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Mélanie’s journey

Read more about our Founder, Mélanie Chevalier and her decision to start Creative Culture in 2008.

“Growing up across 4 continents is the best gift my parents could have ever given me”

Mélanie (yes with an accent) was born in Paris with a strong French heritage originating in Burgundy. Having celebrated her first birthday onboard a plane en route to Taiwan, she grew up in some of the most wonderful of countries, from Taiwan to Brazil, Cameroon, France and Spain. Surrounded and influenced by these very rich cultures and their diverse languages, it was only natural that she would dedicate her career and life to cross-cultural matters. Her passion.

After several years in transcreation, Mélanie started Creative Culture with a clear vision. While transcreation was invaluable, sadly it was always left too late in the process and by doing so brands took the risk of either missing the mark in their local markets or even having to scrap concepts that took them so long to “perfect”. Authenticity and cultural relevance were, and still are, absolutely critical to the success of any international project, strategy, message or campaign. However, it is only by considering the bigger picture of an end-to-end cross-cultural solution and injecting local insights and intelligence right from the very earliest stages of conceptualisation and ideation that global projects can truly come to life and make sense. That was our starting conviction and remains our raison d’être.

Very early on, Mélanie understood that the key to making global work on a local scale lay in building relationships and processes to gain an all-encompassing yet detailed vision of the needs at both ends. The value of this approach was proven in her work for Nikon Europe in 2006, helping them successfully transition from a decentralised to a centralised management of their advertising and comms across 30+ markets, and is something that she has brought to Creative Culture to roll out on an even wider scale. With a passion for problem solving and stakeholder management, she’s always pushed the boundaries of what could be done – converting cultural differences into competitive advantage.

Melanies Journey

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