Husky

The business problem

Partizan was Husky's first album after a long silence, and interest in it had built before the official announcement. Zvuk's priority was to channel that demand into the service: to give fans a reason to choose our platform for the release. We had no musical exclusive — the album came out on every streaming service at once.

I got approval for an approach in which the advertising campaign sustained interest in the album while a merch contest gave people a reason to stream it on Zvuk. The hypothesis: extra value for fans would sway the choice of service even when access to the music was identical everywhere.

Securing resources before the announcement

I locked in the budget and the project's slot on the roadmap ahead of time. That gave the team the lead time to produce the outdoor campaign and the merch, and gave me the standing to negotiate a full joint project with the artist.

Forecasting was the hard part: there was no comparable data from earlier projects. I got the plan approved on the basis of the average performance of Husky's previous releases. That baseline won the resources, but it did not account for the scale of anticipation around the new album — a limitation I kept in mind when we assessed how far the plan had been beaten.

Creative and the release window

With the team I chose to communicate through the artist's own lyrics. Billboards carried lines from the new tracks, with Zvuk's signature green as the only marker of who was behind them. For fans the lines worked as a sign they alone could read; for everyone else, as a reason to look twice at an unusual piece of advertising.

The approved plan concentrated promotion on release day. The first wave of outdoor went live with the album in Moscow and St. Petersburg; the second widened the geography and added a direct call to listen to Partizan. From the outset we designed the outdoor campaign to work as a news hook for music, city and industry press.

Merch for listening

Inside Zvuk we ran a merch contest for the album's most committed listeners. A user opened Partizan and streamed it in the service; the results were counted in total minutes listened. The mechanic was designed for sustained engagement with the music on Zvuk.

Stories, banners, a full-screen placement and push notifications inside Zvuk supported the contest. Husky posted materials linking to the service, and a notification in Okko took the message beyond Zvuk's own user base. I oversaw the approved plan while the manager coordinated delivery with the contributors.

Analytics and limitations

During the campaign the Zvuk app could not be downloaded from the App Store, so the artist's link pointed to the mobile web player. Our reporting lacked the data to pin down what share of listeners came through Husky's own channels. Inside the service, the measurable response came mainly from the full-screen action kit and the stories on the home screen.

In the review I separated the release's performance from the campaign's demonstrated contribution. Streams were driven both by the promotion and by demand that already existed; the incremental effect of individual channels was not measured. For future launches I set the requirement to evaluate new and returning users separately.

Team

I owned securing the resources, getting the plan approved, the key decisions and control of the project. I handed day-to-day running and coordination of contributors to a manager in my group.