Uprising: Lucas Cirillo Breaks the Mould

Lucas Cirillo grew up with one dream - to become a football player. Spending his time playing outside, he had zero idea what life would serve him later on. And although the sport was his main passion, looking back, he admits that television must have had a huge impact on his creativity and knack for storytelling. “With all the cartoons, cheesy series that I watched, there must be a connection. The ‘90s were a bit of a golden age for that,” Lucas remembers.

His social circle as he was growing up was split between his football buddies, his childhood friends and then much later his friends from university. “It allowed me to have two quite different worlds, which opened me up to a wide range of subjects that could be completely opposed to one another.” In terms of university, his high school life didn’t help Lucas on the decision front, so in somewhat of a rut he decided to pursue a diploma in business and administration, without fully understanding what it’s about.

He quickly realised - it was about having 10 hours of accounting classes per week. “It was terrible,” he says. But regardless of it being terrible, Lucas saw it through. Right after, he moved to Scotland to pursue a marketing degree. “I didn’t learn much academically, but it was a great experience on a personal level.” Upon returning to France, he spent another two years in a communications school, where he says he also didn’t learn much but was able to start doing internships. 

But, even after all the back and forth, he wasn’t too sure of what he wanted to do - he only knew he loved communications. “Based on that knowledge, I tried almost everything - public relations, art direction, digital marketing and eventually focused more specifically on social media.”

Following this decision, a friend of Lucas’ told him that an agency named Buzzman was looking for an intern in the role of social media consultant. Despite not knowing what Buzzman or social media consulting was, Lucas jumped at the opportunity which became the official start of his professional career. The role also saw him learning to ‘step back’ and pick his battles wisely - a skill that he says took him about four years to grasp properly, but remains one of the most important ones he picked up at the dawn of his working life.

At Buzzman, Lucas gained a lot of experience working with smaller accounts as a junior, but the most significant project he faced was with Huawei. “It was a brand that was relatively unknown to the French public at the time, and our initial focus was 100% on social media. This allowed us to clearly assess whether our efforts were useful and effective. I have fond memories of working on this account, largely due to the client I had, who made the whole experience amazing.”

But it’s not only cooperative and amazing clients that get Lucas going - it is also those brands that manage to consistently renew themselves creatively, without ever succumbing to tradition or being outdated by trends. “I love brands that dare to take risks without being afraid of not pleasing anyone.” It’s no surprise then that, for him, the most frustrating thing is having to have a client or himself conform or fit into a preconceived mould. 

To Lucas, even the presence of a mould is counterintuitive to the nature of creativity. He takes his job as a personal challenge to break that mould, to reach out of the box, to destroy the box, or any other similar analogy. “The most creative aspect of my job involves thinking of content and activations that would always catch the eye, bring a smile, all within a very competitive environment - which makes it extremely exciting.” The one question Lucas finds himself asking when working on any project is: “Is the branding sufficiently visible?”

Lucas is also partial to directness - something he values in others and tries to emulate himself. However, being less direct is sometimes part of the job too, especially when trying to please clients. “I find it challenging because trying to please the same people, clients, and oneself can often feel like an almost impossible mission. It leads to being less direct and using tact when necessary - it’s an important skill in this line of work.”

His colleagues are what keeps Lucas fresh and on top of popular culture - all people from different backgrounds with varying passions and hobbies, who he believes “contribute significantly to [his] personal growth.” He says, “The more we engage in meaningful exchanges with them the more we can learn and develop.”

Speaking of hobbies and passions, Lucas has recently been getting into creating things beyond social media. “I’m currently focusing on furniture, then moving on to rugs, and not forgetting that a vegetable garden is not far behind.” Besides this, football is still a big part of Lucas’ life, but now it shares the pedestal with cooking, and nerding out about architecture and art.

Going back to that first lesson Lucas learned about taking a step back, he leaves us with one piece of advice: “You need to know how to take a step back and realise that, at the end of the day, it is ‘just advertising’. We’re not performing open-heart surgery.”