In November 2023, Ukraine celebrated the 10th anniversary of the start of the Revolution of Dignity – an event that significantly influenced the country’s development trajectory.
However, even after 10 years and a full-scale invasion there is still a barrier of misunderstanding between Ukrainians and Europeans. On one hand, most EU citizens agree with the statement that “Ukraine should join the EU when ready.” At the same time, russian propaganda portrays Ukraine as an incapable state and works to sow division within the EU.
A step towards overcoming this barrier of mutual understanding was to be a joint symbolic communication campaign that through the example of the Revolution of Dignity would demonstrate that Ukrainians feel and share European values. Given the tendency to avoid news about Ukraine in Germany, especially negative ones, the campaign aimed to facilitate the publication of quality materials that would reveal context and convey embedded messages.
Since Europeans do not completely believe that they are similar with Ukrainians, perhaps it is worth communicating our common values through the universal language of humanity. It sounds “right” and is understood in various social contexts worldwide. And that language is music.
During the Revolution of Dignity music united, supported, and inspired. Blue and yellow piano “Ukraine” not only served as a musical instrument but also became a physical and symbolic barrier between forces and peaceful protesters. Considering the deep symbolism of the piano the Publicis Ukraine and MSL Ukraine team proposed to create a cultural event alongside another symbolic monument, but for Germans, the iconic Brandenburg Gate.
The culmination of the event was the performance of the EU anthem “Ode to Joy,” in a four-hand rendition as a poignant symbol of Ukraine’s inevitable accession to the European family.
The campaign generated over 50 publications in leading German media, including online, print, and 11 features on major TV channels. The total non-unique publication coverage exceeded 486,100,000, with unique coverage reaching 40,500,000 — all without any media investments. Additionally, the event served as a platform for conveying important messages by official figures.
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53% of Ukraine’s economy depends on food and agricultural exports. Today, landmines occupy 30% of our land, which is twice the size of Portugal. Without global assistance, it will take decades to make it safe. Countless agricultural fields remain dangerous. People can’t work there.
The Minefields Honey Project ‒ the mix of nature and tech helps us to create a product that was never meant to exist by turning unsafe areas into flourishing gardens for symbolic honeymaking.
Personnel limited edition jars with details about our issue became a diplomatic tool and were given directly to influential people. The harvested honey became an invitation to fundraising events for Ukraine’s demining. The first 55 personnel jars were presented at special economic events such as World Economic Forum (Davos) and, USA-Ukraine Partnership Forum (Washington D.C.).
For now, the project has resulted in 175 000 000 impressions and numerous headlines with zero budget investments. It also received awards in huge international festivals such as Cannes Lions, KIAF, and others.
In 2024, Saatchi & Saatchi Ukraine, Kernel Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, and the Union of Beekeepers of Ukraine gathered the new honey harvest to ensure the project’s continuation.
read morePodorozhnyk is one of the TOP-5 pharmacy chains in Ukraine. The brand is growing rapidly, therefore, it needs an update that would reflect its fresh essence, advantages, and values.
The Publicis Ukraine team has rethought the brand identity and key message for the new Podorozhnyk. This is how the slogan appeared: “Podorozhnyk. Knows that helps”. It is based on two main brand advantages. On one hand, the brand has the necessary competencies, knowledge, experience, and resources to tell the client which drugs would be helpful in a specific case. On the other hand, Podorozhnyk cares about its client, offering high-quality drugs with no fakes. Also provides regular discount programs: “Quality available to everyone”, and provides additional services such as “Doctor at the pharmacy” etc.
Then the agency team updated the logo. Over the past years, Podorozhnyk has managed to build brand awareness, so when working with the visual component, it was important to maintain continuity, while reflecting updates and modernizing it. Thus, the recognizable medical cross and plantain leaf were visually rethought in the main green color. They merged into a single entity, where the significant element of the sign is linked to the corresponding word in the logo by color: the cross to the word pharmacy and the leaf to the Podorozhnyk. The logo has become concise and simple to understand, and the font has become lighter, neater, and more open.
read moreCan selfies overcome cancer? Children with it have a 90% chance of recovery. But only when they are provided with the necessary treatment. In Ukraine, due to lack of funding and social problems, this figure is much lower, so online donations are very important. Together with Tabletochki Charity Foundation, we decided to increase the number of such donations, making selfies less selfish. That’s how the #MoneyCanChallenge came about.
The participant “complemented” his face in the photo with a portrait from a banknote donated to the Tabletochki and passed the call to friends. The flash mob was picked up by users and brands, making it one of the main TV news in the country. Tabletochki raised a considerable amount of money for charity at no cost, turning the instrument of love for oneself into an instrument of love for others.
read moreIn the category of chocolate bars, where the brand is chosen emotionally and standing near the shelf, we work with a young audience of 16-24 years old. This generation least of all trusts advertising and selects the brands that it really loves, considers cool and relevant in its philosophy.
Our task was to find a massive territory for communication on which the brand would look organically. And we have chosen for ourselves the cybersport, which is polarized among young people and is actively developing. But what we needed was involving emotional communication. Therefore, we became the first sponsor of the bars of the Kyiv tournament on the mega-popular game in Ukraine – Dota 2.
Thanks to the native integration into the tournament itself, as well as large-scale support with the announcement, we were able to not only reach and engage the audience but also achieve our goals.
read moreFor years the Chewing Gum category was represented by 2 leading brands: Orbit and Dirol. Orbit was a prominent player both in media investments and sales. Meanwhile, Dirol was #2 brand and eventually fell into the stasis where ad investment maintained the existing level of brand awareness while losing its positions in brand usage, consideration, and market share. Yet, Dirol decided to refresh its positioning and appeal to a younger audience – Generation Z.
Looking for an interesting youth territory we came upon bloggers trend. A big part of the audience is not only interacting with blogger content but dreaming of becoming one. Willing to help people with video content we created a Dirol Blogger Academy. Participants of the project had the possibility to learn how to become a blogger with special lessons from popular influencers, and the winner got 1 mln. views on Youtube for promotion of personal channel.
This project reflected the audience’s dreams vowed prominent brand slogan “Dirol. Inspires with taste” and positively affected brand sales.
read moreIssuing new active payment cards with many transactions is becoming more and more difficult every year when it comes to a large bank. Standard audience targeting tools no longer work.
Thanks to the psychographic segmentation of the target audience, done with the help of partners, we were able to reach a new level of personalization. As a result, we improved our media metrics, got more active customers who made more transactions, determined which segments performed better and applied our knowledge to optimize our next campaigns.
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Pandemic is a hard time for people: we are flooded by bad news and sad thoughts. We all need a source of calmness and harmony during these times.
Therefore we created a new philosophy “Take it smoothie”, which helps to deal with bad moods and tough problems.
We used only social networks to promote our campaign and created bright content, interesting copy, and super cool Insta-masks.
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