Russia Special: McCann Moscow's Tim Brown

After falling for both Russia, and a Russian, after a college trip, Tim Brown returned to Moscow in 1992 and forgot to go back to Blighty. Now ECD at McCann Moscow, he’s seen 20 years of huge changes in the country and its ad scene. He tells Emily Ansell how it’s now boom time for the bear

Imagine living out of a suitcase for six years, always intending to fly home but never quite finding the time or the will to book the plane tickets. That’s exactly what McCann Moscow’s executive creative director Tim Brown did after a long-distance romance led him to leave the UK and move to Russia. 

Brought up in Surrey, Brown decided around the age of 15 that he was going to build a career in either tennis or art. His dad wanted him to be a civil engineer but his grandmother had a more artistic side and encouraged him to follow his dreams. “My gran was the artist of the family and she was very influential, but I decided that if I was going become an artist I wouldn’t have a great future,” says Brown. “I envisioned having no money and living on the backseat of a car. So I thought, let’s study advertising instead. I did a design course at Reigate School of Art and Design and then studied advertising at Berkshire College of Art and Design. From there, it was pure luck.”

It was while on his design course at the start of the 90s that Brown went on a class trip to Moscow and St Petersburg to meet artists and designers. He made lots of contacts there and, as it was during the days before the internet, he became pen pals with a few of them and kept in touch over the ensuing years. Like something out of a romantic movie, one of those pen pals became something more and, after completing his studies, Brown travelled back to Moscow in 1992. “I never expected to stay there beyond the summer, but I thought the city was a bit weird and funky. Advertising wasn’t really on the radar there though, it barely even existed,” he recalls.

Empty shelves and nothing to sell

Finding himself low on money and with student loans to pay off, Brown took work as a designer at The Moscow Times followed by a position at a design agency. “The agency was in one of those huge Stalinist buildings and I had to cross Red Square every morning in the cold. It was quite a culture shock, Russia was coming out of the Cold War and there was poverty but I just thought it was such an interesting country,” says Brown.

Brown’s advertising break came from BBDO, where he joined the design team. He refers to it as a “weird little office” and says there were just three people working in the studio. The agency only had very minor clients, but Brown felt grateful as he’d had heard that most of his friends from his student days were working as bricklayers or in other jobs which had nothing to do with advertising. “In the early 1990s there was almost nothing to advertise in Russia. You’d go to the shops and just see empty shelves. It was very difficult. In 1998 there was a financial crisis but before that you had the tanks shelling the Russian White House [the constitutional crisis of 1993]. There was a lot of unrest, so you kind of kept your head down and did what you could do,” he reflects. “I thought there was no point in going home. I had a job and was gaining experience.”

Brown found he was able to learn Russian quickly and that gave him a real advantage when it came to finding work because ad agencies were looking for people with a Western background and education who could bring something different to the table. “Being able to speak the language meant I was no longer living the ex-pat life, I was properly there. Other Westerners would come and go, but I was in it for the long haul. Russia was changing so fast and it was like being on a train going somewhere exciting and not wanting get off,” he says. “I’d had no plan to stay there. I lived out of a suitcase for about six years because I was trying to convince myself that I would fly back to England. It then finally dawned on me that I was really living there and I needed to sort myself out,” he recalls. “England was stable; things weren’t going to radically change. I felt I could go back if I wanted to but I was gaining a lot more experience in Russia than I would at home. I was given much more freedom and everyone was experimenting because advertising was only just kicking off. There weren’t so many established rules in the game. It was a lot of fun.”

After a year at BBDO, Brown left to take up an art director position at McCann Erickson Moscow. He spent four years there before moving to agency Ark Thompson for a further four years, then he went back to BBDO where he was promoted to senior art director. Following BBDO, Brown moved into CD positions – firstly as associate creative director at Publicis Moscow for eight years and then swinging back to McCann where he is now executive creative director.

Fun times with fridges and Frisbee

During these many years in the industry, Brown has noticed a huge change in Russia’s advertising climate. It’s gone from being almost non-existent to becoming a booming industry. “A lot of clients are now turning their heads towards Russia,” he says. “It has one of the biggest markets in the world at the moment. It’s won a lot of awards in the past couple of years, loads more local stuff is being produced and the industry has been growing steadily.

“There were fewer agencies in the 90s. You could count them on both hands. Now there are so many agencies and it’s much more diverse. In most agencies there are around four or five foreigners but there aren’t many that have been there for more than 20 years like I have. People often have a love-hate relationship with Moscow – it’s quite heavy sometimes, it is a place that is full of contrasts.”

So what are some of Brown’s favourite campaigns among the sizeable horde of work he’s done over the years? He says it’s great to create award-winning campaigns, but the ones that really stand out to him are the ones where he has had a great relationship with the client. “When I was at BBDO we did a lot of stuff for Snickers. That was a great brand to work on. There was a lot of freedom,” he says. “One of our Snickers commercials, Frisbee, actually ran in the UK too. It was shot in Moscow and the UK market picked it up. That one sticks out to me because my mum saw it on the TV and was very excited. Before that, she was always asking what I’d done and never got to see anything. That was really cool.”

Another highlight for Brown has been working with Coca-Cola. He particularly enjoyed the Coke@Home campaign which included TV ad Red Fridge. “The campaign was for Russia, Eastern Europe and Africa. It was fascinating to work with so many different markets across huge continents in one go. I loved hearing all the different points of view and it was a great chance to learn,” he says. “Rolling it out and doing the shoot was so much fun. They’re all quite different cultures and the only link was their Coca-Cola habits – the campaign was all about trying to get people to have the drink in the house. In America it’s in everyone’s fridge but in Russia very few people have it at home.”

When asked about the challenges of working in advertising in Russia, Brown’s list is very similar to that of creatives all over the world – budgets have slimmed down considerably and the internet means that people are expected to deliver quickly. “Budgets all over the world are tighter and people are being asked to do the same task for less money every year but, in a way, I think that’s a good challenge because in the early 2000s there was a lot of money in Russia and things weren’t done so carefully. Now, people try to make the most of every ruble and make it work better than it did before,” he explains. “Everything can be done immediately in the digital age. In the days when you just had fax machines, things happened at a much more natural pace and it was a bit more thoughtful. Now, that time for crafting has really speeded up.”

An old Russia hand

Brown’s been executive creative director at McCann for two and a half years now and is feeling very settled. He’s working with huge clients including General Motors, Coca-Cola, L’Oréal and Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, so it’s not surprising to hear that his suitcase is now well and truly unpacked gathering dust in the closet. “The feeling I might come back to London comes and goes but to move back isn’t necessarily the right thing for me,” he says. “I’ve spent just over half my life in Russia now. I’ve stepped over the half-way mark and a lot of Russians tell me I’ve ‘gone native’.”