Crazy4Art, A Smart Audio-guide to Experience Italian History & Art
On Thursday, October 24, JCU welcomed Irina Voytsekhovska and Raul Ricozzi of Crazy4art, in the context of Professor Antonella Salvatore’s class “Service Marketing.”
Crazy4art
Crazy4Art is an audio-guide app that provides users with customized tours of Rome based on their interests, taking into consideration the main sights and suggesting the simplest routes on the app interface. Ricozzi explained that the app is aimed at facilitating tourists’ experience of Italian cultural beauties. They can listen to the content, provided in ten languages, while keeping their phones in offline mode. Crazy4Art has created audio guides for Rome, and is currently working on one for Venice and Florence.
Ricozzi said that when creating Crazy4Art, the first step was to analyze how they could offer a better and more innovative service. The team of Crazy4Art decided that their main focus should be the quality of content. Their audio guides should not just provide tourists with factual information, but with stories and anecdotes to remember.
Once the mission was identified, the team started to work on setting the right target for their business. Ricozzi explained that they narrowed down their client pool to tourists with mid/high-level education, aged 25 to 55, who plan their visit in advance.
Voytsekhovska said that their business is a B2B2C (business to business to consumer). For a new company, a B2C strategy can be too difficult and expensive. For this reason, at first Crazy4Art started to create partnerships with service providers in their cities of interest. Some examples are bike and car rentals, info points, tour operators, cultural companies and associations, as well as hotels and restaurants.
According to Voytsekhovska, the real challenge is to establish a contact with potential partner companies. In Italy, personal interaction is paramount. Voytsekhovska’s advice for JCU Service Marketing students was to use their network to be introduced to people working in the company that they want to get in touch with or attend events that could provide the chance to meet the organization’s representatives.
“When launching a new business, you will come across a wide range of challenges and you may get stuck in front of an obstacle,” Voytsekhovska explained. “People who are not emotionally attached to the ‘baby’ will see your product as a consumer and this will help you improve it and find new solutions,” concluded Voytsekhovska.
(Giorgia Tamburi)
