Celeste Dalairac
Executive Creative Director, Grey London
Celeste Dalairac, Executive Creative Director, Grey London
As an award-winning creative director who’s worked with some of the world’s biggest brands – Coca-Cola, GSK, Unilever, P&G, Avon and Vodafone, to name just a few – it’s surprising that Celeste Dalairac considers herself the “least creative” member of her family. “My mum’s a celebrated architect who knits amazing sweaters, my sister, who is also an architect, bakes cakes that could be on the Great British Bake Off and my brother built all his own furniture,” she laughs. Growing up in Buenos Aires, she couldn’t draw or paint as well as her siblings, “but I was always good at making up stories,” she explains.
Given Celeste’s way with words (she studied journalism prior to embarking on a career in advertising) copywriting seemed like a natural fit, but she was encouraged by her then-creative director to give art direction a go. “It’s all about having a good eye. I’m a curious person and love learning new things, so I taught myself Photoshop and Illustrator from scratch, and loved it.”
This can-do approach has served Celeste well throughout her 17-year career in Buenos Aires and London, working for small hot shops and network giants like Ogilvy, Del Campo Saatchi Argentina, Saatchi and Grey London. She’s persuaded total strangers to share a Coke and a chat (Coca-Cola’s Sharing Billboard), clapped back at Donald Trump’s misogyny with a deck of playing cards featuring influential women (Maddy Kramer’s The Woman Card) and highlighted gender stereotypes via an innovative 3D/2D film which uses custom glasses to show contrasting male and female experiences (Pink/Blue, for the Saatchi New Director Showcase). Alongside this portfolio of much-publicised campaigns, she’s also helped to modernise brands such as Head & Shoulders, through casting diversity and a more approachable tone of voice.
Currently an executive creative director at Grey London, Celeste’s career path would look very different had she not been selected for Cannes Lions’ inaugural See It Be It, an initiative to achieve equal gender representation in creative leaders across the ad industry. Working in Argentina’s macho culture, she’d regularly encountered sexism (from being told never to partner with another female creative because “women get frustrated easily and cry,” to being cornered by sleazy colleagues in the office) but put up with the status quo. “See It Be It really opened my eyes. Other women around the world were facing similar issues but dealing with them in a completely different way. They were asking for pay rises, promotions and calling people out if they had to,” she remembers.
The experience spurred Celeste to make the move to London, where she worked for Saatchi & Saatchi, and Santo, before taking up the creative directorship at Grey. Within four months, she’s been promoted to ECD and has joined a leadership course to prepare her for the next step up the career ladder, where she hopes to continue championing gender diversity. “I’ve mentored junior creatives and given talks about what it’s like to be woman working in advertising, but the best way to support female talent is to hire more women, promote them and give them exposure, so the next generation of creative leaders will have more amazing women,” she concludes.
Interview by: Selena Schleh
