Vladimir Zagorsky, co-founder of Russian skincare brand VOIS, has explained what he believes drives the label's popularity, saying a brand today is no longer just a product but an environment built from content, people, events and experience. He made the comments to Russian news outlet Lenta.ru.
Zagorsky said quality has stopped being a competitive advantage and has instead become a baseline expectation. Most products in a given category are "good enough," he said, and the difference between them is not always obvious to the user. Competition, he argued, has shifted toward capturing attention instead.
He said audiences are responding less to direct communication, with advertising formats from banners to paid integrations increasingly seen as noise. Consumers no longer want to be sold to, he said, and instead form their own opinion of a brand by piecing together impressions from social media, online marketplaces, reviews, discussions and offline experience.
Building a sense of trust over time
Zagorsky said a person can watch a brand for a long time, simply observing, reading and returning, before eventually deciding to buy. At that point, he said, what matters is not a single point of contact but the overall impression the brand has left.
As a result, he said, engagement rather than reach has become the key metric, with brands now working not only to grow their audience but to build a community of people who already use the product.
More than a million reviews, like the ones our now-legendary yellow hair mask has received, are not the result of advertising. They are the result of people using the product and wanting to talk about it.
Zagorsky said the underlying strategy has changed too, with brands placing less emphasis on one-off campaigns and more on sustained dialogue with customers. That shift means less control over communication for the brand and more participation from its audience, he said.
VOIS's growth since 2021
VOIS was founded by Islam Gediyev and Vladimir Zagorsky in September 2021. In 2024, the brand's revenue rose from 388.4 million rubles to 2.5 billion rubles, while profit climbed from 43.8 million rubles to 592 million rubles.
Experts have linked that growth to the company's approach to online marketplaces and to a hiring practice new to Russia's cosmetics industry: bringing bloggers on as staff. VOIS is estimated to work with around 400 external bloggers on a monthly basis.
The brand has worked with Chinese manufacturers since its launch and now has seven partner factories in the city of Guangzhou and the surrounding Guangdong province.
