Dear Turkey(s), Do Tell Us About Experiential Learning
Produced by Ideal
Creative & Production Credits belong to the Ideal team (2021).
In loving memory of Valeria Tunzi
A bright, warm presence and a wonderful part of this experience. Thank you for always being a friend — it meant a lot to me. You’ll always be a part of us.
Before we even get into turkeys, chaos, English, experiential learning, or the sixty Italians who were terrified to speak in front of each other… you should know one thing:
This is what the agency eventually turned my Thanksgiving project into — their official holiday video.
But the part no one sees in this polished, cinematic greeting
is the absolute creative insanity that made it possible.
So let me tell you what really happened behind that video —
starting with two turkeys, a castle’s worth of cooking, an English program that spiraled into mythology, and one idea that went way too far (in the best possible way).
1. The Turkeys and I Have a Word
At the end of the night, I found myself standing in an industrial kitchen, staring at two enormous roasted turkeys—a combined forty kilos of golden poultry resting like heavyweight champions who had finally surrendered. I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t sat, and I certainly hadn’t stopped. And in that quiet, stainless-steel moment, I swear both turkeys had something to say. Honestly, so did I.
Mushy sentimental side note: I’m a vegetarian at heart. I always give my spiritual blessing and thank the turkeys that give their lives for us. I always feel a sense of sadness and guilt every year. Why I’m not officially a vegetarian (yet) is a story for another time and another mood.
In the meantime, here’s how I roast butchered turkeys while reconciling it all in my head.
2. The Lady Who Does Thanksgiving
In Torino, I seem to have acquired several unofficial titles, but the one that matters most during the month of November is this:
I’m The Lady Who Does Thanksgiving.
In castles, villas, Michelin-star restaurants, and penthouses.
If I’m going to do something, it’s going to be over-the-top — otherwise, what’s the point? I live by the mantra: Go big or go home.
The first year I hosted Thanksgiving here, there were sixteen people, then thirty, then fifty… and eventually, circa 2015, one hundred guests attended a Thanksgiving feast at Castello Canalis, in Cumiana, Pinerolo.
Every year, Italians ask me questions that make me laugh:
“È la festa con i fuochi d’artificio?”
(Is it the party with fireworks?)
No.
“È quella col tacchino patriottico rosso-bianco-blu?”
(Is that the one with the red-white-blue patriotic turkey?)
Absolutely not.
“È tipo Ferragosto ma col purè?”
(Is it like Ferragosto but with mashed potatoes?)
Not even close.
For reasons I can’t fully explain, I never get tired of shedding light on their unknowns—maybe because I love talking about food and how to cook it. And maybe because Thanksgiving here isn’t a tradition—it’s an experience. And certainly not an experience for the lazy.
3. Enter: Sixty Italians and an Opportunity
In the summer of 2022, a major advertising agency invited me to install an English program for sixty out of their one hundred employees. By September, the CVO (Chief Vision Officer) —who knew my creative style, my English programs, and my culinary chaos—came to me with a question:
“Emilia, would you do a Thanksgiving event for us?”
I said yes, because at that point, saying yes had become a lifestyle. And while all my “yessing” has gotten me into plenty of complicated situations (“in a pickle,” as we say), I don’t regret any of them. My life might have been easier had I taken a more linear path, but easier has never been my brand.
And then my imagination—my lifelong accomplice—sat upright in my mind and whispered:
What if this weren’t just a dinner? What if this became a full-scale experiential English event?
That night, I couldn’t sleep. My brain was exploding with ideas. This usually happens either when I have a genuinely genius idea or when I’m experiencing a moment of manic creativity and just think I’ve had a genius idea.
Either way, I knew something big was coming.
4. Let’s Talk Turkey
I opened a new Google Slides deck and typed one sentence on the first slide:
“LET’S TALK TURKEY.”
Then I left everything else blank.
The next day, I assigned roles to my students based on the actual jobs they held within the agency:
Account managers
Strategists
ATL/BTL copywriters
Designers
Photographers
Event planners
Musicians
They weren’t going to study English — they were going to marinate in it.
5. The Fake Product That Should Never Exist
Elena—my then twenty-year-old daughter—and Max, her twenty-two-year-old boyfriend, handed me the seed of the idea:
A motorcycle-shaped turkey-roasting stand.
I should have known then that we were heading into madness. Those two are brilliant at many things, but their brilliance in the art of ridiculousness is unmatched.
Then the agency took the idea and went full throttle. As the weeks went by, teams added their slides. The evolution was happening in real time, and everyone was inspiring everyone else.
Together we built:
a complete 360° communication strategy
naming proposals
visual identity
audience analysis
social media plans
an ATL creative campaign
a full brand backstory (involving retired Sons of Anarchy bikers who now forge kitchen tools)
and even a cinematic interactive video concept
All real, all documented, all cited, all magnificent.
They named the product:
Featherless Knight.
At that point, I realized my team didn’t do “halfway.”
They did mythology.
Credits: Nick Fioni & Matteo Divenere Thank you for your beautiful storytelling, creativity, and sense of humor.
I also realized I was strangely qualified to lead them into this creative insanity. Over the years, I’ve worn almost every hat imaginable: music student, fashion designer, graphic designer, copywriter, web developer, international account manager, chef, coach, and the woman who kept ending up with an empty bank account but an overloaded skill set.
“Hi, my name is Emilia, and I’m a recovering multipotentialite.”
All joking aside, the mix of hope, disappointment, learning, reinvention, and survival that built my unconventional career has also given me the ability to dream up things like this project without flinching.
6. Born to Be a Wild Turkey
For the music component, I coached a team of musicians as they developed an original parody of Born to Be Wild — which became:
Born to Be a Wild Turkey.
We booked a studio session, rehearsed pronunciation, and recorded vocals. The result was a full song, complete with outlaw biker energy and turkey-death poetry documented in the deck.
Check it out below — I’ve placed the track and lyrics at the end of the article.
Then we created:
a turkey mascot
a biker-themed photo booth
sunglasses, bandanas, and fake tattoos
props
and a motorcycle sidecar setup for photos
At this point, it was no longer a Thanksgiving dinner — it was an interactive simulation.
7. The Fear → The Breakthrough
Creatives can be fearless when generating ideas, but ask them to speak English to someone, and they shrink and hide. And to be fair, that’s a cultural issue here. Italians who learned English through the traditional school system were often conditioned to believe they were fundamentally flawed and would never be “good enough.”
When my daughter was in grade school, I noticed that some teachers would never give a perfect grade — ever. The top score was always nine out of ten. Why?
Because, “No one is perfect.”
How is anyone supposed to feel good enough, let alone successful, when you already know going right out of the gate that you’ll never be acknowledged for excelling?
Naturally, the thought of presenting in English in front of the entire company terrified everyone. But as soon as they realized they weren’t alone in their fear, everything shifted. (Plus the open bar at the event played its part too.)
Shared fear became:
solidarity
empathy
courage
community
This is experiential learning.
You don’t learn English passively. You pick up the tools you have, step into the lion’s den, and you fight your way into becoming who you’re meant to be.
8. Four Days, Two Turkeys, and Zero Sleep
Four days before the event, the madness began:
Special-ordered two 20-kg turkeys
Wholesale warehouse runs
Open market missions
Baking whole pumpkins
Evaporating milk
Packing a van (full of tools, equipment, and food for 100 people — including our featherless friends; needless to say, my body was feeling a bit broken)
Driving to Turin from my farmhouse in the hills
Arriving at a hotel with no heat
Sleeping (or attempting to) fully dressed like a pilgrim experiencing central-heating trauma
By 6 a.m., our event space — an ex–Michelin-star kitchen — was glowing in stainless-steel brilliance. Four industrial ovens, two massive turkeys needing nine hours in the oven each, and students popping into the kitchen between meetings to prep vegetables and learn how to make foods they had never even heard of.
The pumpkin pie alone inspired at least 100 questions.
Let me say this clearly:
You do not carry forty kilos of raw turkey across Piemonte without questioning your life choices.
But somehow, we pulled it off.
9. It’s Showtime, Baby!
By 7:30 p.m., guests were arriving from Milan and Turin.
By 8:30, dinner was served.
By 9:30, presentations began.
Every group delivered:
the ATL campaign
the social strategy (“Italians Do It Better… Or Not?”)
the “Save Italian Turkeys” movement
the “Abso F*****g Happily Ever After” engagement phase
logos, visuals, and mood boards
a jacket-potato personality quiz
the official introduction of Featherless Knight
and the world premiere of Born to Be a Wild Turkey
Every person got on a microphone and spoke English in front of one hundred people. The room exploded with laughter, warmth, and applause.
Then my father, Giuseppe, got up and sang.
A full operatic moment.
People held up lighters.
A few were emotional.
Until that moment, he was simply “Emilia’s dad who occasionally substitutes for her.”
Of course this was happening — because only a night like this could produce a finale like that.
10. What the Turkeys Taught Us
Later, back in the kitchen, I looked at the two roasted turkeys — fallen gladiators resting after their final battle — and clarity hit (or rather, delirium).
Experiential learning is not a concept.
It is a collision of:
heat
pressure
stakes
creativity
vulnerability
community
Here’s what the turkeys taught me:
Learning sticks when the stakes are real.
(Like roasting forty kilos of poultry in a foreign country.)
People grow when they’re slightly terrified but deeply supported.
Community dissolves shame.
Creativity lowers resistance.
Embodied learning beats grammar 100 to 1
(even though I still firmly believe adults need at least some structure to know what’s going on).
People are highly motivated when they have specific goals attached to a specific deadline.
And finally, the turkeys delivered the simple truth:
Transformation requires heat. And if you can’t take the heat… stay out of the kitchen. But if you can? Step in. Because you can take what you’ve got and turn it into something delicious.
11. What This Actually Did for Them
This wasn’t a party.
It was:
a confidence accelerator
a company-bonding ritual
a creativity catalyst
a real-world English immersion
a demonstration of what “You in English” really is
a memory built with enormous smells, emotions, and laughter
This is why my experiential programs work.
I don’t teach English in isolation — I teach people to integrate it into what they already are. And they end up gaining far more than they expected.
12. Cultural Notes for Italians
“Let’s talk turkey”
→ Significa: “Andiamo al sodo.”
“Born to be wild”
→ La canzone rock americana famosa; la nostra versione col tacchino è… indimenticabile.
“In a pickle”
→ Significa: essere in un pasticcio / una situazione complicata.
“If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen”
→ Significa: se non sopporti la pressione, evita le situazioni difficili.
Thanksgiving
→ Nessun fuoco d’artificio.
→ Nessun tacchino patriottico rosso-bianco-blu.
→ Nessun hamburger.
→ Solo cibo, gratitudine, e persone — di famiglia o di scelta.
13. And Off I Go…
Now I’m grabbing my bag, kissing my five dogs and five cats, loading up the car with food, and heading out the door.
I’m off to Milan with Elena and Max to do Thanksgiving in a penthouse. The two turkeys are already waiting on site.
🎵 Born to Be a Wild Turkey — Audio + Lyrics
Credits
Vocals: Guido Callegari, Fiorella Forneris, & Alessandra Reyneri
Thank you for your beautiful voices and supporting the insanity.
Born to be a wild turkey
Get your motor running
Head out to the oven
Looking for some pleasure
In whatever fries your way
Yeah darlin’, go and make me crispy
Spin me round in spice so nice
Fire all your flames at once and
explode me with taste
You like smoked and juicy
Dripping gravy wonder
Greasy in the pan
and you’re smelling what you hunger
Yeah darlin’, go and make me crispy
Spin me round in spice so nice
Fire all your flames at once
and explode me with taste
I’m a bird tasting wild
I was born, born to beguile
I can’t fly so high
so, I’m gonna bang, bang, bang, die
Born to be a wild turkey
born to be a wild turkey
Get your taste buds goin’
head out to the table
looking for some servings
of whatever comes your way
Yeah, darlin’, she made me crispy
cooked this bird that you wanna taste
Give thanks all at once cuz
I’m explodin’ with taste
Like a true nature’s child
I was born, born to taste wild
I couldn’t fly so high,
so I had to die
Born to be a wild turkey
Born to be a wild turkey