Giorgi Turkadze

Chapter 1 - The setup

When I joined the company, the main challenge was not brand awareness, but rather a weak emotional connection with the audience and an accumulation of negative feedback across social media networks - technically there, but nobody was humming along.

It became necessary to establish a completely new standard of dialogue with the audience. The brand needed character, consistency, and a reason for people to stop scrolling. Not with a bigger ad budget - with a better story.

Chapter 2 - The approach

Creative storytelling as strategy. Creative storytelling took center stage in the marketing strategy. Every piece of content was structured around a specific scenario, character, and emotion. This approach led social media algorithms to natively boost our content because users were genuinely interacting with it - a character, a tension, a resolution. Stories are how humans have processed information for 40,000 years.

Content that earned attention instead of buying it. The reach we built was overwhelmingly organic. We made content so good that the algorithm worked for us - because people genuinely wanted to watch, react, and share.

Multi-channel, one voice. Social, in-store, digital, PR - the brand sounded like the same person everywhere. That consistency is what turns a marketing department into a brand identity.

Chapter 3 - The viral moment

In November 2023, just before the Black Friday campaign launched, we responded to Balenciaga's high-priced towel skirt by highlighting an affordable towel in Gorgia's inventory through a humorous contrast. Gorgia sells towels for ₾10.

So we put them side by side - the $925 designer version next to ours at ₾10.11 - and let the absurdity speak for itself. 21,000 reactions. 1,200 comments. 1,400 shares. This wasn't luck. It was two years of building a brand voice that had earned the right to be funny, bold, and culturally aware. Only a brand with a real personality can make a meme that feels authentic - and becomes the opening shot of a record-breaking campaign.

Chapter 4 - The results

The campaign's total numbers tell the story, but each one means something. Here's what happened in a country of 3.7 million people.

People didn't scroll past. They watched. 4.3 million minutes of video viewed - that's over eight years of human attention paid to a hardware brand. 7.2 million views in total, and 1.1 million people who watched all the way to the end. We didn't interrupt people's feeds. We became the thing they stopped for.

This is the number I'm proudest of, and it isn't the biggest one: 88.8% of all this reach was organic - earned, not bought. Most brands rent their audience by the day and watch it vanish the moment the budget stops. We built one that showed up on its own.

Georgia has 3.7 million people. Our Facebook page received 2,256,845 visits - up 322.8%. Instagram profile visits climbed 316.8%. People weren't waiting for us to appear in their feed. They were typing our name into the search bar and coming to look for themselves.

21,764 people didn't just react - they opened a conversation. In retail, a message is intent: "do you have this," "where's your nearest branch," "is this in stock." That's 21,764 hands raised, ready to buy. And 4.85 million total engagements - in a country of 3.7 million, that's more than one interaction for every person alive in Georgia.

Chapter 5 - From screens to stores

One of the core metrics of marketing is converting digital activity into physical foot traffic.

728,122 people walked into a Gorgia store during the campaign window. Not visited a page - walked through a physical door, across the whole country. That foot traffic turned into 50% sales growth over the previous year's campaign. That's the difference between marketing that entertains and marketing that sells.

Building the brand's voice.

Relevant humour and real everyday life became the primary tools of communication, establishing a direct connection with the audience.

A simple Valentine's Day post. Built with zero media budget, it generated 5,500 reactions, 567 comments, and 92 shares - just because it sounded like a person, not a press release. The iPhone post did the same on an ordinary day. This is the difference between a brand that talks at people and a brand that talks with them. That voice didn't appear overnight. It was built, post by post, over four years - and it's the foundation everything below stands on.

Chapter 6 - The four-year arc

This campaign was the peak - but it was built on four years of consistent transformation.

I didn't inherit a broken brand. I inherited a quiet one. The work was to give it a voice worth listening to, a personality worth following, and a creative standard that made every post feel like it was made by someone who actually cared. This wasn't a campaign. It was a four-year transformation - proof that when you find the real story inside a brand and tell it with craft, the numbers take care of themselves.

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Building brands that cross borders

In 2025, I took the role of CMO at BMS - the company bringing some of Europe's most established consumer brands into Georgia. Each arrives with decades of European equity and zero local emotional connection. The challenge is the one I've been solving my whole career: how to build interest in everyday products that consumers use without a second thought and to prove them why they need to spend more. The answer lies in proper communication that bridges cultures.

Vileda Turbo Smart

"Keep pace with innovation"

The challenge. Generating attention and driving sales for a premium product within a low-engagement category like cleaning accessories. The Turbo Smart was a launch fighting for attention against everything else in a person's day.

The insight. Most Georgian households still clean the old way - a bucket, a rag, a mop wrung out by hand, a sore back. The Turbo Smart had a foot pedal that spun the mop dry for you. It didn't just look newer - it made the old way look ancient. So I built the campaign around one provocation: why are you still cleaning like it's 1990?

The creative. Every piece was a BEFORE / AFTER - grim grayscale old way on the left, bright effortless Turbo Smart on the right. The tagline leaned on the pedal: "ფეხი აუწყე ინოვაციას" - keep pace with innovation. In Georgian "ფეხი" means foot, so it works twice: keep up with innovation, and do it with your foot. Price closed it: 205₾ down to 89.95₾.

The amplification. We handed the concept to 15 influencers, each producing their own creative video. Those videos alone earned 5.3 million views - in a country of 3.7 million people.

Vileda Gloves

A win-win

The challenge. Creating a high-engagement campaign for a standard household item, rubber gloves.

The insight. So I decided not to talk about gloves at all. I'd talk about hands - and what hands can do beyond cleaning. In Georgia, the most recognized face of sign language is Esma, the interpreter who translates national broadcasts for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. We partnered with her to put sign language in front of the whole country - teaching basic signs and raising awareness of a community most marketing forgets exists.

The idea. The gloves became the bridge. Hands that protect. Hands that speak. Hands that connect. We turned a product campaign into a small act of public education - and tied Vileda to something larger than cleaning: empathy, inclusion, and the dignity of being understood.

This is a classic example of a win-win-win strategy. The brand earned strong loyalty and image growth, society received educational content, and the deaf and hard-of-hearing community gained an important platform and visibility.

Basso × MasterChef

"Happiness starts with Basso"

The challenge. Basso olive oil entered a market where olive oil is a commodity. Every brand looks identical on the shelf. Sponsoring MasterChef Georgia was the chance to break through - but only as more than a logo in the corner.

The idea. The line "Happiness starts with Basso" is a wordplay that only works in Georgian. "Basso" opens with the letter B - and so does "bedniereba," the Georgian word for happiness. Brand name and feeling became linked by language itself, so every mention of Basso quietly carried the word for happiness inside it.

The execution. We wove Basso into the heart of MasterChef - where cooking, craft, and joy already live - connecting the brand to the pleasure of making something good rather than the chore of buying groceries.

The rest of the portfolio

Frosch - Eco-friendly cleaning. Positioning sustainability as a feature people actually care about, not a checkbox.

Pasta Reggia - Italian pasta. Building premium perception in a market flooded with generic imports.

Trolli - Playful candy. Absurdist humor and bold visuals in a category dominated by nostalgia.

Working with European brands taught me something I first learned as a tour guide: every culture has a frequency. The stories that land in Groningen don't land the same way in Tbilisi. But the need for a story is universal. Sometimes connection means a foot pedal and a price drop. Sometimes it means a pair of hands teaching a country to say "thank you." Both are the work.

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