Kyiv, December 23th 2020

Based in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, DIEVO is a digital-centric advertising agency that is part of the NCG (NOSTRA Сommunications Group) holding.

Its motto is to dream, want and do more to deliver better results to their clients.

To make that happen, they’ve built an effective digital team of strategists, creators, designers, account managers, digital planners, performance specialists and content managers.

The agency was founded in 2016 by Ivan Kucherenko, the agency’s current CEO, alongside his business partner Dmytro Kutovoy.

In an interview with TIA, Kucherenko described his personal journey in the Ukrainian digital market and the changes experienced by the sector over the last decade, highlighting some of the agency’s recent work.

To kick things off please can you tell us why Kyiv is a great place to work?

There is one simple reason – Kyiv is very beautiful city where creative and open-minded people are living. It’s very picturesque – somewhere like an old European town, in other places like a modern downtown.

The architecture of Kiev is an extraordinary phenomenon. The unique and extremely diverse cityscape has been transforming for 14 centuries. Thus, the buildings and streets of the Ukrainian capital combine more than 30 different architectural styles, which accurately reflect the stages of the city’s formation. I think Kyiv also is a gastronomic capital of all Eastern Ukraine — with enormous cafes & restaurants of all different types, delicious meal, very tasty coffee and cheap prices.

Nightlife in Kyiv is also percolated, someone says that our techno culture successfully competes with Berlin’s one. All of these probably makes Kyiv very attractive for worldwide brands & corporations to shoot their commercials (like Apple, Sony, BMW, P&G and others) and establish their offices here.

Ukrainian people are very hard-working & gifted, and the most talented of them seek ways to move to its capital, i.e., Kyiv.

Tell us about your personal journey, how did you find yourself working as CEO at DIEVO?

I’ve started my journey in internet marketing in late 1990s, when after being fond of computers since my childhood and discovering Internet initially at the modem’s speed of 2400, I’ve decided not only to use it for computer games, networking or studying, but to create something in www – so I’ve learned how to develop web-sites and established my own web-production studio.

Later I’ve worked in different companies, like large mass-media holdings (Ukrainian office of Telegraaf Media Group from Netherlands, largest local TV-broadcasting holding StarLightMedia), advertising agencies (PRODIGI, SPN Ogilvy) and clients’ side.

One day 5 years ago I’ve met my business partner Dmytro Kutovoy, who was quite excited about developing the Ukrainian digital market, which was growing rapidly that time.

He offered me to launch a new digital agency within Nostra Communications Group (NCG) holding company and I really liked that idea, because it allowed me to use all my previous experience to build a powerful agency, which will have a great impact on the market’s growth.

So I’ve agreed, we became business partners and in a couple months, in March, 2016, we launched DIEVO as part of NCG. And this year NCG DIEVO became #2 in the list of the most effective media agencies in Ukraine according to the EFFIE awards results.

In your opinion, how has the digital industry changed over the course of the last 10 years?

Changes in the digital industry are significant and inevitable. The largest disruptors in the industry during the last 10 years are social networking, messaging apps, which also lead to mobile usage growing, and programmatic advertising, which is forever changing the buying models of digital advertising.

Brand content & brand creative was always important, but now brands are competing for the attention of the audience with opinion leaders’ own creative content on Instagram and YouTube, sometimes recruiting them to communicate with their subscribers in the most native way.

Data has changed the ways how decisions are made and digital gives more opportunities to conduct ad-hoc research, collect analytics and examine it in order not only to make conclusions post-factum, but to predict future results of advertising campaigns. But all these changes are provoked by the change in audience’s psychographic, behavior and media consumption.

New consumers generation Z now is mobile first oriented, other generations (X & Y) started to use it more heavily, than before, and this is making it media channel #1 in their preference.

Changed the approach to communication in digital, and the old methods when you used only tactical instruments (like creating a web-site or social network page) now are not working — you have to think about entire communication ecosystem, and not only digital but others media because the audience is multi-screening, omnichannel, they switch instantly between watching TV, browsing Instagram feed and listening online radio via their smart home pods from Amazon, Google or Apple.

And nowadays every brand should understand how its consumers behave in this complex matrix, segment them by their generation, interests, locations, beliefs and deliver them most relevant content in the time, when they will engage to it with greater desire leading them to the purchase.

What ingredients are key to create a successful digital transformation project?

Desire plus resources, mixed with inspiration and prepared by the talented and productive employees, who not only lead the project, but also actively participate in it or adopt the changes.

There is a very popular joke about COVID-19 which catalyzed the digital transformation in companies instead of CEOs or CIOs/CTOs, and definitely it’s true.

Most companies were moving forward to digital transformation each in its pace, but total lockdown and changes in consumers behavior due to it and the threat of pandemic made every business run fast for their lives, or leave behind and die.

I’m really proud that the processes and technologies, which we implemented in our agency and holding company allowed us to teleport from our office work to our home offices almost immediately.

Slack as a corporate messenger, Google Suite as a solution for mail/calendar/file storage, Zoom as a new communication reality and Worksection as project management and task tracking platform allowed us not only to keep our business working in new conditions, but to increase its efficiency in this bright new world.

What role does the CIO play in facilitating an organization’s digital transformation?

CIO/CTO/CDO should be the leader of digital transformation in close co-operation with the CEO, because only he (or she) can see the entire picture of the new digital reality and understand which technology advantages can be implemented in the business, what changes in process and employees’ skills needed, in order not only to increase the business efficiency, but allow it to survive in the new era of total digitalization.

What is some recent work from DIEVO that you’re most proud of?

I’m really proud of our project for Pripravka “Cooking in sauce” brand, which we’ve launched during the lockdown and not only built the brand’s knowledge of almost 20% in a completely new and very competitive category, but changed the audience’s habits during the cooking process, which lead to a significant increase in product’s sales. As a proof of this project’s efficiency – it achieved gold award in “Product/Service Launch” category of EFFIE Awards Ukraine 2020.

Also, I like our cases for UMa&UMi because we’ve managed to use the seasonal opportunity window to scale a new brand of children’s jewelry to the status of a famous and desirable precious gift for a child. Hromadske TV, where we created brand communication platform based on the insight, that it consists of every Ukrainian citizen.

Lenovo when we faced an ambitious goal to launch a new product – Lenovo Explorer (Mixed AR/VR Reality headset) on the Ukrainian market and make the target audience understand, that virtual reality devices can be used not only for gaming, but also for studying and even traveling.

And of course one of our oldest but most loved by myself project for Johnnie Walker brand – when in 2017 we’ve created first edutainment chat-bot in Facebook messenger, which not only helped the brand to achieve more target audience interest via boosting Google search results, but increased sales of the brand during the low season.

Which would you say is the most effective way to build relationships with clients during Covid?

When we’ve found ourselves in our home offices during the lockdown, first of all, we of course decided to change some internal team interaction processes in order to keep our team spirit and be closer to each other in a mental way even being far in the physical one. But then we’ve thought, that our clients probably need our support too – both informational and emotional one.

So we’ve launched weekly digest “On the wave of change” and also sent our clients lists of entertaining possibilities, like online concerts, exhibitions, sport sessions etc, and even “visited” some of them together with our clients.

That worked pretty well – clients thanked us for our involvement and support during this tough period, which definitely increased our relationships with them and leads to an increase in NPS score.

Is there any lesson you’ve had to learn multiple times?

Sometimes I had, but I prefer to use only one opportunity to learn.

What are your favourite digital brands?

Probably I’m a little bit conservative, but I like such common brands as Apple, Google (both with YouTube), Facebook, Netflix, because they not only are changing the digital industry, but also bring us new products, which forever change our lives.

Also I’m a real fan of Slack, Websummit, TheNextWeb and I really like how Zoom is evolving, and the speed of changes in their products, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, inspires me to change my own business and help our clients to use the moment to shift their digital communications to the new level.

And definitely, I’m really excited about what Elon Musk is creating with his Tesla and SpaceX companies, when he believes that can change the world order and even save humanity, which, I think, should inspire every entrepreneur.

Is it better to be good and on time or perfect and late with your work?

I like to say that it’s always better today than perfect tomorrow, because in our VUCA world there is a pretty high opportunity, that tomorrow you will be late or no one will need it.

In another life, what job might you have chosen?

I was born one day with the first human in space Yuri Gagarin and I’m really fond of space, so probably I’d love to be an astronaut 😉

Thanks Ivan!

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