Algae and Eyewear, an Unusual Combination in Marketing Management Contest

What does a multinational like Luxottica and its brand Ray-Ban have in common with a Veneto startup working on launching a new, niche food product for the Italian market, spirulina algae? Seemingly not much. However, both play a key role in a parallel project for the course Understanding Consumers II, part of the Master of Science in Marketing Management at Bocconi University.

The project, coordinated by Stefania Borghini, allows students to work in groups on actual cases in a real competition. "Many companies ask to collaborate with us each year," explains Borghini. "I then make a choice based on two criteria: that the project's content is in line with the course and that it is related to work that students will do in the future. In this specific case, both small startups and large multinationals are classic examples of organizations that may be future career paths for our students."

A marketing campaign for a product that is unknown or niche is seemingly complicated because you may not know where to start. At the same time, after getting past the initial stage of uncertainty, it offers a wider maneuvering margin because there are no conditions. At least this was the point of view for members of the team Psukos (Alessandra Crudele, Giulia Enne, Francesca Romano, Lavinia Baronti, Margherita Fedel and Paola Romano), who placed 1st in the Ecologic Green Farm project on marketing products made using spirulina. "It's a very versatile product because it can be used in different ways," the students explain. "And, as we discovered through interviews and focus groups, various targets focus on different uses. Women, for example, see a dietary use for spirulina algae, while competitive athletes see it more as a supplement to take in pill form."

But, even more important than the results themselves, which is the ultimate outcome of any job well done, what counts in these projects is the process, the group work that leads to the final result. "We divided the work, reporting to everyone during long meetings after classes and study hours. It's very important to see how the work develops after starting with a shared idea and how each of our personalities came out during discussions, and how each of us and our unique traits contributed to the final project's outstanding outcome," say the students.

The biggest risk when dealing with launching new lines of a brand such as Ray-Ban, always popular with the target for the project, millennials, is to be too commonplace. "For three different lines of glasses, with a total of 24 models, each line needed its own target and a name. This was basically the task assigned to us by Luxottica," say members of the group Ghe Pensi Mi (Roberto Diolordi, Bianca Maria Galardi, Silvia Innocenti, Federica Mazzacano, Carolina Raffaelli, Giovanni Piccolia and Mario Moschetta), winners of the Ray-Ban project. "There was also a specific request to be original and creative, which we tried to do, evidently successfully. It started with the interviews, during which we tried to obtain information not through simple questions, but through games and riddles that would incite original answers. But before we began, we also looked at Ray-Ban marketing campaigns from the recent past, to use as a starting point." Overall, this work will be useful for the future, as the students admit, "because it is work that we all hope to do. This project also allowed us to discover sides of our personalities that we didn't know."

"Students will appreciate these projects even more when they do their internship," says Stefania Borghini. "For now, it was a great experience, but also a lot of hard work. In the future, it will be a useful springboard for them."