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In 2023, the digital agency Piksel marked 10 years since its foundation. After firmly positioning itself on the market as a reliable partner for strategic, creative, and consulting solutions for the needs of companies from various industries, Piksel has grown into a full-service company that today includes digital and traditional marketing in its wide portfolio of services. Their creative solutions continuously attract the attention of local and regional audiences and the marketing professionals who join their team.
In this interview, we talk to the co-owners of Piksel: Filip Ristevski, Partner and General Manager, Vladimir Ristevski, Partner and Creative Director, and Dimitar Jovevski, Partner and General Business Development Director.
We talked with the three partners about the origins, the company mission and vision, their market strategy, the challenges they face during economic changes, and their creative identity and point of view on new trends and technologies. Along the way, we discovered how a digital marketing company transforms and grows in this market.
Filip, as a partner in charge of managing the company, you play a key role in its positioning in the market. Can you share the story of the initial capsule for the birth of the Piksel?
Filip: Piksel has two birthdays. 🙂 The first is related to the company registration in March 2011, when we had the idea of developing a digital product. In exactly two years of trying to come up with an MVP solution to offer on the market and working on several things simultaneously, we started receiving requests from our acquaintances to perform services in the digital sphere.
Back then, requests were based on content creation, managing profiles on social networks, and creating and maintaining web pages, as services that gained momentum at the time.
In such a situation, we naturally saw the need for a company to appear on the market that, instead of being product-oriented, would focus on offering digital services from the sphere of marketing, design, and development. This ties in with the second birthday of Piksel, April 1, 2013, when we started operating as a service company. That’s the official “birthday” we celebrated last year.
But what is most important in the story of the “birth” of Piksel is the core drive – to make something of our own that will be recognized and work in the way that my partners and I would like it to work. A healthy working environment focused on people and an offer for customers as an added value in digital services.
The decade was marked by serious economic tectonic shifts, including the pandemic, an effect that was strongly felt in your industry. Despite the enormous financial challenges, as a company you managed not only to stabilize and cushion the effects but also to continue business growth and development. How did you manage this?
Filip: As a company that works with many clients on the domestic market, we face different challenges than those that do their business on the world market. Maybe we were a little lucky that until that moment we were more focused on digital services. During the pandemic these were the types of services that companies had to develop to survive in the market. Accordingly, we had somewhat of an advantage over those who offered mostly traditional services, primarily in marketing and design.
Thanks to the attitude that investments are made in times of crisis, we managed to grow during this period and not only to double but also to triple the number of employees and revenues. We entered with an offer of more traditional activities at the request of satisfied customers. This positioned us as a different company in the Macedonian market, offering a wide portfolio of digital and traditional services.
Over the years, although primarily functioning as a digital marketing agency, Piksel has grown into a full-service company that includes both digital and traditional marketing in its full portfolio of services. Did this merger come about spontaneously or was it the subject of a development strategy?
Dimitar: Spontaneity is a feature of short-termism, and strategy is a feature of planning. As we matured as a company, over the years we developed business units that we felt were necessary for the new era and the technological progress of the company’s operations.
Today, under one roof, we have 3 business units closely related to each other and at the client’s service to help them advance in their digital maturity through software development, design (UI&UX), and marketing (traditional and digital).
In the field of marketing, our key expertise is in the field of digital technologies. But today in the marketing sphere, an integrated/multi-channel approach to end consumers is crucial, and this is precisely the area where we plan to invest and develop in 2024.
Vladimir, as creative director and partner, your vision plays a key role in the company’s business success. Can you share the creative strategies that have helped Piksel develop its creative signature that also receives regional accolades?
My role in shaping Piksel’s creative vision involves a multifaceted strategy, in which our desire for growth and scalability plays a key role. Whenever we encounter “still waters” we know it’s time to make a change. And we, as business managers, usually start the changes with our training and improvement, which has so far proven to be a successful formula.
That is why we also invest in training the team with which we jointly recognize and apply permanent trends. Our work mantra is simple: first, we must believe in our ideas, then we shape them according to the project’s needs in Piksel style, and finally, we present them to our clients.
In this process, our key guides are the lessons learned from previous projects and campaigns. But we don’t stop there, we are open to learning from other people’s lessons. That’s why we are often present at various events, visit successful companies abroad, and cooperate with consultants.
Piksel’s diverse culture also permeates our work with clients, with whom we build strong relationships through a different, consultative approach. Their trust helps us work actively on their positioning towards the external public and on improving internal processes through digitization and automation.
What is your message for the future, not only for Piksel but for the entire industry, one helpful piece of advice to share regarding reaching digital maturity?
Filip: I would advise companies that use development, marketing, and design services. That is to be more courageous and relaxed in accepting what comes as a proposal from us who are on the other side of the process. Us, who offer services. Our goal is to see our customers succeed in the market, so they should not be afraid to accept innovations from experts who are there for them.
Vladimir: The sooner you start learning a digital skill, the sooner you will realize the beauty and necessity of it. You don’t need to be an expert in everything, it’s enough to know where to start. It’s easier when you understand things and have a vision. Then all you have to do is reach out to us. 🙂
Dimitar: From an individual point of view – never stop learning and working on your personal development. And from a business point of view, I am convinced that synergy is always greater than individualism!
