Where AI pizza meets Tolkien meets birdsong

From the limits of Zoom to his book at bedtime, Alexey Federov opens up on the charms and challenges of BBDO Moscow life

Alexey Fedorov is Executive Creative Director BBDO Moscow. We asked him for insight into how the agency manages to produce the outstanding work that recently ensured the agency was inside our global Top 50, and also to tell us about the creative culture of Moscow.

Cresta Your winning work in the Cresta Awards – Birds Records, Dodo open source pizza — involves breaking out of conventional media in order to create highly successful responses. With Birds Records you gave artists free samples of bird songs, to make hit songs. With Dodo you incorporate AI into devising new pizzas. Very different media! How do you start such projects?

Alexey Fedorov For Birds Records, where our client was both WWF Russia and Yandex Music, we understood at once that using the music streaming model, incorporating the voices of endangered birds, would give us an opportunity to use many different channels to embody and promote the message. Yes, it was a Big Idea with great media and PR potential.

For Dodo Pizza, firstly came the idea of creating AI that could generate an ideal recipe. Then we understood that AI could broaden the Dodo franchise in other countries. We shared the recipe and AI source code with everybody on GitHub. Our bot was finding small pizza and fast food places in Europe and on the other continents through Instagram. It then sent them an AI-pizza recipe personally. That’s how an idea transformed from AI-recipe to multimedia Open Source Pizza.

Besides being highly awarded, is there a distinctive culture to the agency’s creative process that enables it to produce such work? 

There must be trust between team members and respect to everybody’s work. For example, with Birds Records the work took two years from an idea to implementation. There were fraught moments because we had to work a lot in our off-work time. 

We got through this period and achieved not only an amazing project but an experience of how to build engagement with many participants while realising such difficult projects. As for inspiration, we didn’t think about prizes, we were obsessed with the process: every track, the music video creation process, merchandise, how the audience reacted to our work… It really inspires and motivates us to keep working.

How has the past year, with the Covid-19 pandemic, effected the operations in your creative  department and the climate for producing creative work in Moscow?  

At first, it was stressful. I remember how nervous and worried I was that there would be no real face-to-face contact. All inner reviews, presentations, and shooting as well, were held on Zoom. But then we won three tenders in a row, shot several videos remotely, and it became clear that we could work this way. 

Nevertheless, I am completely sure that it’s difficult to settle for offline communication, especially on pitch presentations. When it comes to exchange of emotions, or a quick reaction for ongoing processes in the room… Zoom can’t provide it. 

I am for flexible working hours. For example, if an art director needs to prepare presentation and does not want to be disturbed, it will be more effective and calmer to work from home. But meetings with a lot of participants, it is of course better to carry out at the office.

How do you keep on top of the creative talents available in Moscow/Russia, such as with sourcing animation (as we see with the award-winning animation in Birds Records)?

We don’t have such a big market in Russia as exists in the USA or Great Britain. All potential people are in the public eye. You need to keep a finger on the pulse, communicate with other creative directors, review interesting works — get to know who are the authors and meet with candidates.

If you feel chemistry: then welcome to BBDO team. And everyone prove themselves in the process of working.

With Dodo Pizza, you use innovative AI tech. How does the creative mind stay open to these highly specialised areas of advancing innovation?  

It’s impossible to say to creatives 'guys, today you should learn AI and tomorrow NFT’. Everyday more and more people who are interested in technologies come to us, it’s expected.

But also there are people who are interested in visual art, series, books, fashion, music, etc. We don’t sort people on a hobby criterion. An idea can come from everywhere. The agency must be as many people with different hobbies and talents as possible.

What and/or who was influential in your own career?

First, my Creative Director Aleksandr Brener at my first agency Lowe Adventa.  More widely, quite a versatile life experience and other creative industries where I also try to self-develop.

Are there particular areas of industry, particular kinds of client, that you are yet to work with but are particularly keen to try (and why)?

Silicon Valley, space industry, big streaming platforms, fashion industry, world-class sport, different funds and organizations on animal welfare. To tell the truth, I want to work with many different companies. The main thing is that everyone thinks freely, be at the same wavelength and really want to do something outstanding. 

How would you rate the Russian creative industry at present? Is it developing well or does it face challenges? 

I can’t say I like how advertising industry develops nowadays in Russia. Every year less and less prominent works appear. Everyone copies genres and creative methods. Advertising stops being courageous, unexpected and memorable. 

I don’t know if Russian advertising will ever be the part of mass culture as we see it in the USA, Great Britain and Latin America countries. I think that we have a poor service culture between client and agency. We always try to find a solution corresponding to a brand’s or a product’s tasks. But in real life it turns out that you must guess the taste of a particular person or even a particular group of people on a client’s side. 

Taste preferences depreciate the criteria of ideas and brief choice that we work on. Mildly speaking, client and agency relations in Russia are not equal in many cases. Our professional opinion is taken into account very seldom. 

Too often clients don’t look at interesting cases, don’t know works that set high standards in world advertising industry. Our agency’s numerous awards for many people have stopped being important. Our advertising is conducted by taste or its absence, good or bad mood, personal preferences or dislike. It is not led by the brief or the idea.

Of course, sometimes there are clients who are ready to build up partnership relations with agency. We are lucky to work with them.

What work inspires you?

See Sound by Wavio, Football Decoded by Microsoft, Stevenage and Burn That Ad by Burger King, Go Back to Africa, Back to School Essentials… the amount of works that inspire me is uncountable. Today I’m inspired by one kind of works, then appear other works. That’s why I like our industry — whatever happens in the world, advertising always react to it.

And, finally, can you give us a flavour of your current creative inspiration… music, reading, watching, doing…

Before I go to bed, I listen to The Hobbit audiobook and Lord of the Rings. I didn’t read it in childhood so now I try to catch up.

I watch a lot of series. I like Wayne, Sex Education, Zero Zero Zero, Ted Lasso, Call DiCaprio (a Russian series). Silicon Valley is very funny. Unfortunately it came to an end. 

But most of all, I am inspired by communication with people, my friends or new acquaintances. And, of course, my family, my wife and children.

BBDO Moscow won gold at Cresta with its work to raise awareness of the Gulag system among young people, working for Survivors Gulag History Museum.

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