ITC launches "Machines Italia" campaign in U.S.

The "Machines Italia/Turning Innovation into Productivity" campaign launches with an ad in the Wall Street Journal featuring the headline "Whatever you make, Italian innovation makes it better." The goal of the campaign is to expand the market for Italian machinery in the U.S. by promoting three key benefits of the machinery: flexibility, creativity and innovation.

The "Machines Italia" initiative marks the first time that the private Italian machinery manufacturers associations, representing 14 industries and over 10,000 companies, along with the ITC - a government agency - are coming together for such an effort. Participating industry sectors represent a broad spectrum of Italian firms, include companies involved in the production of equipment for agricultural, ceramic, construction and earth moving, food processing, foundry, glass, graphic and converting, leather and tannery, metalworking, marble, packaging, plastic and rubber processing, textiles and wood.

"Machines Italia" is an outgrowth of a first-of-its-kind quantitative study of the American industrial market conceived and managed by New York-based business-to-business advertising agency Citigate Albert Frank, and conducted by Roper Starch Worldwide in 2001. Researchers examined attitudes towards Italian machinery among American manufacturing decision-makers.

The ITC campaign is modeled in part on another successful integrated marketing program undertaken by the Italian government two decades ago to increase awareness of Italian wine quality among American consumers. As a result of the program, said Luongo, "American demand for Italian wines skyrocketed. Today, Italy is the number 1 exporter of wines to the U.S in terms of volume quantity."