{"id":7251,"date":"2026-03-03T10:47:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T09:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.htt.it\/?p=7251"},"modified":"2026-03-07T10:07:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T09:07:36","slug":"sanremo-2026-marketing-lessons-for-brands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.htt.it\/en\/sanremo-2026-marketing-lessons-for-brands\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanremo 2026: 7 Marketing Lessons for Brands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Why Sanremo is Sanremo<\/h2>\n
We watch Sanremo with one eye on the competition and the other on communication. It\u2019s inevitable when you work in this industry.
\nFive nights where brands, artists, hosts and very different audiences meet on the same stage, and where every narrative choice produces a result in real time, without the possibility of correction.<\/p>\n
This year something happened that struck us more than the controversies, more than the outfits, more than the duets.
\nSal Da Vinci won. And in the way he won, there was almost everything we try to explain to our clients every day.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n
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1. Where is your most loyal audience hiding?<\/h2>\n
Sal Da Vinci is not a newcomer, and he had not disappeared. In the years between his Sanremo in 2009 and this one, he kept working: theatre, live music, a solid career in his own world.
\nThe point is that this world did not overlap with mainstream circuits, digital playlists, or the trends of the moment.<\/p>\n
Then in 2024 came Rossetto e Caff\u00e8<\/em>, with more than 120 million streams, without a campaign, without promotional pushes.
\nJust people sharing a song because it meant something to them.<\/p>\n
That audience base was not dormant. It was simply somewhere we were not looking.<\/p>\n
This is an important distinction for brands as well: sometimes the problem is not that the audience has disappeared, it\u2019s that we are looking for it in the wrong places.
\nBefore declaring that a product no longer works, it is worth asking: \u201cis there already someone who loves us, and we simply don\u2019t meet them through our usual channels?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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2. Real moments matter more than perfect content<\/h2>\n
When Laura Pausini said his name, Sal Da Vinci collapsed to his knees.
\nTears, a broken voice, \u201cI can\u2019t even understand what\u2019s happening.\u201d
\nNo pose, no staged moment.<\/p>\n
That reaction went around social media in minutes and outperformed any content produced during the Festival.
\nIt wasn\u2019t communication. It was genuine emotion, and that\u2019s why it became the most shared moment of the week.<\/p>\n
We work in a sector obsessed with optimization.
\nEvery word matters, every image is approved three times, every post has its own A\/B test.
\nAnd that\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n
But sometimes we need to remember that people don\u2019t connect with perfect brands, they connect with human brands.
\nShowing a mistake, a surprise, an unfiltered moment is not a risk: often it\u2019s the only thing that remains.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
\"Stage<\/p>\n
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3. How do you turn a product into a memorable experience?<\/h2>\n
Per Sempre S\u00ec<\/em> did not remain just a song in the competition.
\nSal Da Vinci brought the Festival outside the Ariston Theatre, with a symbolic declaration of love in front of the San Siro Co-Cathedral that literally stopped the center of Sanremo.<\/p>\n
The song became a ceremony.
\nThe artist became an officiant.
\nThe people present didn\u2019t just witness something: they experienced something.<\/p>\n
This is the difference between promoting a product and building an experience.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not about budget. It\u2019s about perspective.
\nThe real question is not \u201chow do we get people to talk about us?\u201d but \u201cin which moment of our audience\u2019s life can we actually matter?\u201d<\/p>\n
When you find that answer, you stop doing advertising and start creating memory.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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4. A real story is the only one that cannot be copied<\/h2>\n
\u201cThis is the victory of all those like me who come from the bottom.\u201d
\nA single sentence, spoken with a broken voice on stage.
\nNaples, family, the years when nobody calls you, the endless apprenticeship.<\/p>\n
Sal Da Vinci didn\u2019t need a copywriter to build his brand purpose.
\nThe story was already there: lived, real, recognizable.<\/p>\n
Many brands invest heavily in purpose and get very little in return, because purpose becomes a statement instead of a story.<\/p>\n
Where was your company born?
\nWhat did you risk?
\nWhat did you get wrong before understanding what to do?<\/p>\n
These things cannot be invented, optimized or replicated.
\nThey are your strongest narrative asset, and often the one that gets told the least.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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5. Who is really your audience?<\/h2>\n
In the televote Sayf won with 26.4%.
\nSal Da Vinci had 23.6%.
\nYet he still won, thanks to the press room and the radio jury.<\/p>\n
This is not an anomaly. It is a map.<\/p>\n
In any industry, the \u201caudience\u201d is composed of different layers:
\nend customers, industry professionals, media, distributors, partners.<\/p>\n
A strategy that speaks only to the mass audience may lose exactly where the decisions that matter are made.
\nWho are the gatekeepers of your market?
\nAre you investing there too, not only in visible campaigns?<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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In marketing, the winner is not the most perfect brand, but the most recognizable one.
\nAnd recognizability always comes from a truth, not from an algorithm.<\/blockquote>
\u2014 Bianca, Team HT&T,
\nMarketing lessons from Sanremo 2026<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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6. Leadership transitions put a brand\u2019s identity to the test<\/h2>\n
Carlo Conti announced that he will not return in 2027.
\nStefano De Martino will arrive instead, hugely popular but deeply different in language and audience.<\/p>\n
The Festival as a brand will have to survive this change.
\nIt is not guaranteed.
\nAnd it is not just a problem for RAI.<\/p>\n
Every time a company changes its main public face, it risks losing the perceived coherence from the outside.<\/p>\n
Do your values exist independently from the person who represents them?
\nIf the answer is no, there is work to do.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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7. Can being deeply local become a global strategy?<\/h2>\n
Sal Da Vinci will go to Eurovision 2026.
\nHe is 56 years old, from Naples, and sings a love ballad with strong melodic roots.
\nIt is not the kind of profile an algorithm would choose.<\/p>\n
Yet it works.
\nBecause a true story, told with full identity, does not need to be translated.<\/p>\n
When brands think about international expansion, they often smooth out the edges.
\nSometimes it is worth doing the opposite: being so recognizably yourself that you become interesting precisely because no one else could be you.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n
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