The Return to Italy

Many things, many moments, were never written down, because they live only in the memory of a man who is no longer here: Giorgio.

But when we got back home, we both fell silent, and neither of us commented right away on the test or how it had gone.

Only two weeks later did I receive a telegram from L’ORÉAL’s Sales Director at the time, with just this line: MR. FREGA THANK YOU.

I learned that companies give you knowledge of markets through products, through the real and the invented needs of the consumer — and that same commercial manipulation still, quietly, shapes buying decisions today.

I like to remember a clip of Benny Hill, the English actor, playing a waiter serving wine to a customer who kept complaining and asking for it to be changed because it wasn’t good.

Benny swapped the label five times, and the wine was always the same — only at the end did the customer finally say it was good.

It’s the same with sales — it’s only a matter of manner, and the kind of label you use. What truly makes someone unique isn’t experience across many brands, but experience across many different companies.

Mothers make only one mistake with their sons: they never teach us how to protect ourselves, because they do it naturally for us — but they know we’ll have to earn that experience alone, and that’s what will make each of us different.

I got home knowing I wasn’t the same man anymore, and my wife saw it too, when she asked me who Rita was — I’d said her name in my sleep during the night. Just a woman looking for a priest, I answered.