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.

While for some, Identica is sort of perpetuated as ‘the empire of Michael Peters’, which created the famous Russian Standard Vodka, the company nowadays has evolved to become a dynamic and diverse growing structure with rich multidisciplinary offer and refined positioning as guru of brand icons. Richard Morris, Managing Director of Identica, tells about what the agency is strategically up to, explains what is a brand icon and how his team manages to ‘create, evolve and restore’ them and why they closed down the Moscow office 3 years ago.