Not long ago, a friend and colleague I hold in high regard, both personally and professionally, asked me a question that genuinely took me by surprise: why — he asked, in all sincerity — should a company or a brand that already communicates through its own website and social channels, that has already built a solid community there, and that can buy space in any publication to say exactly what it wants people to know, why should a brand like that spend more money on a press office?

It's a fair question. But it overlooks the value of reputation, and how reputation is built, grows, and eventually becomes unassailable.

Everything you say about yourself informs your stakeholders: it is one-way communication, verifiable only up to a point. What genuinely constitutes a company's reputation is what others say about you — disinterested third parties who are nonetheless competent and authoritative in your field.

And what is reputation worth? It is an extraordinary intangible asset. It opens every room and every conversation. It doesn't make you untouchable, but it makes you credible, reliable, authoritative.

There's more. Words matter. They matter a great deal.

The principal instrument companies use to communicate is the proverbial press release. At Parini we can't stand press releases, because too often they are nothing more than vacuous eulogies to some more or less interesting initiative, written at excessive length by a well-meaning executive who already knows everything about it — and precisely for that reason leaves out what matters most.

The press office — and let's please start calling it the communications office — works instead through a daily practice that goes beyond any single announcement. Its job is to keep the brand alive in the minds of stakeholders through communication that is verbal, pervasive, near-daily, and above all TWO-WAY.

A journalist asks precise questions; the communications office ensures they get equally precise answers. It selects the interlocutors capable of interpreting the brand's spirit and work, and of giving it the right prominence. It builds a network of opportunities that would not otherwise arise on their own. There is a reason we call it PUBLIC RELATIONS.

This kind of communication allows people to become invested in the brand's industrial vision, to talk about it almost spontaneously — while sparing management the time otherwise lost answering pointless questions.

PR communication is active and dynamic. It doesn't simply deliver the news: it lets it germinate, explores every angle, brings the brand to LIFE. It offers visibility that the brand alone could never seize, quite simply because it is busy doing its own job. Ours is to read how a brand evolves, how it is perceived by stakeholders, partners, investors and competitors — and to act on all of it, tactfully but decisively, so that reputation keeps growing, and grows in the right direction.

That is why that money is worth spending. And spending gladly.

Francesca Parini