interview

Adrian Goldthorpe, Managing Director of Lothar Böhm London: “I attack the mindless filling in of boxes to show that the brief has been ‘written’”

How to shape the direction of creative thinking and get the desired result for a company? The right brief can do so, Adrian Goldthorpe, Managing Director of the London office of Lothar Böhm Associates, argues. In this interview to Popsop, Adrian tells about the difference between the Basic and Magic briefs.

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Stuart Chapman, Associate Director of The Big Picture: “The most common marketing blunder is to expect packaging to do too much”

In April, Stuart Chapman, the Associate Director of the design research agency The Big Picture, spoke at the inaugural Popsop Practicum event in Moscow about the role of research, specific methodologies and how design research is different from all other types of research. Back then, we made this interview with Stuart for the Russian journal Wtpack.ru. Now we publish it in English here.

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Emma Beckmann, Country Director of Landor Associates, Russia: “You can’t underestimate the level of bureaucracy in working processes with clients in Russia”

Last week we met with Emma Beckmann, Country Director of Landor Moscow in their cozy office on Tsvetnoy Boulevard to talk about the results of their first year in Russia. In the interview, she discusses how the creative industry has changed over the 20 years that she’s been in this business across different geographical markets, kindly shares her view on the Russian bureaucracy and ways to tackle it, reveals her personal client wishlist, and gives valuable cultural advice to international agencies looking to enter the Russian market.

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Daniele Fiandaca and Mark Chalmers, founders of Creative Social: “It’s better to be wrong and interesting than right and boring”

Creative Social, founded in 2004 by Daniele Fiandaca and Mark Chalmers, is a collective of the world’s most pioneering, interactive creative directors and business owners (the Socials)—a group of people who recognise that collaborating in this digital landscape is how they’ll advance the industry and enjoy the journey.

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Simon Bolton, Worldwide CEO of The Brand Union: “Storytelling is the most critical part of our business now”**

Mr. Simon Bolton, a silver-haired noble English gentleman, who dedicated a few decades of his life to the advertising industry, met with us on a chilly Tuesday morning earlier this week to talk about TBU’s business plans in Moscow, to discuss opportunities and threats from the latest Publicis-Omnicom merger for WPP, and to share his vision of a sustainable brand.

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Matt Utber, founder and creative director of The Plant: “Food and art are our biggest passions and core areas of expertise”

Pursuing an architectural degree, he realised he didn’t have enough patience to master that complicated  discipline, so he quit it and turned to a related field—graphic design. Later in 2003, he founded his own design agency The Plant, jumped into the food business, and launched the Feast food festival in 2012. Recently he has celebrated the release of the first issue of his agency’s own printed media—the fanzine Tomorrow’s Chip Paper, based on ‘true food stories.’ All this is about Matt Utber, an Australian expat in the U.K., the founder of the boutique-sized design business, an art lover and food connoisseur.

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Thomas Kolster, the author of «Goodvertising» and founder of WhereGoodGrows: “Brands should put sustainability and value-driven principles at the core of their businesses, and not use philanthropy as an excuse”

Thomas Kolster, a 35-year-old former Danish-English copywriter and concept developer, after almost a decade of working with a number of global brands at some of the world’s leading advertising agencies one day realized that he hated 99% of advertising and messages those brands communicated. In 2010, he dared to raise the question that everybody thought of, but was ‘uncomfortable’ to discuss in public—in his debut book called “Goodvertising: Creative advertising that cares,” published by Thames & Hudson last year.

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Gaston van de Laar, Group Director Client Services at CARTILS: «In beer branding authenticity plays a vital role, small scale is being reappraised»

CARTILS is one of very few brand and design agencies that, being originally Dutch, has become a strong name with a global outreach. We’ve talked with Gaston van de Laar about his work experience with CARTILS, about art of pitching, collaboration with Grolsch, Baltika and the trends which shape the beer branding nowadays.

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