Not observing from outside.
Carrying it myself.
I’m Paride Raspadori. Communication Manager and Board Member of E.R. Services Group, a multidisciplinary consultancy and services group.
I’m not a consultant who observes companies from outside.
I’m someone who lives them from within, with the responsibilities, the budgets, the decisions that weigh. And precisely because of that, when I work outside, I bring something an outside observer doesn’t have.
Strategic communication. It’s what I’ve done for thirty years, in one form or another, under different names.
But the craft is always the same: giving a company an identity that the market recognises and chooses.
The first question isn’t what to say.
It’s where the problem is.
Every company that comes to me already has an answer prepared for its problem.
It needs more visibility. It needs a new website. It needs a campaign.
Almost always, that answer is the wrong one. Because it responds to the brief, not to the real problem.
The real problem is different, and more uncomfortable. The market doesn’t perceive the company as it should. Communication burns budget without moving anything. The brand isn’t chosen.
My work starts there. Not in what the company wants to say, but in what it still hasn’t understood it needs to clarify.
If you already know your problem, good. If you don’t, finding it is already half the job.
I advise companies better because I live inside one.
A consultant who has always worked from outside knows the theories. Whoever is inside a company knows the consequences.
I know what it means to defend a communication budget before a board that looks at the numbers. I know what it takes to keep a consistent message when five areas pull in five directions. I know how hard it is to make an identity decision that whoever lives it experiences as a risk.
These things aren’t learned from books. They’re learned by going through them, decision after decision.
That’s why, when I work outside, I don’t bring theory. I bring the experience of someone who actually makes those decisions. Advice born from practice, not from observation.
Direct. Sometimes uncomfortable. Never generic.
I won’t tell you what you want to hear. I’ll tell you what I see. If I think an idea of yours is weak, I’ll say so, with the respect of someone who does it so you can achieve more, not to be right.
I don’t use consultancy jargon. Empty words, slides full of anglicisms, concepts that sound deep and say nothing, aren’t part of how I work. If something can be said simply, I say it simply.
And I don’t work with everyone on everything. I prefer a few projects done well, where I can genuinely influence, over many done by halves.
Whoever works with me finds an interlocutor who thinks, not a supplier who executes.
If you value intellectual honesty, it’s worth us talking.
A conversation, to see if we could work together.