Press Date: 35 years in media monitoring

Media monitoring, press review service for communication offices and companies. Two "behind the scenes" activities in the world of information, yet fundamental and strategic. Among the leading realities there is Print date, partner of Festival of Food Journalism.

We interviewed the president Massimo Scambelluri which, in the 1981, founded this new service from scratch, in a sector that is still little known.

In the 1981 you founded the company. From which idea and in response to what need?

Data Stampa was born in February of the 1981, when, with a law degree in my pocket and tired of a job that was not stimulating for me, I decided with my girlfriend (my wife today) to start from scratch in a sector that is still little beaten: that one of the press reviews, at a time when organizations and companies began to focus on the world of external communication and institutional relations. Thus began the work of "cut and sew" for the first few customers of that time. A bet shared with other young people willing to "do everything": from reading newspapers to delivering reviews on scooters.

Over time, the spread of PCs has made the processing of articles slimmer, the old technologies have been enhanced and enriched by software that Data Stampa has had the readiness to develop "at home" since the 1987, thus being able to manage emergencies of customers in real time.

What are the main services you offer?

Over the years the company has established itself on the national and international scene, becoming a reference point for the most important companies in the country and the main Italian institutions. The group has expanded its activity and, in addition to print media, we have enriched the press reviews with the monitoring and processing of audiovisual, of press agencies, of websites and social media, with the production of customized abstracts and qualitative-quantitative analysis of products.

How important is your review service for corporate press offices? Is there a service to economically quantify the articles published? 

A good press review service without “holes” photographs the activity carried out and offers ideas for the interventions to be put in place working in synergy with the press office and placing ourselves as true “consultants” within their communication strategy. Furthermore, thanks to the division, Data Press Media Analysis, it also deals with quantitative and qualitative analysis, a fundamental tool, in our opinion, to "measure" the success of a press office. The press review is given a real advertising value, given the economic weight of media coverage, based on the commercial policies of the various newspapers.

In your 35 years of history and activity you have witnessed many changes, especially with the advent of the web and then of web 2.0. How have you updated and with which tools? 

It is precisely in the 2016 Data Print that 35 completes years: for over three decades we have had the privilege of telling the world of communication without taking away from its continuous challenges. For those who "read" information, surely the web, and then i social networks, represented the most complex battle to face, the borderline between old and new methods of analysis. Our customers can now take advantage of the monitoring of over 300.000 national and foreign sites and the main social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube). From the 2014, thanks to the PicoWeb software, the old methodologies have embraced the new, the reading of the news from the traditional world of media has met the new methods of content production, with the possibility of identifying trends and interests of internet users. If Data Stampa continues to enjoy the trust of hundreds of communicators from the country's most important institutions (including the Quirinale, the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies, the Court of Auditors, the Bank of Italy) and the private world (I am a example the 25 company among the 30 of the "old" MiB) is certainly for the farsightedness of a path and a turnover that is always growing, of the success of our initiatives and of our languages ​​that are being imposed as models often imitated by our competitors ( just take a tour on the sites of the operators to perceive it on the fly). If the world of 2.0 web it represented for a part of our competitors a breaking point and a crisis, for us it was instead a reason for further, exponential development. It is enough to think that our division that monitors and analyzes web and social networks has tripled its turnover in the last year.