Some of the best Ukrainian ambassadors are the companies that build the perception of Ukraine abroad through their creative work in advertising, film and media.
In the past few years, four such projects have captured the world’s attention to show just how much Ukraine has changed for the better over the 29 years of its independence.
Banda
The Banda creative agency has worked on promoting Ukraine in the most possible direct way: in 2018, it created the national Ukraine NOW brand, the first since the nation’s independence. Developed pro bono for the government, the national brand aims to improve the perception of the country abroad for better investment and tourism.
Simple, appealing and easily replicated, Ukraine NOW’s visual style caught on instantly in Ukraine. Abroad, it received the prestigious Red Dot design award in 2018. Banda then became Red Dot’s agency of the year for having seven distinctions at Red Dot’s international design competition that same year.
Since its inception in Kyiv in 2011, Banda’s mission has been “to make creativity meaningful in Ukraine,” according to the agency’s development director Dmitry Adabir. But when asked to present themselves at Red Dot after winning the agency of the year award, Banda developed its global goal: “to make Ukrainian creativity known in the world.”
This is one of the reasons why Banda has just opened an office in California, its first branch outside of Kyiv. Besides working with American clients, Banda wants to help Ukrainian companies enter the U.S. and worldwide markets.
“There are Ukrainian companies that sell word-class products that can interest audiences worldwide,” Adabir says. “We want to help these brands become popular abroad.”
Banda’s ambitions don’t stop there. After creating the national brand, Banda works with the government to change perceptions about a place most associated with Ukraine abroad — the Chornobyl exclusion zone.
People usually think about Chornobyl for what it was — the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident, Adabir says. But today Chornobyl is much more than that: it’s a natural reserve that can be a treasure trove for many sciences — physics, ecology, anthropology, archeology, etc.
“Tourists usually go to Chornobyl for the thrills. But we want to show that it’s a unique and interesting place that is changing and developing,” Adabir says.
Radioaktive Film
If there is one company responsible for making Ukraine a popular filming destination internationally, it would be Radioaktive Film. A production service company, Radioaktive pitches Ukrainian locations and talents to film crews abroad and helps them create award-winning commercials, music videos, movies and TV-series on the spot.
“It was always our mission to put Ukraine on the map of service production internationally,” Jane Yatsuta, Radioaktive Film’s executive producer and co-owner, told the Kyiv Post.
Founded in Kyiv in 1998 by two Americans of Ukrainian descent and another American partner, Radioaktive has built an impressive portfolio of commercials for international clients, such as Apple, Nike, Audi, PlayStation, Diesel, and music videos for Coldplay, Twenty One Pilots, Hurt and Foals. But to get there, the company had to pull through several crises in Ukraine.
A particular challenge came with the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine in 2014 when western clients became reluctant to come film in a country with an ongoing war. Radioaktive had to work harder to attract these clients and convince them that most of Ukraine was still safe.
A big part of Radioaktive’s success is the film trend for post-Soviet aesthetics, especially in architecture, which the company helped establish with the iconic music video for “Iron Sky” by Paulo Nutini in 2014. Since then, Radioaktive helped produce scores of music videos and commercials in Ukraine that explore these aesthetics.
But Radioaktive’s biggest success was the award-winning “Chernobyl” mini-series that it co-produced with a Lithuanian company for the U.S. HBO television network. Besides the locations for the series that were set in Soviet Ukraine, Radioaktive’s core selling point to HBO was the usual — the great competitive correlation of production quality and competitive price.
And with Ukraine’s new law on cash rebates for foreign companies that produce videos in Ukraine, companies like Radioaktive will now have another commercial advantage.
“We believe that it will give exponential growth of service production in Ukraine,” Yatsuta says.
An aerial view of the Olesko Castle in Lviv Oblast in August 2018. Like other Ukrainian attractions, the Olesko Castle has been a subject of stories by the Ukraïner media project, which promotes Ukraine at home and abroad. The project’s founder Bogdan Logvynenko says that Ukraïner’s primary mission is to fill the knowledge gap about the country of Ukrainians themselves. (Pavlo Pashko / Ukraїner)
Tabasco
Creative agency Tabasco has made many commercials that promote Ukrainian identity, but those that grabbed most attention abroad were about nothing else than condensed milk.
After a series of explosions in 2018 at the Defense Ministry’s ammunition depot near the town of Ichnia, some 175 kilometers east of Kyiv, the brand of Ichnia condensed milk wound up in crisis. How do you sell a food product from a plant associated with army explosions?
So Tabasco helped Ichnia put the association to good use: the brand released a limited series of condensed milk cans in support of the army — each had an image of one of Ukraine’s military troops that together formed a battle panorama. The negative association was converted into a positive one.
In the next campaign, Ichnia released a series of cans dedicated to outstanding women — Vira Kotsiubynska, Oleksandra Skoropadska and Yaroslava Bandera — who were the wives of famous Ukrainian men — writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, military leader Pavlo Skoropadsky and nationalist leader Stepan Bandera respectively. Tabasco’s feminist and patriotic idea triggered a flurry of reactions worldwide, especially from the Russian media which called it “Bandera’s condensed milk.”
“We were pleased that these values ranged out so loud from Ukraine, receiving reactions abroad,” Alexander Smirnov, Tabasco’s creative director and partner, told the Kyiv Post.
Tabasco also made a series of public service ads for Victory Day in 2015 that challenged Russia’s narratives. In these videos, Ukrainians fighting Russia’s war in the Donbas congratulate their grandparents who fought in World War II on Victory Day. The WW2 veterans, in turn, wish them victory in the war against Russia in the Donbas. The sentimental campaign received the Effie Awards Ukraine for effectiveness.
“In our projects, we emphasize that Ukraine is a strong country with a rich history, and modern Ukrainians are talents, whose ideas are competitive in the world,” Smirnov says.
Ukraïner
When the Ukraïner media project published its first videos from an expedition in Zakarpattia Oblast, it filled a long-overdue need for media about Ukraine’s remote corners. In two years, the project produced almost 200 stories about people and places in all but the occupied regions of the country.
But the expedition didn’t end there. Funded by grants and donations, Ukraïner went on to explore Ukraine’s more well-known natural and cultural attractions, and then cities with ambassadors from each — famous artists and journalists.
The project’s founder Bogdan Logvynenko says that Ukraïner’s primary mission is to fill the knowledge gap about the country of Ukrainians themselves. Instead of stereotypes about grayness and rudeness of big cities, Ukraïner wanted to tell stories about changes for the better in all the regions of modern Ukraine.
Presenting Ukraine to the world was another goal of the project from the very beginning. Ukraïner’s volunteers translate the stories and add subtitles to videos in nine foreign languages, including English, Spanish and French. Most of the audience comes from abroad: the U.S., Canada, Britain, India and Poland. The domestic audience is in fifth place.
Ukraïner’s latest series on national minorities living in Ukraine is especially gaining popularity among the minorities’ respective audiences abroad. A story about Albanians in Odesa Oblast has more comments from Albania than from Ukraine, for example. The most popular story among Greeks was about a Ukrainian village sculptor whom Ukraïner takes to Greece to see his favorite ancient art.
Besides the web, the project’s videos of Ukraine’s landscapes will soon be screened in public transport in Warsaw, Poland. Ukraïner also started working with a company that has over 300 screens in malls and fitness clubs in Poland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic that will be showing Ukraine’s landscapes as well.
When asked how Ukraïner wants to portray Ukraine to the world, Logvynenko says: “As little-known, meaningful, proactive, multicultural and united.”
