Will Alessandro Benetton climb the Reputation Manager rankings?
The present and future position of Alessandro Benetton in the Reputation Manager rankings. The letter from Claudio Trezzano
Dear director,
I saw that you conjectured about the impact of the media reverberation of the latest outings of Urbano Cairo, president and major shareholder of RCS, on his online reputation for the purposes of the Reputation Manager rankings .
But even more anticipation for the next rankings comes from the full-page interview that Corriere della Sera has reserved for Alessandro Benetton.
The occasion of the interview was her sixtieth birthday. There are two articles published at the same time: Alessandro Benetton turns 60, the party with his children and friends in Treviso: «I wish you to always change » and above all Alessandro Benetton: «My life with three children, now I am more patient» .
The same Alessandro Benetton on whom the Corriere on 17 December had the headline: Benetton: «Edizione, 3.5 billion invested in sustainability and innovation in two years» , while not even a month earlier , i.e. on 21 November, it ran on the page with this headline: Alessandro Benetton launches the 2100 fund: it will invest in technologies for the environment (and the return of brains).
Or, again: Palazzo Ancilotto, Alessandro Benetton brings the building back to life: the restoration of the star architect Chipperfield has been completed and Alessandro Benetton inaugurates a coworking hotel on the Navigli: «I am investing in Milan because it is where the future is designed» . Or: Alessandro Benetton, for «21 Invest» boom in turnover and 23 companies: Omega Pharma is also in the portfolio .
I bet you're about to answer that it's not the Corriere 's fault that Benetton is a sort of "King Midas of news": whatever it does it turns into news. You're probably right, I still have my doubts, for example, about whether the inauguration of yet another hotel or yet another coworking space in Milan is news. But that's it.
However, it is certainly not phantasmagorical news that Alessandro Benetton is turning sixty, yet the Corriere still dedicates a nice page to him: “The president of the Edizione holding has turned 60: «The Morandi Bridge? Deep sorrow, I renew my apologies. After the tragedy we returned to the values of the founding fathers."
I'll read you the attack: “Alessandro Benetton throws it out there – one sentence among many – in a very long conversation. He says: "Each of us is what we do when things happen to us that we don't expect." Alessandro Benetton has the talent of perfect sentences, because in recent years at least two far-reaching unexpected things have happened to him. The first: he became president of the family safe, he who for years had considered himself "in the opposition". And Edizione is not just a trifle that has reached a net asset value of 13 billion euros, with shareholdings in the transport and digital infrastructure sectors, in travel retail and food & beverage, in real estate, in the agricultural sector, in Mediobanca, in Generali and of course in clothing, but it was also in the midst of the reputational crisis following the tragedy of the Morandi Bridge”.
The Morandi case? «In these cases, bad advice from lawyers and communication agencies takes over. I, on a personal basis, have made an apology and renew it. I can't say anything about Atlantia, which controlled Autostrade because Edizione only held 30 percent and only one Benetton sat on the board of directors, my uncle Gilberto. In Edizione, for some time, Gilberto, in good faith, had delegated everything to the managers: he had the idea of a family that kept itself out of management, perhaps also to avoid conflicts in the generational transition. But usually, such delegation occurs after an adequate corporate culture has been built, otherwise, the risk is self-referentiality and management feels entitled to make decisions as if it were the property."
Do you understand, director, how it works for the scions of Italian finance? When they succeed it is always thanks to them and it doesn't matter if they certainly didn't start from nothing, in perfect accordance with the underdog narrative that is popular today. However, when they fail and make mistakes it is always the fault of others: of the "bad advice of lawyers, of communication agencies"…
Comments Benetton, speaking of the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa: «That day I was in California surfing with my son. I get out of the water, I open social media and, without knowing what had happened, I find messages with many likes that said things like: I hope the sharks eat your son." It's okay to be a crybaby, but to be seen as the victim of the Web while "he was in California surfing with his son", no. It's understandable why they don't take it exactly well in Genoa.
It goes without saying that the echo that that interview may have in a newspaper like Il Corriere is not the same as the echo of the interview with the representative of the victims' relatives published in a local newspaper like Il Secolo XIX. It is no coincidence that I have already seen the article from the Milanese newspaper taken up by other sites on the web, bouncing here and there (ranging from news on MSN to less well-known if not even unknown news aggregators ). I only saw the one of the Century on PrimoCanale , a Ligurian broadcaster, and on Vita diocesiana Pinerolese .
Prima Comunicazione tells us that in February Alessandro Benetton was in 12th position: I'm curious to find out where he will be at the end of March, when his interview will have bounced around other newspapers and perhaps will also be picked up by that swarm of unidentified Sitarelli…
Do you, dear director, accept the bet that we will find him higher in the ranking?
A greeting,
Claudio Trezzano
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/alessandro-benetton-scalera-la-classifica-di-reputation-manager/ on Mon, 18 Mar 2024 09:46:31 +0000.