Timken’s Mike Johnson (right) helped Dan Pecchia land a godsend project at the Canton manufacturer, igniting a bright start for Pecchia Communications.
When Dan Pecchia lost his job in 2005 and started Pecchia Communications, his aim was to land enough work to tide him over until the next full-time job.
But a couple early breaks – one modest, one gargantuan – helped transform Pecchia Communications from a temporary project to an organization that has lasted more than two decades.
A timely trip to a hardware store
The modest break began with aluminum siding, and it took shape even before Pecchia Communications was formed.
In fact, it happened on Dan’s drive home from work the day he learned he was losing his job.
“That was unexpected and it hurt, and one of the worst parts was having to go home and tell my wife,” Dan recalled. “We were worried at the time about the cost of college for our kids and, to say the least, we were totally unprepared for me being out of work.
“Beyond that, Betsy was a little annoyed that I kept coming home without stopping at the hardware store to pick up the aluminum siding corners we had ordered to replace the ones that blew off our house during a storm. I got to the store after it closed a few times, and I just forgot to stop a few times.
“So I made sure that day that I’d pick up those corners so I wouldn’t have to come home without those and without a job.”
Dan’s stop at Bernard Daniels Lumber in Canfield turned out to be timely for another reason. At the counter, he noticed a sign that said, “Under New Management.”
The lady at the counter told him a local businessman had just bought the 87-year-old store and was over in the lumber area greeting customers.
Dan headed there and introduced himself to auctioneer Tom Paranzino. After a 20-minute conversation, Pecchia Communications had its first client before it even existed.
“I asked Tom about his plans for communicating about the purchase of the store,” Dan recalled, “and he shot back that he couldn’t afford advertising and would just rely on word of mouth.
“When I told him about characterizing the sale as a news item and inviting the local media to cover it, at a cost far below the cost of advertising, he perked up. The store was a landmark, Tom had specific plans, and he was an energetic, quotable guy. We had some news value.”
The store wound up enjoying strong news coverage locally and in an Ohio lumber business publication. Weeks later, Pecchia Communications launched a Testimonials page on its website and Paranzino agreed to contribute a message (his words are still there).
“The project wasn’t big,” Dan recalled, “but it was significant in a couple ways. For one, it gave me tremendous confidence at a time when that was pretty scarce.
“Also, it sparked the idea that maybe there was a market of small business owners – smaller than the typical big-agency client – who are willing to pay lower but still decent prices for small bits of work.”
Tom Paranzino (right) and Dan Pecchia recently reconnected at Tom’s Bernard Daniels Lumber store, the first client of Pecchia Communications.
The right place at the right time
The other big break took longer to develop and had an even greater impact. It centered around the Timken Company, a manufacturer in Canton where Dan had a friend and fan.
Mike Johnson, who had just retired as vice president of communications, introduced Dan to his former staff and helped him land a gig as a writer for the TimkeNet, the newly launched intranet. After a few weeks, Dan got invited to a meeting with some different Timken people about a potential new project.
“Are you familiar with S-A-P?” Dan was asked, and he had never heard of that.
The Timken people explained they were working through a multi-year project to install SAP, a comprehensive information technology solution, throughout their worldwide operations to replace a mishmash of outdated IT systems and smoothly connect everything.
The multimillion-dollar effort would change the jobs of thousands of employees, and it had an opening for a “communications lead.” Dan was asked to apply for the contract role.
As it turns out, the role was open because it was a tough job. Three experienced communications pros hired by the consultants running the SAP rollout quit or were dismissed, and several senior Timken employees tried and walked away.
“Timken probably guessed that I was desperate enough to take this gig and try to make it work – and they were right,” Dan recalled.
“This was totally new territory for me, but the Timken folks wanted the arrangement to work so they helped me do a good job. There were times when I thought I should be paying them.”
That project lasted nearly two years – a very long time in Dan’s experience with his two previous agency employers. More importantly, the work exposed Pecchia Communications to the emerging field of comms work supporting major organizational changes like technology rollouts and ownership transitions.
After Timken came referrals to even larger projects at Whirlpool, AkzoNobel (parent of Glidden Paints), American Greetings, PPG, Tate & Lyle, American Electric Power and others. Pecchia Comm is now serving on its 19th change management engagement, this one with Safelite Auto Glass in Columbus.
“Every time I drive by the Timken building near the airport or one of the steel plants further south I think about great memories,” Dan recalled. “I happened to be in just the right place at just the right time.”
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