A portfolio directed by the internet. Creative strategy, from the first insight to the final cut.
A selection of ideas built from the first tension to the final cut. Open a project to see what happened between the brief and the feed.
Not a proprietary framework — just how the work actually gets made. Scroll through it: the step you're on lights up.
Walter Giovanni Grillo is an Italian creative strategist based in Milan, with a background in communication and creative direction. He builds short-form concepts and creator-led campaigns, and works the whole distance: from insight to production.
Cinema is where he learned to think about attention: framing, pacing, what to cut and what to hold. It's why a TikTok and a title sequence get treated with the same care. He's looking to grow inside high-quality creative environments.
Creative strategy, copy and selected overthinking by Walter Giovanni Grillo.
Shot, edited and uploaded from Milan.
A social-impact initiative translated into TikTok-native creator communication.
The #NeiPerTe initiative already existed. As Creative Strategist, my job was to translate its prevention message into a language that genuinely belongs on TikTok.
The #NeiPerTe initiative set out to turn awareness around melanoma prevention into a concrete invitation to act. The communication had to capture attention while pointing people towards a real preventive behaviour — not just inform, but move.
Translating a campaign for TikTok isn't about making it vertical. The real tension sat between three ways the message could land:
My role was to identify how the existing initiative could behave inside the feed: how to introduce the topic, how to make the message feel natural, and how creator-led communication could carry the campaign's social objective.
Making health content feel native — without making prevention feel superficial, and credible without becoming institutional or distant.
The campaign used creators as part of the creative idea, not as simple distribution channels. The translation had to leave room for individual voices while keeping the prevention message clear across every cut.
The creator-led approach helped turn the initiative into a push for people to act concretely — from attention in the feed towards real engagement with prevention.
The campaign won the Greatest Impact category at the 2025 TikTok Ads Awards — recognised for combining creativity and social purpose, and for encouraging people to move from awareness towards concrete preventive action.
“Celebriamo le campagne che, su TikTok, hanno unito creatività e finalità sociale, catturando l'attenzione del pubblico e contribuendo al bene comune. Da hashtag a messaggio con un vero impatto sociale. L'impiego dei creator, coerente con l'idea creativa, ha promosso l'attività di CSR, trasformando la campagna in qualcosa di più di una semplice sensibilizzazione: una spinta per le persone ad agire concretamente e attivarsi nella prevenzione.”
I worked on the TikTok translation of the #NeiPerTe initiative. My responsibility was to understand how its prevention message could enter the feed through a platform-native, creator-led approach — while staying clear, credible and aligned with the campaign's social purpose.
The wider #NeiPerTe initiative and CSR platform pre-existed the brief; this case covers my TikTok translation, alongside the campaign team and participating creators.
From zero to an always-on Gen Alpha content world — creator-led spontaneity, designed shootings and one recognisable BOB voice.
BOB entered TikTok without an established channel language. The opportunity wasn't to launch another branded profile, but to build a place a young audience could recognise, revisit and interact with over time.
It was conceived as an always-on channel rather than a temporary campaign: a continuous stream of formats, creators and ideas designed around how a Gen Alpha audience actually behaves.
Gen Alpha recognises advertising instantly. A feed built only around product messages would reproduce the distance that usually separates brands from the people they're trying to reach.
The challenge: let BOB take part in the audience's culture naturally — without imitating it — while staying consistent enough that every video still feels like the same channel.
We approached BOB as a continuously evolving entertainment channel: a recognisable world of recurring formats, gaming references, challenges, characters, trends and product-led stories.
Much like youth television once combined entertainment, recurring faces and advertising inside one recognisable environment, BOB's TikTok presence was designed as a small digital network built specifically around its audience.
BOB combines two complementary production languages. Creator-led content keeps the channel spontaneous and close to platform culture; designed shootings add a more controlled, visual layer without losing TikTok's speed and humour. The production changes — the BOB voice doesn't.
The channel grows through recurring content territories rather than isolated posts — each format a different way to entertain, involve the product and stay recognisable.
The clearest result isn't a single viral post — it's the consistency of a channel that stays recognisable across different creators, formats and production styles.
I contribute to the continuous development of BOB's TikTok language, formats and creative direction. For selected executions I also step in front of the camera, translating the concept into a professional, ironic performance suited to the channel's tone — from behind the idea to inside the frame.
A collaborative, always-on project — developed with the wider content team and other recurring creators.
Ten vertical videos and a coordinated photoshooting, from early creative development to two days of on-set direction.
HUGO needed a coordinated package of vertical videos and photographic assets connected to two Spring/Summer 2026 territories: Red Means Go and Summer 26.
The two-day production had to deliver ten social-native video executions and a complete photoshooting while preserving the visual precision and recognisability of the brand.
The challenge wasn't to crop campaign imagery into vertical. Each execution needed immediacy, movement and social readability while staying controlled, intentional and unmistakably HUGO.
Ten videos and a photoshooting also had to coexist inside one production without becoming visually fragmented — social immediacy against campaign precision, many outputs against one coherent language.
The approach translated the two territories into vertical visual ideas shaped through movement, framing, model performance and set design — introducing a more immediate vertical rhythm into a carefully directed brand world, rather than imitating spontaneous creator content.
Across the two shooting days, I directed the complete creative execution on set, coordinating the video team, models and set designer to keep every output aligned with the intended idea.
My role was to connect the parts of the production: communicating framing and movement, guiding model performance, aligning the set with the creative requirements, and making real-time decisions as each execution developed. Before the cameras rolled, I'd supported the initial development of the ideas — translating the territories into vertical concepts that could work across video and photography.
A real behind-the-scenes moment: working with the video team to translate a concept into movement, framing and on-camera action before the final take.
Not a final campaign asset and not shot by me on camera — evidence of the creative direction, not the technical camera work.
As Creative Strategist, I supported the initial development of the ideas. During the two shooting days, I directed the creative execution on set, coordinating the video team, models and set designer across ten vertical videos and the accompanying photoshooting.
A collaborative production — Walter did not originate the global campaign or operate the camera. On-set creative direction, with the wider HUGO and production team.
Between takes I shot the two days on film — a personal point of view on the production, distinct from the official campaign photography.
Analog photographs by Walter · not official HUGO campaign imagery · final campaign photography to be added
A coordinated package of vertical and photographic content developed across two campaign territories and held together through one consistent creative direction.
Turning trail tech into urban desire.
Salomon's ACS Pro Shell is a highly technical trail silhouette. The task: make it desirable in the city, not just on the mountain.
Technical specs don't sell on TikTok, culture and aesthetics do.
Reframe the product through an urban creative territory; architecture, cold light, movement and styling.
Creator concepts and briefs, visual references, a transition language and product-focused storytelling across seven executions.
The product sold out shortly after launch, within a campaign that positioned its technical design through a more urban, aesthetic lens.
One brand. Many creator voices.
Campari's Design Week presence needed to live on TikTok through creators — not one brand script repeated five times.
Push a rigid script and creators sound fake; give no direction and the brand disappears.
Write frameworks, not scripts — protect each creator's voice while keeping the brand, locations and experiences clear.
Creator-led narratives across Design Week touchpoints, tone-of-voice adaptation and briefing, coordinated across locations.
One coherent Design Week story, told in several honest voices.