A wheat manifesto has a problem. However carefully written, it is still a wheat manifesto. In 2021, Barilla took ten commitments about its durum wheat and gave eleven Italian illustrators something to interpret. The result, Grani d’autore, could be walked through, explored online and encountered on pasta packaging. A supply-chain argument had acquired a public life. Omnicom PR Group Italia helped conceive and manage the PR idea behind it.
- Three established agency operations combined in Italy in 2017.
- Clients buy communications advice and campaigns, from consumer storytelling to crisis preparation.
- The practical lesson: build an experience around an audience’s reason to care.
The interesting question is why an exhibition should belong in a public-relations portfolio. Consider the usual corporate predicament: an organization possesses information it considers important; everybody else has other things to do. OPRG Italia works in that gap. Its assignments connect business objectives with the interests of journalists, consumers, employees, institutions and patient communities. The work can involve a conversation with a reporter. It can also involve making something worth visiting.
A pasta story you could walk into
Grani d’autore unfolded through physical exhibitions, a virtual experience and a consumer competition. The agency’s case study traces the exhibition through Milan, Parma and Turin. Barilla’s own account places the work within its longstanding use of art in advertising. This mattered: the format had a connection to the company’s history, giving the creative decision a foundation beyond a fashionable technology.
It was also a shared production. Launch coverage credits OPRG with the PR idea and management, and Il Prisma with architecture and experience design. MONOGRID describes animating the illustrators’ work for augmented reality. Those credits are instructive. An integrated campaign still requires people with distinct crafts, and a client has to coordinate the handoffs between them.
illustrators interpreting ten wheat commitments.
A corporate document becomes a public experience.
The competition’s rules provide one unusually concrete cost: 100 merchandise sets valued at €40 each, a €4,000 prize pool. That figure covers prizes. It cannot price the artists, exhibition, digital development or agency work. For anyone borrowing the idea, the budget lesson is to separate the visible giveaway from the machinery needed to deliver the experience.
Three lineages, one Italian brief
OPRG Italia’s own origin involved coordination. In March 2017, the Italian operations of FleishmanHillard, Ketchum and Porter Novelli came together under the Omnicom PR Group name, with Massimo Moriconi leading the operation. Similar combinations took place in France, Spain and the Netherlands. The Italian proposition was a larger pool of expertise available to a client through one local organization.
In 2019, the Holmes Report named it Mediterranean Consultancy of the Year. Its assessment described a market where global networks had struggled to make their midsize operations compelling. Pooling resources was a response to that structural problem. Historical client coverage ranged from Prada and Norwegian Seafood Council to Roche and Starbucks, suggesting a practice that could cross several kinds of corporate conversation.
That breadth places OPRG alongside international consultancies and established Italian agencies. A prospective client can compare it with firms such as Edelman, Barabino & Partners or MSL Italia. The useful buying question concerns the people and expertise assigned to a particular brief. A network connection matters when the assignment needs it; local knowledge matters when the conversation depends on local context.
The audience has a life already
The Novartis campaign È tempo di vita offers another way to understand the agency. Developed with the patient association Salute Donna Onlus, it addressed life with advanced breast cancer. Its content brought together oncologists, patients and specialists including psychologists and sexologists. The subject extended into relationships, wellbeing and everyday concerns, giving patients and caregivers information organized around their lives.
Essity’s Nuvenia work approached a different obstacle: silence around intimate health. Il triangolo magico included #Bloodnormal in 2019 and #VivaLaVulva in 2020, with an exhibition of work by international women artists in Milan. Events, media activity and digital channels supported the conversation. The campaign won the Mediterranean category at the 2021 EMEA SABRE Awards. Here, art gave a difficult subject a place to be discussed.
“Aiutiamo le persone a costruire relazioni”“We help people build relationships.”
OPRG Italia’s stated purpose
Across these examples, my reading is that the repeatable move is to identify an audience need before choosing the format. A patient community, an exhibition and a journalist briefing do different jobs. Copying the exhibition without understanding the need would miss the useful part.
Four channels. One obligation to answer.
The agency calls its distribution approach P.E.S.O.: paid, earned, shared and owned media. Its commercial offering spans campaign creation, digital work, public affairs, employee communication and reputation advice. Clients commission expertise and execution. Crisis support uses an Assess, Resolve, Control framework. These services address organizations whose communications needs extend across several audiences and departments.
Its research offers a useful check on all that distribution. In the 2025 edition of its study of 25 leading Italian wine companies, LinkedIn followers grew 29%. Yet only five companies answered Messenger inquiries personally within 24 hours. The comparable count in its 2021 research was ten. These are snapshots of the companies examined in each edition, rather than a controlled experiment, but they expose two different definitions of progress.
For a buyer, the implication is practical: agree on what someone should be able to do after encountering the campaign, and measure that alongside reach. Communications work depends on credible conduct and the capacity to follow through. A beautiful invitation is little help when nobody answers the door.
The organization around the agency continues to change. In February 2026, Omnicom announced a global Golin-Ketchum combination and plans to place Porter Novelli within FleishmanHillard. That parent-level development adds context to the Italian operation’s three-network origins. Its published work still offers a simple test for any brief: what will make this story useful to the person receiving it?