What led you to take on a position in marketing?
I studied psychology and specialized in communication psychology. At the time, the first social networks were spreading in Italy and, given my experimental thesis on what were behavioral communication paradigms at a corporate level, I decided to move for a few months to Philadelphia to an agency that had created the first studies on what we now define as buyer personas. I then attended a six-month master's degree, starting my career path. I then chose to start working in an agency, a sector where I remained for 10 years, changing various roles. Driven by a desire for change, I decide to join the company and take part in the launch of Aldi, a multinational that was not yet present in Italy. I therefore moved to Verona for this opportunity and stayed for about 5 years, completing a super positive and stimulating experience, full of many goals and challenges. After many years in the large-scale retail trade world, I decide to move into the Drugstore world and start my challenge in a new reality, Gottardo spa, a leading company in the sale of home and personal care products.
What is your role in the company and who do you interact with the most?
I joined Gottardo in September last year as Digital Marketing Manager. I am therefore responsible for everything in the world of digital communication: social media, digital strategies and campaigns, special projects such as brand and product positioning. I also deal with the management of partnerships and collaborations with influencers. I have the opportunity to be involved and follow various projects, which make my work stimulating and allow me to have a broader vision of the business and marketing logic.
Which social network do you use with the most involvement and which one the least?
Tigotà, a brand of the Gottardo group, is present on almost all social channels, from LinkedIn to TikTok and Telegram. Initially this social media multiverse was geared towards the same type of communication. In a continuous digital evolution, we have developed a social strategy focused on different brand objectives, which could describe the Tigotà world with the same language as the destination platform. We certainly have priority channels, the META world and TikTok, which play a key role in our social media strategy. If in the first case, these help us to address users targeted by our points of sale, the Tiktok world offers us the opportunity to be even more creative in creating content. Here the objective is almost more entertainment and helps us get in touch with a new target, a younger one, truly super fans of the brand, which we call TigotàLovers. We wanted to translate our brand identity and our characteristics through different but always recognizable creativity, in order to give space to every facet of the brand. We collaborate very willingly with creators, because we believe in the value of the story diversified from person to person, telling directly and spontaneously their experiences in our stores and with our products.
The data shows that having a low number of followers damages the brand image, what do you think?
I honestly believe that the number of followers, for us who are used to working with these parameters, is a vanity metric. In the corporate world it is a fact that still has a lot of importance and acts as a parameter for choosing the influencers to involve in projects. Gottardo and Tigotà's pages have had excellent growth, both on Instagram and TikTok and we want to continue working in this direction, communicating with our target audience on each platform.
How important are online reviews, are they important?
Reviews are important and at Gottardo we monitor them a lot. We have often wondered how we could further improve the management of feedback and requests that arrive via social media. Our customer service faces many different needs and questions every day so we are evaluating the implementation of a software or a partner that supports this area of the brand. In my private life I use reviews, both reading and writing them.
Have you thought about enlisting the help of professionals from the social world given the importance achieved by digital platforms and their management complexity?
I believe that there are some aspects on which agencies are very strong: there is a whole network to support businesses that is very difficult to internalise. Flyers, catalogs and all the communication linked to them constitute a complex world, with wide implications. Having worked for many years in the consultancy sector has allowed me to understand the internal management of work and relationships between agencies/brands. I believe that agencies are an added value for brands, especially in terms of vision and innovation in digital, which is constantly evolving and needs continuous updating on the many new features and opportunities it offers us. At the moment in Gottardo we collaborate with two external agencies: one to support the Meta platforms and one that works only on TikTok. Together with the team, I follow all strategy and content planning, leaving room for new projects directed from within.
What are the future corporate communication projects?
In addition to the Tigotà world, we will strive to tell even more about the world of our lines. Last year, we created a very nice project in collaboration with San Patrignano, creating a new line of products that combines the antioxidant properties of red grape extract and resveratrol, coming right from the San Patrignano vineyards. An important project for us, as we wanted to give value to the concept of beauty. A value that was not only aesthetic but also, and above all, of personal and social gratification. Over the years, Gottardo Spa has always worked to demonstrate our closeness and support in the social sphere: we have always had these issues at heart and we really care about creating projects and collaborations that fully reflect them.