How to communicate in football: the case of the Fussball Club Südtirol Interview with Manuel Insam, social media manager of the Trentino Serie C team
With the last draw at home against Cesena, Südtirol had to give up the possibility of going up to Serie B through direct promotion. The Bolzano team will be able to try the play-offs, and given what has been seen so far on social media, there will be fun. Because South Tyrol is a special club.
They call themselves an atypical club and they are right. Not all football clubs in Italy - especially in Serie C - have a paper magazine, a Tik Tok account and a podcast of their own. To understand Südtirol's communication strategy and social setting, we talked about it with its marketing and social media manager, Manuel Insam.
Manuel, Südtirol FC is one of the most interesting teams in Serie C for several reasons; on all, the fact of being the team of a particular geographical reality. It's not usual to meet a bilingual team. Considering your bilingualism, how have you decided to set up the communication in the club, both internal and external?
Südtirol is a small club and it has fans especially in Bolzano, which is not a big city, but in general, we are the team of the whole of Südtirol and not only Bolzano. Football allows people to be united thanks to passion and at our stadium you can find together the three local language communities - Italian, Ladin and German. This is also reflected in merchandising, so we have to work on customized products with different languages.
Although there are three speaking languages we are all united, and also inside the club we are equally divided into people of native German and native Italian speakers, but it is something that helps us and enriches us: we can know other colleagues traditions, ways of doing and understanding differences. Neither the fans nor the club have we ever had any problems from this point of view.
You renovated the stadium in 2019 and on the site you put on a beautiful exhibition "ready for Serie B". I imagine the idea of an upgrade as a club starts from a long way away and the results seem to give you reason given the proximity to the top of the rankings. Are you a small club in the Panorama of Serie C, how have you structured the growth path?
Südtirol FC has been professional football since twenty years. We won the C2 in 2010 and from there we were always present in the C and, after fighting for salvation, for five or six years we have been in the areas of the top ranking. Our secret was never to take the longest step of the leg, so, every year, the company managed to add a small piece and reach the top of the rankings. The goal of the club is clear, and is to make the Serie B: we need the right infrastructure and the old Druso stadium couldn’t accommodate the second division. With the idea of making the category jump we have started to expand it and we are increasing the capacity to 5 thousand.
We also worked on a new sports center, which is located in Appiano, 10 minutes from Bolzano. It’s our headquarters, with 5 training camps, offices, physiotherapy gym. The whole club’ staff works in the sports center and for us it’s also a logistical advantage because it creates familiarity and we don’t have to run through thousands of intermediates. And then it's awesome: it's in the woods.
