Solitary baby Adamo foreshadows Italy’s population crisis
Kraft Heinz has delivered a warning from the future to shock today’s Italians into bedroom action and reverse an alarming decline in the nation’s birthrate.
The food multinational, owner of Italian baby food brand Plasmon, has more at stake than most in ensuring maternity wards are kept busy, prompting it to imagine a dystopian society in which the sounds of schools and playparks fall silent.
Set in the year 2050, ‘Adamo’ follows the plight of the last child born in Italy, extrapolating existing demographic trends to absurd extremes to hammer home its message.
The self-styled mockumentary seeks to spur a serious conversation in a society facing a grey future without immediate action from the government, individuals and companies.
To begin this process an accompanying website urges concerned parties to sign “Adamo’s Pledge”, a push for regulatory changes which support parenthood.
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Francesco Meschieri, head of marketing at Plasmon, said: “It is becoming increasingly necessary for brands to take a stand on relevant social issues and start implementing concrete projects to trigger change. Plasmon, which has been at the side of parents in Italy for more than 120 years, cannot consider demographic decline as an exogenous variable and wants to highlight and address the various problems affecting young people and new families.
“The Adamo 2050 platform has the ambition of bringing both companies and institutions around the same table, with the aim of being able to formulate tangible proposals that guarantee everyone, should they so desire, the possibility of building a family.”
Livio Basoli, ECD and partner at Dude, added: “As a country, we have been ignoring the demographic winter for too long. Adamo is Plasmon’s wake-up call to the whole country and to the people who can actually make a difference.”
Italy has the third oldest population in the world with its birth rate declining every year since 2008, hitting a new low of below 400,000 in 2022 – a fall of 25% compared to the 546,607 births registered as recently as 2011.
Initiatives to reverse declining birth rates in China, Japan and Singapore have seen limited success, opening the door to marketers to find new ways to get the message across.