BINASCO, Milan, Italy – For the second year in a row, the partnership between Gruppo Cimbali and IULM University in Milan continues, coordinated by Gruppo Cimbali’s HR department in collaboration with Prof. Daniela Corsaro. This year, the theme of the project was innovation in human-machine interaction, applied to the launch of the new super-automatic LaCimbali S15 machine: designed to be connected and to offer all the advantages of the IoT, the Cup4You app lets users interact with the S15 directly from a tablet or smartphone.
The S15 is the ideal coffee machine for offices, hotels and small businesses like mini-markets, bakeries and quick service restaurants, offering a new, touchless, intuitive way to manage, personalize and send orders to the machine.
Students from the University’s Masters in International Marketing & Sales Communication presented five work projects on the theme to Gruppo Cimbali’s Marketing and Communications and Strategic Product Marketing teams.
After an initial brief presenting the company and the new super-automatic LaCimbali S15 machine, the students were asked to create a go-to-market plan, developing specific marketing tools to identify and design approaches for new sales channels (offices, convenience stores, hotels), finding the right mix of digital and traditional communications tools to reach various targets.
Both the brief and reports on the 5 projects developed by the Masters students were presented in English in online “virtual presentations” using the Microsoft Teams platform, once again highlighting the efficacy of the technologies being used in this period to overcome distances and keep collaborations between universities and the professional sphere alive.
The reports, all of which were first-rate, brought original, creative ideas, complete with moodboards and videos, that were perfectly in line with the brief that had been shared with the students. Worthy of a professional communications agency, they provided numerous ideas that Gruppo Cimbali can develop on in proposing the new product to different markets, both in Italy and worldwide.
At the end of the presentations, the company’s management provided feedback, recognizing their usefulness, feasibility, creativity and quality, and the sustainability of all of the projects, and finally identifying one in particular.
That project, realized by the group made up of Alessandro Gorla, Maria Gilda Meduri, Martina Menne, Giovanna Nemours Sacchi and Michela Santus, was detailed, specific, and showed great inventiveness, from the initial concept of travel, to an excellent analysis of the hotel consumer channel and various types of salesforce training and communication tools, to an optimal mix of online and offline means, all within timelines and budget and illustrated through a dynamic, engaging presentation.
Gruppo Cimbali
Gruppo Cimbali is a leader in the design and manufacture of professional machines for coffee and milk-based drinks and coffee bar equipment. The Group, which comprises the brands La Cimbali, Faema and Slayer, has three production plants in Italy and one in the U.S. (in Seattle, where Slayer brand machines are made), with a total of more than 800 employees.
The Group’s commitment to spreading espresso coffee culture and highlighting the places where its products are made and used came to concrete expression in 2012 with the founding of the MUMAC – Museo della Macchina per Caffè (Museum of the Coffee Machine), the first and largest permanent exhibition dedicated to the history, context and culture of espresso coffee machines, located at the Gruppo Cimbali headquarters in Binasco. MUMAC hosts the MUMAC Academy – the academy for Gruppo Cimbali coffee machines and a center for training, communication and research.