Global brands, between Paris, London and New York.
For three years I led Garnier's global creative from Paris: 130 markets, around fifteen international campaigns a year. The challenge was cultural before it was creative, keeping a French brand true everywhere without turning it into a caricature. My first experience of cultural coherence at scale, the ground What Makes Us Human is built on.
Three years reading New York, so that Maybelline could belong to the city rather than arrive in it. I built the brand's Social Brand Book, a cultural map in six pillars, and directed the campaigns that grew from it, with Gigi Hadid and Charlotte Kemp Muhl.
Global creative director in-house, from product to shelf. I turned an Australian complexion brand into an American one: one idea, the Glow Glossary, carried across product, retail, digital and a SoHo event for 200+ editors. Then the Chrissy Teigen collaboration, the number one selling palette at Sephora US at launch.
With Adobe France and Adobe HQ, I led the creative for the global launch of Substance 3D: taking 3D out of the experts' circle and opening it to everyone's imagination. A cinematic hero film mixing live action and CGI, shot in Brussels during lockdown, and a full series of tutorials.
To make Legrand's Alexa-compatible door entry system matter to the general public, I chose comedy over technology: a digital series of three films built on small domestic moments everyone knows. I wrote all three scripts.
Two markets, the same drift. In the UK, I diagnosed Gen Z's distance from the brand's meaning, then translated it into an exploration film with no phones, no app and no swipe, which became the campaign It Starts With a Swipe. In France, a diagnosis of positive masculinity led to Will The New Men Rise Up?, from Hacked Profiles to activations for the Paris 2024 Olympics.
France's leading fresh food retailer had no advertising and no social presence: a busy store, but a silent brand. I built it from what already existed, more than 1,000 local producers: the first brand films, an aesthetic that set the tone for every campaign after, a YouTube series and the first influence partnerships. Over 500 pieces of content a year.
For Fillmed, Filorga's aesthetic skin science brand going mainstream, I led the creative direction, production and post-production of one of its first product launch films: live action and 3D turning advanced skincare science into a poetic story of regeneration.
I trained in psychology before I trained in design, and I still work where the two meet. For twenty years, between Paris, London and New York, one question has run through every role I have held: how to read a culture closely enough that what you build for it feels like it grew there.
From the idea to the film. Agency side, in-house, then independent.
Today I lead What Makes Us Human, a practice that puts the human back at the heart of decisions, for organisations and for schools.
From the idea to the film.