Adveritising was a coincidence. It was always present because, like every baby boomer, I grew up in a world flooded with advertising. There were fewer media outlets and they were all commercial. But advertising never crossed my mind.

When I graduated with a degree in Business Administration, I had to look for a job, and a good friend was finishing up his internship at Leo Burnett. One day I visited him in his office, as we were going to have lunch together, and after lunch he gave me a tour. He told me what was done at the agency and how fun it was. He also told me many things that turned out to be not so accurate, but the job seemed ideal to me. Especially because knowing about advertising was one more tool that would help me in my later career. I applied for the account executive trainee position for the fabulous (minimum) salary of 40,000 pesos per month. That’s where I started. In the media department cutting out press ads and magazines from our clients’ competitors. It was there, surrounded by ads for the categories in which our brands competed, that I began to realize how boring most advertising is, and how much happiness a clever headline, a powerful image and, above all, a idea, something with an idea! That’s how I fell in love with good advertising and I knew that I wanted to contribute as much as possible to making more of it and less of the other stuff that was drowning me.

Advertising gave me everything. It has bought me my house, he has educated my children, he has given me recognition, friends, competitors, teammates, enemies and so many other things. But advertising is also a tool. It is the tool we use to make people prefer our brands over others, it is the tool we use to change behaviors and beliefs on a large scale and in the most efficient way possible. That’s why I think advertising is a great responsibility. It is such a powerful tool that must be used with enormous responsibility. And among those responsibilities that come with doing it, one of the most important is to reward those who have given us their time, to reward them with an intelligent idea that makes them think, with something that entertains them and informs them. In short, one of the main responsibilities of advertising is to communicate clearly and for the recipient of that communication to say at least “thank you, that time I spent with your message was worth it.”

Many mentors, the list of names is very long, but all my bosses without exception trusted me and made me feel supported. Without them I would never have been able to step out of my comfort zone with such confidence. They were the ones who gave me the opportunities that I thought I was not prepared for.

Envy inspires me. That envy of seeing work done by others that in some cases I could have done, and in many cases I know that something so wonderful would never have occurred to me. That envy motivates me every day to try to contribute to doing work that I would have been jealous of if we hadn’t done it ourselves.

This will sound very strange, but going from the climate of Bogota to the climate of London is an upgrade . In London it is much sunnier than what we see in movies and TV series, the air is clearer and it is much less cold than we think.  London is a city where you can live better than anywhere in the world, in my opinion. The cultural offer is infinite and extremely varied, the gastronomic offer is one of the most interesting and eclectic in the world and it is close to everywhere except perhaps Australia. My children live and have lived with me until they graduated from school in London, I think we are well adjusted.

Ha ha. It’s true. I like too cook very much. I’ve always liked it. And during the quarantine many of the people I knew in London had dedicated themselves to ordering at home. For my part, I dedicated myself to testing and making simple but delicious recipes and I realized that, in general, they took less time to be ready from scratch than the 40 or 45 minutes that at that time a delivery could take in come from the moment when people decided what they wanted to eat. So I decided to make an Instagram account (@possibility_meals) where I would publish the recipes that I was making and that were delicious to my taste. Today I continue publishing new recipes but what always happens is that some of the ones already published are repeated quite a bit. However, I still cook every day for my children and myself. In my house, sitting at the table every night and eating together is a ritual. It’s part of the reason why cooking is so important to me.

In 1985 we were spending vacations in Rio with my sister and my father right during Rock in Rio. We were staying at the Sheraton in Copacabana, I think it was called that. I went down to breakfast alone one morning and at the table next to me there were about six or seven people dressed in black and speaking Australian English. I knew about AC/DC and was going to see them at the festival, but it took me a while to make the connection. When I made it, I started trying to look at them discreetly, but no matter how hard you try, it never works out. One of them gave me a gesture of greeting with his hand and I then felt I had permission to speak to them. I asked them if they were AC/DC (the first question is always the stupidest of all), when one of the managers (I imagine) got up and offered me his chair at the table. I asked permission and sat for a while. He was next to Brian Johnson and in front of Malcom Young. I had a coffee and they brought me breakfast, which I ate at the table with them. They finished and went to sound check and I was left alone at the table finishing my breakfast. At that moment my sister came down and asked me why she was alone at such a big table. That night I saw them again, but that time I’m sure they didn’t see me.

There are always dreams to fulfill. There are some that I no longer care if they come true or not, there are new ones and there are the usual ones that, to be classified as dreams, must be by definition unattainable at the time of having them.