BE A PART OF IT— A Founder and Creative Producer at
Simple Product Marketing Studio, Talks Professional Instincts and Keeping a Foot Firmly Planted Outside Marketingland
The founder and creative lead of Simple explains how the last couple of years made her the creative she is today. Vera Shilyaeva is Marketing Producer, PM, Editorial Creative and B2B/B2C Strategic Marketer. She previously held the role of growth marketing manager at one of the European Digital Art creative studios, ex-software dev Head of marketing and business communication.
Vera has a Bachelor’s degree in English and Education, and holds a dual Master’s in Strategic and Operational Marketing Management and Public Relations. Worked as a B2B marketer, project manager and communication/messaging strategist on Eastern European and American markets, has both insatiable curiosity and a sharp business acumen.
“Being a worker in marketing is about being comfortable with your skills, personal style, understanding of life and other people’s opinion about your work. I’ve tried many styles and finally found my own. I had to become more retrospective and started my own business. There was an erosion around the idea that you need to be in a good company to make good work. Simple℠ is about how to get great results doing more with less.”
As Simple reveals the next phase of working with the European clients and partners we talk to Vera Shilyaeva about why she hopes the power of wise, truthful storytelling will break down taboos, ethnic hatred and fears and can bring more emotional truth in business and cultural cooperation.
Simple> How did you get started?
I worked my professional way up from a department rookie to a head of marketing but decided to go solo as a content marketing enterpreneur, producer and editorial designer. When I was considering my next move, I was looking for a niche where I could do good work right away, and a sphere where I could keep learning and growing. My aim is always the same: I want to create work for my clients that has real business impact and becomes part of culture.
I came up with advertising and texts for a brand of chewing gum, a fashion brand, comics scripts, business presentations, life safety products’s marketing and continued my work in the marketing for technology companies. Luckily after a period of cooperation with the studios from a creative and production field I can also assist you in the marketing of VFX and CGI animation, film production, creative and cultural initiatives. I also like creative writing projects a lot. It is not a special event for me, it’s just a normal part of a marketing job. It is normal. We are all storytellers and story-attentive beings.
Simple > You started your career in PR, moved on to strategic marketing and then last year became a creative director. That’s not a standard creative career path. How do you think it shapes the way you work and what you’re mostly concerned with?
Starting my career in PR gave me a holistic view of the creative process. In PR you are the account person, the strategist, the producer and the creative, so it gave me a really great insight into the different roles I then encountered when I moved away from PR, into social content creation and marketing and later into advertising. It also means that my approach to briefs tends to be less traditional.
Simple >What's been your favourite project that you've worked on so far?
I’ll always have love for one of the first comics scripts I worked on. My company at the time was exploring new inbound marketing techniques to keep the business not only stable but funky at the same time. It was the first time I felt so ingrained in every aspect of the creative; where my Marketing Head (at the company I was working at that moment) gave me true autonomy to own the work. I learned so much about myself and managing creatives. As a result I had to study a lot about types of irony (situational, verbal, etc) to be able to move on the story in the comics scripts. Here you can see the results of that work. Maybe I will describe this long-term (1,5 year) project a bit later though it was back in 2015.
Simple> Before stepping into a design path, your work was dedicated to marketing only. How has the transition been so far?
Being a visual marketing addict my art concepts are clear and catchy. I’ve been lucky enough to work for many talented, successful creative producers in a marketing sphere who all had very different styles. This helped me realise that I could succeed by being me. Now I consider myself a strategic partner to clients, offering brand consulting, public relations, influencer marketing, go-to-market strategy, integrated marketing, social media marketing, copywriting, media auditing services and visual marketing services.
Simple> More recently, you worked on a content marketing and sales enablement campaign for a VFX and Animation European client that caught a lot of eyes. Tell us more about this.
I’ve been fortunate to work with great people! Europe is an interesting market. On one hand, budgets are smaller than in the US, for instance, and a lot of brands just adapt global work to run here. On the other hand, thanks to this project I’ve learned to do more with less. Here you can read about this campaign.
Simple> What being a strategist in marketing with a versatile background means for you?
There are so many jobs in marketing/advertising that are a good fit for a strategic person. But a strategist is a very specific species. To do this job, a person must live in a world of constant research, identifying patterns and templates, being mad about details. It is extremely boring and annoying sometimes but definitely worth it.
What I love about marketing is a diversity of creative methods and techniques within. I don’t shy away from anything. Every other strategy, PR plan or a new website with its creative content seems to get better and better. What ever you born with — love for creative writing or design, strategic straightforward thinking — embrace it. My mentor used to say: trust your instincts. Because they’re almost always right.
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