Territorial marketing: founding a Pro Loco during lockdown

In March 2020, lockdown was declared in Italy. The municipal administration of my town, Barzago (LC), decided that something had to be done — not only on an operational level, but on a psychological one too. I was asked to help.

A Pro Loco founded at the worst possible time for a Pro Loco

In March 2020, lockdown was declared across the whole of Italy. This meant that even the town where I live, Barzago (LC), began to live the nightmare of social distancing and restricted movement.

The council had this idea: since you can’t get out of Barzago, let’s make the citizens appreciate Barzago more.

So the aim was to found a Pro Loco that would tell the hidden beauties of the town, to make the hard months of lockdown pass more pleasantly.

In a few days a WhatsApp chat, a name (BZG) and a logo (the one you see above) were born.

Then the challenge: how do we let the people of Barzago know about the initiative? That’s where I came in.

My challenge: reach as many “Barzaghesi” as possible

The name, BZG, sort of recalls airports. MXP is Milan Malpensa, LHR is London Heathrow, and so on.

The idea behind the name was: just as a large airport hub rises next to an important destination, BZG is “the airport” through which we want to bring visitors to an interesting destination like Barzago.

So, we asked ourselves, why not play on the airport theme for the communication too?

As a marketer, though, my point of view was: let’s understand what makes people feel good, what they want and what they’re doing right now. Let’s use that information for successful communication.

Some insight on lockdown

What we knew was that, in the first phase, people were busy with:

• walking pets
• cooking
• housekeeping
• playing with the kids
• movies and TV series On a more intimate, psychological level — through conversations and phone calls — we understood that the most problematic thing about lockdown was the sense of confinement, particularly acute for those with smaller, crowded homes.

The other big problem was the lack of space for oneself. It’s nice to spend more time with the kids, but when can you be alone for a while?

It was inevitable, getting inside the heads of Barzago’s inhabitants, to realise they’d give anything to be somewhere else — maybe on holiday, ideally covid-free.

At this point we had all the insight we needed to proceed.

The communication: where do you come from?

First, we delivered a special gift to every home: a plane ticket with departure from a big city in the world and arrival in… Barzago.

To activate it, you had to scan a QR code. This led to a mysterious countdown set for 6 p.m. on May 4th.

That day, the QR code would open access to the BZG association’s Facebook page. There, the people of Barzago would find this video:

As you can see in the video, we tried to respond to the desire for escape and for open, solitary spaces that we knew were common feelings at that time.

The communication worked: the ticket in the mailbox generated word of mouth that we could monitor on Facebook. Moreover, less than a week after the BZG launch, more than 10% of Barzago’s inhabitants had seen the video and followed the Facebook page. Today, several months later, that figure is close to 20%.

Organising events during lockdown

What else is missing during lockdown? Easy answer: seeing your friends and going to the shops you love!

So the events we organised had one watchword: people at the centre.

We organised video interviews with interesting people living in Barzago: shopkeepers, people who have travelled, photographers.

This way our aim was to keep everyday life going, even in virtual mode.

The tool of choice was Facebook Live. Easy, effective, accessible to everyone.

Below you can see a poster:

…and a screenshot of a live broadcast: