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Francis CAZAL
Creative Director | GRABARZ & PARTNER
Francis is a french Creative Director based in Hamburg, currently working at Grabarz & Partner for international clients.
He previously worked as a copywriter in Paris, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Hamburg, for Springer&Jacoby, Young & Rubicam, DDB and Lukas Lindemann Rosinski. His portfolio of clients includes Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Telekom, Decathlon, Porsche, Indeed, Eurowings...
In his free time, Francis plays volleyball, baroque violin, composes a weird music almost nobody gets and used to be a cool style blogger when blogs were cool.
questionnaire
What was your very first job?
Copywriter at DDB Düsseldorf was my first paid job after one and a half year of internships in Paris. I was 23 and it felt good to not have to ask my parents to pay my rent.
Please describe, in your own words, what your job is and what work it entails.
I’m the creative director of what I think is quite a unique team in Germany: we are 10 people from France, Australia, Swiss, England and of course Germany working together in a German agency for a French and international clients, and supporting the rest of Grabarz & Partner when needed. It gives us the opportunity to put our different cultures at the service of creativity, which is surprisingly still not common in advertising agencies once you leave London, Paris or Amsterdam.
How did you discover that the creative world was right for you? Was there a time in your life that you credit to this discovery? What was there train of events that brought you to where you are today?
When I started playing violin. I became a music nerd and also improvised a lot. That’s how I discovered I could do more with my brain than remembering what the teachers tell me. Using your brain + not following the rules at school = good profile for a creative.
In your constantly growing and expanding industry, how do you find inspiration to keep your work fresh, innovative and relevant?
I’m a bit old school on this. Most of the time, I find inspiration in real people outside, in books or music, in history or sciences. I’m far away from a digital native.
If you had to pick one piece of work or project that you are most proud of, more for the creative work and innovation it required, rather than its recognition or industry “success,” what would it be?
The first commercial for our French client Volkswagen Utilitaires, that we recently released. It’s quite cool, because, it’s probably the first time a foreign agency makes a film specifically for France for VW. If I had to pick a second one, it would be a Christmas film I wrote for Telekom with DDB a few years ago. Still really happy with this one, because it’s simple and was quite refreshing for a conservative brand like Telekom. Since then, they have done much better though.
