The day before the Global Advertising Summit in Moscow that took place October 9-10 under the support of the Government of Moscow and the oldest advertising trade organization IAA, we talked to the two global managers of IAA — Faris Abouhamad, the World President, and Michael Lee, Managing director. Konstantin Mayor, the owner of the leading Russia’s media company MAER GROUP, that is one of the Summit’s media supporters, also joined our conversation.

We discussed the newest mission of advertising and popular industry misconceptions, talked about IAA’s expectations in Russia and global media trends, as well as the importance of professional marketing and advertising qualifications.

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.

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.

In April 2014, ahead of the Popsop training event in Moscow, we collected some rather controversial perspectives on the design business, popular in the Russian marketing circles. We kindly asked Jonathan Ford, one of the honoured speakers at our inaugural event, to comment on each of these stereotypes. Here we publish his interesting thoughts.

Last month, March 1-2, Sam Stone, Creative Director at London-based Identica, taught a masterclass on visual identity and branding for the Russian designers and managers in Moscow. Popsop sat down with Sam to discuss how local Russian brands can fulfill their potential to become globally known and iconic, and why Russian FMCG brands choose to imitate Western style rather than developing their own.