Speed is the keyword for today’s business world. In this new economic era of high-speed changes in the market where new technologies bring new ideas and opportunities to open new amazing horizons, Elena Herweyer (CEO and Creative Director) and her team of Art Fresh is working hard for their clients’ objectives and strive to exceed their expectations. She believes that marketing, new media channels, and industrial design quickly assimilate new trends and technologies to transform businesses.
Mirror Review’s short chat with the talented, Award-Winning Creative Director Elena, benefitted with the insights of her journey of developing dynamic marketing concepts. Here are the excerpts.
Leader’s Philosophy Led to Innovations and Creative Transformation
Can you name a person who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader?
I feel lucky, I have several remarkable people in my life that are leaders in their area of expertise, people whom I admire, respect and who have had a significant impact on my life and career. My grandmother was my best friend and a wise teacher in my life who guided me throughout my childhood. She was a 23-year-old student at the Medical University as the Great Patriotic War began and she immediately went to work in the hospital as a volunteer. My grandmother was a natural leader, a leader whom people loved, respected and followed. My grandmother’s personality positively influenced me developing my leadership qualities and my love of working with people.
Another person who had has a big impact on my personal leading qualities was my art teacher, an amazing Ukrainian fine artist. He is, for me, a great example of an intellectual leader, creator, and visionary whose philosophy of life led to innovations and creative transformations. His leadership skills were highly contagious and inspiring for me, the same as his ideology of understanding life and personal objectives. The lessons I learned from these people and other leaders, whom I have never met in person but read about and learned their life stories helped me to better understand my nature and personal abilities, gain confidence to follow my passion, keep my mind open to the new, and not be afraid to change my opinion if it no longer brings desired results.
The Trio Package of Qualities Responsible for Being the Game-Changer
What are the three qualities responsible for making you a game-changer of industry?
I don’t think that the qualities can be crumbled into just three but to answer your question precisely, and I had to name just three qualities that fuel my energy and help me run my business every day it would be my “three loves”—I love to help people express and communicate their passion for business. I love to take on new challenges and learn every day to constantly improve my skills. I love to be creative and bring beauty to people’s lives.
Crazy ideas fuelled with passion and expertise
What’s the craziest idea you’ve ever had and what did you do about it?
I think the craziest idea I ever had was to establish Art Fresh in the new country being a newcomer to Canada without any entrepreneurial experience. Without investors, partners, just based on my passion and expertise, eight years ago I decided to start my own business from scratch in a new country and I’m happy that I did it!
Creating Innovative Ideas That Sell and Develop A Comprehensive System
What is Art Fresh and what are the unique services you provide?
Art Fresh is a multi-award winning full-service branding studio that I founded in 2011 just after I moved to Prince Edward Island, Canada from Kyiv, Ukraine. The idea behind naming the studio as ‘Art Fresh’ was because of Father of Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Rosser Reeves’ statement that reflects our mission: “Advertising is the art of getting the Unique Selling Proposition into the heads of most people at the lowest possible cost.” This is what we strive to do every day for our clients, sharping our skills and knowledge working with new challenges. We build brands and manage them, we are focusing on marketing strategy, brand identity design, marketing communication and web design of any complexity. Our mission is to help businesses deliver to the consumer the idea, benefits, and passion that is implemented in the product or service using a power of creativity and fresh approach.
To brief about our services, we provide businesses with comprehensive marketing solutions that will help them generate revenue and will help more people improve their lives by using the offered products or services. We create ideas that sell and develop a wide-ranging system of interaction with the consumer in this new digital era.
Striving Every Day to Be the Best at What We Do for Our Clients
What do you think makes you stand out from the others in the market?
I think business is a sport and, like every team, we aim to win and want to be the leader in the market. The differentiator can be the fact that we love our work and we have a passion for continuously developing our professional skills to be better every day. Our creative team of like-minded professionals wants to be the best at what we do to deliver the most effective results for our clients. We have a strong passion and love to help businesses grow and succeed.
Also to add, my excellent teams’ hard work has been rewarded with Best of Show, Gold, Silver and two Bronze Medals at the Summit International Awards (USA) in 2013, 2018 and 2019, for marketing and creative projects. In addition, we were honored to be an A’Award Jury Member at the A’Design Award & Competition 2018, 2019 in Italy. We still continue to sharpen our marketing tools to develop a brand vision and methodology, to deliver new effective solutions to help our clients create big ideas and build powerful brands in the highly competitive environment where the world’s markets are merging.
Mentorship Can Be the Key to Leadership
Can you suggest any keys to developing the next generation of women leaders in the business world?
In my perspective, many women are born leaders, and it is difficult to be taught leadership skills if it is not in one’s nature. For those women who have such personal abilities, leadership skills can be significantly developed when they communicate with a seasoned leader, find their own passion for what they love to do and want to contribute to the community.
I believe that the living example of a passionate woman leader whom you can observe and learn from is the key to developing leadership skills and self-confidence in women, who dare to make their own contribution that will change the world for the better. So, mentorship, which is leaders who want to help young women entrepreneurs by sharing their own experience, ideas, and knowledge, I think, is the key to developing a new generation of women leaders in the business world.
