There’s a lot to say about me.

Nice to meet you. Antonio Serafini. I’m sure you won’t remember it. I almost never remember a name the first time I meet someone, and I’ve decided that goes for everyone. Then, when I realise a person is interesting, I look for a creative way to make them say it again without asking. We introduce ourselves first out of politeness, but everything would be simpler if we did it at the end. Like in advertising: a brand first tells you something worth remembering, and only at the end tells you its name. I was born in Italy, a country famous around the world, in Termoli, a charming little town by the sea in Molise, a legendary land — in the sense that for most people it’s just a legend. I’ve lived in Milan for twenty years, and I’ve worked out that at least five or six of them I’ve spent confirming its existence to friendly Muggles who always make the same joke: “Oh, so it does exist?” One day I might add all those years of advertising my homeland to my LinkedIn experience. And so I moved to the city of Campari. I left the sea behind me, and in exchange Milan offered me fog, tram tracks, and a way all its own of making you feel late even when you’re early, poor even when you’re not, and somebody even when you’re nobody. I’ve paid it back by complaining constantly. That’s how you can tell a southerner has decided to stay. The first thing they ask you in Milan is what you do. The first thing they ask you down south is whether you’ve eaten. Twenty years on, I’m still learning to ask the first question as naturally as my grandmother asked the second. I’ve been here long enough to be Milanese in Termoli, and to remain a terrone in Milan. Like Balto: all he knows is what he isn’t. I get around by bike, which for many people makes me someone who cares about health and pollution. For pedestrians I’m a hazard on the pavements, for taxi drivers an obstruction, for my friends someone who arrives slowly and late, to the point that they end up coming to pick me up by car. Cycling in this city has revealed my infallible sense of disorientation, which turns every shortcut into a new way of making the road longer. And it has taught me one thing about Milan: it acts big, but deep down it’s really quite small. Although I don’t drive, I know a lot about driving. Not because I’ve never wasted a minute looking for parking, or because I read car magazines the way other people read horoscopes, but because I spent years writing manifestos for the automotive industry: cars capable not only of taking you to destinations never reached, but of pushing the pleasure of driving to unreachable heights. All imagined on a bike, obviously. The car in the photo isn’t mine. But we were en Pandant. I have three cats in a flat. It’s not that I wanted three: I had one, then I got a girlfriend, she had two more, and what was I supposed to do, I couldn’t just abandon them. These days I pay the rent to them. When writing for a living strikes the wrong note, I turn into a singer-songwriter. I’m a baritone. Useless information, unless you happen to be looking for a voice-over artist from Molise, which is rare, trust me. In which case this is the most important sentence on the page: stop reading and call. I speak English and Spanish. Spanish well enough to understand everything, not well enough to argue. I’m working on it: in my experience, the best ideas come out of an argument. I’ve been told this page is too long. I’ve been told this by people who read all of it. My mother, basically. And a few friends I forced to read it (they knew there would be questions afterwards). I know that nothing you’ve read so far will help you decide whether to call me for a job. But then, whatever I had written would have been useless: that’s the trouble with every about me, they can’t be trusted. So I’ll spare you the self-proclaimed skills in HR-speak — results-driven problem solver, team player with a strong aptitude for lateral thinking, passionate storyteller with a growth mindset — or the tedious creative bios, the ones that try to make the things a creative does every day sound exceptional: to DIG for the insights that matter, to BUILD ideas on the strong strategic ground they reveal, so they can MOVE something in people and make brands remarkable, through ideas that come to life as incredible brand experiences, buzz-worthy activations, films and every kind of campaign that has always existed and gets redefined every five years. Or the list of the world’s mega-agencies — DDB, Leagas Delaney, Armando Testa, Havas — like medals on a hiker’s walking stick. I’ll also spare you the usual photo of me gazing thoughtfully out of a window, as proof that I can think. All in all, I’m sparing you a lot, even though, as I said, there was a lot to say. And there would be more.