What and how we communicate

Article 2, paragraph c) of Legacoop Bologna’s charter defines one of the main duties of the organization that of “developing a congruous communication policy that enhances and promotes the presence of cooperatives within the territory.”

For this reason communication campaigns are periodically run with the aim of spreading cooperative values and principles, with particular reference to cooperation’s ties to the local context.

Communicating the economic and social value of a cooperative enterprise is certainly not an easy task; in any case, within such a highly media-influenced social environment as is our own, the function of communication becomes ever more important for cooperative enterprises articulating social values as well.

In the past, Legacoop Bologna’s communication efforts mainly concentrated on cooperative values(1997), youth (1998/1999), the conception of the cooperative world as a resource network and the promotion of new cooperatives (2000).

In 2002, the campaign’s new aspect was conducting a coordination among all of the Leagues in Emilia-Romagna, carried out in large part through billboards and radio advertisement.

Since 2006 Legacoop campaigns have instead become fundamentally thematic: The first year, the campaign Cooltura (2006) focused on supporting the cultural sphere within the Bolognese territory; last year was dedicated to the varied universe of social cooperatives (2007).

In the same year (2007), a new communication initiative, Tutti Utili, began, a weekly program broadcast as a podcast and on radio stations, dedicated to social economy and cooperative issues.