Our normal traveling buddy and PR professor extraordinaire, Bob O’Gara, had snagged a great sounding visit to Burson-Marsteller, part of the WPP group. We’re just so sorry he couldn’t come with us! He is so much fun on these trips, and his spirit was with us this day.
Our Rai Milan visit meant seeing Anna Vitaliani again, the Italian journalist who had been living in Pittsburgh with her family this past year and gave two great presentations to our class and at the CMI. She added so much to our class with her many visits, and I loved seeing her again.
Fabio Caporizzi, the CEO, greeted us warmly, as did everyone on his staff. The firm has just joined Cohn and Wolf to create a much larger agency. As Fabio and Luca from Wavemaker told us, success in this area starts with media context and data. Italy has become a much more technology-driven society, and residents are discovering just how much they can do on their phones. And we saw that everywhere. Just like in the U.S., we saw people on phones everywhere, attached to them just as we are.
The problem in this country of 60 million people, economic growth has been very slow. How do companies and organizations stand out in the market, increase sales and market share? One answer is to promote Italy and its products outside of the country. More about that in a bit.
Because most websites require users to permit cookies, Luca and others can obtain data on about 80 percent of all Italian data consumption. His take on the mindset of Italian consumers was startling. He creates data clusters for the team to start their work.
He used an interesting case to illustrate this: introducing “House of Cards” on Netflix for the fifth season. (And no, Kevin Spacey’s sexual assault allegations didn’t seem to matter much here. It is just different country, Fabio told me.) A very creative campaign based on his character, Frank Underwood, included a social media election, leveraging President Trump’s visits to Italy and his infamous tweets, including the infamous cofeve. Posters, fliers, leaflets helped, too, and Now TV reached 6 million people to view the series, Luca said.
Luca’s data work now encompasses 10 percent of the agency staff. It is considered that valuable. And although the firm uses Nielsen ratings for this nation of TV watchers, it doesn’t rely on them. Nielsen doesn’t measure web viewing.
Italian law requires that viewers be alerted to ads appearing before them, something I noticed as I sped through the many, many TV channels looking for something, anything, in English some nights.
Now back to Italy looking beyond its borders. Fabio noted that Fiat had to move to Detroit to survive. His own son studied at NYU and St. John’s and now works in Armonk, N.Y., for a Swiss company, and changed his name so Americans can more easily pronounce it. So instead of just importing industry and talent, he and others are looking to expand the innovative and premium goods Italy is known for outside its borders.
We were led through case studies for a an amazing remembrance app for early Alzheimer’s and dementia sufferers and a device Ford has created for visually impaired people to “see” the landscape called Windowsweep Technology.
Elena Silva, from Cohn and Wolf, explained that the two firms that were close before are “now like brother and sister” in the merger. Although Italians don’t like change, they have to do so, she said. “We have to evolve with the world around us.”
The four pillars of their work are media relations, Digital Information, Social Mobile and PESO, and a Fusion of the Digital and Physical (meaning events and activities). It needed a digital branding to reach customers and luxury car lovers throughout the country and Western Europe in particular.
She illustrated what she meant with the famous Maserati line of luxury vehicles. Its first SUV, Levante, the Italian word for a warm Mediterranean wind has just been launched. Michelin chef Massimo Bottura (who she said is “not a car guy”) became the endorser with food events – slow food and fast cars. The test drive, spurred and promoted at major car shows, all driven by the website, have been successes. (Sad to say to my family, fans of the beautiful game, soccer stars are dropping in their star and endorser status in Italy.)
Another example was the push for meningitis vaccination for young people in Italy. With Pfizer as its client, how can the agency reach young people? With compelling videos and a YouTube blogger named Fraffrog, who uses graphic art to reach her followers.
A big challenge is to reach across generations with the campaigns, and the group saved the best for last – Campari.
“Creative is the big work,” Fabio said. And for this agency it has been ably done by Sergio of J. Walter Thompson in Italy. His push – use emotion. Tell stories. Use film as a guide.
He pulled out a bottle of the liquor and offered us all a taste. We sipped the strong liquor (called an aperitif) together – many students disliked it immediately. He noted that like it or not, it’s a strong taste, unique and a vibrant red. “It tastes bitter and sweet, lasts on your tongue. Like a Jekyll and a Hyde,” he said.
What Sergio created to distinguish this iconic Italian liquor is a series of Red Diary videos of bartenders telling stories about their favorite Campari drink creations, inventing a Hollywood style treatment that is not only compelling but also shot in a unique style I have not seen in ads. Clive Owens and Zoe Saldana star in two other 15-minute video stories, live streamed only on the web.
Campari is building up to its centennial celebration with his creative work, which he believes captures the essence of the brand – intriguing, stimulating pleasure. Everything has to be precise, he said, because Campari – which he said is social by affinity – has a specific tone and voice. All brands, Sergio, said, have physical and emotional qualities. Finding the right way to tell their stories in advertising in more is crucial to success.
And it has. Campari has doubled it consumption worldwide, and it’s the fastest growing group in its industry.
So what can top this? An afternoon visit to Rai Milan came close for many of us, offering us a glimpse of the public broadcaster. Since its creation, starting with radio, Rai has benefitted from a special tax that brings in a steady stream of revenue. Each household is taxed, much like all public broadcasters in Europe, and now in Italy, the charge has been attached to the electric bill. Because that brings in a steady revenue stream, the fee has been lowered.
Today the broadcaster has a private side, too, and can cover up to 4 percent of its budget with advertising. Not bad for programming at all, and it helps the 17 TV channels, 10 radio stations and three internet channels.
From its start in 1954 with television – basing its operations on its successful radio broadcasting network – the various components have generalist (mainly news just as we see in the states), thematic and international programming. Public service is the guiding principle, and programming includes children’s programming, sports, entertainment – including its own version of “The Voice.” It has about 37 percent of the market in Italy, closely followed by Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset. It employs just under 13,000 people. Our Anna works in the Trieste bureau.
What’s impressive to me is its continued use of international bureaus, including New York City, when so many media outlets have cut back. The news programming is very similar to the states – a mix of morning, midday and late evening news. Time is set aside for information sent by satellite from Rome.
Emilio Ratti of Rai Milan emphasized to us that each regional bureau has editorial independence. He’s worked for Rai since 1987. One of the historical broadcasts delighted the older folks – the puppet Topo Gigio, Rai’s most famous import to the U.S, with his appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in the 1960s and ‘70s.
The Milan operations include quiz shows for students, live sports coverage, and a La Scala Opera broadcast every December. We had a great time visiting the TV sets, one of which uses augmented reality. It was originally a radio stage for live performances, and then became a TV studio. We saw several different studios, one smaller with a blue chroma key background and the other larger one with a small green chroma key. Robotized cameras, of course, are utilized, but the big augmented reality had cameras on boom cranes and an amazing automated light system. The control rooms looked much like what we have at home, and although the staff currently uses Avid for editing, but it is moving to a new system.
But the big hit of the day? The live KGG radio show, featuring our Emily Yurchison. The talent had researched our WPPJ station and found out Emily had hosted a show there. She was the featured guest for the last part of the show. Even before we left the building, the staff had posted a group photo of us on its website and a podcast link of Emily’s appearance. Such fun!
We had to say goodbye to Anna, who needed to get back to Trieste – a four-hour train ride – and Jan and I had tickets to La Scala’s house ballet company’s production of “Le Corsaire.” We treated ourselves to a wonderful dinner before it at Biffi’s, a restaurant in the gorgeous Galleria Vittorio Emmanuelle II, which dates back to 1878. One more day left!