Mikhail Rakov

Mikhail Rakov is a Chief Creative Director with a focus on creative concepting and copywriting at Tastes like Blue agency based in Armenia. Initially, he was supposed to become an art director due to his two degrees in Architecture & Design and Art History. However, in the end, he decided to get a third degree as a journalist and started his career as a creative copywriter and storyteller.

With his collaboration, the agency built a solid creative reputation and won its very first Cannes Lion (in less than one year of the agency's existence) and dozens of other prizes and awards at festivals around the world. At the same time, Mikhail works at a couple of magazines dedicated to art where he writes articles about contemporary art and interviews famous contemporary artists such as Liu Bolin, Magnus Muhr, David Walker, Francoise Nielly, and many others.

With over 15 years of experience in advertising, design, branding, and digital, working with different brands and with multi-disciplinary teams, he has been creating award-winning works for local and global clients such as MasterCard, T-Systems, DHL, UnicreditBank, Total, Scania, Auchan, Orange, etc. Many of his works won some important awards worldwide, such as Cannes Lions (2023/2017), Epica Awards (the first award for copywriting & storytelling in Russia), Luerzers Archive, Red Dot, Red Apple, KMRF, ADCR, White Square, Idea, and many others.

After Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022, Mikhail did an anti-war project which was spread with the most influential opposition Russian media and newspapers, and won a Bronze Lion at Cannes Lions 2023. After this was forced to leave Russia for Armenia.