With more than 12 years of experience in strategic creativity, brand design, art directorate, and management, Zdravko Kevrešan has been appointed creative director of Drive agency. Learn a little more about him and further plans for Drive below.
What attracted you to the advertising industry? Just a need for a job, or something more?
What is especially related to working in advertising agencies is the opportunity to be exposed every day to new challenges that needs to be creatively processed, a new topic that needs to be understood, completed and placed in the right way in a short time, to have an effect on someone's business, often on someone's life. Intimately, it is an opportunity for a daily refresh of one's own view of oneself, people, the environment and the world itself.
Do you have a favorite project that brought you challenges but also pleasure when you started your career? Favorite campaign created by Drive? As well as which award are you most proud of, which one did the agency win?
Various projects..from rebranding the online presence of Mastercard in Serbia, through the educational AR experience we did for Next Buci Buci for the youngest part of the population, to creating unique mixed reality content for the Coke Mystical Tour and content created to promote Besa 1 and 2 series… each of these projects was particularly challenging and ultimately received, I believe deserved, the attention of society.
Given that you have been in this industry for a long time, how would you evaluate the results of the work of domestic creative agencies? Current state of the advertising scene in Serbia?
There is a growing imbalance between agencies and brands. Trust has become the most expensive currency, inertia has become the main "driver", and autopilot has become the favorite mode of operation.
On the other hand, the younger generation has never had higher expectations that brands can change society for the better, and this is an opportunity for brands that they must not miss. Courage, although treated as a luxury in the business world, is too necessary to be able to ask the right questions and not agree to the status quo.
If you could change something in the industry, what would you change? How do you think the role of creativity will change in the coming years?
Changes in advertising and in the world in general, are happening abnormally fast, and the definition of creativity requires new points of view.
In Serbia and the region, the time is coming for challenger brands and those who have such a mindset. We live in a time of ‘Ideas Economy’, in which you succeed if you have the ability to turn an idea into value faster than the competition, so we cannot treat creativity and business as separate items. Creativity is business. In addition, if brands dare to think big and allow agencies to help them do that, together they can change much more than just their marketing or the look of a campaign.
With over 12 years of experience in strategic creativity, brand design, art management and management and working at McCann agencies, how do you view the future of Drive?
After 10 years of existence, Drive enters the next decade as a creative full-service agency. Drive's place will be with those who want to operate outside the comfort zone and challenge the status quo again, either in business or in society.
There is a lot of talk about ways to develop business through new technological innovations. How would you explain the role of the company's creative director in the market that is in the process of digitalization?
Rules and technological possibilities are experiencing tectonic changes in the period from the first to the second coffee of the day. I am pleased to recognize how important the need for rapid adaptation is and that we as a company are open to embracing the opportunities that new technologies bring.
Hobbies? Do you have them and, more importantly, do you have time for them?
I like to ski, to cook for family and friends, and music is a nonabelian part of my life :)