Experience

The creative who got the keys.

Nearly twenty years doing communication. Not just planning it.

Before directing communication, I made it. With my hands, against the clock, from a blank page.

Then I moved to where strategy is decided. But that craft stays with me. It’s become the eye I use to look at every brand.

From a blank page to the room where it’s decided.

I started as a copywriter in Milan, in the early nineties. Writing to sell. And learning that making something memorable is harder than saying it.

Then, creative direction. In Bologna, and in Shanghai, where I led creative teams for brands that had to make themselves chosen in saturated, very different markets.

Volvo. Technogym. Coppertone. Philip Watch. Irish Tourist Board.

Brands that didn’t need explaining, just to become memorable.

Nearly twenty years inside communication, before moving to the other side of the table, where the keys are.

Not to plan it, as a marketing director would. To direct it, with the eye of someone who recognises when an idea rises to the strategy, and when it betrays it.

Eleven awards. None hung on the wall.

Eleven communication awards. Knowing full well it’s the market that counts, not a jury.

An award doesn’t build a brand. It only says that, that time, the idea hit the mark.

Among them, my favourite: Antenna d’Oro at Radiofestival, best Italian radio spot, Beauty category, for Coppertone.

List:
Antenna d’Oro, Radiofestival — Coppertone
Best Advertising Magazine, Media Key — Philip Watch
TV Media Key — Supermercati Sigma
Targa d’Oro della Comunicazione Italiana — Supermercati Sigma
TV Media Key Spot Export — Technogym China
Three Targa d’Argento della Comunicazione Italiana, 2001, 2003, 2005 — Supermercati Sigma
Three Promotional Global Awards, 2003, 2004, 2006 — Supermercati Sigma

An award lasts a night. A brand, years.

Technogym
Technogym wanted to support the many Chinese gyms equipped with its products, and drive sell-in in the major cities. We shot a spot that spoke to the well-off public of China’s cities, the coolest crowd. Not just on television. On skyscraper lift screens, on taxi screens, where that audience spends its days. An award, the Media Key, came later. But the real question was different: entering a difficult market speaking its language.

Volvo
To tell the story of Volvo’s four-wheel drive (AWD) arriving in Italy, I didn’t use technique, I used emotion. The soundtrack is by Paolo Conte, a genuine Volvo fan. Pleasure, respect, safety. And the product became culture, not a spec sheet.

OVA
A historic brand fallen into oblivion. The challenge wasn’t modernising it, it was giving it back a reason to exist in the market’s eyes. Restoring value where only memory remained. Dusting off a prestigious brand.

Supermercati Sigma
A faded brand. We revived it with two graceful older ladies, who turned shopping into something lively, fun, young. With the Emilian accent creating an unmistakable signature. Tone made the difference, not price.

A case I live every day.

There are two ways to leave a mark. The idea that wins an award, and the strategy that builds a brand. At ERSG I’ve put both in the same hand.

The case:
E.R. Services was a consultancy with real but invisible expertise. Eight years ago it decided to transform. Not redo the logo. Rethink who it was, and become a Group.

Today E.R. Services Group is a single point of contact with five integrated competencies: legal risk, workplace safety and environment, management systems, training, communication. The market doesn’t choose one of the companies. It chooses the Group, and gets an integrated view no specialist consultancy can offer.

Here I didn’t just design the strategy. I made it live.

The Safety Movies:
One example. Safety practices, to work, need to be remembered. But in workplaces with people from different cultures, a manual or a course isn’t enough. I devised the Safety Movies, wordless films, with the faces of real workers, showing correct and incorrect behaviour. No language, no cultural barrier. Just images anyone understands and remembers.

This is communication that solves a real problem. It’s strategy that reaches all the way to execution.

The method that built this transformation is the same one I bring when I work outside, for other companies. Inside ERSG I live it every day. Outside, I put it at the service of whoever needs it.