How many of you keep tabs on Twitter on your smartphone while watching a television programme?
And how many of you fire up Shazam when you hear a song that takes your fancy to instantly find out the title and add it to your personal playlist with a simple touch?
We are living in the second screen era. It’s an extremely common phenomenon, one that maximises the concept of multimedia: even four years ago, 80% of people who had a smartphone and a TV were already using the two devices simultaneously.
This social behaviour may appear simple, but it has a huge impact on companies’ communication and marketing strategies. No cutting-edge brand can afford to ignore the fact that their customers are being exposed to advertising messages in a completely new way and are sensitive to stimuli from more than one media source.
It’s something that has certainly not gone unnoticed by Elio Di Fiore.
The former MIP MBA student – whose CV boasts a series of impressive marketing experiences with large companies – teamed up with course-mates he met at the Milanese business school to capitalise on the trend to launch a quite revolutionary app: Movym.
The idea came about during Di Fiore’s MBA studies, when he and a group of fellow students decided to devise a way of linking televisions and smartphones via voice-recognition technology.
The objective? To use the mobile device to decode the content being broadcast on the television, thus achieving maximum integration between the two.
So, if you want to know more about what a particular presenter is wearing or an object featured in a programme, Movym analyses the content you’re watching and with a simple click can show you the brand, making it easier for you to purchase the item and creating a more fluid, immediate customer journey.
Yet for such an innovative idea, it was imperative that Di Fiore had a comprehensive and varied background. It’s something that many people working in specific, inflexible industry sectors are missing – quite simply, they need “to get a 360 degree view of the businessâ€.
It was Di Fiore’s determination to overcome this barrier and “better understand how to manage big companies and how to start one†that pushed him to sign up for an MBA. He was also able to obtain a scholarship, which enabled him “to study and work at the same time†without making too many sacrifices on the professional side of things.
Di Fiore believes the main benefits of studying on the MIP MBA programme lie in “MIP’s technical background and the flexibility on offerâ€: these key points enable the course to offer comprehensive training and mould future leaders. The MIP MBA represents a springboard to help its alumni take a step forward and transform themselves from talented marketing professional to entrepreneur, someone capable of “starting and running a companyâ€.
But that’s not all: during his time on the MIP MBA programme, Di Fiore showcased great ability in the field of networking, striking up trusted relationships with fellow students who would later become partners in his successful Movym venture.
Read the full interview with Elio Di Fiore here.
