Why are consumers attracted by your products, what do they base their purchasing choice on?
Carlotta de Bevilacqua Gismondi: Light today is conceived as something that is fundamental to improve and personalise environmental qualities in every context of our life. For the past forty years Artemide has been promoting design and qualitative standards by developing a strong brand and product identity.
Consumers choose our products because Artemide has succeeded in conveying to end clients the importance of its brand values through its integrated product/communication system.
Therefore, people prefer our products because they offer a correct mix between value that is expected and value that is perceived, in terms of four aspects.
The first is the cultural dimension, the design, as the synthesis between aesthetic suggestion and designing expertise. Second, the experience dimension, which is the relationship the client establishes with the product that is no longer subjected to it and, instead, generating new qualities in terms of global relations and experiences when interacting both with the object itself and with the management of light. Third, the centrality of man as opposed to the object, where it is the product that complies with our daily life needs, contributing to improving our wellbeing and increasing personal pleasure. And finally, the aspect of innovation dimension and research that the product must convey.

Patrizia Moroso: Since there are many types of consumers and different kinds of commodities, let us imagine that our consumers are well-informed, careful, with good purchasing power and that the purchase concerned, far from being an occasional one, is the important kind that one would normally make around the age of 30/45.
Our consumer has been considering this purchase for a long time, perhaps it was even recommended by a professional interior decorator, and the choice he/she has made is a very careful one, certainly not one made on the spur of the moment.
Our consumer has probably consulted magazines, looked for more information, been to many shops before making up his/her mind. And when the choice is made at last, precisely because it concerns an important “item” that has been chosen specifically for his/her house, it is in that very object that our consumer wishes to identify or reflect him/herself.

What type of feelings of well-being do your products convey and what type of elements do you use to convey them?
C.d.B.: Artemide has always placed man and his wellbeing at the heart of its plan to improve lighting performance in line with newlyarising needs. Our products are expressive and multi-sensorial generating emotions through their aesthetic-sensorial and performance-oriented design favouring perceptive well-being.
They are more human and use innovative lighting solutions to create lighting atmospheres that reflect more closely to our moods or functional needs. They are environment-friendly, using “good” materials, energy-saving sources and are prime quality products in terms of duration. Our corporate communication policy is based on a process where every tool aims at making perceivable not only our brand values but also the well-being and comfort values that are inherent to every single product.

P.M.: It is also because of the above-mentioned reasons that manufactured goods should not be all the same; instead, they should each have a soul of their own, a strong personality, which they are able to convey. Our items have strong characteristic features, they are the result of a synergic process between two different entities, they are like sons, their father being the designer and their mother the company.
But eventually, these powerful, beautiful and communicative products on their own are not enough, even though they naturally enclose an assumption: that they need to be conveyed properly, through images that are consistent with their very essence, otherwise they lose part of their intrinsic force.
One example for all, Malmö e Fjord: a wide collection of seating and furnishing accessories, lovingly designed by Patricia Urquiola, recalling Nordic landscapes; an excellent production, down to the smallest detail; those very objects become the main actors at last, photographed for the catalogue and the advertising inside the Nordic Countries pavilion in the Gardens of the Venice Biennale, suggesting a proper relation between the objects themselves and their reference space; a graphic project that is amazing and charged with sensitivity at the same time: then everything becomes clear, the project’s soul flows freely, the objects speak. The result: perfect communication, an exciting catalogue.

Functionality and design: how are they combined?
C.d.B.: Right from the start, Artemide has always pursued the goal of designing lighting devices that were the perfect synthesis between shape, function, innovation and efficiency.
Artemide has enriched its current strategy by adopting a process that aims at generating innovation in terms of product significance and identity, bringing together functional, aesthetic and technological aspects, and allowing Artemide to keep its stance and role as a great innovator and precursor of lighting design for mankind.

P.M.: “FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION” is not such a strict rule anymore.
The purposes of an object may also be emotional, apart from ergonomic and functional. This doesn’t mean that a sofa or armchair may be uncomfortable (that’s its function), but these two notions change inline with the rapid changing of the customs and habits of our way of living our home.
Moreover, there is another increasingly important value that is prevailing over “comfort”: the object’s “image”, which is precisely what consumers relate to or even identify themselves with.

But when I actually listen, and when listening becomes a tool necessary for a job in which you approach people and situations in order to create change, I notice that it is a skill that varies over time, expressed by a subjective intention or created by the circumstances. Part of it comes from within, while part of it you suddenly find next to you, almost by chance. Listening is a travel companion.

On the other hand, you really listen when you meet someone who wants or needs to be listened to, or in order to find something that might be important and seems to have been missed.

Listening, an unreliable companion, has accustomed me to perceiving a company in terms of history and geography.

I quickly realised that I found it fascinating (and still do) to listen to the stories of individuals and groups. Colourful tales are transformed into legends that represent a social event or a moment in the evolution of a company or other organisation. Narration gives a linear order to the sequence of events, and unlike reality it has the appeal of cohesion. It tells of forces moving in what, with hindsight, seems to be a well-defined direction. It helps to simplify and give meaning.

But extended opportunities for listening open up another dimension that to me is even richer, the dimension that gives you a glimpse of  organisational landscapes characterised by diverse voices, motives and a multitude of trajectories, signs often hidden by the emerging story,  territories whose logic and vibrancy can perilously unbalance the system but can also create the conditions for positive change.

In this sense, taking the time to listen allows me to tap into the complexity, change-related tensions and the abundance of knowledge which exists in organisations, in order to bring effective procedures and projects to life.

But it also brings me closer to a fundamental aspect of corporate relations, when they are not merely based on power and hierarchy: mutual recognition. This is a dimension that will emerge if you accept the fact that listening has a certain element of gratuitousness. It asks you to give up your time and yourself without constantly thinking of the ends to be achieved. This way, by dedicating space to other people, you can build substantial relationships, understand and recognise others’ experiences, individual and collective identities. It is also a way to enable the listener to engage and achieve recognition in his own right.