Chapter 03 · The candidate
Clément Menviel
Chief Marketing Officer · La Vie™
I have spent twenty years buying three seconds.
A yogurt in a supermarket aisle gets one to three seconds to win. No targeting, no retargeting, no second impression, and no way to find out why it lost. I spent more than a decade making those three seconds work on Lactel, Bridélice, Maille, Aoste, Kellogg's, Panini and Magnum. Brands re-judged every single week by the only metric that existed: whether the shelf emptied.
The shelf was the original hook rate. It just did not have a dashboard.
The role asks for / what I bring
Brand vision and strategy, ultimate guardian of the brand
Full ownership of a high-identity brand at STid across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Gulf: platform, tone of voice, visual identity, consistency across countries and channels. Guardianship is half the job, and the boring half is the half I actually do.
Set the creative bar for everything the brand touches
Fifteen years of creative direction, eight of them running my own agency. Supervising creative production end to end: editorial, art direction, delivery. Same-day feedback on all of it.
Lead country marketing teams in France and the UK
Agency director at Faust, office director at Oxygen Marseille, communications director of a 165 person group. Building, developing and keeping teams is not the new part.
Innovation from consumer insight to launch, with a business case
Ten years of launches, promotional mechanics, packaging and integrated campaigns on food brands, plus a digital business unit created from zero at Kaiman with its own P&L, hires and pipeline.
Data-centric decisions, read a P&L and judge a campaign
Brand Manager France at Mastercard, where nothing is decided without a number, then fifteen years of creative direction. The combination is not a claim, it is the sequence.
A track record of brands people love
Campaigns judged on sell-through, not impressions. And this application itself: a fifty page diagnosis of your market written before you hired me, from public sources only.
Fluent French and English, international mindset
French native, English fluent. Brand and comms deployed across Europe, North and South America, Asia and the Gulf.
The track
2025 →
Founder · Unstable Narrative
Brand language and strategy practice, Marseille. Brand platforms and strategic recommendations for consumer and industrial brands: beauty, hospitality, mobility, technology. Editorial system redesign, content intelligence, SEO architecture, prospecting campaigns.
2025 →
Communications & Marketing Director · Renewable energy group
Solar developer, 165 people, around 1 GWp in development and operation. Brand, content and acquisition strategy carried to board level.
2022 – 2025
Group Communications Director · STid
International identification and security brand across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Gulf. Full ownership of a high-identity brand. Creator of L'Art d'Innover and the STid House.
2018 – 2025
Founder & Director · Hop Hope
Agency built and run in parallel. Eight years of strategies that beat their targets, with full ownership: development, consulting, production pipeline, management, profitability.
2020 – 2021
Director · Oxygen Marseille
PR and influence agency, head of the Marseille office. Influence strategy, press, spokesperson positioning, reputation management. Team leadership, business development, P&L.
2016 – 2017
Brand Strategy & Digital Director · Kaiman
Created the digital business unit. Magnum, Aoste, L'Arbre Vert, Thales, STid. Built a testing culture from zero: A/B testing, journey optimisation, performance analysis, documented learning loops.
2006 – 2016
Account Director then Agency Director · Faust Communication
Maille, Aoste, Panini, Kellogg's, Bosch. Ten years on food brands judged weekly on the shelf. Then strategic and commercial direction of the agency: vision, growth, management, profitability.
2004 – 2006
Brand Manager France · Mastercard / Account Executive · DDB Paris
International financial services, entirely data-driven. At DDB: Lactel, Bridélice, Roc, De Beers, integrated campaign management brief to delivery.
The rest
Education
Five-year master's degree in B2C advertising, Sup de Pub, Paris.
Languages
French native. English fluent, professional working proficiency.
Outside
Novels and essays, ongoing. Treasurer, Main dans la Main autour du Monde.
Position
Paris. Start 01 October 2026. Ready.
Instead of a cover letter
I ran one pass over your business and wrote you the first week of the job.
Fifty pages. Five narratives that no longer hold, a market and competitive board, a company mission, four CSR programmes, four acts, a studio operating model and a hundred day plan. No access to your data. Public sources only, every figure dated and sourced. I would be glad to discuss it, and above all the points where you think I am wrong. There are certainly some, and those are the ones that make the conversation useful.