by Jennifer Cohen
I worked on completing the Barilla presentation, as we would be meeting with the people from Barilla later during the week. The Barilla meeting took place at their Customer Collaboration Center in Parma, Italy, which is about three hours away from where we were staying in Porto Recanati.
Upon getting there, we were given a tour of the space as well as a virtual shopping tour in the Media Room. The virtual shopping tour consisted of a walk through of a grocery store that displayed what the store and packaging looked like before versus what it looks like now.
The program was projected onto the entire back wall, like a movie theatre, and allowed the virtual customer to walk through space, pick up items off the shelves and even add them to their shopping carts.
After this, we proceeded to the conference room to discuss business matters. Other employees from the office spent a few hours discussing the renovation and after this it was time for me to give the presentation to the group.
The Customer and Marketing Global Director of Shopping was very pleased with my presentation and we discussed moving forward with this project even after my return to New York. He also told us that he and some other people from the Barilla corporate office would be visiting the U.S. in a few months and he would like for us to present our progress on the project to them when they come.
I think this meeting was the perfect way to end my experience in Italy. To present my work to a real life client and have them respond positively to it was a very gratifying feeling.