CHAPTER I
FANATIC ABOUT TCB
- BRIEF INTRODUCTION ON THE CULTURE BUSINESS AND
THE FANATICS ABOUT CINEMA -
1. INTRODUCTION TO THE ACTIVITIES
The creative industries have been seen to become increasingly important to
economic well-being, proponents suggesting that "human creativity is the
ultimate economic resource
1
” and that “the industries of the twenty-first
century will depend increasingly on the generation of knowledge through
creativity and innovation
2
". The festival sector in Italian cultural and economic
landscape is, actually, an industry that has seen, in 2009, investments for 400
millions € and an induced consumption of 1.5 billions € spread on 937 events
during the whole year
3
. Festivals and cultural events are important resources
for territories which want to expand and develop both culturally and
(consequently) economically.
The Culture Business (TCB)
4
has been able to understand and gather the
challenges proposed by this budding industry.
Explaining the complicated web of activities established by The Culture
Business wonʼ t be simple. Born as an agency for integrated services
dedicated to cinematographic festivals, it is becoming more important year
after year, event after event; turning into a reference point for every cultural
operator. The activities developed by this Bologna-based small firm, are quite
1
1
Florida, Richard - The Rise of the Creative Class. And How it's Transforming Work, Leisure
and Everyday Life, Basic Books, 2002
2
Howkins, John - The Creative Economy: How People Make Money From Ideas, Penguin,
2001
3
Micardi, Federica - In Italia tre festival al giorno. Il Sole 24 Ore, Lunedì 2 Novembre 2009
4
The Culture Business srl Via Paolo Fabbri 1/3, 40138 Bologna, Italy. P.IVA/CF:
02338891209
innovative due to the fact that the same importance is given to the two
strategic and determinant sides of the cultural industry field: the
acknowledgment and recognition of the artistic value of the products they deal
with (usually cinematographic), and a very high professionally-oriented
attention to the business and managerial operations. This attitude has been
deeply influenced by the education and the personal background experiences
of the four managers that founded and still run the organization: Andrea
Romeo, Emanuela Ceddia, Monica Ghisleri and Marco Monsurrò.
TCB divides its activities into three main streams
5
: the profit-oriented activities
divisions, the events organizer and the press office.
The first one is composed by TCB itself and its divisions: Fanatic About
Festivals (FAF), an integrated services provider for film festivals; Fanatic
About Films (FAFI), marketing department that develops film releases
promotions through preview screenings, special events and co-marketing
operations; Fanatic About Venice (FAVe), an event space in the context of the
International Film Exhibition of Venice; Fanatic About TV (FATV) integrated
services provider for TV formats and Fanatic About Games (FAG) integrated
services providers for the video-games field. Not all these divisions are still
working; actually just FAF, FAFI and FAVe have developed projects whereas,
for the others, no opportunities of development took form and have been
temporarily shelved.
The second stream is made by the events promoted by the Association
Fanatic About Festivals (AFAF): Biografilm Festival
6
, an international festival
focused on biographies; Festival Of Festivals
7
(FOF), a meeting event
dedicated to cultural operators and festivals insiders; and by the magazine
Fanatic About Festivals | Il magazine dei festival italiani, dedicated to the
Italian festivals industry.
2
5
In order to describe TCB activities as simpler as possible, a framework is drawn out in the
appendix, fig.1
6
Logo, appendix, fig.19
7
Logo, appendix, fig.20
The third element is the Press Office 2.0 that cares about the visibility and the
external communication of all TCB activities. It organizes press conferences
for the events (Biografilm and FOF), press junkets during FAVe, it takes care
about FAFI press releases and keep the relationships with local and national
press. Press Office 2.0 has officially began its activity in 2008 providing
visibility for Biografilm and FOF, collaborating with Alphabet City which,
instead, cares about the web communications for TCB.
2. THE CULTURE BUSINESS AND ITS DIVISIONS
Born in 2002, The Culture Business
8
is an agency that provides specialized
marketing solutions, events and communication tools for the audiovisual field.
It covers a wide range of clients, various in number and genre, and in order to
grant the best service possible for each different customer, TCB has created
four different divisions, profit-oriented, within its spaces.
Each division has at its core, the key concept of services integration. The aim
of their job, is to create the best interaction between the providers of cultural
products (such as festivals promoters and movies distributors) and the
economic and commercial partners that practically contribute to their
realization and/or awareness.
It is important to specify that these divisions donʼ t create independent offices
of their own, but are managed by the same staff almost since the beginning.
Just in very recent times, the core management is trying a retreat of the
personnel and a specialized reorganization of the offices in order to design
more specific tasks for everyone.
a. FanaticAboutFestivals
Established in 2003, itʼ s the division that actually gave birth to TCB itself.
The company realized that the field of cinematographic festivals was a real
industry with its own insiders; they decided to provide integrated services
plans that can enhance and develop for the best, the festival field.
3
8
http://www.theculturebusiness.it/
Determinants for the realization of their projects, were some elements
characterizing the founders: a background experience in festival
organization and development (Future Film Festival from 1998 to 2002) and
the deep willing to be recognized as professional reference points and to
professionalize the whole sector.
These services, generally involve complete plans for visibility and
communication that include:
- Web sites (a general one, dedicated to FAF activities
9
, and a dedicated
one, specifically developed for the client event)
- Mailing lists
- Meetings
- Off line events for the community
- Information and columns on specialized magazines (among which TCBʼ s
publication FanaticAboutFestivals - Il magazine dei festival italiani
10
)
- Newspapers
- Television and radio programs
The principal components
11
of their projects development are: public,
possible partners and the synergy with visibility tools aimed to reinforce the
relationships among those networks that orbit around a festival including
insiders and audience.
The public must be engrossed and satisfied both in entertainment and
artistic value by the festival and its organization, for this reason, consumer
activities, participation activities, information and surrounding tools have
been planned in order to increase their involvement.
Companies are determinants in a cultural events realization and TCB has
developed attractive solutions for firms which want to take advantage of
cultural contents to gain visibility in front of the publicʼ s eyes.
4
9
http://www.fanaticaboutfestivals.it/
10
FanaticAboutFestivals - The italian festivals magazine has been created in 2010 in order to
collect all the experiences on innovation, sustainability and feasibility in italian cultural events.
FAFs publishes one issue every three months and it is a direct emanation of the annual
meeting Festival Of Festivals.
11
A framework of the interconnection among these elements is drawn in the appendix, fig.2
The combination of these two components can give birth to a profitable
synergy that can satisfy both the parts involved.
FAFs, applied its knowledges about the cinematographic festivals in
several cases, sometimes even projecting an entire festival beginning with
a feasibility plan. This is the case of Biografilm Festival, a product of their
own that took place for the first time in 2005 and that in 2010, at its sixth
edition has achieved great results of both public and participants.
One of the most successful strategy adopted, has been the different
approach to sponsorships: sponsorships and partnerships toward festivals,
are drawn on companiesʼ needs and visions and, for each of them, is
proposed the cultural event that can satisfy these necessities.
One of the very first project, in 2002, has been the Play Garden during the
59th International Film Exhibition of Venice, a place where technological
and entertainment elements, consistent with the context, were offered to
the public. Now the Play Garden has turned into the Cinema Garden,
fulcrum of the consumer activities within the Venice Film Festival and that,
in 2007 edition of Venice film festival, has involved an amount of thirty-four
among which companies stands and bar refreshments
12
.
TCB addresses its attention not just to the Italian landscape, but also
internationally. The very first international project, has been the consulting
feasibility plan for the launch of the international video-web platform:
Babelgum
13
and, especially, its section Babelgum Online Film Festival
14
,
an online-multi interactive film festival that engrosses more than 300
festivals from 50 countries and that saw as presidents, protagonists of the
cinematographic landscape as directors Spike Lee and Michel Gondry that
saw in this project the future of quality film festivalsʼ visibility.
5
12
In appendix, fig.4 and fig.5 show the plan and the map of the stands present at Cinema
Garden
13
http://www.babelgum.com/
14
http://www.babelgum.com/online-film-festival
b. Fanatic About Films
The FAFI (Fanatic About Films) division aims to create a profitable synergy
between the necessities of cinematographic distributors and those
companies who are interested in using cinema as a marketing strategy
lever.
What distributors mainly look for is a supplementary visibility campaign for
their products releasing in theaters or on DVDs; whereas companies use
the properties or the messages conveyed by movies, in order to promote
their core missions rather than new products or periodic special offers.
FAFI, since 2005, has developed different tools in order to carry out these
achievements: promotional events, special previews and co-marketing
promotions.
Special previews are, obviously, dedicated to theatrical releases and TCB
can work on different kind of products: international blockbusters, national
products and high quality movies arising the awareness around these
products and favoring positive buzzing about them.
The Warner Bros blockbuster The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
15
has
been launched in theaters by 5 free previews in as many key-cities. The
promotional press campaign has involved many local and national media
such as La Repubblica
16
, Il Corriere del Mezzogiorno
17
and Radio Adige
18
,
the aim was to favor positive Word-Of-Mouth and reinforce the awareness
of the movie thanks to fans buzzing.
Amore, Bugie & Calcetto
19
by Luca Lucini, has been shown in preview to
more than 6000 spectators in almost 40 cities and it has been supported by
120 national and local media partnerships. This campaign has strongly
supported the theatrical release, especially during the first weekend.
6
15
By David Fincher, USA 2008
16
La Repubblica is a national newspaper http://www.repubblica.it/
17
Southern Italy newspaper http://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/
18
North-eastern radio station http://www.radioadige.it/
19
By Luca Lucini, Italy 2007
Marjane Satrapiʼ s Persepolis
20
has been heavily supported by a strong
media campaign that has enabled the possibility to organize several
previews and to broaden the movie secondary target.
Recently, FAFI is focusing its attention on co-marketing promotions that
actively involve both film distributors and traditional industries.
These promotional operations, generally take the form of contests or prizes
draws that usually involve, as first step, the consumer in buying the
companyʼ s product or service. Both distributors and companies can gain in
profit and visibility from these operations: the films are more promoted and
the general awareness about their release is enhanced, whereas
companies can increase their products selling thanks to promotions,
contests and prizes draws linked to the film contents and its properties.
One of the most successful co-marketing operations run by TCB, has been
the one between Mercatone Uno
21
and Yes Man
22
, the blockbuster comedy
starring Jim Carrey. The contest foresaw the draw of several prizes,
including a trip to Hollywood, among those customers who would have
bought Mercatone Unoʼ s products for at least 20.00€ , during the
promotional period. The campaign has been supported by national media,
both by Above The Line and Below The Line means. At the end of the
promotion, 800.000 people applied to the contest.
A different kind of co-marketing, has been the one realized in cooperation
between IBM Italy
23
and The 11
th
hour
24
a documentary centered on global
overheating and environmental problematics produced by Leonardo
DiCaprio. IBM shown the movie to a restricted public composed by its staff
and by its primary clients. It also printed a leaflet, to be put inside the
7
20
By Marjane Satrapi, France 2007
21
Mercatone Uno is a department stores chain centered on furnishings. It is present, on the
national territory, with more than 100 stores. http://www.mercatoneuno.com
22
By Peyton Reed, USA 2008
23
http://www.ibm.com/it/it/
24
By Leila and Nadia Conners, USA 2007
DVDs, presenting its environment-oriented last product to mass customers
in order to aware about IBM commitment on ecological thematics.
Actually, many marketing agencies provide the same kind of services FAFI
proposes, but its strengths rely on the right balance between distributors
and companies necessities and a strong profitable relationship with many,
important, media partners; besides, for each promotion, several platform
can be activated in order to manage it and actively involve the final
consumers. A general platform, www.fanaticaboutfilms.it, collects all the
promotions managed by FAFI; it has been established in order to let final
consumers always kept in touch with the last contests and movie releases.
Nowadays FAFI sees co-marketing promotions development as its core
business and works with most of the international majors and with many
important companies and franchises that operate on the Italian territory
always developing new and innovative ways of enhance the relationships
between creative movies properties and traditional “humdrum” companies.
Previews screenings are still organized but in smaller number and not very
often due to a change in market habits.
c. Fanatic About Venice
FAVe (Fanatic About Venice) takes place in the context of the annual
International Film Exhibition of Venice
25
one of the most important
international film festivals in the world.
TCB, taking advantage from the opportunities provided by this great event,
manages the spaces situated in Foscari 3 as a meeting point for insiders
and professionals aiming to illustrate the services it proposes to the
cinematographic industry. Moreover, FAVenice hosts a literal meeting point
for creative and traditional companies which can promote their products or
services through samplings, visibility tools or events in the glamourous
context of the Venice Film Festival. Also journalists of specialized and
traditional media use to attend Foscari 3 where parties, press conferences,
8
25
http://www.labiennale.org/en/Home.html
movie junkets and other events use to take place avery day. Insiders and
professionals can also find organizational and managerial players and
companies that could help running better their events caring about
incoming and back office handling.
For example, the launch of Current TV
26
contest for young film makers was
supported by a stand, postcards, press events, party, staff incoming
package and back office services. This event helped the network to
increase the awareness about its national programs and scheduling into an
appropriate context.
Also public institutions take advantage of TCB services, such as Regione
Basilicata that used Foscari 3 to promote the contest Orizzonti Lucani
27
with postcards and totem placed all over the Lido, press conference and a
gala party, made in partnership with Lancia. In this case too, the project of
Basilicata region of spreading the knowledge about its project about food-
farming thorough a cinematographic contest, was perfectly fitting with the
socially and culturally oriented context and TCB organized everything
professionally and by any point of view.
During the Venice Film Festival period, TCB organizes many other different
events to let all the players of these components to meet and to share their
knowledges and their hypothesis of projects: parties, meetings, buffets,
products presentations, prize-giving and other rendezvous not to be lost.
d. Fanatic About TV
This division was conceived as a integrated service provider for
broadcasting, publishing and new media. The aim was to set up
promotional campaign for TV shows and format similarly with the FAFI
methodology.
9
26
Current Media is an award-winning multiplatform company dedicated to the in-depth
investigation and exploration of the world's most important, interesting, and entertaining
stories. http://current.com/
27
It is a project of foodfarming weaving factory promoted by Basilicata Region http://
www.ssabasilicata.it/orizzontilucani/
Actually this division did never develop and has been temporarily shelved.
e. Fanatic About Games
Following the model applied to Festivals and Films, TCB founded the
division Fanatic About Games in order to develop projects of marketing
strategies applied to the video-games market. In this case the provision of
those elements useful to comprehend the sector is assigned to an external
collaborator
28
.
3. THE FANATIC ABOUT FESTIVALS ASSOCIATION
A little after the creation of TCB as a company, the founders found out that
their experience had to turn into something that could express pragmatically
what they had learnt in years of experience, and for this purpose the
Associazione Fanatic About Festival (AFAF) has been created. Hence the
association was born in order to promote those different events that year after
year, were surfacing in TCBʼ s mind and that represented what they thought
which cultural field, in Italy, was missing and needed to develop for best.
a. Biografilm Festival
The first event promoted by AFAF has been Biografilm Festival -
International celebration of lives which was born in 2005 after a
feasibility plan on the thematic festivals landscape. The subtitle
“International celebration of lives” explains immediately the willingness of
Biografilm to become a festival with an international relevance and that is
what, actually, is happening.
In just six editions, Biografilm has arisen consensus from both public and
insiders. Its particular theme had engrossed film makers and professionals
from all over the world who have actively participated: just in the last edition
of 2010, four hundreds movies subscribed to the contest from forty
countries all over the world; John Scheinfeld, Michael Wadleigh, Charlie
10
28
Stefano Silvestri, publishing coordinator of Sprea Edizioni and assignment editor of The
Games Machine magazine.
Kaufman, Michael Palin, Amalie Rothschild are just few examples among
many other of the international hosts who arrived in Bologna to take part to
the festival presenting their works or their stories.
Each edition of the festival presented five different focuses on protagonists
of historical events, literature, music, art and culture in general and has
extended to books presentations and exhibitions the festival events.
b. Festival Of Festivals
After many years of experience in festival organization, TCB decided to
give birth to a new event that could convene the insiders of this field in
order to share the experiences and knowledges collected by the great
number of festivals that each year take place in Italy.
The importance of these kind of events in spreading culture, promoting
local identities and economies is demonstrated by the growing participation
of professionals to the seminars and workshops organized at FOF since its
first edition in 2008.
The meeting treats about all the festival organization and management
core issues: from sponsorships and partnerships to ticketing; from
marketing and promotion to public policies. Later we will also talk about the
central position of FOF as a Knowledge Broker within the field of festivals
organization and management, aiming to professionalize the sector and let
it grow and develop for best in both artistic and business sides.
The success of this event has underlined the willing of TCB to be
recognized as a professional actor in the sprouting industry of festivals and
the corresponding identification by insiders as a reference point.
c. Fanatic about Festivals Magazine
Fanatic About Festivals Magazine was born as an on-line magazine
focused on reportage and news from Italian film festivals but after the
experience of Festival Of Festivals, TCB staff has been persuaded that
cultural operators involved in any kind of festival, needed a specific tool, a
dedicated magazine that could inform about the last information,
innovations and experiences on festivals organization. Thatʼ s why Fanatic
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