Media

Grazia, the Mondadori Group weekly that is a reference point in fashion and an authentic voice in current affairs, is celebrating its 80^th anniversary by maintaining all of the passion and urgency  it started with.

First published in Italy in 1938, today Grazia  is the only 100% Italian fashion magazine sold across the world, from France and Great Britain, and from Mexico to China and Australia.

The title has accompanied generations of women thanks to a unique formula that combines fashion, current affairs and news; as well as investigations and background profiles, on issues of greatest interest, along with con exclusive features, a visionary style supported by great photographers and interviews with world-famous personalities, thanks to a continuous ongoing dialogue with leading protagonists around the world and a special relationship with celebrities, top models and designers.

Strong points that have enabled the iconic brand to evolve into a multi-channel system that is appreciated by the most dynamic and sophisticated readers and digital communities as the ideal interpreter of Made in Italy.

Today Grazia, which is published in 5 continents with 20 editions, reaches a total of more than 17 million readers with monthly sales of over 10 million copies, 35 million unique users every month and 13 million followers on social media, confirming its position as one of the preferred advertising vehicles for upscale fashion and cosmetics companies.

THE CELEBRATORY EVENT

This evening an event will take place in Milan to celebrate the 80^th anniversary of Grazia, the culmination of a series of special initiatives, organised during the year by the Italian magazine edited by Silvia Grilli with the hashtag #Graziayoungsince1938, to celebrate the history of the iconic brand of the Mondadori Group.

The event, which is being held at the prestigious Rotonda della Besana, will begin with cocktails before proceeding with an exclusive show inspired by the values that have made Grazia a distinctive brand that continues to evolve: Made in Italy, internationalism, creativity, elegance and sustainability.

Joining Ernesto Mauri, Chief Executive Officer of Mondadori Group, Silvia Grilli, editor of the magazine and Carla Vanni, director of the Grazia International Network, will be a range of Italian a world-famous international guests including: Pixie Lott,  Ireland Basinger Baldwin, daughter of Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin, Patty Pravo, Eleonora Abbagnato, the soprano Carly Paoli, Victoria Cabello, Filippa Lagerback, Alessia Marcuzzi and journalist Mia Ceran.

The exceptional “godmother” of the event will be Nadège, one of the most famous top models of the golden age of fashion and one of that small group of “super models” that revolutionised the fashion system, transforming themselves from mannequins into women with strong personalities able to enchant entire generations.

The actor Alessandro Gassman will receive a special prize for an outstanding career of over 30 years and social commitment, both in Italy and abroad, a manifestation of the values of excellence and responsibility that have always inspired Grazia’s journalistic mission. The special musical guest is Ofenbach, the French duo that has achieved world renown with their music with the hits Be Mine (three Platinum Discs in Italy) and Italy’s most played track on the radio in 2017, Katchi (Platinum Disc) and Party, and the new single Paradise.

The event has the support of the City of Milan Milano and the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, and coincides with the opening of the Milan Fashion Week.

During the evening it will also be possible to admire Terzo Paradiso by Michelangelo Pistoletto, a work which, on the occasion of the 80^th anniversary of Grazia, was created by the artist using only recovered copies of the magazine to underline an eco-sustainable promise and reaffirm the role of the printed page in contemporary society: to inform and stimulate thought.

The installation will remain open to visitors of the historic site of the Rotonda della Besana during the whole of the Milan Fashion Week, which ends on 21 September.

CELEBRATING – MADE IN GRAZIA: A COLLECTORS’ ISSUE

Grazia also wanted to recognise Italian beauty and talent with a special issue Celebrating – Made in Grazia, a coffee table book featuring pages with interviews, stories and extraordinary images dedicated to the biggest Italian talents and international culture and genius as seen by important authors from our country.

The most famous models shot by celebrated photographers, such as Bianca Balti photographed by Gia Coppola, stories about the lives and work of our designers, the men and women of cinema, stars from the worlds of music, dance, sport, architecture, art, design and literature. Personalities form a whole range of areas, together to tell some unexpected tales in conversation such as those between Mika and Pierpaolo Piccioli, Diego Della Valle and Pierfrancesco Favino, Miuccia Prada and Alice Rohrwacher, or protraits of Roberto Bolle and Donatella Versace by writers such Marco Missiroli and Teresa Ciabatti.

The special collectors’ issue also an overview of Grazia covers form yesterday and today, by leading Italian artists such as Marcello Maloberti, Mimmo Paladino, Paola Pivi and Nico Vascellari.

Celebrating – Made in Grazia, in Italian and English,  is on sale from 18 September on newsstands and selected bookstores in major international cities.

GRAZIA GLOBAL CONFERENCE 2018

The celebrations for the 80^th anniversary of Grazia will continue on Tuesday 18 September with the Grazia Global Conference 2018.

A working conference at the Palazzo Mondadori, the Group’s headquarters, that will bring together the director of the Grazia International Network Carla Vanni and the managers and partners of the 20 editions of the magazine from around the world (Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Holland, the UK, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, China, Korea, Morocco and Australia).

The meeting will feature special testimony from Rosita, Angela, Luca and Francesco Missoni; Robert Triefus, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer,  Brand and Customer Engagement  of Gucci and Brunello Cucinelli, chairman and chief executive of the brand of the same name, and will also offer an opportunity to discuss trends and future scenarios for fashion in the digital age, with speeches by Carla Buzasi, Managing Director of WGSN and Giuliano Noci, professor of Strategy and Marketing and Pro-rector of the Chinese Territorial Hub of the Politecnico di Milano.

Everything is ready for the London Design Festival, which will take place in the British capital from 15 to 23 September 2018. For the third year in a row, INTERNI, along with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in London, will be present for the launch of an important event: A Reflection on Contemporary Italian Design and Architecture (Progetto e destino. Una riflessione su design e architettura oggi in Italia). Five events featuring some of the most representative exponents of Italian design. The series of events, which will continue until  January 2019, aims to focus on the role that Italian creativity can play at the international level.

“When you don’t design”, is the title of the first conversation with Martino Gamper, designer and Johanna Agerman Ross, design and architecture curator at the V&A Museum, who will discuss the value of contemporary Italian design: its languages, aspirations and ideals. The recovery of a relationship with crafts and the tension with the industrial and technological activities of the discipline, the relationship with both the past and the future and the aesthetic and social value of the object in the century of global culture, but, above all, the sense of Italian identity in the world of contemporary design.

The event will be opened by Marco Delogu, director of the Istituto di Cultura Italiana, and Roberto Luongo, director of the Italian Trade Agency.

The event, which is open to the public, will take place on Tuesday 18 September at 7.15 pm, at the headquarters of L’Istituto Italiano di Cultura in 39 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8NX, which will be transformed for the occasion into a unique stage. The subsequent two events will take place at the IIC on Thursday 18 October at 6.15 pm with Piero Lissoni, on Lissoni Associati, in conversation with Deyan Sudjic, and Monday 26 November at 7 pm with Alfonso Femia, Atelier(s) Alfonso Femia, in conversation with Matteo Vercelloni.

With thanks for collaboration to: Ristorante Granaio, Baglioni Hotels, CitizenM Hotels.

For more information: www.internimagazine.it

The Mondadori Group brands are among the protagonists of the “Milano Licensing Day”, an event that brings together the leading operators in the licensing and brand extension market, taking place on 13 September at the Hotel Nhow in Via Tortona.

Among the opportunities offered by the magazines of the Mondadori Group, the Italian leader in the sector, is a licensing programme that above all involves the titles in the kids and cooking segments. Products under license and formats in franchising in line with the philosophy, identity and brand assets, that drive the encounter between demand and offer that for years has been the essential ingredient of the Milano Licensing Day.

An innovative offer of content and services that circulate around the Mondadori Group magazines; not just a basic printed product, but rather an authentic integrated communication system that makes the most of the editorial expertise, by investing every day on the web and social networks, promoting events around the country and involving communities of readers with a wide range of initiatives.

Heading up the new proposals will once again be the Focus Junior “system”. During the year, the brand, which is an established point of reference in the world of children and young readers, has reached a number of licensing agreements with prestigious brands, leading to a range of quality products: from personalised Easter eggs with Kinder Gran Sorpresa to the flowpack miniatures produced by Dynit, and from the large-format exercise books of BM Arti Grafiche to the cards and diaries of Giochi Preziosi.

Also featuring at the Milano Licensing Day will be forthcoming books, the latest project developed by Focus Junior: from 30 October young readers from the age of 6 will have the opportunity of discovering a large number of science-related curiosities in “Un mondo di record” and to discover the incredible diversity of our planet thanks to “Un mondo di mappe”.

A sort of “fun science” that is spreading across Italy, thanks to franchised educational and play spaces carrying the Focus Junior label.  After a made-to-measure bedroom produced by Cgfdesign, just a few days ago, the first Focus Junior Play Lab was opened in Lecco; a space designed to satisfy the natural curiosity of children and early teens with science laboratories, and drawing, cooking and digital journalism workshops and which, in addition to the space and equipment also offers a teaching plan conceived by the editorial team, the training of operators, a communication plan and a range of activities in the local area.

The strength of the Mondadori Brands is confirmed also in the kitchen, thanks to initiatives organised by Sale&Pepe, which with its franchised cooking school every day offers a new and exciting way to experience restaurants and their protagonists being guided by passion and skill. Set up in Milan in 2015, the Sale&Pepe cooking school has a broad selection of courses for adults and children, events for individuals and companies, showcooking demonstrations and themed-evenings. It is a format that can be reproduced across the entire country two ways: from a traditional space equipped with a chefs kitchen and work benches to itinerant “cooking stations” in public spaces, with the brand that offers in every case the opportunity to transform a love for food into a remunerative job.

Spy is celebrating its first anniversary with a range of new features, aiming to satisfy its readers even more with an increasingly useful, rich and complete product.

Starting with the issue on newsstands this week, the Mondadori Group magazine dedicated to the secrets of the star system is expanding its content with new features and columns by some of the most popular faces on television, together with a redesign of the title’s layout.

“One year from its newsstand launch of, Spy is giving itself a new look and new format: in fact, in addition to gossip, readers will discover news articles and lifestyle features, as well as a number of new columns by well-know TV personalities,” declared Massimo Borgnis, editor of Spy, adding, “Plus a surprise for cooking enthusiasts: recipes curated by GialloZafferano, Italy’s most celebrated cooking web site.”

From this week there will be a multiplication of the regular appointments in the pages of Spy, with tips on household financial management from Titti and Flavia from Detto Fatto, advice on insurance and pensions form the Tg5 expert Bruno Benelli and medical details from Dr. Pierluigi Spada from the RiaTre programme Tutta Salute. Space will also be given to taking care of plants, with suggestions from Luca and Daniela Sardella, the presenters of Parola di pollice verde on Rete 4 and a new cooking section with recipes from GialloZafferano, the most popular cooking web site in Italy.

Every week the heart of Spy will remain the stories, scoops and behind the scenes coverage of celebrities and personalities form the world of TV radio and show business that excite and enthuse Italians, reported in the unmistakeable and well-informed style that characterises the magazine. The look of the title has also been upgraded to improve readability and clarity. And finally, there will of course also be sections dedicated to television programmes, fashion and beauty.

The launch of the new Spy is being supported by an articulated communication plan across a range of media: from a TV commercial (on air on the Mediaset channels, Discovery, Fox) and radio spot (on R101, Radio Italia, R105, RMC and Radio Subasio), print media, the Group’s web sites, as well as sales points and large-scale retail outlets.
The connecting thread of the advertising campaign will be the claim “Peccato non leggerlo!” (It would be a sin not to read it!), that has distinguished the magazine since its launch.

Spy is on newsstands at the special price of €0.50.

The Mondadori Group is Italy’s leading publisher on the web: this is the assessment of the latest Comscore data for May, which show that Mondadori properties are out in front with a total audience of 28.7 million unique users per month, a rise of 22% compared with the same period of last year. At the same time, market reach is up to almost 76% of Italy’s digital population.

The Mondadori Group boasts Italy’s richest and most diversified digital offer.
With over 30 authoritative and successful brands on the web, the company is also leader in the high-value vertical sectors, such as women, food, wellness, fashion and education, thanks to the 16 million unique users of Donna Moderna, the more than 12 million of GialloZafferano, the 5.8 million of Starbene, and over 3 million of Grazia as well as the 9.3 million users of Studenti.it.

This result has been achieved thanks to the development path followed by the Group’s digital magazine area since the acquisition of Banzai Media until today.
All of the main sites in the portfolio have been involved in an ongoing renewal and updating process, including Donna Moderna, which has a new look nad feel to give users an even more immediate and intuitive experience; Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni with its new digital Guida Tv making it easier to navigate through a continually evolving television panorama; Grazia, through its Grazia Factory project, which presents and gives voice to the most interesting emerging influencers in fashion, beauty and lifestyle; and the redesign of Nostrofiglio and Panoramauto, with enhanced content and a more structured approach to the channels.

To all this should be added the recent additions of Oroscopo.it, Italy’s leading astrology site, and Design D’Autore, the international social system. leader in the design sector, with which the Group has consolidated its positioning in the women and design sectors, expanding also the audience on social networks, where the presence of Mondadori brands is similarly strong, with over 20.2 million fans on Facebook over 46 pages, up by 56% compared with the same month of the previous year.

From Monday 9 July, Annalisa Monfreda, editor of the weeklies Donna Moderna and Starbene, will take on also the role of editor of Tustyle.

At the same time, Paola Salvatore, the current deputy editor of Tustyle, will expand her responsibilities following her appointment as fashion editor of Donna Moderna and Starbene.

This new organisational structure will give Tustyle, Donna Moderna and Starbene an innovative, cross-over position: on the one hand thanks to specific editorial skills, the fashion content offer for readers of the three weeklies will be enriched, while, on the other, it will be easier to enhance the relationship with interlocutors in the mass market advertising sector.

An all time record Maturità (the Italian high school exam) season for Studenti.it, the Mondadori Groiup brand that is a point of reference for Italian students. The site, which this year is celebrating its 20^th anniversary, chalked up its best ever traffic figures during the recently concluded period of written exams, confirming its leadership in the education segment.

In the 3-day period from the eve of the exams until the second written paper, Studenti.it recorded double-digit growth, during the live marathon from 19 to 21 June, reaching 2.3 million unique users; there was also a particularly significant boom in access from mobile devices, which in the same days accounted for 73% of the site’s total traffic (source: Google Analytics).

Also of significance was  triple-digit growth on Facebook. The “Maturità 2018” group, coordinated by the Studenti.it team, saw an authentic flood of registrations, reaching a total of 42,000 subscribers (+280% compared with 2017): exam candidates who up until the “night before the exams” continued to interact with each other looking for help and, in turn, offering their support to their peers. Overall, thanks to constant activity on the fan page, in the week of the written exams, Studenti.it content reached 2.4 million users, a figure that rises to 3.8 million when the data for the last month is taken into account. Also in this case an extraordinary performance compared with 2017, with increases of more than 250% (source: Facebook Insights).

So, an increasingly social and digital maturità, made possible also thanks to the quality of video content: in addition to live feeds with experts, psychologists and tutors in preparation for the exams, the big new feature this year was the involvement of webstars and youtubers such as Favij, Frank Matano, Sofia Viscardi and Salvatore Aranzulla, who talked about their experiences with the maturità through live specials on social media and popular video clips. In fact, during the last month, including the exam days, the Studenti.it platforms (Facebook, YouTube and the web site) recorded 4 million video views.

The Chi Summer Tour, an event created by Chi, Italy’s most widely read people magazine edited by Alfonso Signorini, returns this summer to 4 very trendy and chic locations. Following the enormous success of previous editions, this year the tour will have a range of new features to entertain the many guests and the public.

The tour kicks off on Saturday 30 June on the beach of Mondello in Palermo, before proceeding on  8 July to Cortina d’Ampezzo, on 15 July to Forte del Marmi, ending up on 21 Juli in Rimini.

This year the Chi Summer Tour will travel round Italy with a personalised truck that will convert into a stage from which the editor Alfonso Signorini and his guests will animate the squares of the locations involved.  This year’s four stages will provide an opportunity to get a closer look at the world of the Mondadori Group magazine, to meet the editor and the celebrities participating in the event.

There is much anticipation for the talk show, conducted by the editor Alfonso Signorini, with some of the best known faces from the world of entertainment who will talk live about themselves to the audience, providing also some gossip, curiosities as well as what’s new and trending in the summer of 2018. From Valeria Marini to Giuseppe Sottile, and also Cecilia Capriotti Giovanni Ciacci, Francesca Valtorta, Romina Mondello, Iago Garcia and Antonio Spagnolo. At the same time, the Chi truck will also host moments dedicated to beauty and a show-cooking by Alice Balossi, pastry chef and cake maker, blogger and TV presenter.

The appointment at all 4 locations will be at around 7 pm in the heart of each place visited by the Chi Summer Tour (with the exception of Cortina, that will start at around 5 pm).

With this format, the advertising sales company Mediamond offers companies the possibility of communication projects and events that allow them to present their stories in original and valuable contexts.

All updates concerning the Chi Summer Tour will be available on the magazine’s social media profiles: Instagram chimagazineit and Facebook www.facebook.com/chimagazine and by following  the hashtag #chisummertour.

The 20^th June sees the start of the final high school diploma exams in Italy, commonly known as the “maturità”, and once again this year Studenti.it – the Mondadori Group brand leader in Education sector market with 4 million unique users per  month (source: Audiweb, January 2018) – is working with students to help them pass this important moment.

Studenti.it boasts 20 years of experience having been launched in 1998 as a pass-notes database to help students to exchange study materials: the site has grown alongside the Millennials and Generation Z, young people now aged between 10 and 20, who have never known a world without the internet and that are the core audience for the brand. Since the beginning, the site has seen its offer expand enormously, with the addition of content edited by researchers and university professors, a constant flow of news and information about the world of schools, dissertation summaries, exam tools and simulations and a range of other supporting materials, making a total of some 50,000 documents in the archive.

In a now consolidated tradition, also this year, in the days of the written exams (20, 21 and 25 June) Studenti.it will run non-stop live coverage of the maturità from 7am to 8pm: with real-time updates and comments from experts and tutors in different subjects who will provide assessments of the outlines proposed by the Miur, as well as developing simulations to be published at the end of each exam. On the field, the Studenti.it team will interview students outside the schools, before and after the exams, to gather immediate reactions and comments to be added to the flow of news on the site.

Listening to the views and needs of those directly affected is part of the constant efforts made by Studenti.it to get as close as possible to the maturità: for example, online surveys using questionnaires on the site and on social media have in recent months brought together the opinions of more than 52,000 students facing the maturità this year on various issues related to the exam (study techniques, the use of technology, progress assessments, managing nerves, “outlines”), surveys that have been picked up and reproduced by local and national newspapers, as well as on the radio and the web.

An important new feature this year was the involvement of popular webstars, such as Frank Matano, Favij, Sofia Viscardi and Salvatore Aranzulla, who took part in live interviews and video spots on Facebook with a reach that so far has totalled 1 million people: the participants shared news and anecdotes about their experiences of the maturità, along with useful advice and tips for getting through the exam and also dealing with what happens after the exam, when adult life really begins.

Also on Facebook, where the Studenti.it page has over 466,000 fans and continues to grow, a dedicated “Maturità 2018” group has recorded an authentic boom in subscriptions: 40,000 students (three times more than last year, the widest group about the exam in Italy). Through the group, moderated by the Studenti.it team, students can come into contact with each other in the search for tips about the exam, to let off steam in moments of difficulty but also to offer their own creative qualities and share know-how: what will come out in the Italian exam? How to prepare the perfect cover for your dissertation? What software to use? How to set out a conceptual map? How does the credits and bonus system work? Does anyone know the external examiners on my commission? These are just some of the topics that ring round schools across the country in a normal day of students preparing to face the maturità in 2018.

The seasonal peak of traffic is an opportunity for many companies and brands to communicate with a young audience in a qualitative context, also by integrating the site’s social platforms into advertising plans.

Giallozafferano, the point of reference for Italians in the kitchen, with 6.6 million unique users every month (source: Audiweb), over 6 million fans on Facebook and more than 600,000 readers for its printed magazine, from today will “speak” to its community also on  “Google Home, the voice-activated smart speaker recently launched in Italy by Google.

The Mondadori Group brand will consequently be available through Google Assistant across all compatible devices: Android and iOS smartphones and tablets, and Google Home and Google Mini smart speakers.

With Google Home it is possible to interact with the digital cooking assistant of Giallozafferano, that will establish a pleasant and friendly natural conversation with the user: all you have to do is call the assistant with a simple vocal command “OK Google, let me talk to Giallozafferano” to get the help you need in the kitchen. The secret lies in the innovative step-by-step function, in which a voice will accompany the user through each step of the preparation of the dish – using the vocal commands “back”, “repeat” or “forward” – making it possible even for inexperienced cooks to follow the recipe and  produce a perfect result without mistakes.

In fact, the  step-by-step function makes it possible to complete each phase of the preparation, interrupting when necessary, and starting again from where you left off. All by using the simple vocal “OK Google, ask Giallozafferano to start cooking again”; a particularly useful feature for dishes that require a long preparation.

With Giallozafferano’s new Action on Google,  you can choose a recipe, from a selection of over 4,500 available, with “OK Google, ask Giallozafferano for the recipe for tiramisù”, or run through the list of ingredients with the command “OK Google, tell me the ingredients”.

The new service offers a range of functions also to users accessing Giallozafferano from a smartphone or tablet, with even easier and more immediate usability thanks to the support of high-quality photos that make each stage even more intuitive and simple to complete.

This new project continues the brand strategy of Giallozafferano which, on the strength of the success of the web site from which a magazine was created that in just over a year has achieved an average monthly sale of 120,000 copies (source: ADS, March 2018), a series of books and a TV programme on Canale 5, can now count on an even more articulated multi-channel offer.