december focus

What a month, friends. We honestly thought December wouldn’t give us enough topics and that we’d simply wrap up the year instead. Turns out, there was so much to talk about that closing the year without a December Focus was impossible.

So buckle up — a wide spectrum awaits. We’ll tell the stories. You decide the conclusions: which campaigns worked, and which ones turned into a good lesson.

zoommer x supermarket - the collab we didn’t know we needed

This year, Zoommer delivered exactly what we’ve come to expect from the brand: humor — and as a bonus, their signature musical twist.

Let’s start here. One noticeable trend this year was brands trying to make products talk (Wiser’s and Alta’s campaigns come to mind). Zoommer took this idea further by bringing together internet-famous voices and, under the campaign “Zoommer Gifts Can’t Wait”, showcased its “Zoomer Selection” in a genuinely entertaining way.

Through three short videos, we were introduced to dozens of products you can buy at Zoommer for the New Year. The chosen voices were carefully selected to resonate with different ages and tastes — effectively covering the entire audience spectrum.

Ioane speaks directly to Gen Z.
“Lela’s Voice” connects Gen Z and Millennials.
Lela Tsurtsumia and Stephane Mgebreshvili? Universally recognizable across generations.

In short, Zoommer didn’t just showcase its tech and link New Year’s gifts to the brand — it successfully reached audiences of different ages and interests.

Just when we thought the campaign had ended, Zoommer surprised us again with a video built on a different concept. This time, soprano Lina Tsiklauri’s voice speaks about the stress of gift-giving: What if they already have it? What if they don’t like it? And then comes the punchline: “Why all this drama? The right gifts are at Zoommer”

With this move, Zoommer:

Extended the existing campaign by reinforcing its wide selection of gifts;
Revived an old brand concept — delivering the message through music — but this time using classical music.

A familiar idea, reinterpreted thoughtfully.

“love comes back — you just have to believe” - TBC x Playmakers

We’ve already discussed, more than once, how TBC is consistently building its new brand platform: “You Just Have to Believe.” Every campaign — big or small — functions as a continuation or reinforcement of this idea. The New Year’s campaign checks almost every box we typically use to define a strong campaign:

Brand fit
Relevance
Context
Social background
Emotional impact
Real action

The main video, telling the story of a young boy and his grandmother (aka Santa Claus), turned out to be deeply emotional — especially for emigrants and their families. The music deserves a special mention. The story, accompanied by “Where Do the Seagulls Fly”, becomes even more powerful.

Kutaisi to Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki to Kutaisi — and back again. The campaign clearly shows something we often fail to consciously acknowledge: our families — and, by extension, the country’s economy — are heavily supported by emigrants’ remittances.

But emigrants don’t just send money. They send clothes, food, technology. The grandmother in the video is an emigrant. Santa Claus is an emigrant. The emigrant is the family’s backbone. And what do they receive in return? The child sending a gift back to his grandmother becomes a metaphor — love returning, gratitude expressed.

Then comes the key message: “In 2025, emigrants sent nearly 7 million transfers to Georgia.”

A campaign built on real statistics and a strong insight — classic Playmakers style (remember “Gogoa” for PSP). The call to action follows: “Send a gift to an emigrant with TBC and DHL’s special offer until December 25.”

Another video within the campaign features children answering questions and sending drawings to the people they miss most — parents, grandparents — living abroad. Simple, human, effective.

TBC also involved influencers. For example:

Influencer Tato Karchava, now living in France, received letters from her sister and friends.
Beloved TV personality Babilina, now in the U.S., received her grandchild’s letter and album delivered by Natia Gvazava (NatiaTalks).

A very emotional piece of content. The campaign is still ongoing. Once it ends, it will be interesting to see how many people actually used the offer — a metric worth watching.

“you caught a cold? so what” - pharmadepo x mozaika agency

Together with creative agency Mozaika, Pharmadepo told us: “You caught a cold? So what. Pharmadepo has everything.” To deliver the message, they used a recent hit by contemporary Georgian artist Torcho (Giorgi Toradze).

The video shows a family gathering. A boy sneezes. A woman asks: “Did you catch a cold?” He replies: “So what?” Everyone starts dancing, handing him medicine cheerfully.

The reaction was mixed.

Some praised the unexpected use of Torcho’s song and the surprise effect.
Others criticized Pharmadepo for being irresponsible.

When analyzing any campaign, brand fit is essential — and this is where we must start. Pharmadepo is a pharmacy chain. Its own description says: “Pharmadepo — a place where a pharmacist cares about your health.”

This means the brand carries a responsibility to raise awareness around health issues — not trivialize them.

Context matters too. When hundreds of thousands die annually from seasonal viruses, a pharmacy saying “So what?” sounds, at best, careless.

Cultural context is equally important. In our country, many people go to work even when sick — due to economic pressure or ingrained habits. We all remember COVID, when masks had to be enforced by law and fines.

In a reality where health is already taken lightly — or where people simply can’t afford to miss work — trivializing seasonal flu, especially through irony, is not what we expect from a pharmaceutical brand.

We understand what the intended message probably was: “Don’t panic. Don’t stress. Pharmadepo has everything to help you manage your cold and recover quickly.”

But what the video actually said was only this: “You caught a cold? So what.”

This case once again proves:

You may want to say one thing but end up communicating the opposite.
A popular artist and a hit song don’t fit every message or every brand.
Humor doesn’t always work — especially if it’s unclear for whom and why it’s being used.

“cold doesn’t Suit You” - midea x supermarket

“Cold doesn’t suit you,” Midea tells us in its latest video. What I heard was something else: poverty doesn’t suit you. I can’t link the video — it was deleted from all platforms the day after launch — but I remember it clearly.

Here’s what we saw: A dimly lit house. A family wearing layers of clothes, hats, scarves. The home is messy, dark, cold. One person knits with frozen hands. Another fries eggs. Someone plays the piano. Another lies curled up in bed. A boy reads to a child. A monster-like shadow appears on the floor. The man at the stove burns his hand.

Final scene: the whole family sitting in front of the TV — still cold, still bundled up, still in darkness.

Then the camera moves one floor down. A bright, tidy apartment. A woman in a thin dress. And… Midea’s hot-and-cold air conditioner.

Message: Buy Midea’s hot-and-cold AC with a 30% discount.

As mentioned earlier, beyond brand fit, context, background, and audience are critical. And all of this requires an understanding of reality. After watching this video, one thought stayed with me: a complete loss of reality perception.

Let’s remind ourselves where we live:

In a country where people sleep on the streets;
Where many children go to school without food;
Where homes still use old, dangerous gas heaters that frequently explode;
Where nearly 20% of the population depends on social assistance.

In this country, cold is not a choice — it’s everyday life for many. Yes, contrast is one of storytelling’s strongest tools. It works here too — dark vs bright, cold vs warm, layers vs a thin dress. But in this context, contrast doesn’t elevate the message. It provokes anger.

Tools don’t work universally. They don’t fit every brand or every campaign. At the end of the day, the message matters more than the technique.

The campaign was deleted the next day. I don’t know exactly what triggered the decision, but it was the right one. The campaign didn’t spread widely — and stopping it prevented larger financial and reputational damage.

Every failure has one positive side: it teaches us something.

What does the Midea x Supermarket case teach us?

Brands don’t exist in a vacuum — they exist in specific countries and realities. Context is not optional; it’s mandatory.
Agencies, like brands, must stay loyal to their value systems and never lose touch with reality. An agency that recently delivered MZIA – 12 Citizens with deep local insight, and then tells us “Cold doesn’t suit you” in the same year — does not match each other.
Contrast, dramatic direction, and minor-key music are just tools. If the core message is flawed, drama turns into audience aggression.
Strategy without reality awareness is just visuals. Losing touch with reality means losing your audience — and no amount of great direction or discounts will save you.

And finally: Stopping a campaign is not always a failure. Sometimes it’s a declaration — we made a mistake, we saw it, we acknowledged it. It’s proof that a brand listens before the damage becomes irreversible.

In Conclusion

A cold December turned out to be a very hot month for the creative industry. We saw successes and failures, acknowledged mistakes and ignored ones. Time will show which efforts deliver long-term value — and how brands evolve from here.

I’ll leave you with one question — one we’re still thinking about at minds&marketing:

Who carries responsibility for a campaign’s success or failure — the company as the client and approver, or the agency as the executor?

“love comes back”, technology speaks, midea pulls the plug…