KRConnect readers know I love Italy and have many personal connections: the late and dear Paolo Ettorre; my Italian daughter-in-law Clarissa and her two children with my son Ben Stella and Chloe; my great friend and former star rugby winger John Kirwan and his wife Fiorella; my friend Renzo Rosso of Diesel; the best watch designer in the world (Giuliano Mazzuoli); L’Espresso, the leading newsweekly in Italy for which I have written a quarterly essay for the past seven years; my friends at Illy…and the constantly inventive family at Saatchi & Saatchi Rome and Milan led by Fabrizio Caprara and Giuseppe Caiazza. In Italy there’s an age old tradition where at the beginning of the year, you buy a piglet, fatten it up during the year and then slaughter it for the family… and the Italians use every last inch of that pig – from head to trotters… here is a story from Fabrizio about a recent visit. KR
Is your boss a pig? This is a question that everyone should ask about their boss! We treat Kevin like a pig; rather, like a pork. And we don’t get fired for it either! It is a known fact that every little piece of the pork is used and nothing goes wasted. While my colleague Giuseppe Caiazza and myself were arranging one of Kevin’s visits to Italy we said “we have to consider Kevin like pork and exploit him to the max.” Not a minute of his precious time has to be wasted. So we fill up his agenda to the top with meetings, speeches, interviews and photo sessions. We ask him to write letters to clients and prospects. And, since a picture is better than a thousand words, we asked Andrea Afeltra to draw Kevin as he would have appeared in a butcher shop. And this is the result. It’s not our fault: Kevin always encourages us to be daring and values disobedience, so we have done nothing but obey him!
