How to Launch Successful Marketing Campaigns for Global Brands: Insights from Andrey Novikov

The marketing landscape is fiercely competitive, with everyone vying for the attention of international brands and a chance to build a strong reputation. These agencies’ triumph hinges on their leaders’ skills and willingness to adopt innovative and out-of-the-box strategies.

Andrey Novikov, the co-founder and CEO of Affect Group, offers a glimpse into how he propelled his agency to become one of the top players in Eastern Europe. He also shares his experiences in executing successful projects for globally recognized companies.

Successful Case Studies

International brands typically approach marketing agencies with global objectives, ranging from launching a new product line or revamping communications to refreshing their audience demographics. Occasionally, as Andrey points out, his team is also tasked with business objectives, such as boosting sales. The stringent demands of international companies mean that not every agency can handle such projects.

Andrey explains, “The defining characteristic of large clients is their market influence. They set the rules of the game. They can replace you instantly, as there’s a line of people eager to work with them on any terms. Therefore, it’s crucial to have streamlined processes, a professional team, and top-notch service at a price that the client will compare with the aforementioned queue.  To maintain a long-term relationship with such clients, you need to be flexible – not turning down projects due to lack of interest or resources at the moment, and sometimes even allowing yourself to operate at a loss. However, over time, you’ll see the client’s annual expenditure increase. And your collaborative projects will gain recognition at the most prestigious competitions,” he emphasises.

Andrey’s team has numerous such projects under their belt. One standout project – Game Fuel Adrenaline Rush – was executed for PepsiCo. The brand aimed to boost the product’s popularity among the gaming community. The team developed a platform where gamers could analyze their Steam accounts and compete for the title of the best. This project bagged the grand prize, gold and silver at the Silver Mercury International Festival of Advertising and Marketing Communications.

According to Andrey, “The project involved intricate mechanics – various engagement strategies and a host of mini-games that drew over 60,000 participants. The end result was an engaging interactive project that resonated with our audience. However, it’s important to note that an interactive component doesn’t always guarantee success and isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s not always necessary, especially for simple tasks that don’t require a burst of creativity or extensive resources. While it’s a common technique that can surprise both the target audience and the client, the project should be managed in a way that achieves the goal at minimal cost and meets KPIs.”

Affect has executed several successful projects for the Olmeca brand. For instance, the Olmeca Party Calls project won a silver Tagline Award and two Silver Mercury bronzes. Launched during the pandemic, the project catered to isolated people who still wanted to socialize. Leveraging bloggers and the brand’s social networks, Andrey’s team demonstrated that isolation wasn’t a barrier to online communication with friends.

Another project for the brand received high praise from the international Effie and Tagline Awards jury. The agency organized a large-scale event to celebrate the Mexican Day of the Dead. The event was promoted through top bloggers, online magazines, and social media. The offline event attracted 2,000 guests, while the digital coverage reached millions of users.

Andrey Novikov explains, “Blending online and offline activities is a common practice. The beauty of this approach is that you can create engaging content for a small audience on a limited budget, and still have it discussed by millions of people, both on social media and beyond. It’s a highly effective technique that often generates a wealth of user-generated content, helping to foster a closer connection with the audience. Offline, you can create anything from events and teleconferences to apparatus and socially significant actions. For instance, we had a project for a beverage manufacturer where we encouraged the audience to make bird feeders using juice boxes. Online, users could click a ‘Feed the Birds’ button and watch in real time as grain was dispensed.”

Charitable themes in marketing activities also resonate strongly. Affect’s “Share Warmth Together with SBP” project even won gold at the E+ Awards (formerly Effie Awards Russia). The client was a company that facilitates P2P payments via QR codes in the CIS countries, and the partner was a charity that cares for homeless animals. After careful strategic planning, Andrey’s agency decided to place QR codes in parks and at public transportation stops during winter, enabling people to donate any amount to help the animals. The campaign was also promoted on social media. As a result, not only did brand recognition significantly increase, but donations to the charity also multiplied.

The Key to Success

Today, Andrey Novikov’s company boasts a team of over 100 creative and marketing professionals. He has successfully assembled a team with a broad spectrum of competencies. Notably, Affect now has a large department dedicated to creating content of varying complexity.

” I firmly believe that to create unique creative content that resonates with audiences, brands, and professional juries, you need a diverse range of expertise within the agency. When multiple project specialists or representatives from several agencies are involved, the risk of the product losing its coherence increases. If your team encompasses various competencies, it’s easier to coordinate the creation of a comprehensive creative product where the creativity, mechanics, and communication aspects align with the Big Idea,” says Andrey Novikov.

According to him, a successful project requires the convergence of several factors. One of the most crucial is brand fit: if an idea is equally applicable to both the client’s brand and a competitor’s brand, the campaign is unlikely to be effective. Other key components include tapping into the audience’s insights, innovativeness, and the achievability of KPIs. Each client sets its own performance indicators, which shape the project’s content – for some, achieving a low cost per contact is important, while others prioritize executing a project that will win awards at festivals.

Significantly, Andrey’s agency has persuaded major brands to abandon ineffective performance indicators for digital campaigns. In fact, the team has revolutionized the approach to SMM KPIs. Rather than merely increasing the number of social media followers, who may not even engage with posts, the team focuses on other, more impactful metrics. For instance, they strive to create content that motivates audiences to make purchases and assess the contribution of social media to brand health.

“We’re currently spearheading another revolution in the promotion of B2B companies. As part of our unique workflow, we amalgamate a wealth of data from various providers and enhance it with artificial intelligence. This enables us to identify which factors will most effectively influence audience behavior in a given situation, and based on this data, propose mechanics and content that will ensure a high campaign outcome,” says the CEO of Affect Group.

The agency’s unique methodology is named after the agency itself for easy recall and to distinguish it from competitors – each letter in the acronym AFFECT represents a specific step. Andrey Novikov elaborates on each of these steps:

“A (Access). In this phase, we ascertain whether the brand has digital access to its audience and assist in identifying 100% of the target customers. We utilize databases such as Zoominfo, Seamless, etc., enrich the data, conduct a mashup of sites to determine where to effectively communicate with them, work with custom segments, and even professional communities.

F (Forecast). We then align media opportunities with business needs and current parameters. Before deciding to spend tens of thousands of dollars, we need to ensure it will be profitable for the business – that the ROI will be positive, considering LTV, average check, conversion to sales, average % profitability, and other business metrics. Only then can we commence strategy, content, and media planning.

F (Focus your message). At this stage, we decide how, what, and where to communicate with the selected audience to convert them into our customers. Typically, we create a sense of “ubiquity” with a narrow audience so that they feel like the best choice.

E (Experiment with small targeted spend). Here, we test various hypotheses (e.g., by segments, tools, messages we plan to use) to select the most effective ones in terms of cost per lead and number of leads.

C (Control digital marketing with strong analytics). In this phase, we refine the basic analytics, improve the synchronization of analytics with CRM if needed, retrain the business offices of the sites, etc.

T (Thrive by spending on the best ROI opportunities). Often, everything works on a small scale, but performance deteriorates when scaled up. That’s why we also devise a scaling strategy and do adaptation before launching a campaign.

Affect applies its unique competencies to the international market. After conquering Eastern Europe, Andrey’s company successfully expanded to the USA and is on the way to becoming one of America’s leading marketing agencies.

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