Day 4 Art Attack, La Repubblica and Go Steelers!
Art Attack has become Arkage since our 2012 visit, and La Repubblica is working hard at being relevant and engaging readers with projects, data journalism, a TV web series and an enhanced website. And I finally got to meet Giovanni Poggi and visit his infamous Rome Steelers bar.
Claudio Ciatti was eager for us to visit his agency again, and we knew we’d have a great visit once again. He and two of this top staffers – Federico Giuntella, chief customer experience officer, and Mauro Feliziani, the creative director, took us through the agency’s strategy, clients and successful case studies.
What stands out the most is the fact that this small 45-employee agency has clients as large as Universal and Versace, and, as Federico pointed out, wins contracts from larger businesses all the time. It has two offices – Rome and Milan – and is privately owned, something that sets it apart. It does have two successful joint ventures. Arkage is the first postdigital communications agency in Italy, and that is its strength he said. It is poised to take advantage of using social media – he confirmed that Instagram is hot in Italy right now – and Italians’ eternal love for their phones.
Mauro said the success also comes from the agency’s central belief that the staff first needs to know how to move people, then understand what they really need. A good example, and one of the first, was Arkage’s work for Uber, soon to come to Rome and give it, he said, the mobility it really needs. This massive city has crowded buses and trams – often unreliable – and Uber may be the answer to its prayers.
(We know this first hand. We’ve waited a long time for the tram and squeezed our large group on to crowded cars, making travel at times incredibly difficult. Add to that no announcement of stops and poor signage! A mess!)
Standout case studies for me – the launch of Fiat 500 in London with its excellent color themes and local challenge, the adorable children in the Original Marines (an Italian children’s clothing brand), truly cool sunglass ads for Luxotica (think Rayban, Oakley, etc.), and a touching new mothers and their babies spot.
Above all? “We don’t fake it,” Mauro said. Ads with children were unscripted, and the overall goal is simple to him: “We try not to create anymore ugliness in the world. We lower the volume of this noise.”
As a B corporation, Arkage carries this over with no plastic in the office, a pledge to treat people fairly and plans beneficial activities for all. That means a 30 percent discount for all nonprofit work.
Wonderful group,, so welcoming and so gracious. Claudio and staff provided a delicious lunch for us before we headed to La Repubblica. And best of all we met Jordan Foresi’s mother, Regina, our Pittsburgh native and original contact for Claudio. We hope to see her when she visits Pittsburgh in the fall.
I just love everything about La Repubblica. It is an amazing newspaper group, and seeing deputy editor Raffaella Menichini again was great. Even better when we found we had another connection – She is very good friends with Sylvia Poggioli! Of course!
It is hanging in there despite a drop in print circulation from 500,000 subscribers to 200,000, nothing different from what is happening in the United States. But this operation also has two national newspapers, 13 local newspapers, cable, a few radio stations and an amazing website. Print, though, had and has been the major revenue source. That means the staff needs to monetize all its digital efforts, which are considerable.
Its website is No. 1 among all media in Italy, she said, and a good part of that is due to social media. It’s had Instagram for four years and has 300,000 followers, gaining 2,000 news ones each week, according to Sarah Bertuccioli, digital manager. The social media team has 11 journalists to manage that, Facebook and Twitter as well as website articles, video, and multimedia and photography.
One goal, Sarah, said is to reach young people. It invited in high school students to be social media editors for a day,ocovering the Rome book fair. The idea? Get them ready to be the next La Repubblica consumers. They like social and softer news more, though.
A TV webseries, “Bongiorno,” mixes news, music, contests and more. Special projects, such as the one commemorating the 40-year anniversary of politician Aldo Mori’s assassination have been a big draw, as well as marking the retirements of a major soccer player, Francesco Totti. The special projects cross platforms and use timelines, photographs, original publication pdfs, Instagram stories and interactive graphics, all with links to the articles. About a dozen journalists work in teams on these projects.
Natalie Rose leads the paper’s digital lab and data journalism efforts, with the main purpose of finding innovative ways to tell stories. The projects she oversees are not just data but narratives, she stressed. Most are mid- or long-term efforts, such as one that marked the 30th anniversary of the European Union.
Amazing work by amazing people, some of whom we met on our walk around the building. One that stood out was how much was spent in Italy on slot machines. You can just look at numbers, she said, but they found much to stories when visiting towns and conducting interviews. One small town, she noted, near a seaside was a popular gambling spot for tourists, so it wasn’t just the residents. That is real journalism.
Google stamp stories, modeled on what the Washington Post has had success with – 20 slide for mobile phones in particular – are now getting attention from Natalie and her lab team. Those need storyboards, much like the Martin Luther King project she did with her staff. Now that I had a glance of it, I want to really check it out.
And for my Post-Gazette friends, she really liked News Slide when I showed it to her!
The long day ended with a pilgrimage to La Boticella, the infamous Steeler bar off Piazza Navona. My PG reporter friend Dan Gigler told me about it on our first trip, and several students went there, created a video and brought a Point Park banner. So about four students, Robin and I set off to find out if it was still there and see the bar for ourselves.
As soon as we got on the tram, a downpour let loose. Because two of our crew did not have umbrellas, we stopped so they could buy some. All did little to prevent us from being soaked. We pushed on, though, and found it and Giovanni Poggi, Dan’s friend, who welcome us warmly. (“The Giglers are like family to me,” he told me.)
Well, I love following Dan – also known as PG’s Munch to the restaurants he reviews, so why should this be any different? We had a great time there, joined by another group of Point Park students. Giovanni walked us to his friend’s restaurant so we could eat dinner like real Italians, meaning very late. Satisfied, we left and found the rain had stopped, thank goodness. We ran to catch one of the last trams, running almost over another group of Point Park students (how does this keep happening in this big city?). Success, thank goodness, and slightly dryer, we made it back to our hotel.
One more full day in beautiful Roma. It always goes way too fast.