SEKTA
A case study by Nadia Gorelikova — Head of Brand, Sekta
How I built the brand communication behind 15+ products at a Russian online-fitness school — winning #1 Share of Voice among online-fitness peers, growing branded search demand by 61%, and driving +25% YoY online sales growth.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Ad hoc, non-standardised launch campaigns | Repeatable brief-to-launch brand communication system |
| 15+ products, no shared narrative or visual system | One brand communication system across flagship, seasonal & evergreen lines |
| Perceived as a fitness product | Repositioned as a school, driving +61% branded search growth |
| Unclear standing vs. peers | #1 with ~50% of tracked branded search demand (2020) |
| Unpredictable launch delivery | +25–35% launch conversion, supporting +25% YoY online sales growth |
Context: Sekta, the brand
Sekta is a Russian fitness edtech school — online programs for different audience segments (flagship, seasonal, mums, focus intensives) plus 30+ offline studios across Russia. My focus was the online business: flagship programs, launch campaigns, dedicated social channels, website pages, and the brand narratives and communication behind them.
The core challenge: 15+ products across the annual calendar, each launched by a different mix of designers, copywriters and production partners, with no shared system holding the brand together across launches — and a market perception anchored to "fitness" rather than the school positioning the business was moving toward.
Repositioning: Fitness App → Fitness School
Market perception and search behaviour were anchored to "fitness" rather than the school identity the business was moving toward. I led the shift in positioning, messaging and proof points — from a conventional fitness app to a science-based fitness school.
What I did
- Grounded the "school" positioning in science-based program methodology, translating it into consistent brand narratives and creative execution across owned, earned and paid media
- Curated a free science portal with its own editorial team, working simultaneously as an SEO funnel and a trust-building content pillar. Embedded fact-checking into production to establish the brand as a credible voice in wellness
- Partnered with values-aligned, evidence-based clinics, fitness and nutrition brands, and showed up at industry events to reinforce the same credibility signal
What it led to
Indexed branded search volume, Russia (2018 = 100). Demand rose sharply in 2020 and held through 2022 — the pandemic-era uplift never reverted, and 2022 marked the highest point of the five-year window: +61% overall.
Role & Approach
Hi, I'm Nadia
- Owned the brand's full marketing function at Sekta as Head of Brand — strategy, identity, communications, campaigns and budget allocation — with full decision-making authority, reporting directly to the CEO
- Built the brand's identity and visual system from scratch, enabling consistent production at scale across the core product, 30+ regional branches, and a dedicated moms segment
- Led and mentored a 10-person multidisciplinary brand and communications team across social, photo/video production and PR, plus external agencies and freelancers
- Built brand-led community and partnership programs — an influencer, KOL and health-expert network, and a brand ambassador program that turned power users into visible faces of the brand
Brand Communication: Brief to Launch
To make brand narrative and messaging consistent across 15+ product launches, I built a six-stage production pipeline that took every campaign from business goal to a consistent, multi-channel go-live package.
| Stage | What happens | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Brief & Strategy | Business goal, audience insight, brand constraints, channel mix, launch timing | Creative Director / Brand Strategy |
| 02 Creative Concept | Visual direction, emotional tone, narratives, key message, concept approval | Creative Director / Design Team |
| 03 Design & Copy | Layout system, typography, colour palette, copy tone, templates and guidelines | Designers / Copywriters |
| 04 Photo & Video | Art direction on set, styling, shot list, motion scripts, post-production | Production Team / Motion Studio |
| 05 Asset Production | Adaptation for all formats, QA, approvals, go-live package | Design Team / Creative Director |
| 06 Channel Rollout | Social, web, email, CRM, offline — consistent output with clear playbooks per format | Marketing Teams / Creative Director |
This pipeline made launches more repeatable: a full launch package — concept, key visuals, shoots and templates — could be produced in about a month and reused across channels without losing consistency, cutting down on last-minute changes.
One Brand System
Annual creative scope spanned flagship, seasonal and evergreen product lines, each with its own audience and cadence — held together by one production system.
- Managed BAU brand operations across 3 product lines (social, web, content, reporting)
- Led strategic brand initiatives: repositioning, new visual system, global campaign
Led annual creative scope across seasonal and evergreen products: campaigns for two seasonal launches and at least one evergreen rebrand per year (out of four in rotation), alongside seasonal cross-channel asset systems and a unified marketing calendar with scalable themes beyond paid social.
Repositioned the flagship product and refreshed its messaging through the Evolution rebrand — sparking a new wave of customer interest and contributing to a 20% YoY revenue lift.
Seasonal Campaigns — Bootcamp
Bootcamp is a seasonal product that launches every May. Like other Sekta launches, each edition — Bootcamp Classic, Bootcamp Forever — got its own visual language: logo, elements, colours, models, set design, trainer casting and overlay system.
- Led creative direction from idea and creative brief through post-production, making final assets work across paid social, organic channels, CRM, landing pages and application onboarding
- Distinct casting, set design and overlay systems per edition kept the seasonal product feeling fresh year over year without breaking brand consistency
- Owned positioning for the launch — strong enough that Bootcamp often sold out through owned channels alone, without paid amplification
With a similar media mix, average launch conversion rate was around 10–15%, with an additional 2–3 percentage-point uplift year over year on the same product.
Channels, Analytics & Team Operations
Ran the day-to-day for the creative team — from intake and prioritisation to timelines, reviews and handoff to channel owners — so launches shipped on time and on brief.
| Area | How I ran it | Metrics I optimised for |
|---|---|---|
| Channel effectiveness | Measured creative effectiveness across paid & organic social, website/landing pages, CRM, performance media and video — using channel-appropriate metrics | Engagement, click-through, conversion rate, CAC |
| Reporting | Set up a BI-driven brand analytics framework (Power BI) with an analyst, tracking brand, engagement and campaign performance against business KPIs to decide which stories, visuals and emotional tones to scale or retire | Launch conversion rate, CTR, engagement |
| Team operations | Owned intake, prioritisation, timelines, review cycles and clean handoff to channel owners | Time to launch, team throughput |
| Asset management & consistency | Built a Notion-based DAM — a single source of truth for brand assets and channel-specific playbooks; ran consistency reviews, audited execution against performance data, and folded winning patterns back into the playbooks | Brand guideline adoption, asset reuse |
What I builtA centralized brand portal in Notion — an always-current asset library plus channel-specific playbooks — backed by team training sessions so the system actually got used, not just documented.
ResultIncreased brand guideline adoption from 54% to 89% across 3 product lines after launching the brand portal and running training sessions.
Results, Positioning & Recognition
Standardizing brand communication across 15+ product launches wasn't just cleaner brand execution — it moved the business numbers directly.
"Built SEKTA into one of Russia's most visible online-fitness brands — #1 in branded search share among peers, with regular earned coverage in outlets such as Forbes."
Repositioning SEKTA from a fitness app to a science-based fitness school drove the results — category-leading Share of Voice, sustained branded search growth, and a direct line to the +25% YoY online sales growth.