Aleksei Duriagin, the Creative Director of ASAP Agency & Production, both manages his creative team and generates his own ideas-a highly sought trait by industry experts. By the age of 25, he has accumulated serious experience in preparing advertising campaigns for local and global brands. In this interview, Duriagin shares his process of creating effective advertisements and what trends he believes will be prominent in years to come.

What is a Creative Director's role in an advertising agency? 

"The Creative Director manages a team that produces advertising campaigns- copywriters, creators, designers, and graphics. They should be a sensitive leader, able to inspire their team to the end result. At the same time, they look at the team's work from an outside perspective: evaluate creative implementation, compliance with briefs, and the client's requests. ASAP has two Creative Directors, and we run independent projects.

In large advertising agencies, the Creative Director is usually at the end point of assembling and evaluating the result of the team's work. However, at ASAP Agency & Production, we do things differently. In my role, I not only supervise the creation of content at different stages, but am often the creator of the idea, as well."

Can you recall your first project as a Creative Director?

"It was an ad campaign for a new Mentos product - Pure White whitening chewing gum, launched in 2019. It was based on a simple idea, but that was its success. We created a video where pieces of gum flew out of a Mentos package and folded into a smile. This metaphor perfectly explains the features of the new product.

The video was assembled according to my idea and storyboard, under my creative and artistic supervision. After launching the campaign, we received positive feedback from the local office, and the brand's global office picked up the video for use in other markets, as well.

At ASAP, I actively develop the direction of animation videos & VFX. At an advertising agency, this can be challenging. Clients often do not understand the processes, and graphics studios communicate in a very specific language and are not always ready to explain the intricacies of their work. We've managed to become a reliable link, and now constantly work with graphics, producing independent videos and integrating them into film projects.

We used a lot of VFX graphics for the 2020 Reebok winter collection for the CIS market advertising campaign. Visually, the idea was to combine recognizable city locations with winter nature footage, winning us the opportunity to produce the entire autumn-winter advertising campaign."

You have worked with both global brands and local players, including the Samokat grocery delivery service. What role did you play in this project?

"At that time, there was no fast delivery market in the country. It was just beginning to take shape in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Our task was to acquaint consumers with this category, and to show them the value of the service.

Our first campaign produced graphics that messaged, 'If you forgot something, Samokat is 15 minutes away.' This slogan was received by TV viewers, radio listeners, and pedestrians on the street. It became firmly planted in their heads.

With the success, Samokat became a regular customer. We have launched five campaigns with them."

How are you able to avoid repetition and consistently come up with catchy creatives?

"Each time the client comes to us with new tasks, upgrade the complexity. During the first campaign we created motion-graphic videos. In the second campaign, we filmed a TV-spot, transforming the slogan 'They will bring.' into a catchy jingle for audiences to easily remember.

Our third campaign, 'Samokat: Self-Quality,' was a 360-campaign. It consisted of advertising through television, digital communication channels, promotional videos, and special projects in online and offline formats.

In addition, the messaging has changed alongside the format. In the first campaign, we talked exclusively about the speed of delivery. We've only returned to this topic now in the fifth campaign. We now have the opportunity to say, 'Samokat. The fastest is a fact.' as in 2022, a study was conducted in which the service confirmed its leadership. In other campaigns, we explained why a person needs a grocery delivery service, what they can receive, and highlighted the brand's own products and its quality.

The most interesting aspect of working with Samokat is that we have grown together with them. We made their first full-scale federal campaign, and with each new project, we developed like the brand itself.

It is very important to me that we build partnerships with brands like Samokat. In the first meeting, we proved that we hear our colleagues and understand what they need. As a result, for the latest campaigns' shootings the client did not even send his representatives to supervise the sets. This is a rarity in the advertising business-usually there are at least three to five people on the set from the client's side, and each of them provides their own feedback."

There are cases when clients request implementation of their own ideas. With such clients, how do you build a relationship that allows you to create an effective campaign?

"A lot depends on the client. If a client comes to an advertising agency with their own vision and an intent to have the agency's creative team implement it word for word, it is unlikely that something good will come of it. As far as I can remember, there were no great examples of this sort of interaction. It's just too rigid and limiting. 

But on the other hand, if a client says on the spot that they fully trust the team as advertising experts and expect high results, you need to act cautiously and constantly align your work with the client's brief and tasks.  

Therefore, the key to effective interaction is mutual trust and honesty. Next, it's the willingness to have a dialogue. If the client is wrong, you need to discuss it with them and offer solutions. And if you receive any negative feedback from the client, you need to be willing to reanalyze your work and make necessary adjustments. That's the only way to create great advertising."

Speaking of Samokat, in 2022 the special project "Overtake a Courier" was nominated for the prestigious Effie Awards. What was your contribution to its implementation? 

"It was a collaboration between Samokat, a delivery service company, and Health Vkontakte, a health and wellbeing service available on the Vkontakte platform. The Health Vkontakte included a pedometer with a feature to organize challenges. There was a decision to make a special project that focused on competition between users of delivery services and couriers. This project was created after we launched the 360-campaign 'Samokat-Samokachestvo,' which could be roughly translated as 'Samokat - Self-Quality.'

I came up with the idea of a special project and proposed it to Samokat. Then, our team developed the visual identity and the script and mechanics of the special project. After that, the client independently partnered with Vkontakte. Together, they organized the launch of the project and took care of the challenge operations."

On a final note, in your opinion, what trends in advertising will be prevalent in 2023?

"First, Artificial Intelligence. Just a year ago, it was perceived as a toy, but has since become a working tool actively used in advertising. Agencies use AI to create visuals and slogans, write stand-alone phrases and entire scripts, perform market assessments, and form various segments of communication strategies.

Second, is the focus of brands' communication on consumers' personal experience-on human emotions and feelings, or the 'human touch.' An example of this is an actively developing self-care trend, and brands have jumped on this bandwagon, providing more emotionally intelligent and empathetic communication. 

Third, is the game mechanics and the integration of advertising into the world of games. With the development of gaming, brands have begun to pay more attention to this sector.

Lastly, I like to mention short-format videos as a trend. Thanks to the growing popularity of TikTok and Instagram Reels, the advertising world has started shifting to short formats. Five years ago, the average duration of an advertising video was 1-1.5 minutes. Today, such timing is only used for very specific tasks, while brands tend to make their storytelling as short as possible."