When it comes to communication, no one can do it better than Cindy Crescenzo. Ever since her professional passion for people sparked at DePaul, she has grown Chicago’s communication market tremendously with the help of her husband. She continues to lead in this industry with her unique teachings that cannot be found elsewhere.
Cindy Crescenzo, the co-owner of a successful communications company, Crescenzo Communications, didn’t see her life the way she does now when she was first beginning in the industry. She started as a student at DePaul University’s Master’s program in Marketing. Through this program, she was able to take positions in companies all throughout Chicago, doing various tasks related to her marketing degree. “That was priceless,” Crescenzo said while reminiscing about how it helped to adapt and learn how to work with different types of people. Since she had a pretty strong dance background, being a part of DePaul’s first dance team and bringing them to their first national competition, she started looking into jobs that interested her in that field. Her first job was working for a nonprofit, the Chicago Symphony Theater. After working there for 5-6 years, she gained an opportunity to work for the League of Chicago Theaters. Time and time again, she found herself “becom[ing] the voice of organizations”; she had to put their message into the world to tell supporters why they were worth getting funded.
However, there was a point when working for nonprofits was “incredibly rewarding, but [she couldn’t] afford it anymore.” By then, she had become interested in employee communications, so she started a full-time position with a company rooted in just that. That company, coincidentally, is also where she met her now husband, Steve Crescenzo, who is one of her biggest inspirations. She admires his passion for what they do now at their self-started company. “Steve has been a leader in this industry for many, many years” she said, “and when he is keynoting or speaking, and doing it completely Steve style, to see again the effects he has on people is a really cool thing.”
Crescenzo Communications has been around for over 27 years and, at the time of writing this, consists only of The Crescenzos; they are a company that focuses on helping companies not only connect with their own employees, but also create a work environment desirable for outsiders to apply. They focus on a more personal aspect than most other companies do. By meeting with every level of employee, from CEO down, they help employers create a plan of action in order to connect with their employees. “It’s so important,” said Crescenzo, especially after COVID, employees are reconsidering their careers and positions at their companies, making employee retention crucial for businesses.
Crescenzo Communication offers a perspective no other company has because they teach against the computer-dominated narrative. They have worked towards building their brand as the most “dynamic, energetic, [and] authentic consultants” in their industry, she said, by “building what that means and making sure that when people attend a Crescenzo event…[it’s] like nothing they’ve ever sat in before.” They know what works because they have seen the nitty-gritty of getting people involved. More specifically, they help “thought leadership” with executive-level manager communications and corporate communications. It serves to help people understand how to tell and report stories, and how to infuse people into corporate narratives, which is known to be important in the communications field. They value their ability to “turn everything into a narrative” on top of the graphs and data they offer. “Telling people stories is a better way to capture their attention, to engage people,” she said, so anything they deliver is not only showing CEOs the data behind what their employees are doing, but it is telling them how they are feeling at every level.
They use these narratives to apply what the data means and convey what they can do as a company to help people want to stay. At the end of the day, keeping the same job is a choice, and having a healthy workplace environment to keep employees is essential. By the end of a session with Crescenzo Communications, higher-ups should really have the “‘no feel and do’ hit them over the head,” as she calls it: they know what their employees are thinking, and they know what to do about it.
Moreover, Crescenzo, with her marketing background, is in charge of being the marketing strategic arm of their organization. She is in charge of the website, promotional materials, ticketing, and registration platforms for their conferences and workshops. Not only that, but because they are a small business, she has to do the accounting and other administrative tasks. So her background in consulting and analytics is most helpful here.
A large gain since working in Crescenzo Communications is having the ability to travel worldwide to have meetings and teachings. She describes it as a “dream come true.” Since they began in 1997, they have had the opportunity to travel to 20 different countries spread over 5 continents. Although the start of the pandemic threw a wrench in this luxury, the Crescenzos’ plan to start traveling as much as they can now that society is returning to normal.
However, one of the things that has plagued the communications community as of late is the surge of AI usage. AI has been taking over due to the ease associated with it. People will prompt AI and copy and paste it verbatim, “thinking AI could be a writer for their team, and that’s a huge issue.” By doing so, the response they receive “is corporate speak, it’s very vague, very obscure,” she said. It doesn’t “tell a story that happened to a heart, that happened to a person.” The information is stolen from other sources, and it doesn’t have the quality that a real writer would bring, especially nothing like Crescenzo’s capabilities.
Writing is such an important part of their field, and when it is placed in the hands of AI or done through online platforms, it does not have the same effect. “Ditch your digital security blanket and get comfortable with talking to people face to face,” she advises. It’s “how you start to develop the ‘I know how to write for you’” feeling that is so vital to her success. Cindy Crescenzo, from the beginning to the present day, has been a leader, and she remains an important pillar in the Communication industry with her and her husband’s unique teachings.