Leadership Talks: Global MBA in Design, Fashion and Luxury Goods

4 April 2022

Leadership Talks are a precious added value for BBS Global MBA students. A unique experience for a Master that aims to train the top managers of the future.

Meetings with executives and prestigious business leaders add to the Global MBA classes the personal experience of professionals working at the highest level. This is an extraordinary opportunity for students to listen to opinion leaders with which they can come into direct contact. Students can learn from real cases and experiences from leading companies in their own business areas.

Several meetings have been organized for the Design, Fashion and Luxury Goods Global MBA track. Among them, Luca Finotti, Creative Director, Creative Exchange Agency, discussed Productivity and business in new media: the fashion sector.

Integrating creativity and management, particularly in the fashion and luxury industry, is essential: Luca Finotti, defined by Forbes as “the director of the videos that go viral in fashion”, explained, through his own work, the transformation of the business that more than any other has experienced the shift of fashion and luxury content from print to the new media. From economics student to video maker, from director and creative director to communication expert with experience for the biggest brands in the fashion world and with stars like Lady Gaga and Gigi Hadid, Luca Finotti’s journey became an example for the students of the BBS Global MBA: “At 30, I stopped doing what I had to do and started doing what I believed in”.

After the Tom Ford videos and the Forbes interview, Nike invited him to participate in the Nike Lab, a springboard for his career. The #WeBelieveInThePowerOfLove campaign, highly unconventional for the time, immediately went viral through social networks: a strategy planned, embracing the idea that the internet controls video distribution.

Timing is the key for those who aim for the virality: asked by Nike to work on the campaign in the middle of winter, Finotti decided to wait until Valentine’s Day to launch it. The success of the message was reflected in a sales boom: more than 20%. Nike took Luca to Oregon to study the reasons behind such an exceptional success.

Today, that campaign is the proof that people want to feel that a brand shares its values and points of view, that it can become a medium for their own vision of the world. Add to this the freshness of style and innovation as a breakthrough element to promote a message in the social universe.

And the managerial approach remains crucial: “even when faced with large budgets”, says Finotti, “you need to be able to keep a good level of productivity, and optimize your resources as much as possible”. This real case told the Global MBA students about a life and business experience and demonstrated the importance of Leadership Talks: strong and unforgettable stories, more memorable than any theory, brought by their protagonists to the classrooms of Bologna Business School.

Other Leadership Talks have already been scheduled with leading names in the industry, such as Mauro Baglietto, CEO, Borsalino, who will talk about the Re-launch and repositioning of a historic brand and new licensing strategies; and Candice Koo, Managing Director, Cancan Mobile, who will bring attention to sustainability, a key topic at BBS, talking about Luxury as a driver of sustainable development.