from Economy Magazine (October 2025)*

“Following an acquisition, funds and investors are focusing, correctly, a lot on restructuring the company, its market presence and distribution, and also that of management, with the introduction of high-profile figures in key sectors such as leadership/board, finance and sales. The function of communication is therefore easily delegated to the CEO of the acquisition. Which is obviously much more sales- and turnover-oriented. So communication in the best case is at the service of marketing and sales,” explains Davide Ciliberti, founder of Purple & Noise PR.

“On the other hand, I believe that the communication manager should be one of the ‘first choices’ of the EP, which should in some way claim to itself or in any case govern, and should work in the interest of the company, but also of the investor himself to generate a super-brand value, and raise the so-called brand equity well beyond the ‘real’ value of the company. Because this is possible (at the beginning of the 2000s and the new economy this concept was very clear…) and it is also the cheapest and most effective way to raise the value, the ‘price’, of the company far beyond the real value».

Structured communication campaigns, strategic advice on media presence, constant PR and digital activity can increase a company’s recognition in a few years, open unexpected markets, facilitate partnerships, and, a detail that is far from negligible, improve the perceived value at the time of exit.

“The issue, however, is that PEs are often lacking in the culture of communication, they have a limited if not sometimes self-referential vision of it (reduced to the newspapers of the sector where they read each other) and therefore they do not invest in it, do not govern it and delegate it to the company,” continues Ciliberti.

“Which in turn easily does not invest adequately in it, or perhaps, on the contrary, puts a lot of money in it but spent inconsistently, without a communication plan and without a brand equity logic. Money therefore partly wasted. It is no mystery that there are case histories in which the mere choice of enhancing communication has led to surprising ROI, far beyond the expectations of the spreadsheets,” concludes the CEO of Purple & Noise PR.

*Economy, edited by Sergio Luciano, is the leading economics magazine in Italy