\n
<\/p>\n
Italy’s tourism ministry has revamped a contentious marketing campaign which until now has featured Botticelli’s Venus as a “virtual influencer” who promotes the country’s wonders.<\/p>\n
Francesca Faccini, a 23-year-old psychology student and aspiring actress from Rome, has become the human version of a new campaign that reportedly cost \u20ac138,000.<\/p>\n
This price tag includes filming on location, editing, post-production and content publishing\u00a0by the creative agency IG Italia which shortlisted\u00a0the successful candidate\u00a0from 300 applicants.<\/p>\n
Faccini, who bears a resemblance to the Venus in Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpiece, was introduced to the press on Thursday by tourism minister Daniela Santanch\u00e8.<\/p>\n
With her long blonde hair and natural look, Faccini will be the face of the new Welcome to Meraviglia<\/em> campaign on Instagram. (For non-Italian speakers, “meraviglia<\/em>” means wonder).<\/p>\n Faccini\u00a0is set to travel around Italy in her new role, with a taste of what to expect from the promotional video, in which she wanders around Rome enchanted by the city’s beauty.<\/p>\n The video features the new Venus smelling a rose in Campo de’ Fiori, stroking the face of a statue\u00a0of Emperor Hadrian in Palazzo Altemps, and playing an accordian in the Villa Borghese park.<\/p>\n When the original Open to Meraviglia<\/em> campaign was launched by Santanch\u00e8 in 2023, critics panned it as being tacky, embarrassing and relying on tired stereotypes.<\/p>\n It attracted further controversy when it was revealed that part of the promotional video was filmed in Slovenia, while an Italian marketing company purchased the Open to Meraviglia<\/em> domain name after spotting that it had not been registered.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Photo Il Messaggero<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Italy’s tourism campaign moves from virtual to real life. Italy’s tourism ministry has revamped a contentious marketing campaign which until now has featured Botticelli’s Venus as a “virtual influencer” who promotes the country’s wonders. Francesca Faccini, a 23-year-old psychology student and aspiring actress from Rome, has become the human version of a new campaign that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9917,2800,12139,29198,14932,29197],"class_list":["post-44855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eventi","tag-ambassador","tag-italys","tag-reality","tag-tourism","tag-venus","tag-virtual"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}