Leo Burnett’s CEO at Ca' Foscari: “Success of international communication”

“Aim high, race to the top, always”. These are the encouraging words of Giorgio Brenna, CEO of Leo Burnett, guest lecturer of The role of a modern Communication Agency in a digital marketing strategy at the Economic Campus on Thursday October 5th.

After an education and professional experience in accounting and finance, Brenna started working in advertising at Ogilvy & Mather in 1992 and instantly enjoyed his creative breakthrough. Since 2005 he has been the CEO of Leo Burnett, world leader in the field chosen by such famous brands as P&G, FCA or Philip Morris, and brought his company to excel and get the most important international acknowledgements, including Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Eurobest and many more.

The university once again proves as a strong bond between companies and young students. On this occasion the guest shared his knowledge and a gave a lively and substantive overview of communication agencies.

“We are professionals who use labels to communicate with people, and it does not work according to me”, Giorgio Brenna aims at showing how rich a world without label would be, where advertising, social media and content creation co-exist in a shared communication strategy to transmit a message effectively and timely.

The process of creating a message should focus on the consumer and on creating continuous contact points in his or her customer journey, according to Brenna.

Understanding the consumer can be helped by constantly evolving technology. Giorgio Brenna identifies it as a great support and not as a problem to be tackled.

“Put the people at the centre of every thought and activity you are doing instead of technology.” he declared. “The STEMS are the know how of the people but the know-how is not enough to create innovation; innovation is coming from creativity and creativity is coming from people themselves. So be inspired to be creative and put the people at the centre of your thought”.

Giorgio Brenna then interacted with students and discussed about the new challenges the new generations deal with on a daily basis, and in particular the possible attention deficit due to millennials’ continuous need to be connected.

Even though digital is now a part of everyday life and a fundamental tool in the success of businesses around the world that should serve mankind and not the reverse.

In a world with so many stimuli, the latter should serve as inspirations and not as distractions. Responding to a student asking what was his source of creativity, he said that the world should be perceived “with the eyes of a child”.

A proactive and curious approach is an essential feature of a successful manager. Once again he highlighted how important an open mind is to a professional who would aspire to get notice in this field.

“You must dream about becoming bigger and better, overwise you are not dreaming” concluded Brenna in the event organized by professor Hu as part of the Social Media Marketing course in the Department of Management.