“Ladies and gentlemen to the table” it is time for the meat that is the “housewive’s friend”, or “Eat light? Mangio-tin!”. These are just a few examples of Manzotin television spots over the years – the first was from a series that featured Italian TV host Corrado Mantoni, the other with a very young appearance by comic Enzo Iacchetti – that made Manzotin the Italian pop culture icon it is today with over fifty years of history.
The television campaigns were combined with a strong intuition for marketing and packaging, like the celebrated call to action “open and taste” for the innovative easy-open can launched in 1974. The spot’s slogan was “Si apre con un dito, si gusta con appetito”, something to the effect of “it only takes a finger to satisfy your hunger”.
The brand is so famous for its meat that in the timeless 1970s comedy Febbre da Cavallo, the nickname of one of the characters who was a butcher was Manzotin. The film in addition to other factors pushed Manzotin among the most recognisable brands and terms in Italian mass culture, where the distance between advertising and realty is not as distant as it might seem.
