Art & Business as an emotional marketing partnership. When brands meet culture: Rigoni di Asiago case study

Abstract

Brands have been used for centuries to differentiate products or services. However, strong brands no longer differentiate on product characteristics, such as price and quality, alone. Organizations are structured for the purpose of achieving predetermined goals, as they mature and develop a culture. In other words, the identity of a company refers to its portrayal, composed of distinctive characteristics which facilitate the identification of the firm as a whole in terms of tangible and non-tangible elements among its competitors. In the last decade, branding has emerged as a management priority due to the growing realization that brands are of the most valuable intangible assets a firm has. The purpose of this paper is demonstrating how the rise of emotional criteria have developed new marketing strategies, and more precisely, analyse the emotional impacts that this tool creates within an organization and its process of branding. With the use of brands in marketing, consumers are being pushed by a company to build a relationship with a brand. The first chapters focus on these potent consumer–brand linkages which typically emerge when branding strategies use narratives and tactics that demonstrate an empathetic understanding of customers’ inspirations, aspirations, and life circumstances and that generate warm feelings of community among brand users. The following section analyses the rise of storytelling and the theories that highlight this effective communication skill for managers which helps to find a way to represent companies in a compelling representation of the facts that effectively moves audience to action. The focal point of this study is the concept of Art & Business as an emotional marketing partnership. Companies invest and use culture as a media to reach target objectives and specific consumers with the aim of teasing and conquer them completely in an innovative and modern approach. In this way, companies can transform culture in media, investment and marketing tools. Within this context, an example of this new approach is represented by Rigoni di Asiago, a company which linked its brand to places of beauty and where the business became their restoration. The initiative is represented by the restoration of Jesuiti Atrium in Brera Palace and the following opening of a flagship store in Milan. The purpose of the sponsorship initiative allowed the brand to invest in culture and improve its consistency over the years. The examination of the case study has the intention to understand the means of communication under the brand sponsorship which maintain and follow a consistent narrative path for the brand. The analysis of the case study was made possible thanks to the collaboration of Fondaco, a consultancy firm specialized in strategic communication activities that is proposed as a relational platform between art and entrepreneurship.