BBS Alumni Network. Gino Ruli
3 October 2016Where has your experience in BBS has taken you? The BBS Alumni share with us their projects. In this edition of BBS Alumni Network we introduce Gino Ruli, Alumnus of the Master in Marketing, Communication and New Media.
Gino Ruli is the co-winner of the Digital Fair that was held during the BBS Reunion 2016. Alumnus of Bologna Business School, Gino, thanks to his expertise in the field of digital advertising, was also awarded the prize because he provided an exhaustive overview on the transformation that is underway and that doesn’t stop at start-ups but one that deeply concerns the communication and the consolidation of any digital company as well.He is indeed the “humanistic” side of the digital world: a Bachelor’s degree in Political Sciences, immediately followed by a Master at BBS in Marketing, Communication and New Media. In order to tell his story though, we have to go back to June 2013, when Gino was in Miami, Florida.
Madman
“I was working as a junior manager for a company that managed restaurants, and I was the director of one.” It was late, almost night. Gino, having finished his work shift, went back home and collapsed on the couch. “On TV they were showing a series I didn’t know of, Madmen. It’s the story of a team working in advertising in the Fifties. I discovered I liked that type of work.” One of those cases when something clicks in your head. Why not become one of them? One of those intuitions that prompt you to act, because they activate a need. “Whilst studying at University in Bologna, I’d heard about a renowned and well appreciated institution on the hills around town. I came back to Italy, interview done and I ranked third in the list.” Thus started the Master’s at Bologna Business School for Gino.
Life at BBS
“I had very high expectations and they were met.” Gino wanted to start working as soon as possible, as he’d already had experiences abroad or seasonal jobs. This is why, instead of a Master’s Degree at University, he decided to enrol for a Master’scourse with a very practical syllabus like it is at BBS. “Half the Faculty comes from the world of work, from large companies or highly qualified companies in the field. They were all very experienced and prominent, and I was happy to learn from them. Of course, it was completed by the help and support of the Tenured Professors of the School.” Gino enthusiastically recalls meeting the guest speakers, invited to lecture on their managerial experiences. Many came from other countries, and he’s established long-lasting relationships with some of them. “I’m still in touch with them today, and they help me, they coach me.” What Gino was looking for was precisely this: not just an academic approach, but a course providing the technical skills needed to work.
Emotional Rescue
“I felt a wide range of emotions during the Master’s, but if I were to choose two words I’d say what impressed me where the Faculty’s sincerity and the realism of the field experts.” Gino describes an environment which isn’t academic at all: no professorial tone, rather the intention of conveying to students the awareness of living in a very complex world. And education must provide the tools to be ready to face it. “They teach you communication, new media, digital marketing, a wide variety of skills that allow you to join any digital company, from BtoB to BtoC. But what is important to BBS is to train individuals, because the labour market is very mobile.”
This must be the placement
Job offers arrived immediately for Gino, from different companies. “The BBS placement office proposed in particular a niche marketing business, headquarters in Berlin, and a job at the Italian office of an international advertising giant. I wanted to grow vertically on the digital skills, learn from the experts. I went for the large company.” The current situation is very different though from the one portrayed in the TV series Madmen. The comparison between the past and the present is described by Gino in terms of “a punch in the face”. “Advertising was conceptual and creative, data was not measured. A strategy was devised and then launched. The heart was the whole part of planning and preparation of the media activity, which was mainly launched on TV and radio. Nowadays, the focus is on the second stage of measuring. The attention is now on figures rather than on strategy.” Gino ends the reflection though underlining that from the analysis of figures at times arise very creative considerations and strategies: “It’s very stimulating witnessing that based on what you do users’ perception changes, it’s modified. You acknowledge it, interpret it and act accordingly.” He describes the methodology: “You need to bring the result the client wants, leveraging on all optimization elements, in particular using a mix of technological know-how and real time data. Starting from a hypothesis and finding the way to bring users to act in the desired way. Basically, finding consistency between hypothesis and result.” Tracking, Gino explains, is after all the evolution of marketing as it used to be. Thanks to this you can understand the quality of an efficient media planning and you can bring higher value, concrete and tangible, to your clients.
Digital Fair
“With cookies and ID-based technologies, the digital world uses machines that allow understanding users’ behaviour as they navigate online, thus you can intercept users’ habits to see who they are, how they behave and what they desire. You can’t do it with traditional media. Programmatic advertising from now on will increasingly grant the chance to perceive users in their real behaviours.” It’s on the basis of these revolutionary, precise and somehow disturbing, digital methods to detect users’ behaviour that Gino has developed his participation to Digital Fair, finallywinning the competition among all exhibitors. “I presented my way of offering consultancy services concerning digital strategies when I help start-ups or individual professionals who intend to cash in on their website traffic. No longer buying impressions or clicks but finding a system to acquire by cost per sales, installs, leads and other advanced metrics. We need to raise the bar and minimize business risks for clients offering just concrete results. This is value, this is Performance advertising.”
Read here the other projects published.
Are you a BBS Alumnus? Do you have any project you would like to tell us about? Send us an email to marketing@bbs.unibo.it
