MILAN (ITALPRESS) – Being closer to the needs of brands and CMOs and business dynamics, with a more integrated and more effective approach to generating value over time. This is the goal of Be Closer, the new independent Italian communication company, which stems from the union of three historical realities of communication. The project, initially promoted by the SAE Group of Alberto Leonardis, has in fact aggregated at the end of 2024 Next14, pioneer in the media planning data driven and Different, leader in integrated communication.
At the end of 2025 it has developed further, with an investment of €20 million of the private equity fund QuattroR in support of growth and with the entry into the perimeter of the Uniting group, collaborative ecosystem focused on live experience, influencer marketing and disruptive creativity.
The new Be Closer brand, with more than 122 million euros of revenues realized in 2025, has the ambition to double the size of the business in the next three years, through organic growth and new operations of M&A. The Group today has a shareholder made up of the two promoters (SAE Group, control shareholder through HIC company and the private equity fund QuattroR) and seven entrepreneurs, founders of the three original business realities: Marco Ferrari, group ceo and founder of Next14; Alessandro Talenti, general manager; Giancarlo Sampietro, chief strategy & innovation officer; Luca Colombi, chief commercial officer, and Alessandro Martinelli, chief culture & people officer, founders of Uniting; Davide Arduini, chief market officer, and Andrea Cimenti, chief customer officer, founders of Different.
Management – among founders and first lines – currently holds around 40% of the company. Be Closer’s president is Donato Iacovone, for over 10 years leading EY South Europe and current president of BIP, while Alberto Leonardis, founder and managing director of SAE Group, serves as vice president of the group.
“The path that led us to the launch of Be Closer was much more intense than a rebranding, but it meant rethinking, in these first months of union, structure and processes of our company from the foundations – Marco Ferrari emphasizes – a deep but exciting work, side by side with the founders of the three realities and involving all our community of managers. A path that led us to share a new direction, profoundly transforming our roles and our way of working. Listening to the market, evolving the offer, fixing our industrial ambitions. The goal remains to become great, offering more and more excellence and closeness to our customers, but without becoming gray, that is to grow without losing curiosity and the desire to question that has characterized our entrepreneurial experience. With the support of all our 400 people, I’m really convinced that Be Closer will be able to meet the challenge.”.
“We are convinced that our sector is crossed by an unprecedented transformation – Alessandro Talenti points out – and that this must lead to a new way of approaching customers and markets, without losing the heritage of excellence and know-how matured in these years, but with the courage to evolve into something new. Today with Be Closer we inaugurate a new phase of growth, creating an unpublished ecosystem, able to accompany the brands along the entire communication funnel, integrating strategy, creativity, media, data and technology. We have built a bridge between the specialist and vertical skills of our boutiques and a strategic and unitary vision of our customers’ business, a bridge necessary to be closer to their needs and offer solutions to their real problems. It is a truly challenging challenge, which we gather with enthusiasm.”.
According to Davide Arduini, “the evolution of Be Closer completes a path of integration that we started years ago and that goes in the direction that indicates the market clearly. A market made by more than 43,000 active companies and needs to make more system, even through processes of aggregation and transformation. We must offer customers solutions to the challenges that the acceleration of technology and the transformation of organizations present every day. Be Closer was born precisely because of this: we want to be a firm reference point and a valid support for Italian and multinational companies investing in our country, distinguishing us for close proximity to the needs of customers, integration in the delivery of services and measurement of results”.
The Italian communication market – considering also the experiential marketing that includes events, influencers, branded content and sponsorship – is worth about 17 billion euros in 2025. It is a deeply fragmented market, with over 43,000 active companies, dominated by large international holding companies and crossed by a phase of profound transformation and innovation in its constant growth.
“Be Closer’s birth is the answer to new market needs,” explains the communication company. “The trajectory of three solid Italian business experiences converges in a single company that integrates data, human insights, creativity, media and technology in an operating system that is made available to customers, with the aim of making communication more clear, coherent, close and effective. The ambition is to compete with the main groups for scale, solidity and ability to integrate, maintaining quality, identity and proximity and helping brands and CMO to decide with sense, consistency, timing and creative energy”. The new name Be Closer “encloses the Group’s founding principle: reducing the distances between brands and people, between data and decisions, between vision and actions.”.
“The new operating model comes from a clear principle: to enhance the system approach without sacrificing the strength of vertical skills,” continues Be Closer. “The central system presides over governance, strategy, data, technology and processes, ensuring overall vision and consistency. Around it, boutique brands – with a track record of successful experiences built in years of market positioning – continue to express excellence and credibility in their respective fields.”.
Thanks to an operating bridge made up of Client Lead as a reference partner and Interdisciplinary Solution Team, Be Closer is able to provide its customers with a single direction through a single contact point, combining the orchestration capacity, data and technology of a large group with the agility and proximity of a vertical boutique. For the customer, this results in three concrete advantages: less complexity to manage, data and technology behind each action and timely measurement of the impact on the business.
The commercial backbone of the offer continues to be articulated on three pillars: Creativity & Experiences (advertising, branded content, social & creator, PR, live experience and great events), Media & Touchpoints (strategy and media planning, retail media, influencer marketing, market research & consumer insights) and Retail & E-Commerce (in-store communication, retail activation, loyalty & proximity marketing, e-commerce and marketplace). The Group’s boutiques are operationally presided over with their specializations: Different and Kiwi for creativity and content, All for live experiences, Flu for influencer marketing, Next Media for media and touchpoint, Next Retail for retail marketing, EMG for research and insight. To enable and enhance transversally all areas is Be.X, the technology infrastructure at the heart of the Be Closer model.
It is the technological heart of Be Closer, based on proprietary data (mainly located in Italy). An operating system that has integrated in the last 10 months all platforms developed internally over the years by the company today part of Be Closer and benefits from a dedicated team of over 25 people between developer, data scientist and product manager. Agent technology is the hub of innovation and high-tech component of BE.X, a framework that combines AI models and over 1 billion data points to provide customers with high-tech end-to-end solutions.
Based on a micro-module architecture, it is designed to meet the needs of the contemporary marketer, ranging from social intelligence to creator marketing, from retail data tracking to mobility analysis, to advanced econometric models enriched by synthetic data and proprietary panels. The system is based on a federated data lake that aggregates over 1 billion datapoints: social (450M of creator census and 25M+ analyzed), GEO (over 20M of mobile devices tracked), synthetic panel (with more than 1000 Synthetic Personas created), live tracking of events and retail installations (over 500), our CDP (with over 50M+ of device data and 1000+ target audience created), data and tool “The challenge is not only to integrate structures and processes with the help of technology, but to build a common culture that becomes the true growth engine,” explains the communication company.
“For this reason – he continues – people are the heart of Be Closer’s evolution and Company Culture is a strategic lever to support the Group’s distinctive positioning and value creation over the long term and translates into concrete initiatives aimed at creating a positive environment that allows people to stay well, grow and achieve business results. The nearly 400 people of the group, with an average age of 36 and with a team marked (67%) are involved in a continuous development and training course, with the support of the Team Leadin’Lab of the Politecnico di Milano, which supports the internal functions with the goal of enhancing diversity and common sense of belonging, combining well-being and performance and putting at the center the attraction, development and enhancement of individual talent. The transformation of Be Closer SPA into Società Benefit allows us to insert ESG principles into governance, decision-making, company culture and competitive positioning, transforming compliance and responsibility into a strategic advantage. To this end, the Group has already approved a three-year strategic plan oriented to a model of ethical and transparent governance. This path is designed to structurally root the criteria of social and environmental sustainability in operational processes and the offer of services to the market and, above all, within the corporate culture. The goal is to generate real and lasting value both for the growth and well-being of our talents, and for the entire ecosystem of partners, customers and external stakeholders, placing corporate responsibility as one of the pillars of the identity of Be Closer”.
The company can already count on a unique patrimony of over 300 customers, with a very high retention rate and that includes some of the main Italian investors in communication including: Amazon, Barilla, Bayer, BlackRock, BMW, Brico io, Coca-Cola, Danone, Ferrarelle, Vileda, Generali, Kellanova, Klepierre, Haier, Heinekenreal Iliad, Irenctby, Il Sole 24 Ore.
-Photo press office Be Closer-
(ITALPRESS).
