Launching OSHEE: My Role in a New Market Story
THE OPPORTUNITY
There's a ritual in American sports culture: after the game, someone shows up with an electrolyte drink and that moment means celebration. It's cultural. It's earned. In Kazakhstan, that moment didn't exist yet. The category was brand new, unfamiliar, and met with real skepticism. That's what made it so interesting. We weren't just launching a product. We were introducing an entire idea to a market that had never considered it.
THE STRATEGY
We made a deliberate choice early: this wasn't going to be a mass market play. OSHEE was going to enter through the top: premium supermarkets, high-end gyms, spaces where the target consumer already had a certain standard. With teams working across Kazakhstan and New York, we were telling a story about a brand that existed beyond borders. That story created its own credibility before a single ad ran.
THE CHALLENGE
Marketing a beverage is fundamentally different from marketing anything else. People are putting it inside their body, and that makes them vulnerable in a way that buying a piece of jewelry never does. Trust had to be built before anything could be sold. You can't rush that. OSHEE had everything going for it - a world-class tennis ambassador, a strong European following, a premium identity. The challenge was that none of that meant anything to a Kazakh consumer who had never heard of it.
THE WORK
Lifestyle and sports photoshoots. Branded uniforms for our ambassador team. Merch. A social media strategy built through real-time experimentation and paid advertising. Every piece had one job: make the right person stop, feel something, and reach for it. OSHEE is also where I learned that giving people the option to trust you is one of the most powerful things a brand can do.
THE RESULT
Sales grew. The brand found its audience. OSHEE Kazakhstan is no longer active — not every story has a permanent ending, and not every ending is about the work. What I took from it was more valuable than any outcome: a real understanding of brand trust, consumer psychology, and what it means to introduce something new to people who have no reason yet to believe in it.
CREATIVE STRATEGY
CONTENT PRODUCTION
SOCIAL MEDIA
PAID ADVERTISING
AMBASSADOR COORDINATION
MERCH DEVELOPMENT