When the Financial Times and Statista published the latest ranking of Europe’s Long-Term Growth Champions, the names at the top looked familiar: tech platforms, digital services, fast-scaling online businesses. Less obvious was a communications agency headquartered in Pescara, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, listed among Europe’s most consistently expanding companies over the past decade.
In the Advertising & Marketing segment of the list, Pomilio Blumm sits among the top five players in Europe by 2024 revenue, and, even more unusually, it is positioned as the first player with a clear focus on communication for public institutions, rather than consumer brands.
In a sector that, overall, has grown only modestly in recent years, Pomilio Blumm’s trajectory looks like an outlier. According to figures shared by the company and reflected in the FT-Statista ranking, the agency has delivered a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.21% over ten years, reaching over €50 million in revenue in 2024.
That performance raises a broader question: why is a specialist in public-sector communication growing faster than many peers in a relatively stable market?
«We have shown consistent growth, especially abroad, reaching the size of international giants in the sector while keeping our roots firmly planted in Pescara», explained President Franco Pomilio.
A ranking built on a turbulent decade
The Europe’s Long-Term Growth Champions list is the result of a joint project by the Financial Times and data provider Statista. It identifies European companies that have maintained the highest revenue growth over a full decade for the current edition, from 2014 to 2024.
The period covered by the ranking includes some of the harshest shocks to European business in recent memory: the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, a related energy crisis, and the return of persistent inflation after Covid. Yet the companies featured have managed to keep growing through the cycle, often by innovating in niches the broader market had underestimated.
Within this group, Advertising and marketing firms account for only a slice of the total. The presence of a mid-sized Italian agency focused on public-sector clients is therefore notable in itself.
Growing faster than a mature market
Against a backdrop of broadly stable demand for communication services, Pomilio Blumm’s performance stands out. Company data indicate that: the agency is among the top five European groups by 2024 revenue in the Advertising & Marketing category of the Ft ranking; within that group, it ranks first for “company longevity”, a metric that combines growth with years in operation; about 10% of annual turnover is reinvested in research and development, an unusually high share in its segment.
This profile of Pomilio Blumm suggests a business whose model is less about short bursts of expansion and more about steady, people-driven growth.
When public communication becomes strategic
One explanation for this performance lies in the changing role of public institutions over the same decade. In the wake of the financial crisis, the migration crisis, the pandemic and the ongoing green and digital transitions, European governments and EU bodies have increasingly treated communication as a strategic function.
From campaigns on vaccination or energy saving to complex dialogues around climate, competitiveness or digital regulation, public policies now live or die in the public arena. Institutions are expected not only to inform but also to engage, listen and co-create with citizens.
This has led to the emergence of a distinct sub-sector: institutional communication, with its own methods, constraints and audiences. Contracts are awarded under strict procurement rules, making track record and reliability crucial.
Pomilio Blumm, founded in Italy and long specialised in working for European and international public institutions, has positioned itself squarely in this niche. The agency’s portfolio includes, among others: the DesignEuropa Awards in Copenhagen, curated for EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office); and the European Business and Nature Summit in Helsinki, delivered within an €80 million framework contract for the European Commission. In the agency’s portfolio, there is also a frame contract with DG COM (200 million euros) and years of communication activities for the European Central Bank, including the organisation of many editions of the ECB Forum on Central Banking and the Sintra Forum.
These assignments combine policy content, high-level events, creative storytelling and multimedia production, a mix that is not easily outsourced piecemeal.
An integrated model instead of a loose network
Where many communication groups operate through a loose federation of specialised agencies, Pomilio Blumm has bet on a more integrated structure.
The agency keeps the entire communication value chain in-house, from research and narrative design to campaign development, content creation, event management and evaluation. It relies on more than 100 proprietary tools, developed over time to analyse audiences, map stakeholders, test narratives and measure impact. Pomilio maintains a headcount higher than typical for its revenue level, hiring not only creatives and producers but also sociologists, semioticians, policy analysts, data scientists and service designers.
This choice, on one side, means higher fixed personnel expenses and the ongoing need to innovate tools and processes. But it also brings two advantages: control over quality and consistency. For large public-sector frameworks, the ability to guarantee a consistent narrative and tone across multiple countries and formats is essential. The accumulation of specialised know-how and repeated EU-level assignments allows the agency to build deep thematic expertise.
In a market where the overall pie is not expanding dramatically, gaining share often means offering a clearly differentiated proposition. Pomilio Blumm bets that a fully integrated, institution-focused model is that proposition.
A global network anchored in a provincial city
The most striking element of the Pomilio Blumm story is where its centre of gravity lies. While the company has operational bases in several cities worldwide and leads a network of partner agencies across different continents, its headquarters and strategic departments remain in Pescara, in Italy’s Abruzzo region, far from the usual power hubs of European communication such as Brussels, Paris or London.
The agency describes its campus-style headquarters, the “Cittadella”, as both a workplace and an “idea valley”: a space designed to attract international talent while staying rooted in a local creative ecosystem. The long-term growth recognised by the FT ranking suggests that this peripheral-yet-connected geography has not been an obstacle and may even be part of the appeal.
A bellwether for institutional communication?
As with all rankings, Europe’s Long-Term Growth Champions offers only a partial snapshot of the continent’s corporate landscape. The list is not exhaustive and depends on which companies choose to disclose their data.
Yet Pomilio Blumm’s presence in the top tier of the Communication & Marketing category, combined with its specialisation in public-sector clients, hints at a broader shift.
Suppose an agency focused on interpreting, narrating and disseminating public policies can sustain double-digit annual growth over a decade in a relatively mature market. In that case, it may indicate that institutional communication itself has become a structural growth field in Europe, one that sits at the intersection of democracy, public trust and the digital media economy.
For policymakers, the message is that how they communicate is increasingly central to what they achieve. For the communications industry, the lesson from Pescara may be that long-term growth does not only belong to consumer brands and tech platforms. It can also be built around the slow, complex work of explaining institutions to the citizens they serve.
All quantitative figures on Pomilio Blumm’s performance, workforce, and R&D investment mentioned here are drawn from the company’s data and the FT-Statista ranking.
