Marina Marinetti, journalist and deputy director of economymag.it, tells the Festival as its newspaper dealt with refreshments in the food sector e went through the pandemic. Giving a voice to the catering operators was essential especially in the first part of the emergency. Today the focus is on the essential solutions to restart an entire sector. Key word: the crisis of politics and the inability to respond to the cry of alarm.
How did you deal with this pandemic and the consequent great difficulty in the restaurant sector with your newspaper? Have you in any way changed your usual narrative? Have you carried out any particular initiatives to describe this very particular period?
«Economy was born to tell the real economy and immediately sided in favor of refreshments alongside entrepreneurs, including those in catering. Through the magazine, but even more with the webmagazine www.economymag.it we gave a voice to catering operators and sector organizations (including those created precisely to make a common front during the pandemic), underlining the need for support, proposing solutions, describing the initiatives that have arisen to support the sector.
From your point of view, how do you think the food and catering companies (food companies, but also chefs, restaurants etc) communicated in this period? Are there any initiatives that have particularly impressed you and that you wanted to highlight?
"Let's say that communication at the time of Covid, and not just that in the catering sector, has flattened out somewhat. On the other hand, to closed companies, what to communicate if not the solidarity initiatives, the request for aid and refreshments, the inconsistencies of closures imposed in the face of the obligation to implement increasingly stringent security measures? During the critical phases of the pandemic, however, the sector did not give up and reacted by starting not only food delivery - which some players took advantage of by increasing fees, but this is another matter - but also by associating under the aegis of fledgling co-marketing initiatives. Unity is strength, it's true. Also in the communication field "
How did your users / readers / listeners react? Have you noticed a greater sensitivity to certain issues related to the world of food? In your opinion, has there been an increase in attention to this sector?
“Actually no, as in every crisis everyone thinks about their own misfortunes and the sense of community is always lost a little, although creating a system is instead the best way out of the crisis. But we are in Italy, oppressed by a criminogenic tax that pushes to find creative ways to survive. Unfortunately, the category of restaurateurs, like that of merchants, asks for refreshments, but is marked by the original sin of the "voluntary" receipt (with the usual corollary of "we pay more taxes because there are those who pay less"): not surprisingly the government has linked the refreshments to the drop in turnover ”.
After the pandemic, and when finally we can really talk about a restart, how do you think communication in the food sector will change? Which channels should be privileged and which ones have had their day?
«The issue is not only creativity, but also the objective observation of the world of communication, which tends not to broaden one's gaze by observing how competitors move. The result is a flattened communication on the same issues: the restart, the delivery, the new proposals ... It is difficult to find something disruptive, which attracts attention. But this is a problem common to all sectors ».
Tips?
«Maybe crossing some ideological boundaries and going to look not so much for the audience promised - but not guaranteed - by the big media, when the vertical target, certainly more effective. Not only fueling the undergrowth of food magazines, but daring to explore previously unexamined media. I am not speaking only of Economy, which in any case is aimed at a "high spending" target, but also perhaps of sector publications. Very well the initiatives that directly involve journalists (trips, lunches, tastings), which guarantee publication. Instead, I would avoid chasing the sirens of digital events or podcasts: we don't have enough time to follow everything, really ».
