Incentive Agency / Creative direction · Distributed production
Art direction & regional content
Incentive Agency had demonstrated creator content to a client, but needed a way to produce it repeatedly across regional accounts. I owned content strategy, concepts, art direction, budgets, and production coordination, working with local creators and account managers.
Creative Director | Design Lead | Graphic Designer
2023–2024
- Content strategy & art direction
- Creator production
- Budgets & regional coordination
Photography by Salimkerey
The challenge
Moving beyond a few initial shoots meant organizing device access, language requirements, creator capacity, and regional budgets. Production mistakes and unplanned revisions could quickly consume the agency’s margin.
My contribution
I planned content, wrote and directed briefs, sourced and onboarded creators, coordinated equipment and filming, and controlled quality and spending. Local creators often handled locations and casting; editing stayed with the creator or moved to a motion designer when needed.
Published work
Selected videos produced for iOfficial Kazakhstan.
View on InstagramPublished reel 1 · iOfficial Kazakhstan@iofficial_kazakhstan
View on InstagramPublished reel 2 · iOfficial Kazakhstan@iofficial_kazakhstan
View on InstagramPublished reel 3 · iOfficial Kazakhstan@iofficial_kazakhstan
View on InstagramPublished reel 4 · iOfficial Kazakhstan@iofficial_kazakhstan
Build production beyond the first experiments
The agency had run initial shoots with creators in Ukraine and sold the service, but a repeatable production approach still needed to be built. I found creators through personal contacts, referrals, and social platforms, then onboarded and coordinated them through real assignments.
Early assignments were usually lower-priority briefs. I assessed the same qualities needed for ongoing work: quality, delivery speed, clear communication, and realistic capacity. A reliable creator raised risks early and avoided taking on more than they could complete.
Plan around access, language, and availability
Creators rarely owned the newest devices. Product shoots often depended on a partner flagship store lending equipment, with paperwork and availability to arrange. Sometimes a suitable device owner in another region provided an alternative.
Casting also needed the right language and local context. Those requirements could overlap: a brief might need both device access and a suitable speaker. Location was one part of the decision, alongside availability, capability, and the regional budget.
Check the requirements together
- Brief and budgetDefine the creative idea and regional constraints.
- Device accessArrange store equipment or find a suitable device owner.
- Language and contextConfirm the talent fits the actual audience and script.
- Capacity and rolesCheck availability and decide who films and edits.
Stay close enough to resolve production problems
I stayed available during filming. Missing audio, an unexpected language mismatch, or a store unable to release equipment could put the brief at risk. Resolving those problems was part of production coordination, alongside protecting relationships with creators through client revisions.
Responsibilities were allocated to manage dependency as well as cost. Creators often edited their own work; when their filming workload grew, editing could move to a motion designer. I also filled gaps with my own filming when necessary. Different briefs needed different arrangements.
Make the plan fit the budget
I worked with regional content plans and budgets, adjusting the mix of shoots, creator locations, and editing. Combining production where possible helped create more publishable material, but reuse across markets was uncommon and usually required re-editing.
The programme produced more than 800 publications from the material created. This is a count of published content items, rather than a count of separate shoots or videos. My responsibility was to keep the creative output moving while managing the people, costs, and practical constraints behind it.