Mikhail Lelikov

Mikhail Lelikov is a branding expert with more than 20 years of professional experience. He is the Owner and Creative Director of Opencore, the founder of We Branding, Russia's largest professional branding community, and the creator of Lemon Branding, the country's largest Russian-language YouTube channel for branding agency clients.

His expertise covers the entire branding process—from consumer research and brand strategy development to creating comprehensive verbal and visual identity systems. Throughout his career, he has worked with leading Russian and international companies, including PepsiCo, L'Oréal, Alfa-Bank, Avito, Rosatom, Inter RAO, Capital Group, HeadHunter, Acronis, Medsi, and many others.

Mikhail serves as a jury member and jury chairman of the Silver Mercury Festival, is a speaker and jury member at the Higher School of Branding, a lecturer at Yandex Practicum and the international creative school MADS, and a regular speaker at major industry conferences and forums.

Under his leadership, Opencore has become a multiple Silver Mercury award winner. In 2025, the agency was recognized as Russia's No. 1 agency for new brand development and ranked among the Top 15 branding agencies in Russia according to the national Sostav ranking.