Our services
Note: The
blue lettering refers to appropriate definitions in our Glossary .
IT IS DIFFICULT to draw
a clear-cut demarcation line between marketing, advertising, and PR. A professional
advertising project is unthinkable without a marketing element; a marketing project,
especially a marketing campaign, often
has advertising and PR aspects to it; a PR exercise may need press-releases and other
texts, which, if not produced by professional copywriters, are often exercises in
futility. Etc., etc., etc.
Russian marketing scene has another
element about it: Russian companies and Russian branches of international companies only
rarely have professional marketing, advertising and PR personnel and skills. Many do not even
have trained selling forces. To survive they need more marketing and ad savvy than
Western grandees in Russia. But who is supposed to supply that savvy? We are one of the
few sources of that expertise in Russia.
“Family
doctors.” We try to be for our clients a sort of marketing “family doctors,”
solving virtually ALL the problems involving not only marketing and advertising, but also
the training of a client's salesmen, the authoring of articles, executive summaries,
and what not.
"One-hundred-odd-ball-fixers." Our
experience has shown that in the highly specific conditions of Russia a
consultant, whatever his field, when working with a foreign client, has
not only to consult well beyond an agreed field, but also to fix a wide
variety of problems quite uncommon in a Western business environment. That's
what we always try to do for our foreign clients!
How we work
After our first meeting we may recommend you a corporate seminar to
improve the marketing culture of your managers and workers or for them to
get into the Russian picture. Among other
things, this facilitates our day-to-day cooperation with your people.
Like your visit to a doctor, your cooperation with us begins with
diagnostics (a marketing audit), which normally takes several days or weeks.
Drawing on the results of the audit we work out our recommendations and set
out to perform specific marketing and advertising projects. Some of the
projects are described bellow.
The process of our cooperation can be depicted as follows:
Marketing audit (obligatory)
Marketing
audit
Purpose: To get as a complete insight
into the marketing and operations of a company as possible; to identify
strengths and weaknesses, and to pave the way for reliable and creative
consultations.
Term: Several days or weeks.
Recommendations
Recommendations are our main contribution to your performance in the
market. They are based on the audit results, our experience and know-how.
To begin with, we identify and/or propose your selling points to be used
by your marketers, salespeople, and admen. We then go on and propose
concrete marketing and advertising campaigns and projects sticking to an
agreed budget.
In the process, we may need some brain storms and "client experiments"
involving your managers, salespeople, and other personnel.
Our fees depend on the number and complexity of product categories and
services you deal with, the number of "interfaces," the number of your
suppliers, etc.
Individual projects
If our recommendations contain proposals to run some marketing and
advertising projects, you can order them with us or other companies.
Note: Projects are only performed after a thorough marketing audit
and recommendations.
Marketing campaigns
Marketing campaign
Purpose: To implement some complex
marketing ideas and to achieve some specific financial goals.
Term: 1-4 weeks.
A marketing department:
establishing & training
Purpose: To help a company to set up a
marketing department from scratch or to improve the efficiency of an
existing department. The effort may cover an estimate of the advisability
and feasibility of the creation of such a department; recommendations as to
the number of personnel and their terms of reference; training;
organizational and psychological aspects, etc.
Term: 2-6 weeks.
Dealer (VAR, etc.) recruitment & support
Purpose: To improve the efficiency of
your distribution network.
Term: 4-6 weeks
Tenders & contracts
Purpose: To win a tender or a contract.
Success or failure in a tender to a large degree depends on how expertly the
proposal is written. We can work out a package (in Russian and English) and
appropriate recommendations.
Products
Everything concerned with products is of extreme marketing and financial importance,
since a product, in the broadest sense of the word, is the only way for a
company to meet the needs of the Client, and... to make money.
"Russifation" of products
To succeed, products brought to Russia or developed in Russia by
international companies have to be "russified" in various ways, or rather to
be fine-tuned to the bizarre conditions of Russia's markets. In a word, they
have to be re-launched in Russia with their selling points carefully revised
and sometimes even changed.
Our experience
has shown that products may have to be adjusted to specific regions in
Russia's huge territory.
New products
Purpose: To create competitive
products and "product packages" (product + services or product +
services + atmosphere).
A sea of new products fail in the market,
because some factors are overlooked, under- or over- estimated. We
help at all the stages from an idea of a new product through the
"manufactured article" to a full-blown product ready to be launched.
Some of the things we do:
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Marketing assessment of
the idea of a new product;
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Branding
aspects – name, packaging, etc.; |
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Writing of Sales Guides (a thing nearly
unheard of in Russia); |
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Production of launching advertising and
marketing materials: |
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Assessment of other aspects.
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Term: 3-8 weeks.
Packaging
"Dressing" a product properly is an extremely important marketing
project. When relegated to designers, packing becomes a piece of graphic
arts, not a marketing tool.
A packaged product must break through the clutter on a shelf to attract
the attention of a potential buyer; the information on it must sell when the
buyer holds the product in hands; the container must be convenient to use.
And so on.
These are all marketing tasks.
Effectiveness of packaging
Purpose: To assess the marketing
effectiveness and efficiency of the existing or planned packaging. To
recommend improvements.
Term: 1-2 weeks.
Development of new packaging
Purpose: To produce a packaging that will
"sell" on the shelf, in hands, on the table, etc.
We work out the marketing concept, the verbal and graphic information to
appear on a packaging. We then prepare detailed marketing specifications and
rough layouts for
designers. We test the versions on the shelf (shelf impact test) to make a
product
break through the clutter, etc.
Term: 4-7 weeks.
Internet
On the whole, the marketing quality of the Internet in Russia is
extremely low. Most of it is the hunting grounds of designers and programmers who duly
make it into a useless artsy toy. Perhaps, Russia needs
something like the Internet bubble of 2000 in the USA for companies to
understand that in the Internet (line in all media for that matter) the name of the game is content, not
some fancy design
frills. Client-oriented sites, like Amazon.com, can work
wonders.
We can boost the business efficiency of your site in many ways.
Assessment of sites
Purpose: To estimate a site in various
respects, from its content to usability, and to come up with proposals as to
how to improve it.
Term: 1 week.
Creation or refurbishing of sites
Purpose: To improve the marketing and/or
information efficiency of a site. To produce new sites.
Term: 4-8 weeks.
Advertising
As an ex-advertising agency we boast a high advertising proficiency,
experience, and
responsibility to the customer. Our approach to advertising is as follows:
Nobody needs advertising for the sake of
advertising. (Except perhaps for mammoth bureaucratic grandees,
which view their ad spends as a sort of value-added-tax they just have
to pay to ad agencies.)
If advertising does not give you a bang for
the buck, it's not advertising, but rather an expensive exercise in
futility.
Advertising is just an element of
marketing communications, which, if viewed in the widest context
possible, implies the following:
Everything communicates – what a company does and what it does not, what is says and
what it does not.
We have expertise and proper partnerships in virtually all the ad media.
Optimization of ad programs
Advertising programs may be wrong from various points of view:
unreasonably high spends; wrong media; wrong content, etc.
We could optimize your ad program.
Purpose: To work out an optimal marketing
budget; to foreworn against stupid ad expenses; to recommend alternative
solutions of ad campaigns; to recommend more efficient and less expensive
marketing campaigns.
Term: 1-2 weeks.
Surgery of concrete ad executions
Purpose: To remove blatant marketing and/or communicative
gaffes, thereby drastically improving an advert's efficiency.
We can do a proper surgery of a specific execution and suggest
improvements. More often than not, specific ads incorporate a bag of
blunders. They may be apparent neither to you, nor to your Cannes-crazy
"creatives" who produced the piece. But they may be apparent to a
professional "seller" in advertising.
If you have neither time nor money for a full-scale advertising
exercise, involving marketing audit, selling points, etc., give the
advertisement to us.
Our experience shows that even a quick inexpensive analysis can
reveal major mistakes and thereby improve drastically the efficiency
of your advertising.
Our crash surgery addresses the following aspects:>>
Term: 2-4 hours.
Production of advertisements
Copywriting and design. Testing.
"Russification" of documents and adverts
Purpose: To make your business and
marketing documents and
advertisements appeal to Russians.
PR
We regard PR not as an independent effort, but rather an integral part of
marketing communications. PR campaigns should carry across to target
audiences the same selling points as advertising, etc.
Corporate profile
Purpose: To author profiles meaningful to
Russian readerships.
Because of differences in cultural backgrounds and market-economy
experiences, corporate profiles for Russian audiences, especially for Russian
civil servants, should be couched in slightly different terms.
Term: 1 week.
Press-conferences
Preparation, management, give-aways, translations, etc.
Purpose: To improve the efficiency of
press-conferences, business-lunches, etc., i.e., to improve the probability
and quality
of after-conference publications by the media present at the conference.
Term: 1-2 weeks.
Sponsorship & fund-raising programs
Purpose: To recruit sponsors,
advertisers, donors, etc.
Term: 2-8 weeks.
Souvenirs
Purpose: To make souvenir programs more
efficient.
Many companies often order souvenirs simply to keep up with the Joneses.
Term: 1-2 weeks
Exhibitions
Purpose: To assess the expediency and
potential effect of participation in an exhibition; to save exhibition
dollars; to get more commercial results from an exhibition.
We design a stand, create give-aways (in Russian and English), auxiliary
materials (posters, pointers, badges, programs, etc). We train the personnel
who man the stand.
Term: 1-2 weeks.
Technical writing
Instructions, operation manuals and other technical documentation, which
is important for the success of certain products in the market.
Unfortunately, these skill are extremely rare in Russia.
Project documentation in English
Purpose: To draft English-language
documents in terms that are common in international business relations.
Most Russian firms have no experience of international business
relations. Their foreign counterparts complain that Russians cannot prepare
adequate documentation for investment and other projects. This hinders joint
contracts and other projects enormously.
Translations
If for a project we work on it is of critical importance to have some
documents translated into English or Russian with extreme fidelity, we do
such translations. We also interpret at important talks.
Other forms of consulting
Other forms of cooperation are possible, especially after an intensive
phase of consulting is over.
Consulting on hourly basis
Recommended for small projects and to analyze a
specific advertisement.
Fees: $150 per hour + some miscellaneous
expenses, if any.
Retainer
Purpose: To prevent marketing and
advertising blunders, to do some marketing monitoring after a major project.
Forms: Personal (in Moscow) and distance
(by e-mail).
Terms: 6 or 12 months.
Membership in a board of directors
This form of cooperation is quite rare in Russia.
Distance (e-mail) consulting
Purpose: To prevent marketing and
advertising mistakes; to offer solutions.
Terms: 6 or 12 months.
Traveling within & without Russia
Purpose: To get first-hand experience; to
conduct a fast audit, to map out a plan of further cooperation. Further
communication is for the most part by e-mail and other means.
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