Brand Management Student Projects Feature Inclusion and Sustainability
You come to Bocconi a student and leave an aspiring marketing manager. Then, once your career is going in the right direction, you come back looking for new talent who will follow in your footsteps. And, through a competition, you find solutions that may also prove useful for the company you represent. This is the story for two Alumni: Francesca Broggi, Marketing Manager Italy at Betsson Group, which includes the StarCasinò Sport portal, and Gianluca Nicosia, Marketing Operations Specialist at Lamborghini Spa. They both returned to their Alma Mater, to the classrooms of the Brand Management course, to present students with delicate and engaging challenges featuring their companies. The course, coordinated by faculty member Maria Carmela Ostillio, is part of the Master of Science in Marketing Management.
"I was a student at Bocconi and I know the value of its educational offer," says Francesca Broggi. "All the teams have done an excellent job, demonstrating solid skills in our sector and in marketing strategies that can position and enhance the brand. I am also happy that the winning project focuses on an area that is particularly important in Italy." This issue, equality and inclusion, is a very topical one: "We were tasked with thinking about how to expand the platform's fan base," explains Diego Leonardis, group leader of the team that placed first, Virtuo (Novella Barbieri, Francesca D'Ambrosi, Giada Fiore, Valentina Gamba, Chiara Mottin, Elisabetta Noce, Carlotta Pietrini and Elena Scalinci). "Our goal was to attract more women to StarCasinò Sport and the world of football in general, while also leveraging the platform's various sponsors and partners."
Their project was well-structured and complex, with a variety of market analyses, interviews and surveys. Then they collected all their ideas to concentrate on the strategy to submit to the company. "It was an interesting challenge that allowed us to put into practice the concepts we have learned in the classroom and see how a real company works from the inside, in close contact with management," say the students. "And teamwork was a really important part of the project."
The topic of the course's other competition was no less important: sustainability. "In particular," says Giuseppe Foschi, group leader of the team I Gagliardi, winners of the Lamborghini X Sustainability project (with team members Valentina Bernardi, Cristina Biaggi, Andrea Celada, Davide Galli, Andrea Genco Russo, Alessia Piedimonte, Isabella Zannettino and Michelle Zoso), "Lamborghini asked us to design a communication strategy linked to sustainable activities with Generation Z as a target. What ideas did we come up with? First of all, a series of car concepts using plant materials, an international design event, connecting the company with potential customers, and a Netflix-style TV series focusing on life at the company and the issues that managers and employees have to face on a daily basis." The project was successful because it is tangible and achievable and because it is line with what Lamborghini has been pursuing for some time.
"It was a great honor to return to the University as an alum and to be able to experience the enthusiasm and innovative thinking of the young people the course", says Gianluca Nicosia. "It is thanks to the exchange of ideas and skills that top talent and successful companies are born".
"I would like to thank the companies, the brands actually, for believing in the skills of these students, who, like in past years, have once again managed to 'leave a mark.' This is, after all, the goal of any brand," says Maria Carmela Ostillio. "Thanks to all the students, who got into the spirit of the competition by putting themselves to the test. Thanks to Alice Margonari and Martina Cossu for coordinating these projects and students. What can I say... see you next year with more challenges, more Alumni and more brands."