Students of the “Advertising and Public Relations” programme at Moscow City University (MCU) were awarded two gold medals at a media hackathon held as part of the All-Russian forum “Media Spring 2026” at the Russian State University for the Humanities.
MCU was represented by two teams that worked on cases provided by the developer Akvilon and the financial-industrial group management company Digital Assets. The students’ work was coordinated by Dmitry Dzigua, Associate Professor of the Department of Educational Design at the Institute of Natural Sciences and Sports Technologies.
The goal of the intellectual competition was to develop communication strategies for clients. Participants included representatives from various universities, with the majority being students from the host institution, RSUH.
For the Akvilon case, the task was to propose a communication strategy aimed at building the image of an expert and technologically advanced brand in the development sector. After conducting analysis, the MCU team — Maria Karysheva, Alexey Oleinik, Artem Ermolaev, Olga Goncharenko, and Saveliy Kosikov — developed a brand promotion plan on the Habr platform. The students proposed a concept of longreads about the developer’s energy-efficient and digitally equipped buildings, as well as a promotion roadmap through VK and Zen using short expert videos and infographics.
For the Digital Assets case, the second MCU team — Karine Babayan, Olga Goncharova, Anna Gridneva, Olga Zhuravleva, and Albina Dzahsorova — created a communication strategy aimed at improving digital and financial literacy among young audiences. The students segmented the audience and defined formats and content features for each segment across VK, Telegram, TikTok, and Dzen. Mini-cases, infographics, short videos, quizzes, and bite-sized lifehack cards and guides were designed to reduce fear of digital assets.
Both teams were awarded gold medals at the hackathon and received prizes from the client companies represented on the jury.
Due to the closure of non-pedagogical programmes at MCU starting in September 2026, students of the “Advertising and Public Relations” programme will continue their studies at RSUH.
Photo: MCU