Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni, the Mondadori Group brand, leader in the entertainment segment, with an overall average audience of 5.2 million readers and users (source: Audipress 2017/I + Audiweb TDA Average March-May 2017), presents its new digital Guida Tv, at www.sorrisi.com/guidatv.

Always one of the most interesting content features for the title’s audience, the brand’s new Guida Tv reinforces and expands the offer of information about TV programmes with a practical, useful and complete  online tool to help users find what they want to see in a continuously evolving television landscape.

Sorrisi’s new Guida Tv provides a constantly updated list of 130 channels, with more than 100,000 programme profiles with an innovative design. The new home page shows the programmes divided by category, making it easier and more immediate to use, also thanks to time slot search keys (“today”, “now”, “this afternoon”, “this evening”, “tomorrow”) and the close-up  remote control functionality to select quickly and easily an individual channel or different platforms – free, premium and Sky – making it easy for users to navigate, also from a mobile device.

Also the concept of the Guida Tv is new, thanks to a clear division of categories and genres, offering users suggestions and connections between different content, for example tv series, classified as comedy or drama, kids programmes, sitcoms, history, fantasy, police procedurals, and thrillers. In addition to scheduling details, the new Guida Tv also provides information about plots, casts, video clips and links to sites and social networks.

Based on an integrated system that brings together the magazine, web site and social media, users will also find recommendations by the editorial team of Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni identified by the label “Must see”, a guarantee of quality. The content of Guida Tv is further enhanced by related articles on the web site Sorrisi.com and, in conjunction with prime time talent shows, with live background details on the site and of Sorrisi’s Facebook page.

With 133 votes from the popular jury, Donatella Di Pietrantonio’s novel L’ Arminuta (Einaudi) wins the 55th edition of the Campiello Prize.

As on other occasions, the readers’ opinion has reversed the shortlist positions decreed by the technical jury, chaired this year by Ottavia Piccolo, of the prize for fiction promoted by Confindustria Veneto.

The novel by Donatella Di Pietrantonio has won over the works of Stefano Massini (Qualcosa sui Lehman, Mondadori, 99 votes), Mauro Covacich (La città interiore, La Nave di Teseo, 25 votes), Alessandra Sarchi (La notte ha la mia voce, Einaudi, 13 votes) and Laura Pugno (La ragazza selvaggia, Marsilio, 12 votes).

 Effective from August 1^st, Mondadori, which includes paperback imprint Oscar and children’s imprint Mondadori Ragazzi, has appointed Maria B. Campbell Associates UK Ltd. as their UK scout. 

Mondadori is the eponymous house within the Mondadori Libri Group and the largest trade publisher in Italy. 

Founded in 2013, Maria B Campbell UK is the London affiliate of Maria B. Campbell Associates Inc., the New York based literary scouting agency that has been scouting the US market for Mondadori since 1977. The London office is led by director Katie McCalmont, senior scout Naja Baldwin and children’s scout Gemma Trevisani. They scout for publishers from 11 countries and, with the US office, are the global scout for Netflix. 

As of 9^th August, the team will be based at Somerset House, New Wing, The Strand, London WC2R 1LA.

Giallo Zafferano, the Mondadori Group’s online leader in the cookery segment – with over 6 million unique users every month (source: Audiweb View, Total Audience, January-May 2017), a fan base of more than 5.2 million users and an app that has recorded almost 7 million downloads – confirms its appeal on both newsstands, with an average annual circulation of 200,000 copies and social media.

These results are based on Italy’s leading cookery web site’s ability to engage its audience, in a continuous interconnection between the web, social networks and the printed magazine, as can be seen from the extraordinary participation in the making of the magazine edited by Laura Maragliano, who leaves the choice of the magazine’s cover to the brand’s audience.

This means that the readers are active protagonists in the creation of every issue. In fact, every month, Giallo Zafferano uses Facebook to propose two possible covers for the magazine and users are invited to express a preference using the standard Facebook tools “like” and “love”. In April, this initiative involved more than 1 million people, with and average of 5,000 votes for each issue. Among the most popular challenges was the May cover, “Four pasta dishes to prepare in a flash” against ”Six varieties of sandwich”, which was the victor in the meal par excellence in Italy, with 55% of the votes, out of a total of more than 12,000. The same making of mechanism was used to select the cover of the latest issue of Giallo Zafferano, dedicated to “8 spaghetti dishes for the Ferragosto national holiday”, chosen by 74% of the voters over the competing “Ferragosto picnic “.

But user engagement doesn’t stop at the choice of the cover. The magazine’s readers are also offered the opportunity to vote for their favourite recipe of the month published in the section entitled “A three-way challenge“, in which the three section chiefs of Giallo Zafferano battle it out on a common culinary theme. The July competition, which focused on pasta salads, also received over 1,000 votes and declared Aurora’s “Farfalle alla rucola” the winner. Readers and users also enthusiastically participate in the contest organised by Giallo Zafferano. For each challenge more than 100 recipes are sent in by users with the aim of winning the award for the best dish based on three ingredients proposed by the editorial team and published in the subsequent issue. The latest issue of Giallo Zafferano, on newsstands now, features the winning dish of the contest with August’s three ingredients: green olives, chicken and red onions.

Huge success for Spy, the Mondadori Group weekly that focuses on the Italian star system, that made its first appearance on newsstands on 23 June.

On the strength of a distinctive identity and positioning, compared with what’s available on the market, and thanks to a tantalising and biting style that remains always conscious of the importance of editorial quality, Spy is aimed at a broad and interested target that has rewarded the formula from the beginning. In fact, each of the first three weekly issues has sold over 300,000 copies. Excellent results have also been recorded on the advertising front, with over 150 pages for the first three issues and the presence of all product sectors.

Spy, based on an idea by Alfonso Signorini, is edited by Massimo Borgnis. Each week Spy digs deep inside the life of celebrities, in line with its claim claim to be “The magazine that minds other people’s business”, and revealing unusual but always current stories and focusing on the personalities of the moment that enthuse the Italian public. The next issue, on newsstands from Friday 14 July, with a cover price of €1, will feature revelations about the reignited love story between Paola Barale and Raz Degan, unpublished behind the scenes coverage of the Isoardi-Salvini betrayal and the new man who has bewitched Maria De Filippi.

On Thursday 6 July, in the captivating space of the Ninfeo of the Villa Giulia in Rome, Paolo Cognetti won the 71^st Premio Strega with his nove Le otto montagne (The Eight Mountains). The author, who also won the 4^th edition of the Premio Strega Giovani 2017, an award for young writers, clearly moved and delighted by this prestigious recognition, dedicated the prize to the mountains, “because it’s an area that has been abandoned, forgotten and destroyed, often by the city, and I decided that I wanted to write about that. I have tried to be a sort of spokesman, a go-between, for the mountains, the plain and the city, that all seem very far away. I also try to write these stories for people who don’t know the mountains and live too far away from them, trying, in some way, to save the world I live in.”  “Being here,” he added, “is like a dream come true, not so much a dream of winning a prize, as being a writer and being able to live on my work.”

From the beginning, Le otto montagne has been a literary phenomenon, something that was made clear by the competition among the publishers who wanted to publish it around the world. In fact, the novel has already been translated into more than 30 languages.

Le otto montagne tells the story of Pietro, a solitary and somewhat argumentative city boy, and his relationship with his parents, his friend Bruno and, above all, with the mountains. From the stage of the Strega prize the author reminded the audience that nature is a word used by people who live in cities.”

In their lean, hard and wild beauty, the mountains leave a permanent mark on the soul, an imprint on those who are born there and those who love them. It becomes a category of the spirit, and even when one leaves, in search of a more comfortable and easier place, you can never really break away. All it takes is a sound, a smell, and you are sucked straight back in. This is what happens to the characters in the novel. They just can’t manage without, the come and go, but never really leave.

It is a story of “fathers and sons, of abandoning civilisations, of the freedom of living wild. I have always kept with me the memory of the great happiness I experienced as a boy in the woods. Whatever destiny is, it lives in the mountains we have above our heads.” (Paolo Cognetti).

This week sees the launch of Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni Enigmistica, the first quiz and games weekly from Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni, edited by Aldo Vitali.

The new magazine, which is aimed at all crossword, quiz and games enthusiasts, carried the Sorrisi logo, a brand that is a point of reference in the world of entertainment, and market leader with a readership of 2,372,169 (source: Audipress 2017/I) and a circulation of 559,310 copies (source: Ads April 2017).

The first issue will be on newsstands from Tuesday 4 July, exceptionally a s free gift for readers of Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni, Telepiù e Guida Tv, with a total print run of 1 million copies.

The second issue will go on sale, as a stand-alone product, on Tuesday 11 July, with a special launch cover price of €0.50 cents.

“For ages readers have been asking for a magazine featuring crosswords, quizzes and puzzles. This is why we have put together a new weekly that in addition to all of these also retains its link with Sorrisi and the world of entertainment, which is a feature of some of the new games. And with the arrival of the holidays we wanted to offer a gift to all our readers, because there’s nothing better than exercising the mind for relaxing and improving the memory,”  declared the editor of Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni Enigmistica, Aldo Vitali.

With a total of 48 pages in full colour, and a format of 19×23.5 centimetres, which is practical both for the home and outdoors, the magazine will every week feature 100 games: ranging classics such as general-knowledge crosswords, quizzes, sudoku, word-frames, enigmas, and humorous cartoons, as well as new games based on television, music, the cinema: “Telequiz”, “Le canzonissime” and “Ciak si gira”.

A special communication campaign has bee organised for the launch using TV, newspapers, weeklies, radio, the web, point of sale posters and visibility at leading large-scale retail outlets.

The creativity, based on the claim “Il Big Bang dell’Enigmistica, la nuova origine del divertimento intelligente”, was developed by the agency White Label.

Editorial development by Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni Enigmistica and managed by PRS Editore.

On newsstands from tomorrow, Friday 23 June, Spy, a new magazine that will reveal the secrets of the Italian star system.

This new launch will expand the Mondadori Group’s portfolio of brands with a popular weekly characterised by a distinctive formula and positioning compared with what is currently on the market. Spy will be the only magazine to reveal the un-confessed and un-confessable secrets of celebrities, in a tantalising and biting style.

“The recent months have been a very exciting period for our magazines. We are the market leader, with a market share of around 32% and our portfolio of brands is continuing to expand,” declared Carlo Mandelli, the Mondadori Group’s general manager of Magazines Italy. We have launched a new magazine – Giallo Zafferano – re-launched others, alongside growth in digital where we are now Italy’s leading publisher with around 17 users per month. Spy will further extend our offer with a new product, aimed at a broad base of readers, interested, as the magazine’s claim clearly states, in “a magazine that puts its nose into other people’s business”, and discovering, in a tantalising and biting style, what goes on behind the scenes in the lives of TV personalities, the stars of TV series and the protagonists of reality and talent shows.

“Spy is the result of a project that we have developed with the aim of offering, in addition to Chi – Italy’s leading people magazine –  an innovative new weekly with a strong identity, but always faithful to the editorial quality that characterises all of the Group’s brands,”  Mandelli concluded.

Spy is based on an idea by Alfonso Signorini, the editor of the weekly Chi: “Spy has a dual mission: to inform and entertain. It is a decidedly well informed magazine, thanks to an editorial team and collaborators that have spent their lives behind the scenes or working also, though not only, in the entertainment world, though not only,  and hearing, every day, news and “rumours” from the inside. The news and rumours that fill the magazine, from the first to the last page. And doing so in an entertaining way, not taking itself too seriously and not being the fountain of absolute truth, clear in the knowledge that the world is never just black and white, but an infinite range of colours,” said Signorini.

Edited by Massimo Borgnis, Spy digs into the life of celebrities, revealing unexpected stories that focus on the personalities of the moment who most enthuse the Italian audience. Among the topics in the first issue: Stefano De Martino is the new sex symbol of the summer and Kate’s red light friendship that is making the Queen tremble. But also: The media war between Maria De Filippi and Stefano Gabbana and Corona is released from prison, marries Silvia Provvedi and changes his life.

In addition to the news, inside Spy, readers will find columns and features dedicated to cooking, fashion, beauty and TV programmes.

A massive launch plan has been put together to support the new magazine: for the first four weeks, Spy will have a total print run of 2 million copies, alongside a communication campaign starring Alfonso Signorini.

The TV commercial – which will be aired throughout the summer – with a surprising and ironic tone, sees Alfonso Signorini during an original “confession”, that he feels the need to reveal, in the new Spy, all of the VIPs’ most hidden secrets.

The campaign, developed by Twin Studio, is articulated across various media.

Spy will enjoy major communication support with a multi-brand approach on all media: in addition to TV (Mediaset channels), an important radio campaign (R101, Virgin, Radio Italia, 105) is planned, as well as the Mondadori Group’s print titles, and promotion at points of sale, on the web and social networks.

Digital communication is strong with a video strategy with a display campaign on Mondadori’s women’s websites with 24 million impressions and buzz marketing activities on Facebook with a number of celebrity teaser videos.

Videos, revelations, and previews will be shared on the Spy fanpage www.facebook.com/SpyMagazineIT

After the launch. at €0.50 €, the cover price of Spy will be €1.

“With Spy, Mediamond, the advertising sales company, will extend its offer also to the most popular product categories, which occupy a highly active segment,” said Davide Mondo, chief executive of Mediamond. “The market has responded very positively to the launch of Spy. The first issue has collected 54 advertising pages and we already have a great response for the 3 subsequent issues. This confirms our idea that Spy is the right product to complete our already extensive portfolio,” Mondo concluded.

Mondadori Retail, Italy’s most extensive network of book shops with 600 outlets. is aiming to grow further with a development plan for the opening of new Mondadori Bookstores across the country, and offering opportunities to become an affiliate of the  chain.

The business model that characterises the Mondadori Group’s is franchising. With over 550 affiliated outlets across Italy, Mondadori Retail offers a capillary coverage able to reach customers even in the smallest towns. The core assortment of books, is supported by a range of other products, such as music, films, stationery and toys, for an all-round cultural offer.

The Mondadori Retail affiliation proposal is aimed at entrepreneurs with a great passion for books and reading, and who want to become protagonists of the cultural life of their town and able to enhance the relationship with customers and the surrounding area.

“Our franchisees can rely on a prestigious brand, consolidated know-how and all of the experience of the leading bookstore group with a solid image built up over the years that is a reference point for culture and entertainment. Our bookstore development plan foresees the expansion of our presence to the most interesting locations, including the region of Puglia, with the aim of bringing our offer even closer to the public,” declared Leonardo Gazza, Mondadori Retail’s sales director for both directly managed and franchised stores.

Affiliates in Puglia will receive all-round support from Mondadori Retail, from the search for and selection of locations to the layout, the definition of the assortment and training, as well as a framework agreement with banks.

To this end, a collaboration arrangement for the region of Puglia has been organised with the Banca Popolare di Bari, which has very deep roots in the area in which Mondadori Retail wants to develop, in order to provide a tailor-made offer, and making use of all of the location-specific financing opportunities.

The Mondadori Retail affiliation proposal will be presented during four Open Days: on Wednesday 21 June in Altamura (c/o Hotel Fuori Le Mura​ – via Maestri del lavoro, 5); Thursday 22 June in Barletta (c/o BEST WESTERN Hotel dei Cavalieri – via Foggia, 40); Wednesday 28 June in Santa Maria al Bagno – Nardò (c/o Grand Hotel Riviera – CDSHotels – via E. Filiberto, 172-174); and Thursday 29 June in Brindisi (c/o Grande Albergo Internazionale – Viale Regina Margherita, 23.). The events will take place between 5 and 7 pm.

For information and bookings: roberta.sambinello@mondadori.it – www.mondadoriretail.com