At the end of the Seventies in Bologna, a company was established, which was engaged in advertising and communication. It was ignited by an woman entrepreneur who was able to give a distinctive and counter current signature, in a world dominated mainly by men. Today we look to the future with new analyses techniques, but the human imprint remains essential. Giampaolo Colletti interviews Maria Rosa Piovani and Elena Sabattini of Tecnostudi for FARE INSIEME
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
He who is
born round does not become a square. Or maybe yes. The story we are about to
tell overturns stereotypes and clichés because it starts with numbers and evolves in words. Yes, that’s right. Words that
become campaigns, commercials, posts and advertising messages. It all started
with a young “start-upper” – as we would say today – with a diploma in
accounting and a passion for advertising and communication. We are talking
about Maria Rosa Piovani, founder of Tecnostudi, a historic communications agency
in Bologna. “After all, this business was born by chance, but actually the
passion was already beating strongly in my heart.” Maria Rosa said this several
times, recounting the genesis of this business. She who at the beginning did
not feel like a creative, but, after all, all this was not true. Because
creativity is linked to listening, to sniffing out what is happening around
you, to understanding what the customer thinks without even saying it.
Company profile. Maria Rosa has always
known it. After graduating in accounting, she worked in a communications agency
from which she was fired after communicating her risky pregnancy – different
times? – and later, starting to work elsewhere, the president of the new company
suggested she start her own agency. And she accepted. Today Tecnostudi, now in
its second generation as a family business, still exudes that pioneering spirit
that defines the degree of Bolognese origin. The headquarters were initially in
the Bolognina area, today they are in Porta San Donato, a stone's throw from
the walls that surround the historic area of Bologna and that entrance that
leads to the university area of the "dotta", i.e. the
"learned" city as Bologna is often defined due to its ancient
university (the first in the Western world). So for four years Tecnostudi has
been in Via San Donato in a building of over four hundred square metres
dedicated to the future. Here is also home to the innovative start-up B Side, a
neuromarketing laboratory. Today the agency has 13 internal professionals and
about ten collaborators. The market in which it operates is Italian and in 2024
the turnover exceeded one million euros with a constant double-digit growth
over time. The company has consolidated customers for almost 85%, some of whom
have been since the foundation, a good forty-six years ago.
Company history. So let's rewind the tape of this story and go back to the end of those
Seventies. «We were established in 1979 from a conversation that took place in
a company. The outgoing president of a large company, who had a great passion
for writing, had the idea of founding an advertising agency to try to create
culture and therefore information in the field of communication and proposed to
me, who was working in that company, to go into partnership with him.
Unfortunately, after only a year, he passed away and I continued the activity
alone, focusing on advertising, especially for printing in newspapers and trade
magazines.» This is how Maria Rosa Piovani, an accountant by training who
became an advertiser by passion, recalls. «At the beginning, advertising was
understood differently than it is now: we mainly produced pages for more or
less trade magazines and commercials, that is, the famous carousels. We
concentrated above all on a beautiful image and on an effective copy. The
hardest moment? When my partner passed away after the first year and I decided
to continue alone: at that time agencies were mainly run by men and being a
woman was not advantageous, but very tiring. I had to prove every day that I
was able to do my job well, despite being a woman», says Piovani. What still
makes the difference today is the strategic approach to projects, that is, to
have a broader vision. «We support this method with validated tools, such as
scientific marketing created at MIT in Boston, with which we conduct market
analyses and instrumental neuromarketing, which we carry forwards in B Side. We
have also codified a proprietary method for brand positioning. It is
Neuropositioning, which we spread thanks to courses and specific training for
companies», says Elena Sabattini, CEO of Tecnostudi, born in 1978 in Bologna,
with a humanistic education in languages and then a master's degree in
marketing and communication. «Neuromarketing, an evolution of the focus group
that investigates what lies beneath the surface, uses medical-derived
instruments and software that decode facial expressions. Laboratory tests allow
us to decode the emotional and cognitive perception of the target user»,
Sabattini specifies. Here we go beyond labels. This is what Sabattini always
says: «What matters is first of all to be a reliable partner to accompany
companies on a long stretch of the road. It is essential to keep up with the
times and be constantly updated. What about the future? In a world marked by
artificial intelligence we need to understand how much human intelligence is an
incredible mechanism and how much the human imprint is still fundamental in
creativity».
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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