“Communications and Marketing Are Always Long-Term Investments”: How Can Businesses Build Brands with Limited Resources?

The discussion brought together Borys Tsomaia, CMO at RIEL; Viktor Ivanchenko, Head of Strategy & R&D at Megapolis; Viktoriia Zhezhera, Director of Marketing and Communications at COMINBANK; and Viktoriia Sereda, Marketing Director at the Sens bookstore chain.

The experts discussed the role of marketing in strategic decision-making, campaign performance measurement, business ecosystem development, social projects, and corporate reputation in the age of generative artificial intelligence.

Marketing as a Strategic Investment, Not an Expense

According to Alina Smyshliak-Boroda, business courage today is not primarily about high-profile campaigns or unconventional creative concepts. Above all, it means thinking strategically, taking responsibility for difficult decisions, and investing in long-term ideas whose results may not be immediately visible.

“Communications and marketing are always long-term investments. Today, when resources are limited, businesses need strong expertise and vision to substantiate hypotheses and choose the solutions with the greatest potential,” she explained.

The participants noted that the role of marketing in modern business has changed significantly. It is no longer limited to advertising or brand awareness. Marketing increasingly influences products, sales, reputation, customer experience, and a company’s strategic growth.

As a result, the perception of marketing departments as functions that simply “spend” or “burn through” budgets is gradually becoming outdated. Modern teams forecast leads and conversions, test hypotheses before large-scale launches, and link communication decisions to business performance.

How Does Kormotech Test Advertising Before a Large-Scale Launch?

The advertising campaign for the Meow! The brand provided one practical example.

Before the full campaign launch, the team tested two communication concepts using rapid predictive tracking and AI-powered tools. The analysis helped assess which message attracted more audience attention, communicated the brand idea more clearly, and maintained a distinct visual and narrative identity compared with competitors’ advertising.

Testing also helped identify risks that can be difficult to spot during an internal creative approval process. For example, an advertising message may not stand out enough, may fail to evoke the intended emotion, or may resemble another brand’s communication within the same category.

In the case of Meow!, rapid tracking confirmed one of the team’s hypotheses before the campaign was scaled. This helped optimize advertising investment and reduce the risk of launching a less effective creative concept.

This approach demonstrates that using AI in marketing is not limited to automating content creation. Artificial intelligence can also serve as a preliminary analysis tool, helping businesses make decisions faster and use resources more effectively.

Outdoor Advertising Is Becoming More Precise and Measurable

According to Viktor Ivanchenko, out-of-home advertising should no longer be assessed solely by the number of advertising sites or potential contacts.

Today, businesses can analyze the effectiveness of outdoor advertising using current data on urban populations, changes in vehicle and pedestrian traffic, audience movement, and the concentration of specific consumer groups.

Accurate planning depends, among other factors, on a realistic estimate of a city’s population. Since the beginning of the full-scale war, Ukraine’s demographic situation and population mobility have changed significantly. Using pre-war data can therefore distort campaign results.

To update audience information, the market uses establishment surveys, analyzes urban traffic, and works with aggregated and anonymized Big Data. This helps businesses understand not only the number of advertising contacts, but also the characteristics of the audiences moving through specific areas of a city.

At the same time, performance criteria must be defined before a campaign begins. One brand may aim to increase awareness, while another may seek to change perceptions, grow its category share, or support sales.

Proving the effectiveness of advertising after a project has ended becomes much more difficult when a company and its contractors have not agreed in advance on the indicators that will define success.

People Do Not Come Only for a Product — They Come to the Brand

The Sens model combines a bookstore, a café, a full-service kitchen, an event venue, and rental premises.

According to Viktoriia Sereda, the team concluded that visitors do not come separately to the bookstore or the café. They come to Sens as an integrated ecosystem. The interaction between its different components creates value for the entire business.

The café generates higher footfall and offers stronger margins, while the book business operates within the recommended prices set by publishers. Events, venue rental, and the company’s own products support additional business and communication objectives.

This example shows that modern brands are increasingly built around multiple products. They create environments where different business areas can simultaneously generate revenue, attract new audiences, build communities, and strengthen loyalty.

Social Projects Must Measure Real Impact

Viktoriia Zhezhera explained that after the start of the full-scale war, the bank revised its approach to corporate social responsibility and consolidated its initiatives into a single platform.

The platform includes projects supporting military personnel and civilians, assistance to military hospitals, blood donation, partnerships with charitable foundations, psychological support for service members, and educational materials on wartime communication.

When assessing these programs, the company looks beyond communication metrics. Important indicators include the number of people who received assistance, the number of consultations provided, the amount of materials delivered, and specific cases in which an initiative had a meaningful impact on someone’s life.

This approach helps prevent social projects from becoming little more than publicity opportunities. Their results must be clear and tangible for both society and the business.

A Brand’s Reputation Is Shaped by the Entire Information Environment

Users increasingly form their first impression of a company not through its corporate website, but through generative AI systems. The responses produced by these services are based on more than what a brand says about itself. They are also influenced by independent media coverage, expert publications, reviews from customers and partners, the company’s involvement in professional associations, and the participation of its representatives in industry discussions.

This makes it increasingly important for marketing and communications teams to optimize a brand’s presence across the information environment used by generative systems.

It also reinforces the importance of consistent reputation management. A company cannot simply define the right narrative once. It must continuously support that narrative through its decisions, independent mentions, partners’ experiences, and real actions.

Trust as the Most Sustainable Competitive Advantage

When resources are limited, bold marketing does not necessarily mean larger budgets. Above all, it means making data-driven decisions, testing hypotheses quickly, abandoning ineffective approaches, and investing consistently in trust.

Products, services, and technological solutions can be replicated relatively quickly. A company’s reputation, the community built around its brand, and the experience it creates for customers are far more difficult to copy.

After years of full-scale war, being present for consumers means more than ensuring that a product is physically available. It means communicating honestly during difficult times, maintaining consistent quality, providing useful services, acting responsibly towards society, and supporting audiences even when doing so does not deliver an immediate commercial return.