When working in communications-here in Disclosers in particular-sectoral variety is often one of the most common components.
Every day, for example, we interface with companies from different sectors: tech, travel, food, fintech, beauty, design, and many others. Each sector, clearly, has different languages, timing, metrics and interlocutors, and being a PR professional today means being able to speak "multiple languages," being able to connect different (sometimes distant) worlds, and developing a reading ability that is not superficial, but able to embrace the right depth of the verticals you work with.
How, then, does one maintain a level of depth in such heterogeneous contexts? The answer comes through transversality, not understood as a synonym for superficiality, but as the ability to find connections between realities belonging to even distant contexts and integrate different looks.
The challenge of multidisciplinary teams
Most communications and PR teams today are hybrid by definition. You no longer work in compartments: resources rotate between projects, different briefs are analyzed, and colleagues with different backgrounds collaborate. It is a configuration that offers many opportunities, but it requires a certain method.
Indeed, without a shared approach, there is a risk of:
- remain on the surface, treating each area with "textbook" logic
- Lose time in the learning curve every time you change sectors.
- create irrelevant content that does not really speak the language of those who work in that world.
On the contrary, when investing in transversality as an organizational practice, something interesting happens: the team develops a shared vertical competence, built day by day in the field.
Everyday life in Disclosers
Building a cross-functional team does not simply mean working across multiple sectors: it means putting in place a shared mindset that can value each project as an opportunity for growth and continuous learning (the real key to healthy growth).
How do we do it?
Every Thursday, for example, we dedicate a fixed space to in-house training, a time when the whole team gets together to share best practices, tools, case studies, and insights that come from the projects each team follows. It is a valuable opportunity to contaminate each other, gather stimuli from different fields and transform them from ideas to concrete actions, applicable to sectors even far apart. This constant exchange allows us to develop a broader and at the same time more "dense" outlook.
In addition, every morning each person on the team reads and monitors media related to their areas of expertise. This is not just a press review, but a daily exercise in observing and understanding the media environment, trends, and relevant conversations.
Transversality and verticality within a team: a more pronounced depth
A cross-functional team that develops verticality is, in fact, a more robust and competitive team. It can generate relevant insights more quickly, even on projects that have just started, because it has trained the ability to observe and interpret recurring patterns in different contexts. It is also more credible in the eyes of clients, precisely because it knows the specific logic of the industries it works with and can recognize the real challenges of each market.
This type of team is more autonomous, more fluid in its dialogue with journalists, stakeholders and internal contacts, because it is used to moving in heterogeneous environments with a certain awareness. Finally, it is a team that embraces innovation: the contamination between fields generates new approaches, ideas that are not taken for granted, and solutions that are not derived from automatisms, but from cross-cutting thinking that shapes formulas that are often novel, but highly effective.
Case study
A concrete example of how transversality can become an operational strength came when we were in charge of press office activities for the opening of a new restaurant belonging to one of the world's most famous restaurant chains. From the beginning we built a multidisciplinary team, aware that communication would have to preside over very different media angles.
There was a first level of corporate communication to be carefully attended to: telling the story of the brand's strategic expansion and the economic impact of the new opening on the territory, through industry media and business newspapers, an aspect led by PR Director Daniela Monteverdi.
In parallel, it was necessary to preside over a local and experiential dimension. In fact, the restaurant would host a series of events open to the Milanese public, an aspect we entrusted to the vision and experience of Isabella Castelli and Chiara Urzino, who are capable of intercepting the city's cultural and lifestyle agendas.
A further strand concerned the new items introduced in the menu: a seemingly simple content, but one that required vertical knowledge of the food & beverage sector. In this area Chiara Guerra's contribution was decisive, not only for the management of gastronomic media, but also for the activation of travel-related publications. In fact, the restaurant was also positioned as a reference destination for tourists visiting Milan.
What might have seemed like a linear project-promoting a new opening-actually turned out to be a choral effort, in which different skills worked in synergy to build a rich, coherent and focused narrative on multiple fronts.
It is not necessary to "know everything." One needs to know where to look.
The point is not to be an "expert in everything," but to develop the aptitude to enter each sector with keen eyes, with the ability to read, translate, and decline concepts and visions into messages suited to the target audience, with the propensity to seek connections with other segments (to amplify communication, but without losing focus).
We also add the desire to study, investigate, ask questions, observe carefully and return a thick result. It is this approach that allows each project to be approached with awareness and lucidity, turning transversality into a true working method.As Italo Calvino stated in the American Lessons, "light is not superficial." Similarly, in communication, transversal does not mean generic, but rather stands for flexibility in moving between different domains with agility, yet maintaining a deep and structured gaze, grasping connections and giving depth to each narrative, without weighing it down.
