Stéphane Xiberras

Stéphane Xiberras, the charismatic executive creative director behind BETC’s record-breaking Rollerbabies spot for Evian, talks to Danny Edwards about campaigns, clients, creativity and control – and the power of original thinking

That 2009 was, for many, a year to lock away in a lead-lined cupboard and never speak of again goes without saying. But for Stéphane Xiberras, president and executive creative director of BETC Euro RSCG Paris, it was a 365-day joyride. Critical and commercial success with films for Evian and Canal+, a brilliant website – in idea and execution – for cable channel 13ème Rue and an artificially intelligent computer programme that creates bad advertising all helped to make 2009 a year to remember for Xiberras and his staff. It was, he states, “like a diamond in a big pile of shit”.

Despite being a natural at this advertising game, Xiberras didn’t always plan on working in the industry. “In another life I was a musician. I lived in Aix en Provence but then decided to go to Paris to become Bono.” Deciding against replying that one Bono is more than enough, Xiberras goes on to say that journalism was another avenue he explored before talking to a friend who worked in advertising. Realising that it was a creative industry that operated between the worlds of art and commerce, Xiberras fell in love with it.

Starting out as an account manager – “I thought it was the account manager who had the ideas as well, I didn’t know any better at the time” – Xiberras soon found his forte as a copywriter and spent a decade at various French agencies before meeting co-founder and global chief creative officer of BETC, Rémi Babinet.

Babinet thought Xiberras was going to be a great creative director, and told him so. “I was like, ‘you’re a devil, a devil’,” says Xiberras. “I thought it was a whole other job where you sit between the client and the creatives and that it would be terrible.” That was a decade ago and of course, Babinet was right.

“The transition from creative to creative director was horrible,” explains Xiberras. “I was not a big star in copywriting but I’m a better creative director than I am a copywriter. I think it’s because it’s difficult for me to obey people.

You have to obey your creative director when they say things like, ‘I think it should be like that’, or ‘what about this?’. ‘Fuck you!’ is what I thought. Why does it have to be like that? I have my own ideas and opinions! Being a creative director gives you a bit more freedom, you’re able to use your intuition. I hate authority, that’s why I’m better now.”

For Xiberras, the most important thing that he and the agency do is nurture its relationships with clients. Their work for Canal+ and Evian spans many years but those years are built on a trust-and respect-filled partnership.

“You have to be the partner of a client, you have to understand their DNA ,” he says. “Our success is not just down to talent, it’s not just down to luck. It’s about the relationships we have with these brands.”

Whatever it’s down to, the success is plain to see. Evian Rollerbabies, the Michael Gracey-directed follow-up to 1999’s Waterbabies, made the Guinness Book of Records as the most watched online advertisement to date – with over 45 million views across different web platforms as of November 2009.

The Canal+ campaigns go from strength to strength with the most recent, Wardrobe, jointly picking up the Grand Prix at Eurobest with Philips’ Carousel.

And then there’s CAI – Creative Artificial Intelligence – a programme devised by BETC and overseen by Xiberras that is an example of how not to produce print advertising. If you were at Eurobest you would have seen Xiberras demonstrate CAI and show how, by choosing certain criteria, it could produce a generic, creatively void poster.

“Our job is to change the way we look at the world,” concludes Xiberras, “and you see some creatives are like robots who just don’t understand original thinking, it doesn’t exist for them. This happens in all agencies… come on guys, do something, open your minds, take some paper, draw something. You have to think, you have to laugh, you have to imagine – it’s an amazing job being a creative, it’s the best job in the world, and then I see robots. We need revolutionaries. We need new blood and new ideas.”