JCU Alumna and guest speaker Emily Rosu shares her experience as an Associate Social and Content Manager at Caffeina, a successful Italian creative company where “Ideas Never Sleep.”
Business School News
By Sara Segat / Matthew staff || Edited by Leila Baez
There is no way around it: branded content is all over everyone’s social media feeds. When content is so enjoyable that it gets people to engage with it, chances are it was created for a specific social media strategy by a digital agency. Based in Parma and founded in 2010, Caffeina is an Italian independent creative company that, as they put it, “make[s] impactful experiences to fuel new energy between people and brands.” The agency mainly provides marketing, content, and media services to notorious Italian companies (Frecciarossa, Ferrero, Kinder) as well as foreign companies working on local Italian projects (Carrefour, Pringles, Sunstar).
On Tuesday, 1 February 2022, JCU students from Prof. Salvatore’s course Principles of Marketing (MKT 301-3), as well as other students from Prof. Pulino’s course Early Stage Entrepreneurship (BUS 305-1), had the pleasure to e-meet with fellow alum Emily Rosu for a guest lecture on how digital agencies ideate and produce content for their clients. Born in Rome, but raised bilingual, Emily graduated in Communications in 2017 and established her career in writing and copywriting through various experiences, also interning at JCU as a News Writer. In 2020, she became a Social and Content Associate at Caffeina. In her presentation, Emily illustrated what it takes for a digital marketing strategy to be successful and get the client to where they want to be in terms of sales, social media engagement, and overall popularity. At Caffeina, Emily has mainly worked with AS Roma, one of Rome’s professional football clubs, and Enel X, the sustainable new brand of Enel, Italy’s leading distributor of electricity and gas.
Emily took the class over all the steps she and her colleagues faced for Enel X, from creating an online brand identity to scheduling certain content with specific intentions on unique occasions. Indeed, before they even got to content creation, they spent plenty of time defining content strategies and channel strategies. Planning ahead for what they want to say, how and where they are going to say it, and to whom they need to direct these efforts, allows for a creative, but focused, approach to producing content. In short, what accomplished digital agencies such as Caffeina do with clients’ briefs is much more detailed and in-depth than what emerges on the surface, from extensive customer analysis and segmentation to meticulous and studied content ideation. Emily taught students that, when working on a client’s social media strategy, the focus should always be on their audience and reaching it as effectively as possible. A studied target, a well-rounded tone of voice, a thoughtful choice of platforms, and intelligent call-to-actions all contribute to a social media strategy’s success.
After the lecture, I reached out to Emily and asked her to comment on what it meant for her to be able to present her experience in a digital agency to fellow JCU students. “I was extremely honored that they asked me to talk for JCU because John Cabot has been a very important part of my life, my upbringing, and my approach to the business world and the working world,” she said. “The Center for Career Services opens up a lot of doors and gives many opportunities to find your way into the world through internships.” I then asked her about her career as a young woman in marketing and advertising. “I am at the start of my career, and I have found in Caffeina a very healthy work environment in that they are very community-oriented; they care about their employees and offer them a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of women, actually, covering different roles in the agency,” she began explaining, “I think that my talking on behalf of Caffeina at JCU was also important because careers in marketing and advertising need more exposure as valid options for undergraduate students to pursue. It was important for me to explain how copywriting is a wonderful world to get into, and advertising is the pinnacle of creativity if you’re a writer, because you can really get yourself out there and express your ideas.”
Emily also highlighted the many beautiful aspects and opportunities a creative agency like Caffeina has. “You’re always working with people, and it’s always creative, and it’s beautiful. If creativity is what you want to aim for, the agency world is the best that you can achieve. You go through clients, through different briefs, and you have different projects to work on, so you’re never stuck on the same thing, and it’s always changing. It was important to talk about all the different aspects that an agency can offer because, in an agency, there is space for everyone – not only for copywriters. There’s space for more artistic students who like doing visual design, motion design, etc., or are more prone to the visual aspects of the working world. Then there’s also space for people who are more organized, people who are better at public speaking, and people who like strategy. They’re different little worlds in one big world, and they all work together to deliver projects and messages for brands we’re surrounded by. The main message that I wanted to get across with my lecture was that students who are looking to approach the working world also consider digital agencies within communication, marketing, and advertising.”
Caffeina is among the most ingenious, fresh, and visionary creative companies Italy currently offers. Moreover, with over 130 employees distributed between their offices in Parma, Milan, and Rome, it is a company that not only values people, but especially young people: recent graduates, like Emily, and many of their board members, like CEO Tiziano Tassi and COO Antonio Marella, due to their innate predisposition and understanding of the structures of the digital world. Emily’s class has motivated all of JCU’s aspiring marketers and creatives who wish to work in agencies like Caffeina to believe in the abilities and the knowledge they are acquiring. As the company’s slogan recites, “Ideas Never Sleep,” nor does the future.
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