Guido Ampollini was born in Parma but has lived abroad for over 13 years (Madrid, Singapore and London). Her passion for the world of digital began during her studies and saw her natural evolution, once she moved abroad in 2007, with her first job at the London office of Google. A few years later, in 2013, thanks to the subsequent experience with another web giant, Expedia, he began working on his own as a consultant for search marketing strategies and activities with luxury brands such as Prada, Miu Miu, Venchi and many others. After six years of work as a consultant, Ampollini climbs the business and opens his agency, GA.Agency, with a focus on various services in the digital world such as e-commerce strategy, social media, search marketing, content marketing, influencer marketing for an offer. 360-degree digital. Today, just a few years after its launch, among the clients of the digital agency there are brands such as Calzedonia Group, Technogym, Kiko Milano, KARL (fashion brand founded by Karl Lagerfeld) and many others.
Your training begins abroad, where you worked for important multinational companies. What have you learned from these different experiences and how have they influenced you?
The years I spent working first at Google and then at Expedia have been highly educational because they have allowed me to strengthen my skills in the sector and above all to learn technical aspects that you do not learn in books but can only be grasped in the field. Without forgetting the stimulating working environments that are breathed in these realities that for six years have pushed me to constantly improve myself. One aspect that I have always fought for, learned in the large multinationals where I have worked, is the value of flexibility in managing work, which I try to instill in my team because I believe more in the quality of results than in the amount of hours spent. .
Was it easy to leave your position to go on your own?
When I decided to start my own business in 2013, I took a risk: I had a good role and a good salary for my age and obviously I wasn’t sure what I was doing (the friends I was comparing with advised me not to do it), however , after thinking about it a few months, I came to the conclusion that it was the right time to try, I had experience and in the worst case, if it didn’t work I could have re-entered the corporate world a few months later with a salary and title similar to when I left . Once I found myself alone, with a lot of time available and no income, the motivation came immediately and, years later, I am proud of that choice.
Have you always wanted to do this job?
In reality, at the beginning I didn’t have clear ideas. I knew the world of advertising from my studies but the rest was unknown to me. Then, at the end of the second year of university, one day my father made me read an article in The Economist magazine dedicated to the rise of digital marketing and I began to get passionate about the subject, starting to study the subject independently. I immediately understood the potential of this industry which was to follow the rise of the internet and which at the time was very small and little known. During my Erasmus in Madrid, I attended a website programming course and one of the goals was to build a website: thinking also of my origins, I opened one to sell Parmigiano Reggiano. The business was not successful for various reasons but it allowed me to put into practice what I learned in theoretical form and above all it was very helpful to find a job at Google when I moved to London since the fact of having tested myself with a small business experience, albeit not a successful one, was seen as a positive element of my curriculum vitae. I would like to advise young people who are still undecided about their future to look at new trends, try to understand which industries will be growing in the coming years and specialize in one of these: growing in a growing industry is certainly easier, with a lot of less competition and fewer “sharks”.
Italy Fashion and Luxury Industry Infographic
The digital world has therefore always been your core business. How has this powerful tool changed over the past 10 years?
The change in recent years has been radical. And today everything is even faster. When I started my own business in 2013, there were not many companies that invested in digital and I was one of the few consultants specialized in search engine marketing able to help brands find the right keywords to reach the final consumer. In 2018, I realized that competition was increasing and companies were becoming more and more experienced and demanding. The industry was becoming more mature, it was time for a change.
