FREELANCE CREATIVE
H i t h e r e
Behind the camera
W a n t m o r e? M a k e s u r e t o g r a b y o u r t e a ;)
Born and raised in Matsue, Japan.
From the early childhood, Mari showed a strong interest in art of any forms, such as illustration, music, or Japanese calligraphy. For better or worse, she kept daydreaming at school and home while drawing or writing her own stories.
On the day of her 18 year old birthday, she moved to Kyoto for college. In 2004, she took a year off to go study in Paris. This experience was a game changer; since she loved every bite of the French capital, she then kept exploring how to be back in Paris for a longer term.
After graduating college in 2007, she moved to Tokyo and worked in a French IT company to gain first professional experiences. In 2010, she did not miss a chance to finally make it; working in fashion, her dream industry.
2011 was a miracle year; she was featured in the magazine NYLON Japan as one of the 3 fashion bloggers because the editor has witnessed Mari’s stylings posted on Lookbook.nu or on her blog at that time.
Soon, that article in NYLON was impactful enough to convince her manager to relocate her to their headquarter in Paris for a newly created digital marketing role.
Working closely with PR department, she gradually yet certainly developed her interests in product shootings and the digital communication.
In 2017, her freelance journey began in Paris. This enabled Mari to work on as many creative projects as possible.
Inspired to name her micro-entreprise “Digital x Tradition”,where she literally likes to play around, one of her first clients was Des-Quatre, a French-Japanese creative agency.
Des-Quatre produced a lot of brand videos for Louis Vuitton, especially for their Travel Books and City Guides.
Through this period, she truly enjoyed meeting movie directors or other creatives, learning how to coordinate shootings that were taking place not only in Paris but in Tokyo, in New York city, or in Saint Petersburg.
In 2018, she had an opportunity as a creative producer to manage shootings for Gerblé products that were distributed in Japan.
Partnered with Chiara Santarelli, Italian photographer, the team shot 5 times in total together in order to deliver more than 100 pictures each time.
Mari handled the entire artistic direction including the styling, the locations, set-designs, and the castings. After the first campaign was launched, their creatives were shared on Instagram and those assets helped 30% growth in B2C sales for Gerblé in Japan.
In late 2021, Mari joined as a contractor the creative team of Marcel Worldwide agency (Publicis Groupe). Marcel was the creative house for every digital campaigns of the prestigious skincare brand SK-II by P&G.
As one of the creatives and a copywriter, she contributed to 3 campaigns for global and Japan markets, starring Haruka Ayase, Mina from Twice, Ayaka Miyoshi, and Naomi Watanabe.
From the fall 2024, Mari is currently based in Seoul, South Korea, where she hopes to meet more of exciting projects onward. Since her son speaks much better Korean than her, you may reach out to her in English, French, or Japanese.
