Kyiv-Based Bickerstaff.734 Balances Wartime Work With ‘Ukrainian Creativity’

Building a bomb shelter should never have been in any agency’s office plans, but the daily truth in Ukraine makes that a necessity. And for Polina Blyzniuk, catching up on work in a shelter has become a comfortable alternative to refreshing her phone for bad news. 

“Even when there’s an air alert, it’s easier to pass that time when you have your laptop with you,” said the art director at Ukrainian agency Bickerstaff.734. When asked how she maintains motivation during wartime, she stressed that the work distraction is a consistent source of solace.

With the war in Ukraine dragging through its second year after the Feb. 24, 2022 invasion by Russia, agencies like Bickerstaff.734 are still making tough choices on how to deal with the ongoing conflict while settling into what daily life is like in Kyiv and beyond. As of June, The Kyiv Post reported that Ukraine’s capital has had some 380 alerts, or an average of two per day, in 2023.

Independent creative agency Bickerstaff.734, which now has a presence in both Portugal and Ukraine, has lived through a lot in its short existence. It was founded in 2020 by Ilia Anufrienko, 32, as the pandemic was sweeping the globe, and it created award-winning work in the window before the war began. Many of the agency’s projects are now in direct opposition to Russia, and when asked if that defiant rhetoric makes him fearful, Anufrienko assured that “everything that we feared has already happened.” 

The 22 employees at Bickerstaff, with an average age of only 25 years old, spoke with Adweek about their ongoing struggles during the war, but also their successes and their unyielding optimism for the future.

Getting on the map before the war 

While half its professional lifespan has been marked by unprovoked conflict, Bickerstaff has earned its share of recent awards, thanks to its smart campaigns that combine “Ukrainian creativity” with efforts to improve the morale of the country during wartime.

One of Bickerstaff.734’s first pre-war projects was branding for Khortytsia, a historic island in the middle of the Dnipro River in the embattled city of Zaporizhzhia. The agency wanted to highlight all of the reasons to visit Khortytsia, but decided to make it a mystery. It utilized an “X” sign to symbolize that mystery while encouraging visitors to find their own stories about the island. The entire agency headed to Zaporizhzhia and “explored every corner” to create over 200 creative directions, according to Anufrienko. The project went on to win multiple awards, including one from Cannes Lions, D&AD, Epica Awards and other international creativity festivals, along with numerous mentions in local and foreign media. 

“It was the most productive project of the year,” Anufrienko said. 

Rerouting workspace visions

Bickerstaff is dealing with a forced remote workforce. After the invasion and closing of its Kyiv office, Anufrienko took his family, including his pregnant wife, to Portugal to stay safe. Other employees stayed in Ukraine or fled to other parts of Europe. Since then, the agency work format has undergone significant changes, and while Anufrienko said staff has embraced the digital realm like never before, he still dreams of bringing everyone back together. 18 of the 22 employees remain in Ukraine and 16 are still in Kyiv.

“I don’t think (the war) has become more or less intensive, but we’ve had to get used to it,” said junior public relations manager Viktoriia Ivanishina. “We are trying to live on, but there is no safe place here until the war is over.”

Anufrienko plans to restore the physical space soon, but he said the Kyiv office won’t be about “a fancy setup, sleek decor and a convenient location.”

“It’s all about the nitty-gritty details, like having a bomb shelter, rock-solid internet and generator rooms,” he said. “After all, there’s something special about the warmth and coziness it brings, not to mention that touch of celebration with a bottle of champagne—an essential in our office.”

What’s with the numbers?

The agency is officially registered as Bickerstaff.734, but in other references, the numbers change, like Bickerstaff.111, Bickerstaff.284 and any other three-numbered combination. When asked to explain what looks like a never-ending typo, no one on staff could give a straight answer—and they said that’s the point. 

“In the words of the classics, ‘It’s such a thing that nobody will understand, and it’s such a thing that is difficult to comprehend.’ However, somehow, this thing emerged and found its place among us,” said Anufrienko. “Perhaps, like a logo, it’s a story of the connection of opposites, which under the right conditions create something entirely new, and also a bit of a riddle. Because mysteries always make things more intriguing.” 

My creative skill is my weapon and I use it every day.

—Maria Kochurenko, managing partner and creative strategist, Bickerstaff.734

While it might be cryptic, the naming scheme does give the staff a sense of pride, and clients a bit of fun, since they’re allowed to provide a number of their liking when it pertains to their campaigns.

“It’s one of the most popular questions our agency gets,” said managing partner and creative strategist Maria Kochurenko.

CEO Veronika Seleha said that in communications with clients, on the website, in social media and in the press, the numbers change all the time. 

“Sometimes we say to our clients, what numbers do you prefer? It is a very strange question, but after that, they answer,” said Seleha, adding that they’ll pick everything from the number of employees they have to the suite number of their office. 

Seleha said that anyone on staff or on their client list can request a different number, and nobody can really say what the precise theory is behind the numbers, but it does make for a good conversation starter and a way to stand out from the competition. 

Clutching widespread attention through humor   

Bickerstaff.734 is intent on building an identity outside of the war, and it had already done so before the invasion. But Anufrienko knows that the agency must both fight against Russian aggression as well as build a portfolio for its future. In that sense, he doesn’t want to be known as a wartime agency, but as a creative agency that happens to do some powerful pro-Ukrainian campaigns.

“People are used to being entertained, and nobody wants to hear about suffering, pain and death, no matter how terrifying it may sound,” he said. “Our mission is to make war more captivating than the Johnny Depp court case or a showdown between Elon Musk and Zuckerberg.” 

To achieve this, the agency constantly comes up with new approaches. When it developed a crypto-donation campaign for the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, the agency didn’t use fright tactics by showing bombed buildings. Instead, it proposed investing in peace and recorded a rap video with the country’s prime minister and doves. In another campaign, the agency convinced people to wear their best leopard attire to help convince Germany to provide Ukraine with much-needed Leopard tanks. The #FreeTheLeopards social campaign led to protests and posts that eventually convinced the Germans to supply Ukraine with the tanks.

Defining the Ukrainian spirit 

Bickerstaff also launched a a redesign for the Ukrainian milk brand Galychyna, named after a region in the west of Ukraine. Despite Galychyna being historic and esteemed, the agency wanted to offer consumers a message of collective strength by spotlighting the country at large. “We Instead of Me” replaced “Galychyna” on bottles with regions that have been particularly vulnerable during the war. It was met with widespread praise on social media. Tweets, which have been translated from Ukrainian, reflect a somber sense of pride. One user wrote: “This is not about the war, but how to survive a business during a war on minimal means,” celebrating the significance of the agency’s innovation that is independent from the conflict or the creative itself. 

When reflecting on why Ukrainian creative work will always matter, Maria Kochurenko, managing partner and creative strategist at Bickerstaff.734, stressed that an unwavering resourcefulness has always lived at the core of her culture. 

“We have this phrase in Ukraine that Ukrainian volunteers can find you an elephant if you need it,” said Kochurenko, who emphasized that the country’s heightened sense of unity must be maintained, “after the victory…That’s all you need to know about our people.”  

Maintaining momentum  

Another effort found Bickerstaff working with students of the Ukrainian Leadership Academy, a youth leadership movement with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. They created a book titled “Crime Without Punishment,” inspired by the hearing of the International Criminal Court after it issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Alexeevna Lvova-Belova for war crimes. The 50-kilogram, 6,000-page book chronicled the thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children and the Russian Federation’s intentional attempts to erase the ethnic and national identity of those abducted children. Given that no one has been detained, it is a crime without punishment.

“I’m not a soldier and I’m not a nurse,” said Kochurenko. “I’m not there on the battlefield, but I have my own power. My creative skill is my weapon and I use it every day.”