The sausage category is a highly competitive and commoditized market with low brand loyalty, where mental availability plays a decisive role in consumer choice. Two-thirds of shoppers enter a store without a pre-selected brand (Chart 1A), so the winner is the one that comes to mind first at the moment of purchase. At the same time, more than 40% of consumers easily switch between six or more brands (Chart 2), choosing whichever is available on the shelf (Chart 1B). This makes the battle for strong, consistent mental leadership a critical condition for a brand’s long-term success. «Papa Mozhet» historically stood out in its category: it deliberately avoided typical family communication and developed a unique, brutal character. This ensured the brand's leadership in spontaneous awareness: «Papa Mozhet» had a spontaneous awareness rate of 38%, while its main competitor, «Vyazanka» has a rate of 28% (Chart 3).
Problem
In 2022, amid a surge in the perceived importance of family values in the country, the re-run of one of «Papa Mozhet`s» previous, more aggresive commercials triggered widespread rejection: one in three respondents expressed negative attitudes toward the ad (Chart 4). Its appeal scored 10 percentage points below the category benchmark (38%) (Chart 5). By contrast, advertising from its competitor «Vyazanka» built around themes of family and tenderness in close relationships, performed 6 percentage points above the benchmark (54%) (Chart 5). As a result, by 2023, «Papa Mozhet» was nearly twice the level of consumption rejection compared to its competitor (Chart 6), with the majority of lost buyers switching specifically to «Vyazanka» (Chart 7). We faced the challenge of reversing the negative trend in order to restore business growth, strengthen the brand’s appeal and win the hearts of a family audience, particularly women. 1) Increase sales and win back consumers who had switched to the competitor «Vyazanka». 2) Make our communication more appealing to a family audience amid the growing importance of family values. 3) At the same time, it was critical not to lose the brand’s DNA: to preserve its distinctive character and masculine tone as a counterpoint to the «mayonnaise family» trope, and to avoid blending into the clutter – remaining noticeable both on TV and on the shelf.
Solution
Today’s female shopper (75% of the category, Chart 8) doesn’t want to see a «perfect advertising family», but a real life – where the father is not a bystander, he is a fully engaged participant. However, in food advertising, fathers are either absent or relegated to secondary roles, giving way to an idealized image of the mother. As a result, the most appealing portrayal for her is a dad who is actively involved with his child. The core communication idea of the project was: «When you’re with Dad, everything is different. Only Dad can turn a boring day into an adventure, and routine into a fun game». We launched a new communication platform by introducing the characters of Dad and his daughter. The decision was based on the understanding that brand characters strengthen emotional connections and increase attractiveness by 6 times (Chart 9). We choose TV as the primary channel because it offers maximum reach and enables the building of a long-term emotional connection through a mini-series format. From 2023 to 2025, we consistently released new series («Mozhet, Buter», «Train», etc.), establishing a recognizable creative approach: first, Dad tamed his daughter’s wild appetite by slicing sausage into stars, then he and his daughter went on a train journey and fed the entire carriage sausage. At the same time, we scaled the characters across retail (trade activations) and digital (special projects, VK) to transfer the experience from TV to points of sale and engage with the audience in digital. This is how we revealed the brand's unique character and values: a lighthearted approach to life, lively communication, humor, and ingenuity.
Results
«Papa Mozhet» gained a new communication platform along with a set of distinctive brand assets: engaging characters – Dad and his daughter, a memorable slogan, and a musical jingle that instantly links the communication to the brand. The brand evolved into a family-oriented one without losing its boldness or recognizability, and in 2023–2025 it stood out against the backdrop of lookalike family advertising. This ensured stable growth in KPIs across three key areas. Business performance: №1 in market share since 2023. In 2025, the brand reached 11.7% (value) and 14.3% (volume), up +5.2 pp vs. 2022, and twice the share of its main competitor in 2025 (Chart 11). Marketing performance: - №1 in top-of-mind awareness (TOM): +10 pp over three years, reaching 23% in 2025, which is 13 pp higher than the main competitor (Chart 10) - №1 in consumption over the past 2-3 months: +14 pp over three years, reaching 46% in 2025, which is 5 pp higher than the main competitor (Chart 10) - №1 in loyalty: +5 pp in 2023 and +8 pp over three years, reaching 21% in 2025, which is 7 pp higher than the main competitor (Chart 10). Communication performance: - Average ad appeal in 2023–2025: 72% (vs. 65.9% for competitors) (Chart 12) - Average ad recall in 2023–2025: 77%, which is 28 pp higher than the competitive average of 49.1% (Chart 12) - Average brand attribution in advertising (2023–2025): 80%, which is more than three times higher than the competitive average of 25.2% (Chart 12)
