Reunion night at the Old Damm Factory in Barcelona. More than 250 communication professionals attended Netcom this Wednesday, the annual meeting organized by the Dircom Catalunya association, which was able to be held in person again after the hiatus caused by the pandemic. The event, still marked by masks and health precautions, had a double reason for celebration: being able to organize an in-person meeting again, essential for networking, and commemorating Netcom's tenth anniversary.
"In ten years, everything has happened to us," stated emphatically the president of the board of Dircom Catalunya, Maria Lluïsa Martínez Gistau, who highlighted that this decade marked by digitalization, the financial crisis, and the health crisis "is equivalent to one hundred analog years."
To celebrate the anniversary, Dircom Catalunya opted for humor. With the idea of leaving behind the months of darkness, no guru was sought to deliver a keynote speech; instead, they hired actor Pep Plaza, who transformed into a thousand characters thanks to his accurate imitations, making the entire audience laugh heartily with the show Las mil caras del dircom (The Thousand Faces of the Dircom).
A documentary was also screened about the evolution of the profession in the last ten years, with the aim of better publicizing the work that communication directors of companies currently have to perform. The documentary includes testimonies from Martínez Gistau herself, communication director of CaixaBank, and her professional colleagues Jordi Garcia Tabernero (Naturgy), Igone Bartumeu (Coca-Cola Europacific Partners), Jordi Romañach (El Corte Inglés), Cristina Salvador (Both), and Joan Cuenca (Blanquerna-URL).
"This is a fascinating profession. I wouldn't change it for anything, and believe me, I suffer from it," exclaimed the president of Dircom Catalunya, busy these days with the technological integration process of CaixaBank and Bankia. "The dircoms ---she added--- must have a basic instinct: to be curious, entrepreneurial, to be attracted to what is yet to be discovered."
In her speech, Martínez Gistau enumerated the attributes that a good dircom must have to survive in a context where everything happens very quickly and a lot of misinformation is generated. "This is a profession you have to love, because we live in a pressure cooker and go through very deep crises," she said. After emphasizing the flexibility, the capacity for improvisation and adaptation of corporate communication professionals, she stressed the need to maintain "an invariable commitment to ethics" and to ensure the reputation of the companies they work for. "We are, we must be, the voice of conscience of our organizations, in order to establish honest, responsible and trust-generating relationships with the different stakeholders," she remarked.
The president of Dircom Catalunya also had emotional words remembering the figure of María José Isern, a veteran professional in the sector ---she worked many years at Volkswagen Audi and then at Anticipa---, who passed away a few months ago. "I miss her very much, she was a great professional, a good person, and I want to dedicate this meeting to her memory."
Dircom Catalunya was founded in 2007 and currently has 236 members. Among many others, yesterday at the Antigua Fábrica Damm, one could see Gabriel Martínez (Banco Sabadell), Jordi Garcia Tabernero (Naturgy), Natalia Berenguer (Danone), Fede Segarra (Damm), Xavier Gispert (Cellnex), Òscar Iniesta (Llyc), Rosa Anguita (Caprabo), Remei Uz (Mercadona), Isabel Vea (Familia Torres), Marc Casanovas (Ogilvy), David Martín (Peralada), Isabel Grifoll (Atrevia), Silvia Ramón (Síntesis), Anna Morejón (Idilia Foods), Igone Bartumeu (Coca-Cola), Jordi Romañach (El Corte Inglés), Marc Gómez, Juan María Hernández Puértolas and Elianne Ros (Fundación Bancaria La Caixa), Laura Sabaté (Román), Cristina Fontgivell and Rosario Correro (Kreab), Georgina Teixidó (Cirsa), Esther Caballero (Squircle Capital), Toni Rodríguez (Intermedia), Carme Miró (Apple Tree), María Díaz (Esade), Mercedes Soler-Lluro (ICE), Anna Diloy and Esther Grávalos (Tinkle), José Guerra (Suez) and Iolanda Baqués. The president of Dircom in all of Spain, Miguel López-Quesada (Gestamp) and the general director of the entity, José Fernández-Álava, also attended the event.