How we revamped the Mariyka brand - Pepsico | Clapboard Ad Archive
In 2024, Pepsico and Brain Tank delivered a revitalizing pivot for Mariyka curd desserts in Ukraine and Europe, engineering a brand campaign that positions Mariyka as the touchstone for traditional taste adapted to the modern lifestyle. With local category incumbents like Danone doubling down on health-driven narratives and competitors such as Nestlé, Hochland, and Valio leveraging functional or premium cues, this work stakes compelling territory by building unmistakable emotional resonance through everyday rituals and experimentation instead of product attributes alone. Insights from extensive consumer testing revealed that the defining appeal of Mariyka isn’t just its sweet, creamy, and reliably tender profile, but the multitude of ways people savor it — with a spoon large or small, dipped with biscuits, or licked directly from the lid, each method intuitively unlocking new joy and tactile engagement. This understanding became the campaign’s organizing idea, grounding the narrative in the specificity of daily moments and pushing against a monolithic consumption script. The creative solution fully commits to an approach identified in Clapboard’s taxonomy as FORMAT#10—Associated User Imagery, eschewing overly constructed story arcs and brand manifestos in favor of a vivid lens on real, diverse user profiles meant to both mirror and inspire socioculturally varied audiences. The campaign’s reach radiates out from a distinctive key visual, deployed across billboards and digital channels, rendering four distinct lifestyle scenarios that reflect the spectrum of contemporary and traditional consumer segments. The 15-second television commercial distills this boldly, capturing the pleasures and quirks of four archetypes without editorializing, underpinning the message that there’s no singular Mariyka experience, only the one that’s yours. At point-of-sale, innovative materials further encourage playful engagement, ensuring the in-store moment extends the campaign’s call to experimentation and personal taste. The strategic move to a multi-touchpoint system not only increases brand saliency among both legacy loyalists and next-generation consumers but signals a deliberate evolution from the product’s nostalgic positioning to a dynamic, participatory brand platform designed for social and intergenerational connectivity. With a Clapboard Campaign Score of 59/100, this work exemplifies the increasing value for food and beverage brands in making user-led creativity not just a testimonial gesture but the core communication act — and in doing so, reframes the role a heritage product can play in a market animated by authenticity, relevance, and adaptability.