TBWA
A new product, innovative but unknown to the market. How to
present it? F.I.L.A. leaves this task to the experience of TBWA, an
avant-guard advertising agency even at that time. Corrado Romano,
TBWA Marketing Director from 1973 to 1974, interviewed by Anty
Pansera, tells us how the relationship between the company and the
agency was born and how they arrived at the Tratto Pen print
campaign.
|
|
Anty Pansera: "How did your agency meet
F.I.L.A.?".
Corrado Romano, TBWA Marketing Manager from 1973 to
1994: "F.I.L.A. contacted TBWA in 1973, 1974 for the
Giotto line advertising campaign, a line of children's fibre pens
and coloured pencils. I was interested in the entire F.I.L.A.
production, visiting the factory and bringing an example of each
product to TBWA. One of these, an ugly duckling called Micropunta
Linea 2000, had a special pen for that period. I tried it on paper
and realised it wrote fantastically. At that point I called Alberto
Candela and told him of my surprise: many of these pen tips were
imported from Japan at the time and mounted on a body called the
Micropunta Linea 2000. A couple of thousand were sold. We both
agreed that it had high potential and, for the first time, I
realised I had met a businessman who not only trusts in his
instinct but is also willing to follow it up with consumer research
to check whether our ideas, our instincts are actually shared by
our targets".
Anty Pansera: "Was there a strategy, a study, a
thought behind the Tratto Pen print campaign?".
Corrado Romano: "Francesco D'alessandris was
one of the founders of TBWA Italia and a media genius. He realised
that the target group was enormous, that this kind of pen, sold at
100, 150 Italian lira, would have met the needs of both kids and
managers, housewives, workers or clerks. So how could we send out
this message without an exceptional budget? Alessandro's bright
idea was to create a campaign that reached the various targets
through various magazines, their favourites, with low production
costs. A line was thus create. Low production costs, perfect for
any magazine and addressing everyone".
|
 |