3 Jun 2026
Uzbekistan's market has built strong social media operations, but systematic marketing as a business growth architecture is nearly absent — marketers here execute founder instructions rather than aligning business goals with communication strategy.
Sergei Shima is the AI CTO of Majento.ai and Aimasters.me. An expat's perspective on the Uzbek marketing market: where the system already works, and where it still falls short.
Yes, Uzbekistan has its own, very distinctive system. First and foremost, it is built around social media. There is genuinely strong work with social networks here, and the influencer and blogger industry is well developed. You rarely find such a number of active, diverse, interesting bloggers anywhere else.
I think this is connected to how the internet developed here. Classic web pages never managed to become as strong a channel as in other countries: the market shifted almost immediately to social networks. That is why SMM in Uzbekistan is often done very well. It is surprising and deserves respect.
But this is still only one part of communication. In other areas, the systematic approach often sags.
The main problem lies precisely in systematic marketing. Very often marketing is treated as a function that runs the Instagram account, orders business cards, T-shirts, or hoodies with the company logo. In other words, marketing is perceived as a service for current tasks, rather than as an engine of business growth.
This is especially noticeable in small and medium-sized businesses. There, systematic marketing as a separate entity often does not exist at all. Everyone does it however they can. I think one reason is that the school of marketing is still underdeveloped, and there are few strong specialists. I went into bookstores and saw that there are few classic marketing books in the Uzbek language. Young people often study in Russian or English, but for the market this is still a big gap.
Because of this, for owners marketing often remains a service that caters to the wishes of the founder, the proprietor, or the director. The boss says: do this, redo that, launch it like this. In such a system, the marketer turns into someone who simply carries out instructions. He does not work with strategy, does not link business goals with marketing goals, or marketing goals with communication goals.
In essence, the big boss decides for everyone. And this is visible even in large companies that come to Uzbekistan with their own frameworks, processes, and understanding of how to launch products. Even they sometimes get tossed around here.
Companies often go to one of two extremes. Either they go for an overly heavy national flavor, where it becomes too much. Or they take Western communication and dump it onto the local market with almost no adaptation. Between these extremes there is a huge gap. You rarely come across companies that know how to carefully build Uzbek culture, social specifics, and national character into communication in a way that truly reaches the heart of an ordinary person.
And it is important to remember: marketing is broader than communication. It is positioning, product economics, pricing, categories, data, analytics. This is what often sags. Decisions are made because the owner wanted it that way, saw it somewhere, an acquaintance succeeded with it, or competitors are already doing it.
That is why the main pain points are a lack of a systematic approach, a lack of a strong school, and a weak understanding of what already works in the market and how to adapt it correctly to the local context.
This is a separate source of pain. When state-owned companies announce tenders for communication or marketing support, they are often required to publish the lots on open platforms. And on such platforms, the winner is usually the one who offered the lowest price.
For marketing, this is a poor criterion. It is roughly like ordering a space rocket from the company that proposed the cheapest option. Saving on one small detail can later lead to a major catastrophe. In marketing the logic is similar: if you choose only by price, almost always both the client and the contractor suffer.
We have taken part in such tenders more than once and seen inadequately low bids. The logic is simple: the main thing is to get in, and we will figure it out from there. But then the endless stress begins. The client does not get the quality they need, the contractor works on the edge, and in the end no one is satisfied.
It seems to me that something should have been done about this long ago. There are many strong agencies on the market that cannot show the cheapest price because they deliver a different quality of work. This means tenders should have proper criteria of quality, experience, team, methodology, and results. The market has already said this many times.
Another important point is education. It is clear that some of the people who teach marketing have a weak grasp of the current market. This also affects the quality of the industry.
As for the dialogue between the state and business, on an individual basis it works poorly. What matters here are associations, unions, business clubs, and professional communities. You need to come to the state not through personal connections and back offices, but on behalf of a specific industry, with a clear problem and a ready-made proposal. Otherwise it is just walking in circles, which wastes everyone's time.
As an expat, I can clearly see that traditional social responsibility exists in Uzbekistan. At the level of the mahalla, the family, and the close circle, people genuinely strive to help one another. This is a strong and very valuable part of the culture.
But if we talk about large projects, charity, systematic social responsibility, and the communication around it, here everything is less developed. The reason is clear: business is growing fast and right now is primarily trying to make money. We are still on the rising part of economic growth, when it is more important for companies to scale, open new locations, launch products, and grow turnover.
Social responsibility usually becomes more noticeable later, when the market reaches a more mature stage. When a business realizes that it is already hard to grow through direct investment in advertising, it begins to fight for people's trust and love through mission, useful deeds, and support for society.
So there is a gap here. But it is connected not with a lack of kindness or willingness to help, but with the stage of the market's development. Right now business thinks more about growth than about systematic social responsibility. Over time, this balance will most likely change.
I would not say that Uzbekistan only borrows. Rather, there are two extremes: blind copying of others' models or, conversely, a strong retreat into tradition and emotional pride.
I really like how open, talented, and creative Uzbeks are. But this is especially evident when they are given freedom. At the same time, there is a national trait that sometimes gets in the way: traditionalism, respect for elders, an unwillingness to contradict. This can constrain creative boldness.
A person wants to do something new, and they are told: you can't, it's uyat, don't do that, don't stick your neck out. After that, their hands drop. Although there are very many talented people here, especially among the youth. There are many young people, they compete with one another, they want to stand out, they want to create something of their own. But they are often forced to live within a frame: be like everyone else.
This is worth working on at least at the level of communication. It is important to explain that self-expression and self-actualization are normal and necessary things. Without them, no new culture, no new products, no new ideas emerge.
Uzbekistan can offer the world much more than hospitality, plov, and beautiful historical places. There is a special attitude here toward loved ones, toward community, toward respect, toward care. Even coming back to marketing, one can learn from Uzbekistan how communication can be warmer and more caring toward the audience.
This traditional quality must not be lost, diluted, and sold under a standard that everyone uses. The more we differ from the rest of the world, the more interesting it is to talk to us. When everyone is the same, it becomes boring.
One could joke that the main piece of terminology for a marketer in Uzbekistan is the word "sabr" (patience). That is, patience, calm waiting, and the understanding that everything will be fine. For a marketer this is, by the way, an important skill: we always have rushes, tasks, problems, urgency. Sometimes it is useful to hear: don't panic, you did what you could, now you have to wait.
On a serious note, new practices, methodologies, and technologies definitely need to be adopted. Other markets have already taken their hits, and there is no point in repeating the same mistakes. But adopting mindlessly is a road to nowhere. You cannot simply take a ready-made Western model and stretch it over the unique Uzbek market.
Methodologies need to be adapted, fine-tuned, and tested here, in the local reality. And once they start working, you can already share that experience with the world. This, in my view, is exactly what the international marketing community is waiting for: fresh experience, new solutions, local approaches that have grown out of a real market.
The new appears not when everyone blindly follows the frame. The new appears when methodology meets local culture, boldness, and practical experience. Uzbekistan has great opportunities here: to take the best from outside, adapt it to itself, and turn it into its own product.
But this is better done through professional unions and industry associations. That is exactly where common rules, unified terminology, and clear standards can emerge. Otherwise everyone will invent something in their own corner, and then be surprised why no one notices them.
Yes, absolutely. I have already said that such solutions are better found through industry associations and professional unions. Alone, this does not work.
If the market wants to develop new methodologies, terminology, and approaches to tenders, education, and communication with the state, this needs to be discussed more broadly. With agencies, business, state structures, educational institutions, and professional communities.
The marketing industry cannot develop on the principle of "every man for himself." Methodologies are born of practice: what works, what does not work, where we made mistakes, where we found a strong solution. The more we share this, the stronger the entire market becomes.
This is not a story about me sharing my experience and losing my uniqueness. On the contrary: if I shared, and others shared with me, we all became stronger. In the end business wins, agencies win, the state wins, the market wins and, in the broad sense, the entire industry wins.