GROMCHE × Rovesnik

The business problem

GROMCHE (“Louder”) is Zvuk's family of editorial playlists for emerging artists. I helped create it and later grew the artist community around it, partly through closed showcases for musicians and industry people.

When MAU growth became the marketing department's priority, I proposed opening the format up to listeners. The hypothesis: interest in a live show would give people a reason to try Zvuk, activate a promo subscription and start listening.

Partnership and format

I negotiated the showcase at Rovesnik, which provided the space, the crew, access to its music community and its own promotional channels. For listeners I put together a full concert program; for artists and industry guests, a VIP area. That widened the audience for the event while preserving the room for professional conversation and networking.

The headliner deal

To pull in a wider audience, I added the band Vintage to a lineup of young artists. I cleared the use of the band's likeness in Zvuk's outdoor advertising with the CMO and the brand director, modeled the projected reach and put together a barter offer: a performance in exchange for an outdoor advertising package in central Moscow to promote their new release.

The band accepted. The company paid for the advertising package and the singer's flight from Georgia; there was no performance fee.

Before this deal, most of my approaches to rights holders about a headliner had ended in a no. In Vintage's case, the band's label and its management sat in different companies. Through warm contacts from artist relations I reached the manager directly and carried the negotiation through to a booking.

Announcing before the headliner was confirmed

By the announcement date I had a verbal agreement with the band but no final confirmation of the performance. Pushing the announcement back would have cut into valuable promotion time.

I proposed announcing a secret guest and revealing the name once Vintage had confirmed. The campaign launched on schedule, I gained extra time to negotiate, and we cut the risk of publicly promising a specific artist. Revealing the name later then worked as a second news hook.

Mechanics for driving people into Zvuk

I designed and ran a contest built around a joint playlist from the showcase lineup. Before the concert, users followed a link into Zvuk that came with promo access and listened to the playlist. The most active could win a bar tab at Rovesnik to spend on the night.

At the venue I tied trying the service to an instant reward: guests opened Zvuk, found a code word on the artist's page and showed it to the bartender to claim a punch.

Team

The concept, the partnership, the artists, the negotiations, the mechanics and the internal approvals were mine. I set tasks for colleagues in neighboring teams and coordinated the run-up to launch.