Brand Experience, Low NPS, and What VladA4 City Taught Me About Strategy

How Ideas Stack Up When There’s No Time to Write

I’ve gotten into the habit of jotting down every idea in my iPhone notes app. There’s a dedicated note where ideas for channel posts land as they come.

Today I opened it and realized two topics had been sitting there — both ones I wanted to dig into, but never had the time.

And then it hit me: they’re actually about the same thing.

A Brand Experience That Almost Backfired

My younger son Platon is a huge VladA4 fan and had been asking me to take him to VladA4 City for a long time. Last weekend, the whole family made a proper trip of it — only to find SberCity doing a collab with Vlad, featuring some pretty questionable challenges and a very low level of customization.

Thank god we found a prop diamond YouTube Play Button and got a photo with it. We smoothed over the rest with a simple little t-shirt.

Platon was happy — but we were walking on thin ice. He almost sensed something was off.