Antonio Cilardo

With just a few days left until the US presidential elections, the outcome is uncertain.  One thing is clear: the replacement of Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate has reshuffled the deck , upending messages and strategies. One tactic, however, remains constant, even when it clashes with reality: playing the underdog against a powerful opponent—or even against the system itself. The role-playing game in politics "We got a fight ahead of us, and we are the underdogs in this race": this is what Harris declared at a fundraising event in July. Yet, these words come from the sitting Vice President, who has also served as California’s Attorney General and Senator— hardly an insurgent outsider . Interestingly, in 2016, it was her current opponent, Donald Trump, who played the underdog role and was perceived as such : a wealthy, famous businessman up against the political establishment, financial elites, and the media. The outsider role is easier than you'd...

Sometimes it just happens. Even the most seasoned brands can make embarrassing blunders .  Recently, Apple had to apologize for a somewhat dystopian iPad Pro ad that hinted at the destruction of creativity. Bumble , the dating app, withdrew its ads that mocked celibacy and abstinence among its female audience. Beauty brand Youthforia faced a lot of criticism for a foundation shade that was considered not inclusive enough. After backlashes like these, it's not easy to backtrack, but it can be done. After all, we all make mistakes or face setbacks, right? So can brands. They just need to learn from the lesson. The mirage of invulnerability is an illusory trap " Business and leadership is all about relationships . And in any relationship, things go wrong, mistakes are made, ups are followed by downs. The strength of a relationship is not how perfect it is, but how resiliently it deals with the inevitable failures". And as Albert Einstein said : "A person who never ...

The fact : the Italian Competition Authority fined the companies of the famous influencer Chiara Ferragni , along with the confectionery company Balocco , with a total penalty of €1,075,000 for unfair commercial practices related to the Pink Christmas pandoro. The fine for Balocco is €420,000. The Antitrust claims that the companies led consumers to believe that by purchasing the pandoro, they were contributing to a donation to the Regina Margherita Hospital in Turin , when in reality, the €50,000 donation had already been made by Balocco months earlier. Companies associated with Chiara Ferragni collected over one million euros from the initiative. How did they get to this point? First mistake: confusion  What was the goal of the marketing campaign ?  To improve the company's ethical reputation or to reach the audience that adores Chiara Ferragni?  They are two different levels: the first is moral, the second is hedonistic.  Why muddy the waters? If the goal was to...

December : a time of carefree afternoons spent shopping with your loved ones.  As you stroll through the crowded, festive streets illuminated with a thousand colors, your attention as food enthusiasts is caught by two stands on either side of the street.  Both sell artisanal jams: on one counter there are 24 variants; on the other counter there are only 6 variants.  Which of the two stands is more likely to pique your interest?  Which of the two stands is more likely to turn you into their customers?  The answers to these two questions may not coincide .  Too much choice leads to no choice  In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper conducted an experiment to check the correlation between the number of alternatives available and the customer conversion rate .  The experiment didn't take place in Christmas markets but in Menlo Park, California, in an upscale supermarket, where potential customers were lured with a $1 discount voucher....

  Sometimes, when we think about marketing, an aggressive and unforgiving environment comes to our mind. After all, market is competition , right? However, many people value integrity and fair play . And they wish to reward brands that embrace these values. Is flattery more beneficial to the giver or the recipient? In 2021, in a series of 12 experiments led by Duke University, two groups of consumers were shown two fake tweets (when we could still call them tweets...) by Kit Kat (snacks that I suppose needs no introduction): First tweet - Kit Kat praises Twix : @twix, Competitor or not, congrats on your 54 years in business! Even we can admit - Twix are delicious Second tweet - Kit Kat praises itself :  Start your day off with a tasty treat! 11 days later, the percentage of those who bought a Kit Kat : was 31.95% among those who had seen the first tweet - the competitor's praise was 23.77% among those who had seen the second tweet - the trivial self-praise And the deli...

Remember when, in primary school, we had to study large pages of verbs? No one could imagine that the harmless future tense can , in some way, undermine our future (and that of our planet). Does future tense lead to not caring about the future? “Present-tensed” languages , such as German or Finnish, indicate future actions and situations using the present tense . Sentences like "I'm going to the grocery store tomorrow morning" become something like "I go to the grocery store tomorrow morning". While it may seem counterintuitive, these futureless languages foster future-oriented behavior . Their speakers tend to save more , retire with more wealth, smoke less, are less likely to become obese and more likely to use condoms. The macroeconomic differences are significant : within OECD, countries that speak a “present-tensed” language save 5% more of their GDP each year than countries that speak a “future-tensed” language (i.e. with a future tense).  ...

Having worked in marketing for many years, I've realized that people often overestimate themselves and their ability not to be influenced by external stimuli. I'm sure instead that we are more easily influenced than we sometimes think . In this regard, some studies are meaningful. The instinctual perception of being seen elicits cooperative behavior In a Newcastle University experiment in 2006 , researchers placed simple images of pairs of eyes staring at people in their university coffee room .  In the coffee room there was also an honesty box where anyone could freely leave a contribution to repay the tea, coffee and milk they had drunk. Finally, “people paid nearly three times (2.76) as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image” depicting flowers. According to researchers, “although participants were not actually observed in either of our experimental conditions, the human perceptual system contains neurons that respond selectiv...

By dint of SEO talk, we risk to forget that it’s not so much important to be at the top of search engine pages, as to be at the top of people memories . More precisely: when our potential customers express their needs, we should already be in their minds. Category entry points: the gateways to our daily lifeworld Research by the LinkedIn B2B Institute and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute defines category entry points as triggers that, when a need arises, lead us to remember a certain brand. Category entry points are “the cues customers use to access memories when faced with a buying situation . These cues are both internal, such as motives and emotions, and external, including location and time of day”. CEPs should be conceived as separate from specific goods or services: they “are not about the brand, they’re about the buyer,” according the report’s author Professor Jenni Romaniuk, associate director at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. They are personal or contextual factors that, ...