The communication strategy of Marmeladych

Since 2017, the Marmeladych brand has been delighting sweet-tooths across Russia with the freshest and most unusual marmalade, positioning itself as a creator of vibrant emotions and unique flavors.

Marmeladich operates as a confectionery brand that behaves like an absurdist media outlet. Its persona is a deadpan expert with a chaotic alter ego — someone who knows every detail of marmalade production yet delivers that knowledge through tutorials on worm ear care. The brand rejects glossy food industry aesthetics in favour of raw factory confessionals, worker diaries, and public admissions of failure framed as comedy. The founder speaks not as a distant CEO but as a transparent, slightly unhinged narrator who tells you exactly how many packets were affected by an error, calls defective products names no legal department would approve, and then invites you to help fix the problem. This constructs radical intimacy: the audience is not marketed to; the audience is let in.

The brand speaks to a young, digitally native generation — Generation Alpha and younger Gen Z, roughly 10 to 25 years old — for whom a brand's willingness to embarrass itself publicly reads as the only acceptable way to communicate. These consumers grew up on YouTube, TikTok, and Telegram, developed near-total immunity to traditional advertising before their teens, and detect fake brand voices within seconds. They respond to layered, chaotic comedy that does not explain the joke and value transparency as a baseline expectation: if a brand is not showing the factory floor and admitting mistakes, it is hiding something. The sheer strangeness of the content — worm care guides, chili bear manhunts, pea soup holidays — functions as a discovery mechanism, pulling in viewers who click from curiosity and stay because they have never seen a brand talk to them like this.

Project objective: To analyze how Marmeladych uses modern communication channels (in particular, vertical videos on social media) to create meaning, build a loyal community, and persuade consumers.

The brand's website is a place to place orders and browse its product range. But the brand also finds its customers through social media. The strategic focus is on vertical video: Reels, VK Clips, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok.

1. Social media posts: an endless feedback loop. Social media algorithms demand constant engagement, and likes, comments, and reposts provide instant feedback to the brand. Marmeladych sees which videos are popular (for example, unboxing a new sour filling) and immediately adapts the content. What was initially just advertising often transforms into user-generated content when people start making their own reviews.

2. Marketplaces(Wildberries, Ozon) and product cards on the website. Infographics use bright colors, large fonts, and icons like "European marmalade" or "halal" are instantly readable, creating the desired impression even before reading the text.

3. Telegram channel.Here, Marmeladych creates dramatizing messages—life-related memes, and "recognized yourself" situations (for example, "that friend who always steals your marmalade"). The brand ceases to be just "food" and becomes a marker of belonging to a fun, modern community of sweet-toothed people.

4. Long-format videos(YouTube videos, founder interviews, podcasts). While short videos convey emotion, long-form videos convey meaning. These reach a more engaged audience, where the brand reveals the "inner workings" of its products, discussing the development of new flavors, the eco-friendliness of its packaging, or the company's history. This builds expertise and trust, proving that behind the flashy packaging lies a high-quality, well-thought-out product.

Why does the vertical format work? The vertical video format itself is a sign of sincerity, mobility, and an insider's perspective. Marmeladych exploits this quirk: their videos are often shot in a first-person perspective, as if they were recorded not by a professional cameraman, but by a fellow consumer on a phone. This creates a phenomenological effect: the viewer literally experiences the experience of eating marmalade along with the video's creator, becoming a participant in the process.

To analyse Marmeladich's communication strategy, this study draws upon two theories from the course: Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT) and Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM).

Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), developed by Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, and Michael Gurevitch, assumes that audiences are not passive consumers, but active participants who deliberately choose media to satisfy specific needs. People use media for Diversion (escape from routine), Personal Relationships (social utility), Personal Identity (value reinforcement), and Surveillance (information). In Marmeladich's communication, this means the brand shifts its focus from merely fulfilling a rational, utilitarian need — buying marmalade, which falls under Surveillance — to satisfying deep emotional needs. The brand's social media platforms are designed primarily for Diversion and Personal Identity — users intentionally visit their channels for absurdist comedy, emotional release, and to reinforce their self-image as people who value honesty and reject corporate fakery, rather than to make an immediate purchase.

Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), developed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo, explains how people process persuasive messages through two distinct routes. The central route involves careful evaluation of arguments, facts, and evidence — producing attitudes that are stable, resistant, and predictive of behaviour. The peripheral route relies on emotional cues, humour, surprise, and source likeability — capturing attention when motivation or ability to process deeply is low. For Marmeladich, this dual-route strategy unfolds by embedding genuine production expertise — specific temperatures, complaint statistics, error disclosures — within an emotional wrapper of deadpan absurdist narration and a signature trash-montage finale. The brand does not separate information from entertainment. It uses the peripheral route as a delivery vehicle that ensures central arguments are attended to, processed, and remembered. A viewer comes for the worm videos and the glitch effects, but stays for the verifiable data and the transparent production stories. The result is a unique persuasion architecture: durable trust, built through comedy.

Uses and Gratifications Theory (UGT), developed by Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, and Michael Gurevitch, assumes that audiences are active participants who deliberately choose media to satisfy specific needs: Diversion (escape from routine), Personal Relationships (social utility), Personal Identity (value reinforcement), and Surveillance (information). A traditional confectionery brand satisfies only Surveillance — a user checks a price and leaves. Marmeladich has broken this pattern entirely, transforming a utilitarian product into a daily content destination that satisfies all four needs at once.

As for Diversion, Marmeladich provides a complete departure from reality. Users subscribe to laugh, not to shop. The video «A short guide to caring for your giant worm» has nothing to do with marmalade. The brand delivers a deadpan tutorial on cleaning a fictional pet worm's ears with a soldering iron — ear canals grow over quickly, the narrator explains, so do not hesitate to work the tool thoroughly, then add a satisfied well, delicious. The viewer is then instructed to locate skin imperfections and very gently eliminate them — the yellow ones, by the way, are the tastiest — before giving the worm a warm bath and applying facial moisturiser. There is no price, no promotion, no call to purchase. The serious instructional tone applied to utterly absurd content creates a cognitive gap bridged by laughter. The signature trash-montage finale provides the emotional payoff. The brand understands that the current content landscape is saturated with predictable advertising, so it offers a radically different space governed by absurdist logic. Users come for escape and leave having received exactly what they came for.

Regarding Personal Relationships, Marmeladich's content is engineered to be shared and to build genuine community. The video «I hired our subscriber — a schoolboy — to fight hate» illustrates this perfectly. The founder announces that he has given a job to a real subscriber, a schoolboy whose parents forbade showing his face because soon some of you will probably hate him. This is Snack Ronaldo, the ruthless Telegram admin who has spent half a year deleting negativity and who permanently bans Chupa-Chups fans, especially those who support Messi. The brand elevates an actual follower into its narrative, promoting him to head of the newly created department of resistance to nasty things and slander. When a reviewer claims the sour marmalade is not sour enough, Ronaldo will politely explain that sourness perception is subjective and depends on taste bud sensitivity. And then the founder draws a careful line: do not confuse Ronaldo's personal account with the support team — there, real diplomats work, always ready to peacefully help with any problem, even if you are from the labour inspectorate. This distinction between playful community combat and genuine customer care shows the audience the brand understands the rules of its own game. The Snack Ronaldo mythology becomes social currency: a reference only insiders understand, a character discussed in comments, a story forwarded to friends.