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Obolon Turns Lesya Ukrainka Into a Living Brand Voice
Obolon's Independence Day campaign, created by Brain Tank in August 2024, adapts the text of Lesya Ukrainka's drama-fairy tale The Forest Song into an original musical composition, distributed across digital and film channels in Ukraine and Multinational Europe to mark the national holiday on August 24, according to Braintank Ua.
The campaign, formally titled in its creative record as BRAINTANK | OBOLON | INDEPENDENCE DAY, operates on a straightforward but culturally loaded premise, according to Designrush. Brain Tank took footage already produced for Obolon's earlier campaign, known as "It was and will be!", and recontextualised it around the language and spirit of Ukrainka's The Forest Song, a foundational text in Ukrainian literary tradition. The reinterpretation does not simply quote the source material — it sets a reworked version of the text to music, producing a piece that functions simultaneously as a brand film and a cultural tribute, according to Obolon Ua. According to Clapboard's editorial record, the campaign contains one primary media asset, distributed via digital and film channels.
In Ukraine, where cultural identity and national resilience carry acute contemporary meaning, the choice of Lesya Ukrainka as creative anchor is neither incidental nor decorative. Ukrainka remains one of the most recognised figures in Ukrainian literary history, and The Forest Song is among her most celebrated works. By routing the Obolon brand message through that specific text, Brain Tank positions the beer not as a lifestyle product but as a participant in the continuity of Ukrainian cultural life. The campaign's closing line — "Keep in your heart what does not die" — functions as both a line from Ukrainka's world and a statement about national endurance, binding the Obolon brand to a sentiment that extends well beyond a single product category.
Obolon occupies a distinct competitive position in the Ukrainian and broader Eastern European beer market. The brand's longstanding positioning as a beer of Ukrainian origin places it in direct cultural contrast to multinational competitors such as AB InBev, which according to thereportcubes.com holds approximately 25.5% of global beer volume with brands including Budweiser, Corona, and Stella Artois, and Heineken N.V., which according to statista.com commands approximately ten to thirteen percent of global market share with brands including Amstel and Birra Moretti. In the context of Ukraine's wartime economy and a heightened national consciousness, a locally rooted brand has a structural advantage that purely commercial messaging cannot activate — but culturally embedded storytelling can.
The strategic rationale behind Brain Tank's approach is grounded in occasion marketing with genuine cultural specificity. Ukraine's Independence Day, observed on August 24, is not a generic national holiday in the current climate — it carries layered meaning related to sovereignty, identity, and resilience. Rather than producing a conventional patriotic advertisement, Brain Tank chose a literary figure whose work already carries those associations in the Ukrainian cultural imagination. Lesya Ukrainka's The Forest Song, known in Ukrainian as Lisova Pisnia, is a drama-fairy tale that explores themes of spiritual freedom and the relationship between human life and the natural world — themes that resonate with contemporary Ukrainian experience in ways that require no explanation to a domestic audience.
The decision to repurpose footage from Obolon's earlier "It was and will be!" campaign reflects an economically pragmatic creative strategy. Reframing existing assets around a new cultural narrative allows the brand to deepen an ongoing thematic thread — continuity and endurance — without the full production expenditure of a new shoot. According to Clapboard's editorial record, this creative evolution represents a movement from broadly patriotic brand messaging toward culturally specific, digitally distributed brand storytelling.
Creative Director Andrii Franchuk led the Brain Tank team responsible for the campaign's production and conceptual development. The production team included Valeria Kychko as project manager, Denis Kravchenko as motion designer, and Lada Kvitka as designer, according to Clapboard's awards and credits record. Together, this team was responsible for transforming pre-existing visual material into a cohesive film and musical work anchored in nineteenth-century Ukrainian literature.
The creative execution involves two distinct acts of adaptation. The first is textual — Brain Tank took the language of Lesya Ukrainka's The Forest Song and reinterpreted it, preserving the spirit and cadence of the original while shaping it into song lyrics appropriate for the campaign's emotional register. The second is editorial — the team reworked footage from the prior Obolon campaign "It was and will be!" to align visually and rhythmically with the new musical composition. The result is a film that reads as original while being materially constructed from an existing creative foundation, a technique that demands precision in both editing and tonal alignment.
The campaign's distribution strategy is weighted toward digital channels, consistent with Brain Tank's broader positioning as a marketing and creative communications agency operating in digital-first environments. The choice to release the campaign in August 2024, timed to Ukraine's Independence Day, gave the work a specific release context that amplified its resonance without requiring additional contextual framing. According to Clapboard's editorial record, the campaign was published across Ukraine and Multinational Europe, reflecting Obolon's ambition to reach Ukrainian diaspora audiences and international markets alongside its domestic base. The campaign was submitted to the industry record by Brain Tank's marketing team, identified in the credit documentation as Marketing S-Cuite: BRAIN TANK of BRAIN TANK MarCom Agency.
The campaign earned over 200,000 views on YouTube alone, according to Clapboard's editorial record, a figure that the brand's own documentation characterises as evidence that "Lesya is still a hit" — a line that doubles as creative commentary and performance summary. For a single-asset digital and film campaign produced without a full new production shoot, that reach represents meaningful organic distribution, particularly for a culturally specific piece tied to a single national occasion in Ukraine and Multinational Europe.
No additional verified performance data — including completion rates, paid media spend, earned media value, or downstream brand lift metrics — is publicly available for this campaign. The absence of granular data limits direct benchmarking against comparable Independence Day campaigns in the Eastern European food and drink sector. What the YouTube view figure does confirm is that the campaign achieved distribution well beyond an owned-channel baseline, suggesting that the combination of Lesya Ukrainka's cultural authority, the Independence Day context, and the musical format produced content with genuine shareability.
Clapboard rates this campaign 57 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's cultural intelligence and its economical creative approach — repurposing existing footage through a meaningful literary lens is both strategically sound and creatively honest — while acknowledging that the single-asset format, limited documented reach beyond YouTube, and absence of broader performance transparency constrain the overall assessment. The campaign succeeds as a brand values statement and as a culturally grounded piece of content, but its impact as a measurable advertising campaign remains partially visible.
Obolon's Independence Day campaign is a 2024 digital and film work created by Brain Tank in Ukraine. Brain Tank adapted text from Lesya Ukrainka's drama-fairy tale The Forest Song into an original song, set to repurposed footage from Obolon's earlier campaign, and released it across Ukraine and Multinational Europe in August 2024.
Brain Tank, a Kyiv-based marketing and creative communications agency, created the campaign. Creative Director Andrii Franchuk led the project, supported by project manager Valeria Kychko, motion designer Denis Kravchenko, and designer Lada Kvitka, according to Clapboard's credits record.
Lesya Ukrainka is one of the most recognised figures in Ukrainian literary history. Brain Tank used The Forest Song to anchor Obolon within Ukrainian cultural heritage, connecting the brand to themes of resilience and national identity that carry acute meaning during Ukraine's Independence Day and the country's broader wartime context.
The campaign received over 200,000 views on YouTube, according to Clapboard's editorial record. The brand described that figure as evidence that Lesya Ukrainka remains culturally resonant with contemporary audiences, framing the result as both a performance metric and a cultural observation about the endurance of Ukrainian literary heritage.
Brain Tank reused footage from Obolon's earlier campaign titled "It was and will be!" Rather than producing an entirely new shoot, the team recontextualised existing visual material around the adapted text of The Forest Song, aligning it rhythmically and tonally with the new musical composition created for the Independence Day campaign.
Clapboard rates the Obolon Independence Day campaign 57 out of 100. The score recognises the campaign's cultural intelligence and economical creative strategy while noting that the single-asset format and limited publicly documented performance data beyond YouTube views constrain a higher overall assessment of its advertising effectiveness.
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