MILAN — Italian strategic communications firm Excellera Advisory Group has launched a new company, Excellera Intelligence, to provide clients with media intelligence, reputation analysis, tailor-made market and opinion research, and real-time legislative monitoring, based on data science and AI.

The initiative stems from the expertise of INTWIG, a data intelligence firm founded by Aldo Cristadoro, which became part of Excellera in September 2024. By merging this data science expertise with the multidisciplinary approach of Excellera’s communications firms, Excellera Intelligence aims to elevate corporate affairs through evidence-based advisory services.

Since it was set up in November 2022, Excellera has rapidly expanded, bringing together top-tier Italian firms such as financial comms giant Barabino & Partners – which it acquired last year – Cattaneo Zanetto Pomposo & Co, Community, INTWIG, Public Affairs Advisors, and Value Relations, with the backing of Xenon Private Equity. In 2024, the group generated €60 million in revenue, employed over 300 professionals, and reinforced its presence across international markets with offices in major European cities and New York.

Paolo Zanetto (pictured, right), CEO of Excellera Advisory Group, told PRovoke Media that the inspiration for Excellera Intelligence arose from a crucial gap in the corporate affairs sector: the absence of data-driven decision-making.

“We have created the Italian national champion of corporate affairs, but we felt something was missing. We brought together what we believe are the very best firms in Italy when it comes to corporate affairs, but it is changing because of tech and innovation. We looked very closely at the space around data science and AI, and we really believe that such innovation would really change the way we do our work.

“For a long time we’ve been working in an industry and sector with very little data, but technology is now allowing us to treat language as data – that’s amazing. We looked around for a pretty rare beast – someone with strong knowledge of data science and research, who could really understand what corporate affairs is. We found that in Aldo – an expert in data science applied to public opinion, who had previously worked at major firms including Ipsos – and spent six months working together with him and his team on one very big challenge – how do we make our advice in the corporate affairs space data driven and evidence based?

“To answer this, Aldo spent time in the room with clients and external stakeholders to fully understand what we do and something magical happened – he became more of a corporate affairs guy and I became more of a data science guy. We learned from each other and came to a point where great things have been developed.”

One of the aims of Excellera Intelligence is to break down barriers between different areas of corporate affairs – public affairs, media intelligence, financial communications, and market research – by integrating diverse sources of data.

Zanetto said: “We started by looking at the sources of our services – sources as different as press monitoring, social media monitoring, legislative monitoring, other political sources, public opinion polls, open source research and financial data like stock prices. Until recently, if you were doing public affairs, of course you would read legislative monitoring carefully, but may not care about social media. Maybe financial comms professionals don’t care so much about public opinion or legislative monitoring.

“Our idea was to bring all these sources together and break down those walls. We wanted to create magic with AI and find correlations between news and events: let’s see if financial news has an effect on social media, for instance.”

Excellera Intelligence pulls together this vast array of data into a proprietary ‘data lake’. AI-driven analysis of this repository will allow for predictive insights that go beyond traditional analytics.

The best part, said Zanetto, is that this approach will lead to predictive analysis: “Many people have tried to do this in the past, for instance in social media analysis, where we can now predict trends that go viral. That’s interesting, but it doesn’t blow my mind. We want to understand if political news will trigger social media which will trigger traditional media which will trigger stock price. We feel that we are at the edge of discovering something entirely new.”

While Excellera Intelligence is already delivering data-driven insights to clients, the next challenge is transforming industry mindsets, said Zanetto: “I feel that what we have done so far is the easiest part. Now comes the difficult part: changing the way we advise our clients and starting to educate the market. We’ve been doing this job relying on our expertise – and of course that will keep on being the number one value we offer to clients. Now this will be supported by data and evidence, so we have to change the way we present our advice.

“It’s clearly better advice, which creates even more value to clients, but data in itself doesn’t solve the problem. We as professionals must be ready to evolve, and I think this is the big challenge.”

In terms of the future of the group, Zanetto said he had no intention of expanding into other sectors: “We love being at the nexus of expertise of financial comms, corporate comms and public affairs. Corporate affairs is where we play and it will keep being so, but data driven and evidence based. Clients are so excited – those we have brought on board in the early stages say they feel like explorers of a new world.”

Cristadoro, CEO of Excellera Intelligence, said the new company was “founded on the recognition that AI is reshaping corporate affairs and that it can open up new strategic opportunities for businesses.

“In just a few months since joining the group, we have already achieved a major technological transformation that enables us to support our clients as strategic partners, by identifying and analysing information that really makes a difference in their business. Our vision is to combine the power of data with a deep understanding of the context.”