Cherkashin Meat Factory Bets on the Subconscious to Sell Smoked Ham
Cherkashin Meat Factory's 'Choice' is a 2018 Russian film campaign created by ad agency Voskhod that uses surreal, psychologically charged visual narrative to position the brand's smoked ham as the product of bold, daring emotion rather than everyday domestic routine.
Released in Russia in October 2018, the campaign centres on a single film asset in which a protagonist moves through two contrasting psychological worlds — one vivid and daring, associated with smoked sausage, the other calm and domestic, associated with cooked sausage. The structure is not accidental. According to Voskhod agency, the creative concept was directly informed by neurovisual research linking smoked meat products to heightened, adventurous emotion and cooked alternatives to settled, quieter feeling. Rather than leading with flavour or heritage, the campaign asks viewers to locate their own personality inside the choice between two products. The result is a piece of Food and Drink advertising that operates at the level of subconscious identity rather than rational preference.
The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting a creative execution that demonstrates genuine strategic ambition and formal originality while operating within the production realities of regional Russian advertising in 2018. No verified records of award wins or finalist placements at Cannes Lions, the Clio Awards, D&AD, The One Show, the Effie Awards, or WARC Awards are publicly available, according to Clapboard. The work nonetheless represents a purposeful and architecturally coherent approach to brand differentiation in one of Russia's most fragmented consumer categories, and it stands as a notable example of narrative-led strategy from a regional ad agency applying research-driven craft to a local Food and Drink brief.
Russia's processed meat category presented a hostile strategic environment for any regional brand in 2018. According to Infoline, the Russian sausage and processed-meat market was highly fragmented, with the five largest companies holding slightly more than a combined twenty percent share — meaning the overwhelming majority of the market was distributed across a long tail of smaller producers, of which Cherkashin Meat Factory was one. In this environment, rational product claims carry little weight; differentiation must be perceptual.
Voskhod's response was to anchor the campaign's strategy not in product attributes but in subconscious associations. According to the agency, neurovisual research had established a clear emotional distinction between smoked and cooked sausage products in the minds of Russian consumers — smoked products triggering vivid, daring feelings, cooked products associated with domestic calm. Rather than claim superiority over competitors on taste or quality, the campaign invited consumers to self-select into the smoked category on the basis of personality and emotional identity. This approach is particularly well suited to a fragmented market where large rivals such as Cherkizovo Group — which, according to Mega Research, held an estimated Russian sausage-product market share of more than six and a half percent at the time, making it one of the dominant players — compete primarily through distribution scale and brand familiarity. A smaller brand cannot win that fight directly. Cherkashin's strategic move was to bypass it entirely, addressing the consumer's sense of self rather than their product checklist. The neurovisual insight became the strategic spine of a campaign that treated Food and Drink advertising as a form of psychological positioning.
The creative execution of 'Choice' is built around a single film that moves a protagonist through two fully realised, stylistically distinct psychological spaces. Each world is designed to embody an emotional register rather than a product feature — the smoked world rendered in heightened, kinetically charged visual language, the cooked world in softer, more settled tones. The contrast is not illustrative but experiential: the viewer is meant to feel the difference before they consciously name it, activating the subconscious associations that the neurovisual research had identified.
According to Voskhod agency, the campaign was produced with the following credited team: creative director Andrey Gubaydullin led the project, with copywriters Georgij Kornilov and Anton Rozhin responsible for the narrative and scripting. Sound design and overall design direction were handled by Mikhail Kokorin, lending the film its distinct tonal architecture. Production was carried out by SKBD SH, with post-production supervised by Ilya Linetsky — whose work in building the two contrasting visual environments is central to the campaign's communicative effect. The decision to deliver the entire campaign as a single film asset reflects both a focused creative brief and the production economics common to regional Russian advertising in 2018. Rather than fragmenting the idea across formats, Voskhod concentrated all craft energy into one cohesive narrative experience. The surrealist register chosen for 'Choice' is relatively rare in Russian Food and Drink advertising, where the category default tends toward warmth, family imagery, and appetite-driven visuals. By departing from that convention, the campaign creates immediate distinctiveness — the first and often most durable form of competitive advantage available to a brand without dominant market presence.
No verified performance data for the 'Choice' campaign is publicly available. According to Clapboard, no confirmed sales lift, market-share movement, or brand-tracking results have been documented in connection with this work. This absence is consistent with the broader landscape of regional Russian advertising from 2018, where campaign measurement data rarely enters the public record.
Structural analysis of the campaign's likely effectiveness, however, points to several genuine strengths. The neurovisual research foundation — cited by Voskhod agency — gives the creative work a strategic legitimacy that purely intuitive executions lack; the emotional bifurcation of smoked and cooked products provides a durable and ownable positioning platform rather than a campaign-specific execution. The single-film format ensures undiluted creative impact. Against these strengths, the Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100 reflects real limitations. A score at this level typically signals creative ambition that is not fully resolved in execution — where the strategic idea is clear and defensible but the film itself does not achieve the full emotional force or craft precision that the concept demands. In a market context described by Infoline as highly fragmented, with the leading players commanding only modest aggregate share, the campaign's identity-based positioning strategy is architecturally sound. Whether it translated into measurable consumer behaviour for Cherkashin Meat Factory in Russia's competitive Food and Drink environment in 2018 remains unverifiable from public sources.
'Choice' is a 2018 Russian film campaign created by ad agency Voskhod for Cherkashin Meat Factory. It uses surreal narrative to associate smoked ham with bold, daring emotion, drawing on neurovisual research to differentiate the product from cooked sausage alternatives in Russia's fragmented Food and Drink market.
Voskhod created the 'Choice' campaign. The Russian ad agency directed the work under creative director Andrey Gubaydullin, with copywriters Georgij Kornilov and Anton Rozhin, sound and design by Mikhail Kokorin, production by SKBD SH, and post-production handled by Ilya Linetsky.
Voskhod grounded the campaign in neurovisual research. That research identified a subconscious distinction Russian consumers make between smoked and cooked sausage products — smoked triggering vivid, adventurous emotion, cooked associated with domestic calm — and this finding became the direct foundation of the film's narrative structure.
No verified award wins or finalist placements for 'Choice' are publicly available. According to Clapboard, the campaign has no confirmed recognition at Cannes Lions, the Clio Awards, D&AD, The One Show, the Effie Awards, or WARC Awards, making its creative merit assessable only through structural and archival analysis.
Russia's processed meat market was highly fragmented in 2018, according to Infoline, with the five largest companies holding slightly more than twenty percent combined share. This environment made rational product differentiation difficult and created strategic pressure on regional brands like Cherkashin Meat Factory to compete on emotional and identity-based positioning.
'Choice' holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, according to Clapboard. The score reflects genuine strategic ambition and a distinctive neurovisual creative concept, balanced against execution that does not fully realise the emotional intensity the surreal narrative approach demands within this single film asset.
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