Pasta Diva

Here is a run-down along the timeline.
In 1958, one of the first Carosello TV shows also featured Barilla, which presented for two seasons a very young Giorgio Albertazzi (1923-2016), first as a discoverer of rare historical films and then as a reader of passionate love poems, and whose gaze would win the hearts of the consumers.

At the end of ‘59 the partnership with Albertazzi – arguably a little too serious – was interrupted, and he was replaced by the more popular and unpredictable Dario Fo (1926-2016). But this was a meteor which only burnt for one season of Carosello.

The singer Mina (Mina Anna Mazzini, 1940-), charming and engaging, was to become an exceptional interpreter of Barilla’s image from 1965 to 1970. Tied to the fashion of the time, but never predictable, endowed with uncommon mimicry and acting talents, along with her exceptional voice she would caress the boxes of pasta with voluptuous elegance or sit astride gigantic packages to recommend quality purchases to those greatest of cooks, namely, Italian housewives.

In 1970, while the futuristic factory of Pedrignano, built along the Autostrada del Sole highway three kilometres from the city of Parma, came into operation, for a couple of seasons Barilla proposed the songs of Massimo Ranieri (Giovanni Calone, 1951-), a standard bearer of regional Italian recipes.

Barilla had grown, and important businesses from various European countries had joined the company. And precisely to launch its image beyond Italy’s borders, Barilla linked its name to sport and to the faces of some truly exceptional VIPs.
In Germany, it was Steffi Graf (1969-) who advertised Barilla pasta from 1991 to 1994, and again in 2006, as refined as a jewel, as cheerful and light-hearted as the tennis champion herself. Then tennis again, this time with Stephan Edberg (1966-), who in 1992 popularized Barilla Pasta with his likeable personality in Scandinavian countries.

Placido Domingo (1941-), almost a hero to his compatriots, masterfully blended harmonies of sounds and flavours,

while Gérard Depardieu (1948-) told the French, with subtle irony, of the wonders of Italy (also in the kitchen).

In 1994, a new horizon opened up with the “Long Live the Blue” campaign. It would be the turn of the singer/songwriter Zucchero Fornaciari (1955-) and the universal notes of White Christmas,

In 2015, the actor Pierfrancesco Favino (1969-), directed by Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores (1950-) staged the story of a single dad, a truck driver, struggling with a growing daughter. His presence on TV screens alongside Barilla continued until 2017.

American skier Mikaela Shiffrin (1995-), Olympic gold medallist at Sochi, who had been wearing the Parma company’s logo on her tracksuit since 2012, after interpreting the international commercial “The Party” with Federer and Oldani in 2019, was back in 2020 to star in a longer video intended to tell the story of Barilla’s pesto sauce for the international market.