How to properly look at a brand and why any creative without this "exercise" is unpredictable — we tell on the example of the case of the Ukrainian agency Brain Tank, which solved the problem of increasing the per capita for the Uzbek chips brand Cheers.

"If you want to create effective advertising campaigns, learn to work with the essence of the brand" — Andrii Franchuk, Creative Director of Brain Tank.

The team from Kyiv started working on an advertising campaign by looking into Cheers at the brand model level and reassembling it from scratch, taking into account a voluminous research data set.

As a result of the brand's reconstruction, the brand's target audience, in addition to sociodemographic and behavioral dimensions, received a psychological dimension with a predictable set of attributes and a "methodology" for working with it. At the same time, the audience was localized to the maximum, taking into account the peculiarities of Uzbek teenagers who tend to achieve, think concretely, and dream of specific achievements.

How to take advantage of this? From the point of view of psychology, adolescence is a crisis that carries a finite amount of experiences. These include natural experiences such as fear of the dark, illness, and death, as well as social ones such as fear of communication, non-compliance with others, and fear of rejection.

The situation is ambiguous. On one hand, the brand's target audience is achievers, but they are inhibited by a teenage fear of taking the first step, which hinders them from actually achieving. On the other hand, the brand Cheers, in addition to excellent product characteristics, has a sincere desire to be valuable to its audience.

Universal physiological mechanisms inherent to the sapiens species since the invention of language come to the rescue. In 90% of cases, if you see a person yawning, you yourself want to yawn, right? This is how a smile works too. By smiling yourself, you can instinctively make another person smile.

The smile as a key has fit nicely into history for several reasons. People love to smile. At the same time, the physical process of smiling also allows for the release of inner tension. Thus, thanks to the smile, the Cheers brand helped a teenager take the "dangerous" first step towards socialization and future achievements.

The campaign message became a call to action: "Cheerzani — and everything will work out!", where "Cheerzani" is a neologism created from the brand name and a verb ending that calls for action. Cheerzani — try, act, and achieve your goal. In Uzbek, the slogan sounds like "Cheersillat va hammasini eplaysan!"

In the final analysis, the consumer felt understood and responded to it in kind. The brand is satisfied. The agency is happy.

And creative director, Andrii Franchuk, reminds us not to overlook the fact that "working with the essence of a brand is a process of defining the 'shelf' in which the brand will be placed in the consumer's mind. The success of any campaign depends heavily on how closely this 'shelf' resembles reality."