Radio Pivnyk: Do You Hear It?

Vandog agency: Iryna Metneva – Сreative director Zhdan Zabashta – Сreative director Rita Peshkina – Strategic Consultant Daria Dobychko – Art director Daria Bairamova – Designer Yuliia Shynkar – Copywriter Yar Zabashta – Motion Designer  Olga Tyshchenko – Client service director Victoria Kondratyuk – Project Manager Yuliia Babych – PR Manager Oleksandra Vlasiuk – Partnership Manager CHARITABLE FOUNDATION PIVNYK: Ivan Hrynko – Founder of the foundation, ENT surgeon Olena Komar – Director of the foundation, otolaryngologist Yelyzaveta Donets – Project Manager Hanna Hrytsenko – Project Lead

Due to the war in Ukraine, thousands of soldiers suffer from acoustic trauma after explosions. More than 30,000 defenders require hearing rehabilitation, while the waiting time for surgery can reach up to 10 years. Hearing loss remains one of the most common — yet invisible — war injuries. To make people literally “hear” this problem, Pivnyk Foundation launched Radio Pivnyk — an audio-driven social campaign built on the psychology of the earworm effect. Instead of playing music, we used the lyrics of widely recognizable Ukrainian songs as triggers. As people read the familiar lines, the melodies automatically started playing in their minds — turning reading into listening. The message was simple: “Do you hear it? It’s playing in your head.” For many soldiers with hearing trauma, music exists only this way — as a memory rather than a sound. Radio became one of the key platforms of the campaign. We recorded fragments of iconic Ukrainian songs and deliberately interrupted them to talk about acoustic trauma — mirroring the sudden way soldiers lose their hearing after explosions. We also created a special version of the message without music. This allowed radio stations to insert the line “Do you hear it?” immediately after any song on air — triggering the melody in listeners’ heads and turning the entire radio playlist into part of the campaign.