Ukrainian businesses must adopt a two-speed marketing model to navigate severe operational instability, creative agency Olart founder Oleksandr Artyukh said on Wednesday.
Artyukh warned that corporate executives who abandon brand building in favor of short tactical sprints risk stripping their companies of core identity and turning them into faceless market players competing only on price discounts.
When planning horizons shrink to several weeks, relying solely on two-week promotional experiments removes the strategic foundation that commercial brands need to survive, Artyukh said.
Constant security risks, acute personnel shortages and widespread energy instability have forced executive management across Ukraine to react to fresh disruptions on an almost daily basis. Under those conditions, a traditional six-month marketing campaign covering comprehensive market research through to final creative production is increasingly viewed by company leaders as an unaffordable luxury or a dangerous gamble with scarce resources.
Ukrainian commercial enterprises have operated under extreme strain since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Businesses across the country have had to purchase backup diesel generators, install energy storage systems and manage rolling blackouts caused by missile strikes on the electrical grid. At the same time, military mobilization and mass displacement have created acute labor shortages, making long-term corporate planning exceptionally difficult for executive teams.
In response to volatile operating conditions, many business founders have turned toward performance marketing, which prioritizes immediate digital clicks and short-term sales over long-term brand development. Artyukh said that while performance campaigns provide rapid data, over-reliance on tactical promotions leaves companies vulnerable to commoditization.
Research on business agility
International corporate data suggests that organizations combining strategic vision with operational flexibility achieve superior financial outcomes during periods of volatility. According to the Business Agility Report 2025, companies that integrate fast tactical iterations with long-term strategic vision generate an average of 10.3 percent higher revenue per employee than inflexible peer firms.
The Business Agility Report is an annual international benchmarking study that measures corporate adaptability, examining how organizational flexibility influences commercial performance and workforce productivity across diverse global industries.
Similar findings have been recorded in Ukrainian corporate research. Analytics published by research agency Gradus Research identified the two-speed approach as one of the primary adaptation strategies used by domestic companies to navigate wartime crises.
Gradus Research reported that Ukrainian enterprises are forced to sustain daily commercial operations while simultaneously investing in future business directions. The research highlighted that corporate readiness to invest early in structural resilience remains vital, even when such investments temporarily increase current operating expenditures.
Gradus Research is a Kyiv-based sociological and market research company that conducts digital panel polling, tracking consumer sentiment, purchasing habits and corporate behavior across Ukraine throughout the wartime economy.
The end of universal pipelines
Artyukh stated that the era of the universal, one-size-fits-all marketing pipeline has come to an end. Corporate winners will be managers who treat commercial marketing not as a single rigid process, but as an engine operating on two distinct speeds, he said.
The central task for modern leadership is separating high-capitalization initiatives that require a systematic six-month development process from operational hypothesis tests that can launch within two to three weeks, Artyukh explained.
A classic six-month pipeline remains essential when a company reaches a growth ceiling, changes its strategic market positioning or enters a more advanced stage of corporate maturity, Artyukh said. When an industry experiences chaos and commercial uniformity, leaving customers unable to distinguish between rival brands, fast advertising sprints cannot succeed without a rebuilt corporate foundation.
However, Artyukh emphasized that extensive strategic restructuring is not appropriate for every operational issue. If an underlying business model remains unchanged and a company is simply adapting to current market circumstances, attempting to resolve every tactical challenge through a massive strategic review only wastes valuable executive time.
Fast operational sprints
Waiting six months to introduce each commercial initiative during wartime carries a heavy risk of losing market share, Artyukh warned. With customer demand and competitive conditions shifting weekly, businesses require prompt commercial decisions supported by empirical data.
He said that companies must learn to test operational hypotheses over a window of two to three weeks. This shorter track is designed for launching seasonal product lines, niche special projects, tactical crisis responses and product trials targeted at limited audiences.
The ability to bring solutions to market rapidly has become a primary condition for commercial survival, Artyukh noted. Short operational cycles allow marketing teams to test customer appetite quickly without committing large sums of capital to unverified concepts.
Balancing strategy and tactical speed
The main challenge facing corporate executives today is filtering commercial tasks accurately and avoiding the mistake of trying to solve immediate operational problems with massive promotional campaigns, Artyukh said.
He outlined specific decision criteria for executive management to apply to every new corporate proposal. If an initiative affects the fundamental value and market positioning of a brand for years ahead, companies must route it through the traditional six-month pipeline, supported by rigorous consumer research and strict quality standards, even if the work requires several months.
If a proposal represents a local test of consumer demand, a situational launch or a tactical experiment, managers should place it on the short sprint track, Artyukh said. He warned that protracted corporate delays devalue situational ideas.
If a situational marketing launch gets bogged down in endless internal corporate reviews and approvals, business managers should either revise the format immediately or abandon the project entirely and move on, Artyukh said.
Artyukh concluded that adapting to operational risks does not mean abandoning long-term corporate strategy. Instead, he said that navigating crises requires strict priority discipline, urging corporate leadership to invest sustained time and capital into fundamental structural changes while keeping operational processes agile and responsive.
