These days, promotion means creating something that combines entertainment, journalism and storytelling. To present a credible story, make it accessible and passionate, encourage others to share it. This is the sense of native advertising, a technique for promoting products, services, ideas and solutions that mixes the commercial matrix – the service/product – with the publishing one – the story and the credibility of those who offer it.
It is the case of the paidposts of the New York Times for example, to offer interesting, new, readable, innovative content without losing the original function of the advertisement – to sell or to communicate something. This is also the case of Umbria – Exploring the home of the International Journalism Festival which, on the basis of this new model, has created a page that recounts the region which hosts IJF in the most exciting way possible.
Designed and put together by the festival team for the Umbria Regional Council, the project aims to arouse the curiosity of the reader through a multimedia trip across the entire region. It is a land that speaks for itself, with its natural beauty and tradition, with its cultural and artistic history, and which also offers major cultural events. Umbria tries to include everything in one fell swoop, with photos, stories and videos in order to give the reader a unique experience, as unique as Umbria is.
The story starts from magnificent views of lakes and hills, praised by poets and unchanged for centuries, before arriving in the towns with their priceless artistic heritage and secular traditions of arts and crafts. A multi-sensory experience that does not forget food and wine and the enjoyment of major events, a wide range of sensations that the renowned photographer Steve McCurry wanted to immortalize in his photos, collected together in the Sensational Umbria exhibition.
The story ends with photos of the historic Perugia venues where the International Journalism Festival takes place each year. The venues are an integral part of the festival’s identity, serving to underline the link between beauty, history, new ideas and the town of Perugia.