Viral commerce experiment · 2017
🌯🌷 Selling shawarma and tulips for International Women’s Day
Led marketing and virality for a delivery-service experiment that paired shawarma with tulips, built the launch landing page, and tested whether an intentionally odd gift could travel through media and communities.
Challenge
What needed solving
The project needed positive unit economics, calendar timing, and an idea weird enough to earn attention without a heavy production budget.
Method
The working logic behind it
- Cultural wedge strategy
- Unconventional growth under constraint
Story
How it unfolded
The delivery service Ptichka wanted a calendar-driven special project with positive unit economics and no demand on its development team. The result was a deliberately unexpected gift: shawarma, tulips, and an optional note.
I was trusted with consumer marketing and virality, built the project’s Tilda landing page myself, and helped the team launch quickly enough for International Women’s Day.
The experiment earned coverage from Lenta, Afisha, Wonderzine, and other publications. After prices were adjusted, unit economics became positive; the broader lesson was that editorial relevance and community fit worked better than conventional performance traffic.
Evidence
How this can be verified
- Public article: Roem documented the experiment and its launch logic. · status: public_supporting_links_available · source: public_independent_source
What this proves
Why this case matters
- Can use oddness strategically when a product needs attention, timing, and low-budget leverage at once.
References
What can be checked outside this page
- Roem: How a delivery service used flowers and shawarma for an International Women’s Day launch
- Public coverage: The experiment earned coverage from multiple publications. · public