Developing the skills of individuals and teams is a must for any company today, especially in highly competitive sectors – including CBA’s. We all understand this deeply: talent development is now the difference between keeping or losing your clients.

However, the word skill is multifaceted, immediately raising questions about what it means to identify said skills and develop them. As daily tasks and projects call for our full attention, demanding to be completed quickly and simultaneously, we might end up focusing only on day-to-day goals and forget people’s long term individual growth.

Creating and maintaining a community of creative professionals to help brands express themselves effectively and originally; developing unique methods and tools: isn’t this what an agency like CBA is all about?

Here is a possible answer to the skills dilemma, then. Both technical and transversal abilities should mirror the organisational identity, the characteristics of its output and – why not – its mission.

With this in mind, in 2021, we launched a programme to bridge the unavoidable gaps we all have on the soft skills front.

Our programme – simply called Skill Up – is based on three principles, the same ones behind the agency’s relationship with the market:

1. Listening. The ability to pay attention to what the other party is saying, consciously or unconsciously.
2. Cooperation. The ability to pool people’s skills to achieve a common goal.
3. Method. The ability to proceed in a way that guarantees reliable results in every circumstance.

Colleagues from the different areas provide each other with advice and tips so that others can develop the skills that all CBA members should share.

At the same time, with the #SkillUpDays, we aim to strengthen team spirit and broader soft skills while having fun.

During the first spring weekend, the first appointment of 2022 took place. Hosted in Mutty‘s beautiful location, we participated in a book-binding workshop organised by Libri Finti Clandestini. The project stems from ideas of recycling and degrowth, practised by creating real artist’s books using only found paper usually considered waste. Among the enchanting morainic hills of the Mantua province, a few kilometres from the southern shore of Lake Garda, we bound our Skill Up notebooks with needles, thread, scissors and paper clips. We literally stitched together the sheets of a story that spoke of the values keeping us all together at CBA every day.

During this process, each of us formed a personal guide to skills development, both their own and others’, by getting help during the trickier phases or supporting those going through them afterwards.

The day ended with chef Edoardo’s hearty cuisine and the local wines, kindly poured and narrated by Matteo di Tannarte, boosting our taste for food and wine.

De Cecco is a symbol of “Made in Italy”. Unlike many other Italian companies, that are the result of acquisitions and resales, De Cecco has always been run by the De Cecco family. This has allowed the company, in the course of over 130 years of history, to remain faithful to its values and to guarantee high quality products. The same consistency has always accompanied the visual expression as well, making the packaging of De Cecco semolina pasta a true icon of Italian spirit throughout the world.

How can we make such a historic brand evolve and make it relevant for the future?

To do this, we started by analyzing the brand’s visual assets, distilling the main ingredients and eliminating the superfluous. A process aimed at making the brand more incisive and contemporary, without distorting it.

The gleaner, an icon linked to abundance and prosperity, was simplified and enlarged, creating a new lockup with the logo, which guarantees greater visibility in all its applications. The background blue lost its shading, returning to a brighter and cleaner tone. The restyling process was then extended to the packaging system, which optimized the information on the front, making it clearer and more usable for the consumer.

Starting from the logo and packaging, we then developed the brand guidelines, defining the application rules on all touchpoints, both physical and digital. A careful and scrupulous work, which allowed us, once again, to accompany the brand in its growth process.

Founded in 1886 in Fara San Martino, the De Cecco Group is a historic Italian company which has been producing high-quality pasta since the beginning. Today, as well as pasta, the iconic product which has rendered the brand famous throughout the world, the company’s portfolio contains other quality products including oils, tomato-based derivatives, ready sauces and bread-based derivatives.

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