Starbucks in Russia

A couple of days ago I came across a post in Morgan Krechel’s blog (btw, Morgan had his Birthday just this Monday so Happy Birthday!) about Starbucks and the introduction of their Christmas cups this year. This post aroused memories of how Starbucks works and promotes itself in Russia.

In Russia, just as in many other countries in the world, everything that is said to be “American” becomes a hit right away. Obviously, Starbucks is not an exception.

Young people in Russia almost pray on Starbucks, which makes it incredibly difficult to compete with it. However, I find a little frustrating the fact that since Starbucks is so popular by default it doesn’t really have to do anything to appeal to foreign segments. That’s why when you enter Starbucks in Moscow, it would look exactly the same and it will sell exactly the same products as anywhere in the US or any other country (except prices in Moscow shops would probably be twice as high as in the States).

On the one hand, this consistency in providing products and services is good because I always know what to expect from Starbucks anywhere in the world. However, lack of unique tailored approach to various geographical segments makes the customer feel like he/she is not special.

Looks familiar?

Well, at least the name is sometimes spelled in Cyrillic

Why are people so crazy about Russian dolls? :)

And yet again! 

Creative Ideas

It's not a secret for anyone that Coca Cola has always been a producer of extremely effective advertising particularly due to its never-ending rivalry with Pepsi. Both companies have managed to find creative ways of promoting their products that would appeal to different market segments. However, this summer in Moscow, Coca Cola did something that definitely made it stand out!

Moscovites will probably remember the summer of 2010 for a very long time since last June, July, and August turned out to be the hottest months in the entire history of the city. Temperature was often approaching 40°C whereas the average is around 24°C.

Obviously, unexpectedly hot weather caused demand for pop to rally and sales of different fizzy drinks increased. But how could Coca Cola benefit from this situation even more? How could it differentiate itself from the competitors?

Coca Cola Russia created an entire "cooling" marketing campaign with a new website, mobile applications, in-store advertising, etc. etc. But the most amazing part of the campaign was advertising on the bus stops! Not only did Coca Cola put its logos everywhere, it also decorated the bus stops with artificial icicles!!! Although made of plastic, icicles looked very real and definitely drew the attention of thirsty commuters, pedestrians and even car drivers dreaming of winter days!

Good job Coca Cola!

National symbol

Almost every of 195 countries on planet Earth has its own symbol, a particular object, event, etc. that represents and differentiates that country from others. For example, the symbol of France might be the Eiffel Tower, England – 5 o’clock tea, Italy – Pizza, Brazil – carnival, Cuba – salsa, and so on. Some countries have more than one symbol, some symbols are more unique and some are more common or usual. So there are all sorts of symbols but what is important about them is that in the minds of foreigners they are so closely connected to the particular country that they relate to that when foreigners see, hear or think of that “thing” they always remember that country. Hence, this symbol becomes an essential part of county’s image, its brand, its identification.

How does a particular object become country’s symbol? In some cases, the answer is quite obvious: just recall Canada and maple leaf. But in some situations the connection is not that cleat. For example, one of the symbols of Russia is definitely a matryoshka also referred to as a babushka doll or simply a Russian doll. How did it become the symbol of Russia? Very few people even in Russia are aware of the fact that matryoshka is originally Japanese and that it’s fairly young (the first one was made in Russia in 1890s) as opposed to the common notion that it’s been produced there for hundreds of years. Miraculously, matyohska made its way to the hearts of Russian people as well as those outside of Russia and became an inseparable symbol of my country. From then on, it’s been an integral part of Russian culture and inspired people from all over the world working in different industries and thinking in different ways to create beautiful outfits for it.

Below, there are a couple of pictures of matryoshkas that were created by famous designers for the 20^th Anniversary of Russian Vogue. I think they are simply adorable!

For more matryoshkas, go here.

Poehali! (Let's go!)

Hello everyone!

My name is Daria and welcome to my new marketing blog!

At first, when I began thinking about ideas for this blog, I was really confused. Obviously, marketing is a very broad topic and there are gazillions of interesting things that one could write about. But at the same time, the more choice is out there, the harder it is to choose. Having spent a fair amount of time deciding on the theme for this blog, I have come to conclusion to write about something that I know quite thoroughly as well as something that might be new and engaging for other bloggers, i.e. my target market :)

So, without any further ado, I’ve chosen Russian marketing as the integral topic for this blog.

Why?

Well, there are a couple of reasons for that. Not only have I lived in Russia for 18 years of my life, I also believe that Russian marketing is extremely interesting phenomenon to study.

What makes Russian marketing so different? How does it work? What makes it easier or more difficult to promote one’s product in Russia?

These are the questions that I will attempt to find answers to in the following posts. But since I’m already at it, let’s get it started!

In order to understand the special features of Russian marketing, first of all, it is essential to at least get an idea of what Russia’sspecific historical, social, cultural, etc. background is all about. For the sake of clarity, I’ve outlined three main aspects that, in my opinion, make Russian Marketing so special – Novelty, Diversity, and Geography (I was trying to think of a cool combination of words to put together a fancy acronym but everything I managed to create was just NDG).

1.     Novelty – According to the textbook (Grewal/Levy) ^^, marketing in the form that we know it today, originated a little over 100 years ago. However, this is what probably happened in Europe or America, but not in Russia.

In Russia, marketing started only when the USSR collapsed in 1991. So, it took Russia 5 times less time to go from the production-oriented to the value-based marketing era than it took many other developed or developing countries. Before that, in the USSR, with the central planning and hence permanent shortage of everything, there was no need to promote a product – people would buy everything that appeared in a store. In 1991, highly regulated market became free and a wide range of various goods and services flooded it. This felt like an earthquake, like a tsunami, like a tornado for both producers and consumers. Local manufacturers didn’t know how to compete with newcomers from abroad. Consumers had no idea how to distinguish between numerous goods. In the past few years, it all settled down eventually. But the market is still very unstable and dependent.

2.     Diversity – According to Wikipedia, there are almost 142,000,000 million people in Russia. All of them have different backgrounds, speak different languages (there are over 100 of them present in Russia), belong to different religions, ethnical groups, age cohorts, share different values, traditions, etc. etc. Older people tend to be very naïve and trusting – they believe everything that they see on TV or read in a newspaper. People in their 40s or 50s, on the contrary, tend to be extremely suspicious and literally think that they are being fooled every single minute of their life! A substantial part of teenagers and young adults are echo boomers and therefore they are extremely active and copy all the new trends that initiate in the States or Europe.

3.     Geography – Despite common belief, Russia is not fully located in Asia. Actually, 40% of Russian territory is situated in Europe. Being in between two continents has a tremendous impact on Russian mentality. Russian people can usually be characterized by their strong belongingness to family and community, reverence to authority, and patriotism. Nevertheless, at the same time, they are usually critical about everything that happens in their home country and would rather buy a foreign product than the locally produced one because they believe imports are of higher quality. All these, at first glance, weird mismatches make it challenging for marketing specialist, especially foreigners, to create selling strategies for goods and services in Russia. On the other hand, all these odd occurrences make their job more interesting, unpredictable and rewarding.

I should probably stop my flow of thought here because this post is getting unforgivably long!

For those who survived preceding 730 words, here is a modest souvenir demonstrating Russian hospitality and generosity!

Enjoy!