Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical science, artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations. (Wikipedia)

The more the years go by the more I realize that regarding activities to develop export it is important to communicate this aspect. Especially for the so-called 3F’s: Fashion, Food and Furniture. But not only. As I already said in my post The Gastro-Diplomacy we can also say in this case that the cultural heritage is one of the distinguishing marks of the Italian Brand.

I recently introduced a Saudi Arabian client to a company from Vicenza. Before telling the company’s story (almost all of our companies have many years of history) and introducing their products with a normal PowerPoint presentation, I thought it appropriate to place the company within the context of its territory. It can seem trivial to us, but it’s absolutely not. I projected a map of Italy and the Veneto region and then screened a video that I have attached below. Since our product belongs to the furniture market, speaking of Vicenza and of Palladio was not out of place; just the opposite. It helped explain what our roots are and, in the end, give added value to our products.

As Salvatore Settis said, “Our cultural heritage is not a foreign entity, arrived out of nowhere, but something that we have created over time and with whom we have lived for generations and generations, for centuries and centuries; not a nest egg in the piggy bank, to spend if you need it, but our memory, our soul. Losing this identity would be giving up an important part, indeed a constitutive part, of ourselves.”

The invitation, therefore, is to absolutely not forget this aspect in our websites, in the wide array of social media in which we communicate, in catalogues, etc., and, why not, also in the names you invent or decide to give to your products.