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values, and his links with particular issues (Diamanti, 1994). With the results from his
surveys, Berlusconi had no difficulty in identifying the right people within his firm to
produce his media message. Berlusconi’s victory was built on his ability to propose who
the favoured leader should be, namely himself, and the topics that the voters perceived
as most important. He succeeded in this thanks to the number of carefully conducted
surveys carried out on his behalf.

The choice of Forza Italia’s local candidates was determined by the same criteria. A
group of professionals was set up to select the right candidates to win from amongst a
large group of people who put themselves forwards as potential candidates. There
were several criteria for selection: candidates had to be new to politics, had to be young
and essentially had to be good communicators. Fifty percent of those who applied for
candidacy were not chosen because they were bad communicators on television. (Poli,
2001).

There is no doubt that the main novelty Berlusconi introduced into Italian campaigning
was his marketing approach that had not been used before 1994. Better than
proposing to voters the ideas and the issues the party was elaborating, as in traditional
Italian politics, and more generally in the traditional idea of politics related to mass
parties, he asked the voters what issues and what figures they would prefer. In this
sense, he transferred to the political arena the marketing culture his business firms
were used to applying. In the following election, 1996, he used the same approach but
this time he did not succeed because he failed to build those political alliances that he
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was later able to construct in 2001 .
In 1994, surveys showed that people were tired of the old Italian politics, its language,
its parties and its main figures who had been accused of corruption during the
Tangentopoli period. This also convinced Berlusconi to focus his campaign more and
more on trivialisation – mixing politics with entertainment – and presenting himself as
a political outsider (Caniglia, 2000), bringing within the realm of politics many features
taken from everyday life and other symbolic contexts: company efficiency, success in
entrepreneurship and economics and in sport (he was, and still is, the owner of the
Milan football team). Berlusconi’s language, building on what the surveys were
showing, became simpler and closer to everyday life. He was very successful in
abandoning the old attitude of Italian politics and its discourse,addressed essentially to
people already familiar with politics. As many have pointed out, Berlusconi won
because he was the natural consequence of the type of society and values,
consumption, success in business and sport he helped to establish with his television Political Professionalism in Italy
services (Bobbio, Bosetti &Vattimo, 1994; Mazzoleni, 1995). In this sense, he was a
‘populist leader’ (Meny & Surel, 2000; Mazzoleni, Stewart & Horsfield, 2003) or, even
better, a ‘telepopulist leader’ (Peri, 2004): he won because of the ‘political malaise’
diffused in Italy after Tangentopoli and because of the volatility of the electoral vote
that followed the disappearance of the previous political parties. He also personified 117