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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.

In 2022 Visa, like other responsible brands, reevaluated its priorities, focusing efforts and resources on support. The company created a non-commercial platform that served as a forum for the coordinated efforts of Visa’s social initiatives and its partners, arising in response to numerous simultaneous needs.

The establishment of the Brands Who Care enabled the consolidation of media channels, businesses, foundations, and those needing assistance for effective aid and support. Visa directed its communication investments to support the platform, emphasizing timely messages on areas requiring immediate assistance. The campaign was created by the Saatchi & Saatchi Ukraine team.

To achieve maximum visibility, the initiatives were presented as Brands who care, rather than directly under the Visa name, which facilitated more effective interaction with the audience. The project garnered significant reach, with over 50,000,000 contacts.

Since the launch of the first collaborations, over 20 initiatives have been organized, and over 80 million hryvnias have been raised. Brands who care community continue to thrive and evolve as a community of socially responsible brands.

The celebration of Kyivstar’s 25th anniversary was supposed to be the highlight of 2022. However, due to the war, traditional approaches to business and media planning no longer worked.

In the realities of full-scale war, Kyivstar reduced its media budgets by 30%. Consumer behavior changed, but the positioning of the brand “Human Connection” became even more relevant. The campaign for a new tariff for the 25th anniversary with the option of donations for the army was launched as a special crisis solution in wartime to save the lives of Ukrainian defenders and literally restore human connections in the de-occupied cities. The key challenge was optimizing the media support of the campaign.

The basis of the planning was Big Data from previous campaigns. Based on this, we created a new approach to planning, using econometric attribution modeling of users’ actual actions. Our data-driven strategy led to a significant shift in the TV and digital media split from 70/30 to a more effective 35/65. We managed to identify the most influential communication methods, thus increasing the amount of direct communication (SMS, push notifications, etc.) and additionally the share of display components in digital tools due to its economic efficiency and higher conversion rates in donation activations.

For continuous tracking of results and accuracy, we created live dashboards.

Results:

x2.5 Activation of the superpower “Helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine”

+20 p.p. Contribution to the restoration of Ukraine

+4 p.p. Brand connection

+4 p.p. Market leadership in mobile communications

Kyivstar gain first place in the fragmented market of the fixed Internet and become “visible” for the non-beneficial algorithms of the search algorithm. Instead of classic SEO-approaches the brand left the template and optimized the landing page for each city and town, where there is a physical possibility of Kyivstar to provide the fixed Internet.

Experimental “local” tactics in SEO increased the visibility of Kyivstar’s fixed Internet in the first positions of organic search results by 3.5 times. Brand №1 has now caught up with itself in the search.

This case received Bronze Award in E-Commerce category at Effie Awards Ukraine.

At a time when the conventional approach is used in customer communication in the category of chocolate bars, we have managed to find our own viable solution – personalized communications with individual segments of a wide target audience. And this is what has delivered fantastic results – our market share has grown over as many as three months for the first time since the beginning of the lockdown. We have chosen to work on five segments that cover the majority of a wide audience aged 16-35. That said, however, we managed to appeal to each of them individually, to become closer and more relevant to their particular preferences. We have developed tailored solutions for each of them: packing, messages, media support, opinion leaders, and presents that meet interests. As a result, everyone had the opportunity to feel like a king in what this particular person was interested in. All these efforts have resulted in heightened attention, engagement in communication, and the main result – fantastic performance indicators!

Challenge: To check the decline in the brand’s market share by means of highly relevant communication that engages the audience.

Insight: While everyone else in the category is working with a wide audience (16 to 35), we can pave our own way of segmentation and personalization of the message.

Idea: Lion encourages you to feel like a king (Lion) in what you are interested in.

Bringing the Idea to Life: Tailored solutions for each of the five selected segments: from packing and message to communication channels and targeting.

Results: An increase in the market share by 1.7 percent after the start of the campaign due to the high engagement in communication.

This is a showcase of how Lenovo, a hi-tech electronics brand, thinks not only about the functional features of its products, but also takes care of both product usage conditions and client’s comfort.

Creating of Lenovo Meowbook – laptop for cats – added more emotions into the user-brand relationships as well as highlighting such a problem as ‘device damaging from cat’s fur’ which became communicative innovation in this category.

Virus orientation, originality, and non-standard merging of high technologies and additional customer care allowed Lenovo to be organically discussed in media and got 9.5 million impressions.

Every year, before the Children’s Day, the Tabletochki Charity Foundation, together with Leo Burnett, launches fundraising campaigns for the treatment of children with cancer. These actions are so periodic that it is becoming increasingly difficult to reach people.

For 2020, the fund has set a MEGAGOAL in general: to shoot a video for a digital campaign that will raise a million hryvnias! And this at a time when people, in addition to the fate of cancer patients, were also worried about the virus, lockdown, uncertainty, unemployment… Additional condition: the foundation wanted to show in the video a real child who beat cancer thanks to philanthropists.

We have developed a script for the video. The main role was played by a former ward of the foundation – 9-year-old Artem. He became proof of the effectiveness of care and a symbol of a possible happy ending.

For 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.