According to the marketing manager, and current director of Liquid Factory, Federico Giacinti, social media has had a positive and effective impact on Italian Football. Liquid Factory is a company that creates marketing content and strategy for AS Roma, Venezia FC, and ACF Fiorentina, whose primary target responds well to digital media. During a presentation on Wednesday, March 15th, at the American University of Rome, Giacinti gave a talk about how social media in the Italian culture and football has been growing steadily, as well as indicated that there’s still some work to be done.
CEO and founder of Liquid Factory, Federico Giacinti, talks about how he aims his marketing strategy. “The marketing funnel is the customer’s journey, and it must include specific elements like awareness, discovery, consideration, conversion, and retention, for marketing to be effective”. Football is the 10th biggest industry in Italy; over 38,000,000 fans watching football contribute to $2.9 billion in revenue. Italians eat, drink and breathe football, so it’s not very difficult to find a target audience in Italy. With such strong marketing potential, it's very important that Liquid Factory uses the most effective marketing strategies.
Nowadays, fans are looking for more ways to get connected to their teams and players, and thanks to social media, they can feel this connection and sense of belonging.
For this reason, marketing managers in Italy are trying to increase this connection by leveraging emotion to sell their “product” to make more revenue. This includes fans having point cards; each time they shop, they can redeem points. The more points redeemed, the better the prize. Everything from jerseys to meet-and-greets are on the table for prizes.
Towards the end of the presentation, Federico Giacinti introduced a very peculiar quote from Winston Churchill, "Italians lose wars as if they were football matches, and football matches as if they were wars....” Football is in Italians’ blood, and not taking advantage of this, in a business sense, would be a mistake." Liquid Factory has taken the initiative to market in today’s world, one full of technology. This has given them an advantage over their competitors because they had learned the ins and outs of social media before it became such a huge marketing platform. This explains why Liquid Factory is one of the leading sports marketers in Italy.