Francesco Pezzo, PPG customer specification advisor, loves sharing his enthusiasm for color. He has unconventional ways for helping increase awareness of our UNIVER® and SIGMA COATINGS® brands in Italy. In his job, Francesco is pushing the boundaries of color design and communication, which sees him frequently collaborating with local designers and artists.
Francesco is sponsoring a customer particular design of footstool applied through Sigma Expert products and part of Milan Design Week
A Life-long Passion for Color and Architecture
Francesco has had a “great passion for color” since he was six years old when he started painting with oils, inspired by his great grandmother’s embroidery work.
It made sense for him to turn a love of color and architecture into his career. He worked for 10 years in another architectural coatings company before joining us in March 2020 as customer specification advisor at our Architectural Coatings site in Cavallirio, Italy.
His role is to support designers and companies in choosing products and specifications for their complex color projects. He also supports our marketing team in increasing awareness for our Sigma Coatings and Univer brands in Italy.
“I love this job because it is constantly changing. My past and long experience as an architect for interior design, allows me to bring life to color choices in line with current needs and trends.”
Time and Great Patience Will Pay Off
While his start with us was challenging due to the lockdown, Francesco remembers the time with fondness as he was given a blank canvas on which to start designing his own prescription project.
I had the opportunity to reflect on PPG as a company, get to know our activities abroad, and consider how we’d bring our values and vision to Italy. It was a beautiful journey.
As no one directly supported the distribution network in Italy, Francesco was also responsible for helping introduce ClientLink software to start recording data and activities from external sales teams.
“Change is necessary and requires us to work better together within precise rules. Time and great patience will pay off.”
Translating People’s Needs Into Color
Francesco has been involved in many projects in his short time with us – delivering webinars, helping launch a new range of Sigma Coatings products for wood, participating in the Milan Design Week, and encouraging the specifiers and architects to make them aware about new international contexts like PPG through color research and projects with a high quality profile.
But one of his favorite projects is PPG's Color Trend, which he describes as a “photograph of people's needs translated into color”.
After two years of isolation, rather than the usual video presentation, he teamed up with communication coordinator for Architectural Coatings, Valentina Boscolo, to design mood boards using fabrics, tiles, images and objects to narrate the research path of the 2022 Color of the Year Olive Sprig and the supporting color palettes.
“We built the storyboard with our own hands. The result was exciting and new. A comfortable environment with a strong reference to nature.”
Bringing a Culture of Color to the Market
Francesco works on collaborative projects which help architects, interior designers and engineers use the right products from our portfolio, and bring the culture of color to the market.
Sigma Coatings has taken a different direction since the introduction of the prescription project and customer advisor team. This is largely thanks to the synergies built between the customer advisor specifier, marketing and communication in Italy.
The Vision of Color project is a collaboration between Sigma Coatings and prominent Italian architectural design company, Studio Marco Piva. Francesco worked on realizing 10 outdoor palettes based on color, sustainability and feasibility. The palettes all have a direct relationship with the environment and “transfer the search for color, landscape and architecture to color content”.
“This project aims to offer something different, a new journey of color through emotions, vibrations and light that is transformable into key project elements.”
Taking the Sigma Coatings Message on the Road
To get Sigma Coatings colors onto the Italian market, PPG has teamed up with Infoprogetto, the largest training firm for designers in Italy, to plan a roadshow that will showcase our Sigma Coatings brand to influencers, designers, distributors and customers across 10 Italian cities like Turin, Rome, Firenze, Catania, Milano, Vicenza, Trento, Bari and Pesaro.
Francesco’s desire to do something totally new for our market required substantial preparation and the mobilization of many departments – marketing, technical, laboratory and sales.
Just working in this climate makes me feel
#PPGProud. Breathing the color and collaborating with so many teams is inspiring.
Francesco’s Vision of Synergy
Francesco says that he always follows his curiosity and intuition. His dream would be to one day build a color-style center in Europe.
“I am purposeful by nature. Believe in it, commit yourself, study. There is no other formula for achieving your objectives.”
He is currently working on more than eight projects around the themes of inclusion, sharing and beauty, in which cultural associations, local administrations, community engagement stakeholders and artists are all involved.
“I love synergy with other companies and PPG teams. I imagine Italian excellence producers conveying the power of color with the technology and innovation of our products.”