– For one of first post-election public appearances, he distanced himself from
the unsuccessful domain of soccer, and chose a much more familiar genre and
audience.
– He appeared at the awarding of the 2007 Telegatti prize for the best television
shows, broadcasted by his own Canale 5 network.
– However, his public appearance signaled another critical transformation for
his well-crafted brand of public figure.
– During the event, Berlusconi flirted in a humorous way with several women,
including Mara Carfagna, former television starlet and later appointed
minister in the fourth Berlusconi government.
– A few days later – incidentally as the national media were covering a sex
scandal involving celebrities -, Berlusconi’s wife, Veronica Lario, wrote a
letter to a newspaper demanding apologies for her husband disrespectful
behavior.
– “From a public man, I demand public apologies”, the letter read.
– Berlusconi had always attempted to put forth the image of a family man,
loving father and devoted husband.
– However, what started surfacing in the aftermath of the Telegatti episode was
an hitherto publicly unknown side of Berlusconi, that is the much less
romantic picture of a powerful man with a promiscuous lifestyle.
– More controversially, it appeared that he had used his personality and position
to lure woman into sexual relations, often under the promise of professional
compensations.
– When first challenged by his wife in 2007, he immediately responded with a
letter of apology to the same newspaper. Shortly afterwards, however, pictures
of him portrayed in his summer residence with three young women appeared
on the cover of a popular Italian tabloid magazine.
– The cover ran the title “Berlusconi’s harem”, a term that started circulating
increasingly in the following journalistic accounts on Berlusconi’s private life,
irreparably damaging the brand of faithful and devoted family man that he had
crafted since entering politics.
– These incidents were symptomatic of a transformation in the Berlusconi’s
brand of political celebrity, one which he didn’t seem to be able to fully
control.
– Early in 2009, upon discovering that Berlusconi had attended the eighteenth
birthday of Noemi Letizia, an aspiring show-girl from Naples, Mrs Lario
accused her husband of “consorting with minors”. A few days later she filed a
request for divorce.
– Previously the Italian press had tended to ignore the private lives of politician
as being not newsworthy, but Berlusconi’s sex scandals signaled that the
increasing exposure of politicians’ private lives had over time created a whole
new dimension to politics in Italy.
– The final episodes of a difficult period for Berlusconi’s personal image were
from the leaking of intimate information from two types of unexpected
sources. One the one hand, there were the revelations of an escort - Patrizia
D’Addario - who handed to Italian prosecutors the audiovisual recordings of
two encounters she had in Berlusconi’s residence in Rome, one involving a
sexual intercourse.
– On the other hand, the images taken by paparazzi Antonello Zappadu, who
took pictures of Berlusconi’s private mansion in Sardinia showing scantily
clad young girls entertaining him and famous guests, including an entirely
naked Mirek Topolanek, former Czech prime minister.
– In light of this wave of scandals, some commentators have argued that the
mixture of personal and political spheres have become Berlusconi’s undoing.
– Coming from advertising and television, Berlusconi has been a pioneer in this
process of “celebrification” of politics.
– This has functioned as a virtuous circle, facilitating the aggregation of
different communities of public and audiences around the same brand, and the
circulation of values across diverse genres, as previously mentioned.
– But negative stories can circulate as well, affecting simultaneously multiple
domains, thus turning into a vicious circle.
– Is the most ambitious experiment in modern populism that the West has
known, based on the constant consecration of the leader before his people and
the removal of nearly every barrier between the public and the private, coming
to an end?
7. Political brands in the new media milieu: risks and opportunities
– One of the most striking excerpts from the recording of Patrizia D’Addario is
when the escort refers to Berlusconi’s bed as “Putin’s bed”.
– Allegedly, the bed in Berlusconi’s private residence in Rome was a gift by
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a personal friend and political partner of
Silvio Berlusconi.
– Berlusconi is well-known for having developed a unique type of international
diplomacy based on personal relationships.
– Berlusconi has often demonstrated a unique ability to captivate the sympathy of
his partners and allies by creating personalized situations with an emphasis on
spectacular or emotional elements.
– In 2008, he had former television celebrity and current minister Mara Carfagna
officially greet the visit of Brazilian president Lula, which he later personally
welcomed together with the Brazilian players of AC Milan.
– However, accidents like the picture of Topolanek naked in Berlusconi’s pool or
the presence of a paid prostitute in “Putin’s bed” may endanger the credibility of
such unique brand of international diplomacy.
– Can this type of “celebrity politics” be accepted nationally and internationally as
the brand of politics of a world leader?
– The main problem with the intermeshing between private and public sphere - or
the personalization of politics – is that its is increasingly difficult to sustain within
a mediated environment where the possibility of access to and dissemination of
private information have multiplied.
– With respect to this, it is very telling that Berlusconi has pushed aggressively for a
law restricting the spreading of information obtained through wiretappings during
criminal investigations.
– However, in the media-saturated space of contemporary society, an image-based
politics increasingly exposes itself to breaches and interferences not only by
means of prosecutors, but also by uncontrolled sources of information such as the
ubiquitous ‘paparazzi’ or even regular citizens.
– On the other hand, the Berlusconi brand has proved to be able to constantly
transform, and it could potentially exploit the moment of crisis to evolve into new
directions.
– In particular, the revelation of intimate details of Berlusconi’s life, such as the
exceptionally promiscuous conduct of a 73-year-old man, can popularize him
even further as somebody who can always fulfill his desires.
– From the religious tones used in his first political debut, to the more mundane
tones in more recent public appearances, Berlusconi has demonstrated an uncanny
ability to constantly move around different genres and types of discourse.
– As a result, he’s always able to maintain attention and generate communities of
followers around his brand.
– And Italian publics have so far proved always willing to follow him in the
creation of new forms and opportunities of expressions, from soccer to politics,
and eventually into world of gossip and scandal, where moral conducts and sexual
mores are exposed and challenged.
– Even after the recent scandals, Berlusconi still has solid approval ratings in Italy,
and remains one of Europe’s most popular political figures. Thanks to his large
media empire, and his ability to connect with the public sentiment, Berlusconi has
been able to remain at the centre of media attention.
– While the values of some his brands – such as soccer - seems to have diminished,
the recent scandals could also produce the unexpected result of reinforcing the
brand of Berlusconi as the individual, the extraordinary personality that with
confidence and talent can constantly win the competition for attention and fulfill
his ambitions and desires.
– Now the communities he has created could turn against the figure that created
them, using information from the private sphere to dismiss him as embarrassing
and corrupt.
– Or they could also accept it as one more unexpected mutation of a familiar brand.
In the new media milieu of reality television and the social networking, saturated
by individualism and narcissistic self-exposure, Berlusconi the “one-man-brand”
may still be just the ideal representative of its public.