The Russian media market is a place where demand is far in excess of supply. Monopolist vendor structures are the norm and there is little experience or willingness for anyone to do anything other than selling ad space using traditional commercial terms at the highest possible cost. Branded entertainment in Russia is still synonymous of ‘traditional’ sponsorships. Restrictions and regulations are very unclear and can be interpreted at the discretion of the vendors. For example, if the product exposure within the program is very noticeable (including verbal mentions of the brand and close-ups), those minutes are to be included into the general advertising minutes. However, the actual determination of how noticeable a product is, is always debatable. With Russia’s younger audiences becoming ever more difficult to reach through broadcast television, brands strive to achieve the greatest possible impact through the little TV that’s watched. Pushing the boundaries of classic commercial trading, and entering into branded entertainment territory and deeper content integration, is the only way to put brands inside teen culture. This new thinking will require working closer with a channel’s creative team and producers, making them part of the brand’s strategy to produce content that has never been seen in Russia before.

We created “Discreet Fashion Academy” application in Vkontakte for a unique contest where girls could choose to be designers or models. Designers used an app to design digital summer collections combining different clothing elements and unlocking exclusive fashion accessories by registering on-pack promo codes.Once collections were created, designers invited a friend as her model for photo-shoot using the app’s augmented reality and a webcam to virtually “catwalk” the dresses. Discreet also provided tips for taking fashion photos and modelling poses.

Teams promoted their collections and accumulated points using the full power of VK social network. Six designer/model pairs with highest activity ratings were invited to the “Fashion Academy” – a TV reality show completely created from scratch by Discreet. In the show, celebrities/fashion experts tutored teams competing for dream prizes: Present their collections in world-famous Moscow Fashion Week plus grants to study Fashion Design in Milan and professionally-made portfolios.

Discreet became a leading brand in Russia in the new space of branded entertainment on TV and online social media. With branded entertainment, Discreet found the way to break the taboo barrier that messages in the feminine category imply, and was able to connect, very openly, in dialogue with its target. Discreet Fashion Academy became the third largest branded application in Vkontakte, showing a huge popularity and engaging power. 1m users generated more than 200,000 digital summer collections and spent on average 5:17 minutes on the app designing, modelling, and later promoting their collections, using all the extent of their social network via friends as well as tapping into friends of friends for their ‘likes’.

Sponsorship of our own Fashion Academy TV show built brand awareness to the same levels as a direct TVC, while proven brand recall was nearly twice as high with a sponsorship ROI index of 160 vs direct copy. Brand Preference also increased +11% achieving a key goal of retaining current users as well as capturing switchers from other brands.Brand sales grew 1.24 vs the previous year and helped us break the all-time record on Value Share for Discreet in Russia.