Where other headlines end, Meduza begins We’re launching the first advertising campaign in our 10-year history. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

For the first time in its 10-year history, Meduza is launching an ad campaign — and it’s aimed not at Russian readers, but at Western ones. The goal is to raise awareness about the challenges Russian journalism faces in exile (an industry practically on the verge of collapse). This international campaign has been carefully designed to attract new readers in Europe and North America while also bolstering Meduza’s crowdfunding efforts.

The campaign, developed by the Berlin-based agency Lure, kicks off with the release of a new promotional video and will continue into 2025 in various formats. Despite being banned and blocked in Russia, Meduza remains the largest independent Russian media outlet, with more than 10 million monthly readers in the country. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Meduza has managed to survive thanks to the support of donations from international readers and Russians living abroad.

A new slogan for a new era

At the center of Meduza’s first-ever promotional campaign is a new slogan: “Where other headlines end, Meduza begins.” It was designed specifically to engage audiences in North America, Western Europe, and Northern Europe who follow events in Russia and Ukraine but feel the coverage offered by regional and international media lacks depth.

The campaign launches on November 25, 2024, starting with the release of a new promotional video (which you can watch above). Over the next few months, with support from its partners, Meduza will expand the campaign across digital platforms, print media, and offline spaces, including special, yet-to-be-revealed events in Berlin, London, Paris, and New York.

The slogan was coined by the Berlin-based advertising agency Lure, which has worked with major global brands like Coca-Cola and ASICS. As the Lure team notes, every ad campaign, regardless of its scale, begins with the question, “What are people missing that you can provide to them?” To find Meduza’s answer to this question, Lure surveyed more than 700 Meduza in English readers from 100 countries, and conducted in-depth interviews with 15 of them to gain more detailed insights into their reading experience.

The interview and survey responses revealed that the average Meduza in English reader lives in the U.S., Canada, or Europe, and relies on multiple sources for information about Russia. They often feel frustrated with mainstream media’s inability to provide clear, accurate reporting on Russia, and they actively seek out unbiased, deeper coverage. Meduza fills that gap.

Lure’s team also spoke to Meduza’s staff to better understand the challenging conditions under which its editors and reporters work — particularly how they continue to gather information from Russia despite Meduza being outlawed there. The promo video references key moments in Meduza’s history and the government repression its journalists have faced: the arrests of reporters Ivan Golunov in Moscow and Maxim Solopov in Minsk, the blocking of its website in Russia, the outlet’s designation as a “foreign agent” and an “undesirable organization,” and the attempted poisoning of special correspondent Elena Kostyuchenko.

Who is Lure, the agency behind this campaign?

The agency behind Meduza’s ad campaign, Lure, was founded in Berlin in 2017 by its current Chief Creative Officer, David Incorvaia. Lure’s portfolio includes 360 global and local campaigns, spanning TV commercials, streaming series, print materials, digital resources, and events. The agency’s work has been recognized with Effie Awards and Webby Awards for its excellence.

In early 2024, David Incorvaia reached out to Meduza with a proposal to launch an advertising campaign targeting Western audiences. By then, he was already a regular reader of Meduza in English, which he’d begun following after the start of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine. He soon realized that many of his acquaintances in the U.S. and Europe had never heard of Meduza, though he believed they would greatly value its reporting.

“As an American, I see both my country and the whole world moving towards authoritarianism,” David tells Meduza. “Press freedom is under threat. And without independent journalism, people are easily manipulated. Your job is so important that I didn’t just think, ‘It would be great to help’ — I thought, ‘We have to help.’”

The team at Lure donated thousands of hours of work to help Meduza reach new English-speaking readers. Lure is also a part of WPI (Worldwide Partners), the largest global network of independent agencies. WPI partners contributed strategically and creatively to the work Lure did for Meduza. In addition, dozens of other partners and freelancers helped build the campaign, including producing the materials, perfecting the sound design, and composing original music for the video. The production company Moonraker, an Emmy Award nominee based in the UK, created the film together with Lure, and the Helsinki-based branding and design agency Werklig crafted the design concept for the print and digital headline campaign with Lure. The strategy firm Venn, based in Berlin, helped Lure develop the campaign’s core creative strategy.

Meduza’s founders, Galina Timchenko and Ivan Kolpakov, note that the ad campaign developed by Lure comes at a critical moment for all Russian media in exile. Like many other outlets forced to leave Russia due to the war and military censorship, Meduza is facing significant funding challenges. Timchenko believes that “Lure’s incredibly high-quality campaign” will help raise awareness about this issue among Western audiences. With no marketing budget of its own, Meduza’s newsroom is counting on readers and colleagues from other media and civil society organizations to help amplify the campaign.

All the work Lure and its partner agencies did for this campaign was provided pro bono.

What Meduza offers Western audiences

Meduza was founded in October 2014 by journalists who had previously worked at Lenta.ru. In the spring of 2014, during Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Kremlin pressured the owner of Lenta.ru — at the time Russia’s largest independent news outlet — to fire its editor-in-chief, Galina Timchenko. Nearly the entire staff resigned in protest.

Meduza was the first major Russian media project started outside of Russia. Its headquarters has always been in the Latvian capital of Riga. Within just a few years, it became the largest independent Russian-language online media outlet and earned recognition as an industry leader. Known internationally for its innovative approach, Meduza combines high journalistic standards with creative storytelling formats. Despite being blocked in Russia since 2022, Meduza continues to reach millions of readers inside the country — including through its app, which bypasses government censorship and works even without a VPN.

Meduza launched its English-language edition in early 2015. From the outset, its mission has been to provide Western readers with a deeper, more nuanced view of Russia, Ukraine, and the surrounding region — offering expert analysis without relying on the usual stereotypes. Every day, Meduza in English publishes news, long-form reporting, and in-depth analysis. It also features:

• A daily newsletter — the easiest way to stay informed on events in Russia and Ukraine
• A monthly newsletter, The Beet, which publishes exclusive feature stories focused on the wider region, from Central and Eastern Europe to the Caucasus and Central Asia
• A podcast, The Naked Pravda, in which Meduza in English’s editors talk to experts about the latest events in Russia and the region

Meduza in English’s primary audience is in North America and Europe. According to Lure’s research, these readers value not only the depth of Meduza’s coverage but also its impartiality.

Meduza is operating in a unique context. It’s one of the few outlets created by Russians that’s also widely followed in Ukraine. And in addition to informing its readers in Russia about global events, it also keeps Western audiences updated on what’s happening inside Russia, publishing reports from within the country despite the tremendous risks faced by their authors. As Ivan Kolpakov notes, Meduza serves as a bridge between people living in vastly different contexts — a role that’s especially important in times of war and polarization.

How this ad campaign will help Meduza

Lure believes that Meduza in English’s audience can and should be much broader. Conversations with Meduza’s regular readers left the agency’s team convinced that Meduza has significant growth potential in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

For Meduza, audience expansion is a matter of survival. For years, the Kremlin has sought to destroy the outlet, primarily by attacking its funding sources. In 2021, the Russian government designated Meduza as a “foreign agent,” triggering the collapse of its business model, which had relied on native advertising; within a week, an outlet that was on track to become profitable in 2022 lost nearly all of its clients. Then, Meduza’s Russian readers came to its rescue: over the course of just 10 months, 170,000 people contributed to its crowdfunding campaign, with 33,000 of them committing to monthly donations — a vital component of any successful crowdfunding effort.

In 2022, Meduza lost funding for the second time in a year when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine: because Meduza’s based in Europe, it could no longer receive payments from anybody in Russia. With the support from the Berlin-based news outlet Krautreporter and dozens of other European and American media outlets, Meduza launched an international crowdfunding campaign.

The promotional campaign Meduza is launching with Lure’s help will allow it to expand its readership and donor base. Right now, the outlet receives monthly donations from 10,000 people. This is a key funding source, but it’s far from sufficient, Meduza founders Galina Timchenko and Ivan Kolpakov note. To ensure long-term sustainability, Meduza needs to significantly increase the number of regular supporters — ideally, returning to the 33,000 people who were contributing monthly before the war.

Meduza’s founders believe that independent funding is an essential condition for high-quality journalism. They stress that in 2024, it’s more obvious than ever before that journalism is a fragile resource that needs protection. Media outlets worldwide are in crisis, but the ones serving readers in authoritarian countries are facing particularly severe challenges. Journalists and editors at these outlets are carrying out their professional duties at great personal risk. Nonetheless, supporting the work of independent media has never been easier: you can simply sign up for monthly donations to an outlet you care about, or let others know about the need for support.

We’re grateful to everyone who helped bring this campaign to life — especially to Lure. If you’d like to support Meduza, please help spread the word: share our video on social media or send it to your friends and colleagues (you can download our materials in three formats: landscape, portrait, or square). If your organization would like to support Meduza, please reach out to us at [email protected]. Thank you!