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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.

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

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.

Against the backdrop of a difficult situation in the hair care category, we faced an ambitious task: to bring Fructis out of the prolonged period of stagnation thanks to consumer rejuvenation. To achieve the goal, we worked with the most difficult audience for communication – Millenials.

Thanks to the insight developed on the basis of the specially conducted research, we brilliantly coped with the task set before us, which affected the results of the rebranding: the growth of the Fructis market share, the attraction of a new audience, most of which are girls under 35 years old.
Fructis relaunch is an example of a successful strategy built on the interaction of deep insights, vivid creativity, and exciting implementation.

tvlab – creative partner of the project.

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.

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.