People, not users: Facebook and the importance of corporate culture
11 February 2020“Company culture is the foundation of the results of every business”, says Luca Colombo, Country Director of Facebook Italia during the visit of the Milan office dedicated to the students of the Master in Digital Marketing & Communication of BBS.
“We started with 7 and now we are almost 60 people – he said – a very small number, considering that every month 32 million users connect to the platform in Italy. How do we manage this traffic? Targeting the public and focusing on resources: every day we work with companies and local stakeholders to help them to understand the full potential of their businesses through our social networks”.
According to Colombo, in the company since 2009, to implement this business model it is necessary to cultivate a corporate culture that starts from the individual. “Before joining Facebook I worked at Microsoft – he said – and I spent the first year there only to change my mind-set: I treasured that experience and today everyone here is put in a position to bring out the best. Who has been with me from the beginning has not run aground in the comfort zone, but on the contrary, he never gets bored and never stops learning”.
Facebook Italia is not divided into fixed departments, but employees who deal with the different aspects of the product sit at the same table to stimulate a continuous exchange of ideas and perspectives. “What do I do every day in here? – Giulio Ravizza, Head of Marketing for Facebook Italy, takes the word – I try to convey the message that a world with Facebook is better than a world without: after having created interest in the potential that we offer, enter at stake is the sales component that offers companies our ADV solutions that intersect three channels: negotiate, understand the media, communicate”.
The social network funnel according to Ravizza has at the top the reputation, linked to the democratization that Facebook has brought to the world of advertising: “before only those who had large sums could invest in promoting their product, now anyone can opt for low-budget campaigns thanks to social networks”.
To those who claim that the new generations are not on Facebook because they prefer other networks, Ravizza replied that the statistics deny this impression: “users have not fallen: Instagram and TikTok have taken hold for moments of leisure and fun, but Facebook remains the ‘useful’ social network on which to search for information and opinions and with which to register on other platforms without filling in infinite forms”.
