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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.

For over 100 years, Carol of the Bells has been synonymous with Christmas. However, many people are unaware that this iconic song originated from Ukraine. Mykola Leontovych, a Ukrainian composer, arranged a traditional Ukrainian folk song into the version we know today, in 1914.

To aid Ukrainian children affected by war, we transformed the beloved Carol of the Bells into 

a donation platform using Shazam. The new version of the song, titled Carol for Charity, encourages listeners to Shazam itself and donate for children’s needs with just a few clicks.

“Carol for Charity” went viral in 11 countries. With the help of Publicis Groupe teams worldwide, it was featured on 22 radio stations and integrated directly into Christmas movies via bumper ads. Media and TV coverage further boosted the project’s popularity, leading to the song being played over 1,000,000 times. 

The project received numerous awards at prestigious festivals such as Cannes Lions, LIA Awards, Mad Stars, The One Show, and Golden Drum.

Advertising for bread producers is usually a rare occurrence, as they typically do not heavily invest in communication projects. However, in recent years, ‘Tsar Khlib’ has broadened its product range, gained confidence, and made the decision: it’s time to take action.

Leo Burnett follows its own philosophy – HumanKind. This philosophy revolves around the desire to find a perfect balance that benefits both the brand and the individual. To achieve this, one must have a deep understanding of both sides. And what better way to showcase a brand than through its production process? Thus, the team gathered and embarked on a visit to the ‘Tsar Khlib’ factory to witness everything firsthand.

Before diving into the brainstorming session, it is crucial to explore how consumers perceive the brand’s products and the overall category. With insights from the client and the Publicis Groupe Data Science team, it was revealed that ‘Tsar Khlib’ holds a place as one of many consumers’ ‘favorite brands.’ However, a significant portion of the audience had not yet noticed the brand, simply regarding it as ‘just bread.’ The team also discovered that consumers prioritize bread quality, appreciating naturalness and taste. Even in everyday meals, Ukrainians enjoy treating themselves, turning a modest meal into a culinary delight. This behavior was coined as ‘everyday gourmets.’

This led to the development of a new brand platform called ‘Craftsmanship Tastes,’ emphasizing the key product attributes valued by consumers – quality and taste.

In transparent communication, it is not only essential to declare but also to demonstrate and convince consumers that these principles are reflected in the product manufacturing processes. Hence, a section named ‘Our Rules’ was created. This segment explains the bread-making process and why it yields such delicious results. Through engaging videos, viewers are provided with insights into daily practices, often imperfect, juxtaposed with the solid principles that ‘Tsar Khlib’ adheres to in product creation. Each rule represents a production insight, revealing the truth about the product while offering valuable and interesting information about its benefits.

To ensure the effectiveness of creative campaigns and boost sales, it is vital to establish communication channels correctly. Fortunately, the skilled professionals from PMX Publicis Groupe Ukraine expertly targeted advertising efforts in Kyiv and the surrounding region. The outcome was promising – awareness of ‘Tsar Khlib’ and its product range began to surge.

Collaborating with technologists, production staff, and the agency’s brand team, around 100 ‘rules’ were compiled, encapsulating the secrets of ‘Tsar Khlib’s’ craftsmanship. Stay tuned to the brand’s communications to uncover more hidden production insights.

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.

Molokija has found the solution in the situation with a quite limited advertising budget and persistently strong competitors’ activity. The Brand has stood out and found its own communication niche in the category.

Rebranding has been conducted, which led to changes in product packaging so that the product ingredients are now the most important highlighted detail. The aforementioned changes along with elaborately planned cross-media activity led us to the significant increase in OFF-TAKE indexes. As a result, both the White Yoghurt and Kefir became No. 1 in terms of market share in hryvnias as well as in tonnages in the period from February till May 2021.

In 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.

We faced a challenge to break into the everyday life of people with a new product Kabanosy – long, thin sausages made from natural meat, positioned in between the meat-sausage and snack category. Until 2019 the product was unknown to both Ukrainian customers and distributors. Retail shops didn’t understand in which division the product should be sold, customers were puzzled whether to make sandwiches or eat Kabanosy with beer.

New product inspired us for a new approach for mixing media channels. We turned the classical media mix upside down and developed “DigiVision”, where digital plays a leading role in generating reach and TV is playing a secondary role. Non-standard and effective usage of media allowed Kabanosy to become a leader of the category of Snack and Meat products with minimal investment and significantly grew monthly sales.

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.