Students in the Shoes of the Managers of Heineken and Fiorentina

THE CHALLENGE LAUNCHED BY THE BRAND MANAGEMENT COURSE, HELD BY MARIA CARMELA OSTILLIO, WHICH SAW STUDENTS DEVELOPING PROJECTS ON THE BRANDS OF HEINEKEN AND ACF FIORENTINA, ENDED WITH AN AWARD CEREMONY

The students of the Brand Management class, held by Maria Carmela Ostillio and Marta Pizzetti (Department of Marketing) had one month and a half to develop their projects on the brands of Heineken and Fiorentina. The award ceremony was held few days ago, in the presence of the two brands’ managers, the professors and the director of the Master of Science in Marketing Management, Stefania Borghini.

The two classes involved were called upon to develop projects that required a creative application of the theories they studied in class in order to solve the challenges posed by the two companies. Before they started to work, the students visited the headquarters of the two brands: the Heineken brewery and the sports center and stadium in Florence. “The aim is to cast the students into the professional world and let them step into a real company’s shoes, a reality in which many of them will probably work in the future and where they will have to apply the competences acquired during their studies, demonstrating integrity and humility,” says Ostillio.

The class who worked on Heineken was asked to investigate how consumers perceive the Heineken brand and to develop new marketing strategies. "We proposed a brand extension, a strategy in which the same brand launches different product categories,” says Lorenzo Bianchi, student of Marketing Management and member of the winning team. "Heineken has always sold the classic blonde beer, we proposed to also introduce a red, a weiss and a gluten-free beer in the market, in line with the market trends and with the offer of competitor brands".

The team of students awarded by ACF Fiorentina developed instead a strategy to make the new stadium - which will be ready in four years - a meeting place for the Z generation, that is, young people born between 1995 and 2003. "The strength of our project was developing a strategy based on a fan’s typical day, in order to understand their needs," says Andrea Pignatelli, student of Marketing Management and member of the team. "Young people find it difficult to reach the stadium, so we proposed, in addition to a shuttle bus service, a bicycle route starting from the city center and guided by a couple of Fiorentina animators, in order to create a community of fans who could reach the stadium together and leave the bikes in a guarded place," he continues. "What we all appreciated about this project was the opportunity to visit the brand headquarters and to get to know the managers who’d been available for the duration of the project".

by Benedetta Ciotto