“Many work to promote a hedonistic image but few live it on a daily basis”

Each communication agency has its distinctive sign. When he moved the Al Dente offices to the north of Paris in early 2020, Patrizio Miceli chose a swimming pool as his signature (what he calls a “Cultural aura”). An architectural feat, the pool is retracted under the parquet floor which must be lifted using a pulley to be able to swim against the current. “The swimming pool is available to people from the agency and their children, but it also serves us for shootings”, specifies the founder of this agency which oversees the image of brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, L’Occitane and Serge Lutens.

The specificity of Al Dente is its integrated photo studio. While most of its competitors entrust photo shoots to specialists, this human-sized agency prefers to keep this central activity under its wing. “During the first confinement, we were able to continue to work in complete freedom. In the all-digital age, it is important to be responsive, to be able to put our ideas into images immediately. For the watchmaker Piaget, for example, who has been one of our customers since March 2020, we have been able to produce and distribute pictures every day ”, explains Patrizio Miceli.

Entrepreneurial culture

With his team of 25 people, he often wins competitions against agencies that have several hundred employees. “Our structure, which integrates strategy, production and post-production, is perfectly suited to recent developments in the world of images. The more people there are to work on a project, the more waste there is in the creative momentum… Here, we see ourselves more as artisans of communication. “ A perfect illustration of this agile organization: at Al Dente, the artistic director is also a photographer.

The interview taking place during Parisian fashion week, Patrizio Miceli is working on uploading images of the AMI fashion show, only forty-eight hours after the show. “We prepare for this deadline three weeks in advance, which allows us to be ready and responsive at the time of the parade. “ Hanging on a wall facing the employees, the multicolored tapestry “OPTIMISM / I Love sticky situations” by South African artist Cameron Platter sheds light on the state of mind of the founder of the agency.

“I am an optimist. This crisis makes it possible to accelerate changes that were bound to occur anyway, such as the digitization of parades or the humanization of e-commerce. We have also worked in this direction with Alber Elbaz and his AZ Factory site, where the creator comes to deliver video advice to certain clients. ”

Studies on the ultra-rich

Patrizio Miceli confesses to having grown up in a family “Creative hedonists” : her mother is a fashion specialist, her father a photographer and publisher, her sister director of the creation of Louis Vuitton accessories. An entrepreneurial culture that he shares today with his partner, the former journalist Jeanne Deroo, at the initiative of a new interior clothing brand, Holi Holi.

After studies on which this ex-dunce will not extend, he started his career at Chanel, where he worked on the identity and digital communication of the brand. He conducts studies on the ultra-rich, particularly in Japan, and understands that it is first and foremost the experience that catches the attention of wealthy clients: “What they appreciate above all is taking time for themselves, recharging their batteries in an onsen [bain thermal japonais], live moments of emotions. ”

Miceli then has the intuition that it is necessary to transform the aura of luxury brands into service. In 2004, he founded his own agency and began to support big houses like Boucheron. He takes care to reposition them by working on their history and their values, their famous “cultural aura”, a notion that goes beyond the products in the catalog and includes a certain number of intangible elements. “Podcasts, for example”, illustrates Patrizio Miceli.

Always on the lookout for new cultural practices, he recently worked to bring fashion and digital closer together by creating mobile games, by connecting the Twitch video platform and brands, or by helping to develop “skins”, virtual clothes for online game characters: “Establishing links between these two worlds is essential today. “

Shanghai branch

Al Dente, who also helps Louis Vuitton to set up a strategy on TikTok, digitized Virgil Abloh’s men’s fashion show on the social network which is a hit with young people. “Ninety-five percent of brand content is not seen by its users. It is our role to find the right vocabulary to crack the algorithm of social networks like TikTok. “ He synthesizes this harmony between creativity and performance of content in the name of his agency, Al Dente (the ideal cooking of pasta according to the Italians, underlined by the logo, a penna rigata), a point of balance that he says is complicated to get.

Patrizio Miceli plans to open a branch in Shanghai, in order to better understand Chinese customers. “To give more consistency to the content, we are translating a global strategy locally. This look has become essential. ” His understanding of luxury is what he owes to Colette, the iconic Parisian boutique. “Sarah, its founder, had a very modern outlook. It has enabled many of our generation to emerge. ” It was in the store on rue Saint-Honoré that he launched his brand of food products Al Dente La Salsa. “The idea started with a gift I wanted to give to my clients: tomato sauces that I have been making with my mother since childhood. I have the recipe from my Sicilian ancestors. ”

Today, Al Dente La Salsa pastes, sauces and spreads are sold at La Grande Epicerie in Paris. “Many work to promote a hedonistic image but few live it on a daily basis”, boasts Patrizio, who praises the low turnover of employees at his agency, where an Italian chef regularly comes to cook for the teams. An ultra-rewarding image when the Instagram account @balancetonagency points to managerial drifts in advertising and communication …

Even closely monitored, the production of tomato sauces had to be entrusted to a specialized workshop. “In this time of crisis, self-sufficiency is a luxury, and one day I will buy a few hectares in Sicily, a country whose creative bubbling I admire. This island has always been built on diversity, it is a value that I would like to defend in the utopian kibbutz that I dream of launching. “