Work we are
proud of

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.

The research data from the Pace panel of Publicis Groupe Ukraine shows that only 19% of Ukrainians are willing to talk about their mental health. This is a relatively low figure, given that we are constantly under stress due to the war. Among the youth aged up to 35 years, as many as 40% experience fatigue and susceptibility to anxiety and depression.

Maybelline NY is not just a brand of decorative cosmetics but a lovemark for the youth, taking on a responsible social mission to support its audience in challenging times. In partnership with the charity foundation UA Mental Help, they launched the BraveTogether project, a psychological support initiative for youth.

It helps young people understand themselves and find ways to cope with various life issues. Through a hotline and a chatbot on Telegram, qualified psychological assistance is made accessible to everyone. Brand ambassadors – thought leaders of the young audience – have joined the project. The Zenith Ukraine team took charge of spreading information about the project.

For communication with the youth, digital channels were selected, and relevant Telegram channels, podcasts, and PR articles were chosen to thoroughly explain its capabilities to everyone. This media mix was crafted considering the high level of trust in personalities and resources, as well as the audience’s preferences in media consumption.

The chosen strategy worked excellently; more than 85% of our target audience (~4.1 million) learned about the Brave Together project. But most importantly, during the campaign period, there were over 16 000 unique interactions with the chatbot and through hotline. And the most crucial achievement is that 400+ people were trained to react in stress and about mental health.

To be continued…

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

The “Finance” category was rapidly declining, and the client set an ambitious goal – to increase website traffic from organic search by 80%, to increase the number of applications for the top 6 products by at least 2 times (+100%), and to increase the average monthly revenue per consumer of these products by at least 20% in the category.

We predicted the formation of pent-up demand in this category and, using AI technology, discovered the opportunity to cover a wider range of search queries to attract more potential clients.

We planned an unconventional SEO tactic “To search as they search” – create a website specifically for service consumers and optimize it based on how they search. It worked wonders in scaling PrivatBank’s presence in organic search results.

We conducted a detailed analysis of search queries based on the principle of “search as they search,” created new pages on the website according to them, generated ideas for relevant content using AI, and promoted these pages using links.

We exceeded the website traffic goal by 89% and the application submissions for the top 6 products by 96%, but more importantly – we increased the average revenue from the top 6 products by 28%, surpassing the average annual inflation rates in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, Pride events do not have a long history. COVID-19 in 2020 made it even more difficult, as all Pride events were canceled and switched to online, which reduced the audience dramatically. Online involves only LGBTQ+ activists. Offline Pride events are a moment of visibility for a wide audience. KyivPride and Saatchi & Saatchi had a difficult task – during a pandemic they needed a campaign that spread online Pride events across the country.

We hacked the tallest European statue, the iconic Motherland Monument, with the help of drones and the Dronarium Ukraine team we attached a huge rainbow flag to its sword in real-time. The statue’s symbolism was transformed – from the protection of Soviet values to human rights protection and raising awareness of gender equality. It was an upside-down shift in symbolism that immediately resonated with society.

The task was to make our Pride event visible in Kyiv during COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. But our stunt made Kyiv’s Pride visible all over the world with more than 100 million impressions in the first three days. The Motherland Monument stunt was recognized as the EVENT OF THE YEAR in Ukraine & Eastern Europe.

The Motherland Pride won several awards in the biggest world festivals on creativity and efficiency, such as Effie Awards Ukraine 2021, Cannes Lions 2021 and 2022, Andy Awards 2021, Golden Drum 2021, AD Stars 2021, D&D 2022, and The One Show 2022.

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.

The Ukrainian Creative Awards festival took place in Odesa from May 29 to June 1. It is a large-scale event in the creative market of the country, which brings together the most ideological and inspired creative people. Creativity is their natural way of life, so we believe that such people are the real driving force that can change the world. Thus was born our idea for the advertising campaign of the festival “Creativity — Ukrainian national idea”, thanks to which the creative flair in itself could be discovered and supported by everyone.

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.