Alessandro Battaglia Parodi
The logo that will identify Italian food products all over the world has finally been presented. The long awaited "signature mark" for “made in Italy”, was planned by the decree “Sblocca Italia/Unlock Italy” approved in November 2014 and developed by the Ministry of Economic Development, by the Mipaaf and by ICE. After much preparation the project which represents an Italian flag with three waves recalling the concept of growth and development, "The Extraordinary Italian Taste" was chosen.
The logo will be used in international fairs, in promotion activities in foreign markets within the stores of large-scale retail trade, in communication and promotion campaigns on TV, on traditional media, on the Internet and on all social media. Maurizio Martina, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, attended the official presentation at the Expo. “Finally Italy has a distinctive logo that will help consumers and operators to immediately identify the promotion of Italian products" said the minister at the presentation.
"A recognizable distinctive sign will allow us to create a common thread that will link all the promotion activities of authentic Italian products internationally. Expo Milano 2015 is where we start taking advantage of this extraordinary opportunity for visibility and we will continue with scheduled activities in our internationalization plan on strategic markets. Over the next three years we will invest over 70 million Euros for promotion, learning to work as a team and not losing resources. 34.4 billion euros worth of export in agricultural and food was reported at the end of 2014" concluded the minister. "In the first quarter of 2015 we are over 8.7 billion and our aim is to reach 36 billion at the end of the year. Also by exploiting Expo Milano 2015 we can reach our goal of achieving 50 billion in export in 2020 ".
For several months the think-tank of the two ministries, Mipaaf and Mise, were involved in order to reach the final choice for the distinctive logo. It took three rounds of proposals to meet the brief for a logo that would recognise “made in Italy” products whilst maintaining Italian intonation. After a totally unsatisfactory session, the second selection had indicated as the winning design a logo with a bitten flag. But then this project was considered detrimental to the reputation of the national flag as it could give a negative opinion of Italy around the world. Therefore it was required to soften the "bite" turning it into a point of strength. Thus three curved steps taking its place.
