Grad School Adventures: "The Value of IM4 Partners"

The Value of IM4 Partners:

To me our partnership opportunities are one of the most exciting and important opportunities available to us at MIP, and is a reason it really sets itself apart.

The 1^st edition of the IM4 or Master’s of International Multichannel Marketing Management kicked off in September of 2015. Since starting it has been a flurry of activity, experiences, case studies, lectures, and workshops. This program offers us the students a wonderful insight to real time experiences and examples by working with and hearing from large companies. Our official IM 4 partners are IBM, Nielsen, Universal McCann, and OTB. To date we have had the chance to hear from and workshop with most of them with more workshops scheduled!

Early in the semester IBM came in and delivered an insightful presentation on BI/Big Data and how this concept is constantly evolving. There is so MUCH data, what do we do with? We have to learn and be experts on the multiple tools that help us synthesize the data and we are working as Marketing Manager students to fine tune our intuition. For we have to be experts in the field to be able to make decisions based of the data and not let the data make all the decisions for us. It is very important in today’s data driven and evolving society to be able to understand the data and make decision not only on data but on our intuition and understanding of the market. There is a great TED talk by Sebastian Wernicke “How to use data to make a hit TV show”. Sebastian a Data Scientist used an example of Amazon and Netflix and how they used to data to make decisions.

Nielsen also came in and did an excellent workshop on Pricing. We had the opportunity to learn about price sensitivity and price elasticity and how pricing effects the market, competition, and how it can affect your brand image. We then got to work in teams using one of Nielsen’s pricing tools to have to create scenarios to work towards a desired outcome. This allowed us to change prices, product lines, etc to see how they affected overall pricing and sales. This was an excellent workshop and really brought together our lessons on pricing in the market and gave us that hands on experience you rarely find in other classrooms while getting to utilize and network with Nielsen representatives who are very well established and respected in their fields.

Recently we had the pleasure of welcoming Riccardo Belinni, Executive VP Diesel and Diesel Black Gold and Chief Marketing Officer at Diesel as well as the Global Head of Media Giada Gheno to give us an inspiring and bold presentation of Diesel Strategic Brand Strategy from where they started to where they are now with the #DieselReboot campaign as they look to continue being the market rebels with bold, exciting, and strong inspiring marketing campaigns. One of the areas that I thought was very cool was how they run all their digital strategy through one office in English to ensure that their message across platforms is consistent and strong! As a lover of Brand Management and Digital Strategy I really enjoyed hearing about their current campaign and what is to come next from Diesel!

The IM4 program has been an awesome experience over the last 5 months and looking forward to working with Universal McCann in the coming weeks. The class has really enjoyed these experiences and are making the most of every opportunity. It is partnerships like these and the constant variation in visiting professors from different areas of expertise and backgrounds that make this program rich with experiences and networking opportunities.

Book Review: "Balancing Work & Life in a Crazy, Connected World" by Cathy Newton

Balancing Work & Life In a Crazy, Connected World:

Recently on a train from Milano to Rome I started reading a book written by my Aunt and Godmother Cathy Newton. She is a loving aunt, great listener, and an awesome teacher. She is a professional keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, and author. 

While growing up I loved to be in front of a crowd delivering a speech or being the center of attention and she is the one who helped guide me in how to deliver to an audience and captivate a room, forever teaching me valuable presentation skills. While reading her book I thought back to the many times she helped edit a speech, conducted games and workshops for my school, and worked with me on presentation and memory techniques. And in her writing I can see and feel all of that. 

Her book ‘Balancing Work & Life In a Crazy, Connected World is a fun, easy, and quick read that helps bring you back to the basics on engaging your creativity and giving simple easy techniques on how to better manage stress in your everyday life and finding a good center balance in all you do. As a “hurry up” “type A” person myself this was a great read on how I could implement a few simple steps in my life to help be more productive and positive every day. 

Through the pages I couldn’t help but laugh at how I could feel the passion in her writing and also I could picture her expressions and gestures as if she was speaking directly to me. Now I know where my writing style of storytelling like I am presenting comes from. 

For anyone who is always feeling stressed, that they have too much to do, or are constantly re-prioritizing their everyday tasks, I challenge you to read this book and I promise you will walk away with a few simple take aways to help better balance both your professional and personal lives in today’s crazy and connected world. 

You can find more information on Cathy Newton at her website at cathynewton.com!

As always feel free to connect with me on Twitter @RobbyNap, on Facebook: Robby Napoli, on LinkedIn: https://it.linkedin.com/in/robert-napoli-a5839119.

Or you can drop me a note at robbynap87@gmail.com

Ciao ciao!