How a Ukrainian moved to New York and does advertising for Microsoft, Samsung and Canon: a success story

Back in 2015, motion designer and Ukrainian Pavel Tkachenko moved from Cherkasy to New York. There he planned to start his own business and his attempt was quite successful. Subsequently, the head offices of Puma, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft, Samsung, Canon, NYC, Paramount Pictures, First Republic Bank, Smart, WeWork, Johnson & Johnson became his clients. In December 2022, Pavel moved to London (UK) to expand services to European markets. Pavel told the publication AIN.UA his history and how he managed to build a successful business.

Next - from the first person.

Video love

I have never done anything other than video in my life: I shot, edited. It all started at school: with friends, we gathered in the basements and played punk rock. There was always a camera, we shot "vidos", edited them, posted them on YouTube. Then I got to production, filming content for TV. We shot news stories, interviews and the like, which then bought channels to fill the airwaves.

But I always wanted to be independent of my location, I wanted to be like programmers who can write code anywhere in the world. I started studying motion design and animation, did it in Ukraine for several years, created a portfolio for myself. He worked a lot as a freelancer in production, collaborated a lot with NLO-TV, local TV channels in Cherkasy. But he was also looking for clients abroad.

Moving to the USA

I think the move was the logical decision in my career. I wanted to first check if I could live and work there. I was working for Upwork at the time, I had clients from the USA and I thought it would be cool to go and meet them. Maybe they will introduce me to someone, recommend me. The plan was this: to leave for the USA, do some work, return to Ukraine and work from here. But it turned out a little differently.

When I flew to the States, I only had a backpack with me, because I did not plan to stay. Quite quickly, several large clients appeared, I decided to stay until the end of the visa, and six months later I already founded a company there. When I flew from Ukraine, I didn’t even say goodbye to my parents normally, I thought I’d be back in a few months. And as a result, it turned out to return after 3,5 years.

New York

Of all the possible places in the States, I chose New York, one of the most expensive locations. At that time, I did not have many clients to pay for my permanent housing. Therefore, I rented a room for the first 2-3 weeks and set a deadline for myself: during this time I must earn enough money to rent a normal apartment. When I arrived in the US, I had $2000 on my card with me. It didn't even have a website.

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During my first week in New York, I was sitting in a cafe doing something on my laptop and asked my neighbor for the Wi-Fi password. We started talking, and it turned out that he had a startup that needed to make a video, and he offered to work together. I've heard before that it's customary here to tell you how cool you are and discuss joint projects, but then nothing actually happens. But he called on the phone the next day, ordered the work and even paid in advance.

It gave me confidence in myself. I am a guy from Ukraine, I moved to New York, although it seemed that New York was the top and it was impossible to break through here. But I got it.

I was looking for the first clients at conferences, meetups, some parties where people from the creative world gather. I just approached strangers, got acquainted, showed my work, said that I can do creative design, animation and motion design.

And little by little it worked. I did not try to send emails, but immediately left and met people. Who immediately offered to work together, who recommended whom I should contact, and shared contacts.

big brands

I went out on such hunts for clients 3-4 times a week, and this gave results. Over time, I realized that I want to work more not with startups, but with big brands.

It is always more interesting to work with startups or a young cool company. But from a business point of view, a startup always wants to pay less, and it needs to make a very cool product. Sometimes I took projects from startups to satisfy my creative streak.

But in most cases in recent years, I began to hunt for large companies: they are more or less stable and pay well. I wanted to move from a person who "makes videos for everyone" to a specialist who makes more narrowly focused content that not everyone can do. Large corporate clients are ideal in this regard, because a lot of people will see your work.

Microsoft, Puma, New York City Hall and others

New York is the perfect city to meet the right person in a random place. I was introduced to the agency that did the project for the New York City Hall by friends at a party. They did all the creative stuff for City Hall, all the stuff you see on the subway, on the billboards, in Times Square.

I came to their project as a creative director, we developed both billboards and metro kiosks, and made videos for an SMM campaign. It’s very cool that the then mayor of the city tagged me on Instagram.

The icing on the cake was a video projection on the arch in Washington Square Park. A lot of people shared her video. It was a very cool project, not very highly paid, but it became a very strong and recognizable portfolio case.

New York is one of the coolest cities in the world, and it was nice to walk the streets and see your work afterwards. What dude from Cherkassy, ​​from Ukraine, came here thinking: “What can I give New York?”. But it turned out that I brought something to this city, made it better.

Working with JPMorgan

This is a very interesting story. I was in the Motion Designers of New York Facebook group and saw that someone was looking for a motion designer for a project. I responded, but they ignored me. A few months later he was looking for a motion designer again, this time we got in touch (and I didn't even know who it was). It turned out that this is a creative producer of JPMorgan.

I came to a meeting with them, in their skyscraper on Park Avenue, went up to some super high floor, we sat down at the table, and I realized that I don’t know anything about the world of finance. And on the project, it was just necessary to explain some complex financial terminology to users using motion design.

But, as they say, fake it till you make it. I said that I was well versed in this topic, and began to work. They would have had a hard time finding any motion designer who was great at finance, so it worked out really well.

I worked with JPMorgan for a year, it was my only client and I learned a lot. When I added on LinkedIn that I worked with JPMorgan, other banks and investment firms began to write to me. So I started working with Fidelity Investments, one of the largest investment firms in the States that I've been working with for three years now. Our main task with them is to teach people how to invest and make these educational videos fun: for a person to watch 3 minutes and understand how to manage their account, for example.

Failed project at Google

There were, of course, failures. There was a project for which I am still ashamed - this is a case from Google. I had a friend with whom we did some small projects, and six months later he offered me to work with Google. Called me to their office. He told me a little about the peculiarities of working with Google: they say that sometimes they don’t have a clear vision of what needs to be done, and it sounds like: “we want something like this, but you have to tell us what it is.” You have to think like a "Google person".

I put together a team for that project, it was very specific, very technical motion design, something related to UX / UI. We offered them different ideas for a long time, and they always answered: Doesn't feel like Google. We tried and offered the best options, but it was not the same.

As a result, time was running out, the deadline was running out, they agreed on one option, which we reworked several times. We handed over the project, received the money, but that dude did not contact me anymore. I even wrote to him several times, asking if there was anything from Google, but he did not answer. Google did not use our work anywhere, although we tried to make everything cool. They just didn't do it the way Google saw it. Turned out not to be Google-minded. Although it is quite possible that the manager who led this project did not know how to do it himself, he said that he had not been in the company for so long.

Cool and successful projects

We did a cool project for Microsoft: we and they really liked it. Successfully worked with Smart Europe.

It was also interesting to work with Puma. It was one of my first experiences of working specifically for social networks: all content was vertical, everything was under stories (they were just starting to use stories to promote a business).

It was a difficult but interesting project: it was necessary to be as technical as possible and do everything professionally, but in such a way that these videos looked as sincere and natural as possible. For example, part of our job was to get content from Puma influencers, people like Selena Gomez or Formula 1 champions, and turn it into a video that looked like they made it themselves.

It was a very cool experience, because I worked with one of the cool agencies in New York, they are in Soho, and for me it was a dream come true. I always imagined myself as a creative director walking around Soho with a cup of coffee to meet some cool office and team. It was an incredibly creative environment: people doing very professional work, and immediately going up to the roof to do yoga, everyone in the office has a dog, everyone is dressed casually, some have tattoos. Maximum immersion in the atmosphere of New York.

The project turned out to be cool, because there were cool tasks and a team. Puma even sent me a bottle of whiskey afterwards.

There was another educational project. Having met the guys from Fresh Ed at one of the conferences in New York, they presented their project, the essence of which is that they write rap for children in schools: about mathematics, history, literature. He suggested that they create a series of animated music videos for their tracks for the literature and history class. The next day we were already sitting in their studio in Soho and came up with ideas for clips.

Pavel does not forget to help Ukraine. At the same time, not only financially, but also informationally, all his clients know that he is from Ukraine, so he often tells news and a lot of interesting things to them.