Branding & Strategy
From esports to enterprise: strategic thinking that drives real-world growth.
Whether it’s a brand launch, sponsorship play, or a repositioning in a noisy market, great strategy should do more than define a brand. It should move people while remaining authentic.
I’ve worked across the full strategic and advertsing spectrum, from building esports sponsorship programs at Kaspersky with teams like NASR and Red Canids, to shaping digital platforms that brought brand narratives to life for both B2B and B2C audiences. These weren’t logo-on-a-jersey partnerships, they were integrated campaigns designed to drive awareness, affinity, and measurable business outcomes. At the same time, I’ve helped brands evolve their tone, sharpen their positioning, and turn scattered assets into coherent identities that show up consistently across channels.
I bridge creative storytelling with business thinking. Crafting strategies that not only look good in a deck, but hold up under performance pressure. Because in a world saturated with brand noise, it’s the thinking behind the visuals that separates good marketing from real impact.
From zero presence to a multi-year, multi-region brand platform
When I joined Kaspersky, the brand had little to no esports presence and a traditional audience base that skewed older and less engaged with emerging digital culture. I created the esports program from the ground up. Developing a strategic, multi-market sponsorship platform designed to refresh brand perception, reach new audiences, and create authentic content opportunities in gaming communities worldwide.
The result was a fully operational global program featuring four long-term team partnerships:
- Sangal (Turkey & Europe)
- Red Canids (Brazil)
- NASR (UAE & Middle East)
- Reckoning (India)
Each sponsorship was activated through recurring content series, influencer collaboration, giveaways, social campaigns, livestreams, and performance-driven paid media. All partnerships were renewed multiple times (up to three renewals before my departure), a testament to both internal buy-in and external ROI.
We designed modular content templates for our teams to keep messaging consistent while allowing local creativity. The sponsorships became a content factory, assets of which could be deployed across their own channels, as well as our own; and utilized across PR, Social Media, and repurposed as advertising assets. I also led the paid media activation strategy—leveraging adtech machine learning tools and our esports audience segments to drive consideration and remarketing at scale.
By 2023, Kaspersky had shifted its perception among Gen Z and millennial gamers, with 87% of surveyed fans choosing Kaspersky as their preferred cybersecurity brand, and 93% responding positively to seeing the Kaspersky logo in gaming content. We generated thousands of sales with new audiences.
This wasn’t just about putting logos on jerseys. It was about embedding Kaspersky into gaming culture—credibly, consistently, and creatively.
