Hanging up your boots, away from the football fields but never from the same in the new role of commentator and entrepreneur, and above all from the issues that through football can also help the dissemination of important social messages, Claudio Marchisio, you have decided to take the field againin an initiative that will also involve your former partner and captain, Giorgio Chiellini, from it.tech renamed Captain Tech, for his passion for technology and investments in innovation in support of startups, this time in a way innovative and in support of an important cause: the protection of our planet.
Innovation Almanac – March 24, 1894
A former warehouse worker takes over a small grocery store in Turin: it will become Lavazza
by Riccardo Luna
Tell us how, together with Lavazza, recognized as a company capable of communicating in a dynamic and innovative way, the idea of this competition was born, within the Lavazza Arena in the Roblox metaverse and live on Twitch, with the young generation Z increasingly present on these platforms, precisely on the World Day of Action for the Amazon, Monday 5 September and what are the objectives of the project?
“The relationship with Lavazza has been consolidated for some time. It could not be otherwise with a company capable of communicating in a dynamic and innovative way without losing its culture rooted in 120 years of history. I am therefore happy to be alongside the company in an initiative that aims on the one hand to discover the Metaverse, a new universe of possibilities in which the characters themselves change shape with respect to reality, on the other hand, to leave a concrete impact to safeguard the Amazon Forest. What unites “WE” is the desire to meet and play together with the younger generations, the possibility of meeting given precisely by the Metaverse that allows us to be together even if distant. And the “WE”, given by this whole, because only united each in his role and doing his part will we be able to achieve this important goal “.
Always in your communication on social networks and beyond, you are careful to be a vehicle and spokesperson for constructive and educational social and value messages. This project is another step in this direction and sees you participating and involved in an even more active way. We speak more and more often of athletes as “Influencers” or “Activists”, thanks to your extraordinary ability to be an example and to be able to amplify constructive messages, as in this case the theme of today’s environmental problems and the urgency of the major awareness of as many people as possible of the serious situation in the Amazon rainforest. Do you feel like a role model in this and do you think it is a responsibility for those with an important following like the one you have built with credibility over the course of your sports career?
“Thank you for the question. Always, even before the arrival of social networks in such a predominant way, I have always placed the value of” communication “at the center. The theme of wanting to compare myself with people, especially the younger ones, listening to them and yes – given my role as a “megaphone” – if we can say so, be the spokesperson for their problems or requests that I thought were more right and those that should be important to us as precisely the care of Nature. Social networks have certainly accelerated and further amplified this approach of mine, everything is faster but the substance has not changed and Nature teaches us it, which has its own rhythms, sometimes slow, that you cannot disturb or change unless, precisely to do harm, and then we think bringing us back to the central theme of the deforestation of the Amazon, to the time it takes to heal a scar, in this case a huge scar that hits the lung of Planet Earth. The future runs fast, communication travels on the s ocial but to achieve long-term goals we must also rediscover the virtue of patience “.
Is there any athlete or former athlete who has inspired you for their activism off the pitch and do you think it is possible to make more and more athletes follow your example?
“I believe that all athletes are, more or less, megaphones or loudspeakers as we said, so it is clear that in this I feel a responsibility that, as I said, has always belonged to me. There are many examples of great athletes that I could mention but precisely because we talk about young people, I like to mention Davide Calabria. With responsibility he married causes like these at the age of 23-24 in an environment where it is not easy to manage issues and pressures that sometimes seem bigger than you “.
In order for the message to pass to the youngest, you yourself have children and you probably live these dynamics in the family, how important it is to speak their language and to preside over the channels where they themselves are present, through, as in this case, the tool of the “game” that can amuse and entertain, but also educate to themes and values from which our society must start again and of which it must increasingly become aware in order to ensure that the future, which belongs to them and of which they will be active protagonists, is more sustainable and clean (just like the soccer fields that we will build together in the Virtual Arena of the Lavazza Foundation)?
“The point is always the same, communication, the meeting that in this case can only take place by making us” older “a step towards them, putting ourselves on the line but transmitting the message that” at stake “is there something more. We will be live on Twitch with gamers like Marcy7 and to challenge everyone who connects. It is, as I said before, a coming together. The Lavazza Arena allows the community to have fun and, at the same time, to understand the ‘extent of this phenomenon: every day the Amazon rainforest loses more than a million trees, the equivalent of an area of a football field every 20 seconds. This is why the mechanics of the game are important to involve them but also to educate: more soccer matches are played, the more the game map returns full of greenery, nature and trees. In the Learning Area to find out about the topic of deforestation “.
Lavazza Arena is a virtual world absolutely different from the usual soccer fields, all to be explored and discovered. Metaverse, virtual, social media, videogames, in a word “Innovation”, are often read and seen in contrast with issues such as sustainability, education, training. This is because too often it is the contents (and not the tools themselves) that are not adequately conveyed and channeled towards a right purpose. Do you see this project as a piece that is added to many others, for the construction of mosaics in which coexistence in the immediate future is not only possible, but even desirable?
“There is no other way. There are no contrasts where there is the will to achieve together certain important objectives such as those of the Lavazza Foundation in this virtuous collaboration with CESVI, which involves the planting of 1000 walnut trees every year to restore the ‘ecosystem of the forest also in favor of the population of the Peruvian Amazon, in the province of Tambopata in the Rio de Madre de Dios “.