My name is Misha Seriakov, and my business is
making discoveries+
that help other businesses achieve better results.
Discoveries
Main buyer ignored
A new muscle and joint topical solution brand entered the market. The category was focusing on athletes and elder people. Yet the main buyer was an adult working woman. And she bought it for herself.
That discovery became the foundation of the communication strategy. We used the category entry points ignored by other brands, prioritized different touchpoints, and produced genuinely outstanding creatives.
The brand kept growing in sales, penetration, and distribution for more than five years in a very competitive market.
Tricky buyer overlaps
There are categories with very different buying patterns. Travel is one of those categories. Honeymoon travelers are very different from rich fishing enthusiasts, and showing a beautiful beach is not enough for either of them.
Another riddle is intenders vs actual goers overlap. There is a lot of wishful thinking in travel. Many audience-defining signals describe desire, not intention. With exotic travel a major part of this desire is never fulfilled.
Authenticity might be a trap
The brand went through a rebranding and adopted a new communication platform, which was heavily based on the ‘real people, genuine emotions, authentic situations.’
Brand recognition fell by ~40pp, ad recall plummeted, BHT metrics growth stopped.
Within three months the new DBAs roll out program was developed and launched, the brand recovered.
Rejection requires personalization
While personalization is a controversial topic, in some cases it is clearly needed. With a broad set of CEPs some audience segments might reject certain messages/offerings.
I observed 50% efficiency decline in education with mismatched message/segment pairs.
These discoveries are translated into
successful campaigns+.
Campaign cases
National grain brand
The brand developed ‘rice-for-pilaf’ line. I found the strongest celebrity in pilaf and convinced him to work with the brand.
The line became the best-selling line.
Flighting, optimal weight, partnership selection led to aided brand awareness growth by 42pp. Expertise metric growth by +10-15pp.
Pre-fabricated houses
Developed a model to cut extensive media spends.
Fixed the wear out problem (one of the rare cases with a real wear out problem, 20,000 GRPs per year).
No-approval campaign
Mass reach campaign built exclusively on content integrations.
All classic paid media formats were unavailable due to client’s origin country regulations.
Trading platform
Tailored a mass media campaign to drive high-value private investors audience.
Health
Set of campaigns for health brands: muscle and joint topical remedies, anti-inflammatory remedies, nasal congestion solutions.
Brand awareness growth up to +14pp.
I develop
tools, frameworks, and practices+
to make better decisions faster.
Tools, frameworks, practices
Test & Learn practice
Developed and rolled out test and learn practice for a brand with 100 integrated campaigns per year.
Knowledge exchange
Multiple teams working on multiple projects don’t necessarily share good and bad solutions with each other in the absence of dedicated procedure and space.
I led and successfully implemented cross-campaign knowledge retaining and application initiative.
Strategy division united
Led integration of creative, comms, media, research strategy together for a coherent practice/product.
Led Power-of-One initiative in strategy for a core client in Publicis. Built de-siloed strategy practice in an independent agency.
Stunt Evaluator
An automated template to quickly evaluate a potential of a collaboration, stunt, non-standard activation.
Designed to be filled in by a non-marketer within 10 minutes.
Campaign Blanks
Pre-made campaign structures for different verticals, campaign complexities, goal sets.
While each campaign should be unique, it doesn’t need to start from scratch.
Partnership Evaluator
An automated template to prioritize cross-category partnerships for an egrocery brand.
Led to a few seasonal product launches.
I make
simple games+
to illustrate how marketing works for educators and brands.
