Can you tell us about your career path?
Since the beginning of my career, I have followed a creative path and cut my teeth in major Parisian agencies before taking on more managerial roles. As the child of a mixed couple, with a Moroccan father and a French mother, I had the opportunity to set up the TBWA agency in Morocco in 2002 and offices in Algiers and then Tunis. After this entrepreneurial venture, I continued my career in Paris, London, Singapore, and Dubai.
I then co-founded the La Force agency. In terms of my experience in Africa, beyond my experience in North Africa, I had the opportunity to oversee advertising budgets in Ivory Coast, notably with the Moov brand, and I also worked with my team in partnership with another telephone operator in Nigeria.
Why did you decide to take over the organization of the African Cristal Festival? Can you give us an overview of what to expect from the upcoming edition?
After all these years as a creative entrepreneur, I wanted something different and, above all, to relaunch the African Cristal Festival, which I believe is an unmissable event in African communications.
For this edition, we are expecting more than 800 participants in Marrakech. The idea is to come together to celebrate this year's talents and major campaigns, but also to address key issues for the future of our profession. In 2023, we will have seen the advent of Chat GPT and artificial intelligence in the broader sense. That is why we have chosen this central theme for the next edition, to identify the various opportunities for African advertisers and agencies.
How will the awards ceremony take place?
19 African countries will be represented on the jury for this upcoming edition, and we will be selecting candidates for 27 different categories. The call for entries is still open. Agencies and advertisers have until September 30 to apply.
We are fortunate to have Justin Thomas Copeland, CEO of DDB North America, presiding over the jury. He will be responsible for consulting with the other jury members to define the selection criteria for African creations.
What are your expectations for this event? What are your ambitions?
The initial ambition is to make the African Cristal Festival a truly African award by bringing together French-speaking and English-speaking Africa. In the past, we have been criticized for focusing too much on French-speaking countries in previous editions. Apart from language, I see many similarities between French-speaking and English-speaking countries, particularly in the fields of communication and technology. There is therefore no reason to separate the two.
I also wanted to create an event that reflected the reality of the continent. We had to represent all these countries with different levels of development, through feedback that reflected this African diversity.
Any other projects in the pipeline?
Alongside the African Cristal Festival, we are also preparing to launch the second edition of our event dedicated to tech: African Unicorns. We are currently sourcing startups across Africa that have the potential to become unicorns within the next five years.
The African Cristal Festival will take place on December 7 and 8, 2023, in Marrakech.