Yandex Lavka —
Promotional Campaign

Context

In 2024, Kinopoisk (Yandex’s streaming platform) launched a large-scale animated series Savage Detective.

Yandex Lavka decided to support the release with a cross-product promotion: themed food items and collectible Jibbitz for Crocs featuring characters from the animation

Marketing and production teams prepared the physical products, while my responsibility was to design a user-facing promotion mechanic that would support the campaign, fit naturally into the shopping flow, and scale across the product.

My role

Senior Product Designer.

I owned the design process end to end: problem framing, research synthesis, concept development, experimentation, and collaboration with product, research, and engineering teams.

Collectible charms campaign welcome screen

My task was to:

onboard users into the promotion without distracting them from grocery shopping
explain a new internal reward currency earned through purchases
maintain the playful tone of the animated series
and translate a familiar offline mechanic (“gift with purchase”) into an online experience — without a salesperson to explain the rules.

Additionally, the mechanic had to support advertising budgets from partner brands selling their products in Lavka.

Key decisions:

Introduced a non-intrusive currency counter that updated in real time as users added items to their cart.
Used micro-animations to explain progress and reward logic without interrupting the flow.
To reinforce the campaign’s mood, every few minutes an animated main character appeared and highlighted products participating in the promotion.
Carefully balanced visibility and restraint so the promotion felt playful, not pushy.

BadgerCat appearing beside products: two interface screens and nine animation poses

One of the most engaging ideas was a recurring animation of the main character, BadgerCat.

A few times per session, the character appeared to subtly point at products participating in the promotion, drawing attention without disrupting the shopping flow. Many users later mentioned on social media that this animation sparked their interest in the campaign.

Result

The campaign generated strong advertising revenue from partner brands.
It achieved wide organic reach: Lavka was actively discussed across Telegram channels and Instagram during the promotion.
User engagement with the mechanic was high, and the campaign successfully supported the animated series launch.
The team gained valuable experience in designing and launching complex cross-channel promotional features that combine product, marketing, and operations.

Key takeaway

This project highlighted the importance of thinking beyond interfaces.

Designing a successful promotion required understanding user behaviour, business goals, and real operational constraints — and aligning them into a single, coherent experience.