The principles of a successful product promotion, the secrets of profitable marketing campaigns, the best tools and practices for campaign management—marketer Alexandra Astasheva seems to have all the answers.
Astasheva’s talent for winning over audiences emerged long before she ever studied sales funnels, target audiences and other key marketing concepts. As a kid at camp, she ran for camp president and won, thanks to her natural persuasiveness and knack for unifying diverse groups. Perhaps unsurprisingly, today Astasheva is considered a guru when it comes to creating high-performing, cross-functional teams.
With nearly two decades of experience in international multi-channel marketing and numerous successful campaigns under her belt, Astasheva never applies the same exact strategy twice. For example, she notes that a product’s positioning can succeed in one country and fail miserably in another. According to Astasheva, a marketer must study the specific cultural, ethnic and geo-political qualities of a region prior to entering it, not to mention, the target audience’s needs, motivation to buy, competitors and distribution channels. She advises marketers not to bend to the pressures of company executives, but rather, to follow the data religiously. Experimentation, testing and listening to customers is crucial. High engagement doesn’t necessarily mean effective content. Always make data-driven solutions and stay flexible.
For the past few years, Astasheva has been working for a large international company that produces goods for children that are both educational and entertaining—and available in more than 140 countries around the world. In 2018, the company set a goal to expand its presence in Russia and the CIS countries. With Astasheva at the helm, she gathered a team of 20 colleagues from various departments of the organization, including Operations, Trade, Customer Development and more, to ensure that the company’s first 360 brand awareness campaign in Russia would be a success. Astasheva employed several strategies for this project including local offline events, media and influencer partnerships and paid media campaigns. In the end, Astasheva achieved a record-setting media coverage audience and the company earned a considerable long-term increase in market share. Global leaders and partners traveled to the region to view her work in person. The campaign became one of the company’s most successful projects and was nominated for Project of the Year 2018.
In addition, Astasheva led a strategic alliance with Yandex, Russia’s largest digital ecosystem, trusted by tech giants such as Netflix, Amazon and Google. This cross-platform initiative combined multiple services at scale, across all stages of the marketing and e-commerce funnel. Additionally, it took place during the most important season in the toy industry: the holidays.
Astasheva’s resulting key performance indicators were remarkable:
- Coverage of over 20 million users
- 200% sales increase compared to the previous holiday season
- 150% uplift on focus SKUs compared to the previous holiday season
In 2022, the project was awarded the Gold, Silver and Bronze Effies, the most prestigious international awards in the field of advertising and marketing.
The Effie Awards were launched in 1968 by the New York American Marketing Association as an awards program to honor excellence in advertising. The awards now recognize all forms of marketing, supporting groundbreaking work across the globe. Being nominated for an Effie is a huge accomplishment for any marketer, but winning a gold, silver and bronze statuette, like Astasheva did, is nearly unheard of. In addition, her company received 11th place in the program’s global marketing performance ranking, beating nearly 100 competing organizations and outranking many global brands.
Astasheva’s project was also awarded the Global Commercial Award 2022, her company’s internal international award, which is open to teams throughout the 140 countries in which it has a brand presence. Despite dozens of competitive applications across multiple regions, Astasheva’s project received a Silver certificate for the best cross-team collaboration.
Astasheva also developed the brand strategy for launching a new children’s toy in the Russian market. Her work resulted the toy achieving the highest brand equity among new products that year and was named the most innovative toy of 2021 by the Russian Toy Association.
Today, Astasheva has led over 200 successful projects in the B2B and B2C sectors, with more than 30 of them receiving international awards. For new marketers starting out, such results may appear unattainable; however, Astasheva proves that they are indeed possible. She recommends receiving a specialized education and putting in time at well-known agencies with an international clientele base. From there, she urges young marketers to set ambitious goals and to never get complacent. Always one to “walk the walk,” Astasheva recently completed a thesis on the “Transformation of the Media in the Era of Global Digitalization.” She also maintains memberships with the Guild of Marketers and the Russian Public Relation Association (RPRA), which have stringent vetting systems to ensure that all members are high-achieving, active professionals within the industry.
Through continuous education, her commitment to innovation and her drive to consistently overdeliver, Astasheva remains an indispensable partner for businesses seeking extraordinary results.
