On the tenth day of the war in Ukraine, Olga Kokoshko left her home in kyiv. She loaded her mother, her best friend and her two cats, Pony and Joe, into a blue jeep and drove towards the Polish border, driving around bridges destroyed by bombs. She was not only fleeing the Russian shelling: she also had to save her advertising agency, Nebo.
She knew that for her business to survive she would have to find new customers in Europe. “Almost all of our Ukrainian clients have canceled their projects”, she explains. But she also wanted to keep Nebo alive to contribute to the war effort: she was convinced that her agency could help Ukraine win.
A direct influence on the fights
As she had foreseen, the actors of the Ukrainian advertising and communication sector played an essential role in the elaboration of the narrative of the war.
“We want the whole world to see and hear us”, she declares. One of Nebo’s early campaigns prompted some companies to stop using the letter Z, become a symbol of the Russian invasion. Among them is Zurich Insurance, which changed its logo last March, a decision for which Olga Kokoshko takes credit.
This type of communication does not act parallel to the battles on the ground, but exerts a direct influence on them. “War is intrinsically psychological”, says James Sullivan, head of the cyber unit at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), a British think tank specializing in defense and security.
“It is therefore important to spread the right message, he continues, and we can amplify its reach with the Internet.” How the war is told can change the willingness of soldiers to risk their lives or the willingness of people in an allied country to fund more weapons.
Simple messages, like in 1939-1945
Some agencies, like Nebo, decided on their own to issue pro-Ukrainian messages. Others have been approached directly by the Ukrainian government.
Ukraine’s external communication is mainly handled by the Ministry of Information, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Digital Transformation also make their own announcements. Exactly how they work is unlikely to become clearer until after the war. In any case, Ukraine has managed to do on social media what Britain did with propaganda posters during World War II. On all platforms, politicians and official sites and accounts repeat simple messages that can be easily remembered and shared.
Ukraine’s war communication must address several audiences at the same time: the country itself, Russia and the whole world.
The Telegram messaging app has been the most influential platform inside the country, but Ukrainians have also managed to mobilize Twitter, Instagram and, more surprisingly, TikTok (a video creation app