Інтерв'ю в Kyiv Post

Блог - Андрей Прудиус

8 сентября 2010 г.

What inspired you to work in marketing and what drives you to do your job?

There were a few turning points in my life which eventually brought me to marketing but probably the most inspiring one was my MBA studies at Central Eastern University Business School in Budapest where I fully realized how diverse marketing field was. In addition to that, we had prominent marketing practitioners as our teachers, such as Paul Garrison a former Coke’s Chief Marketing Officer for Central-Eastern Europe and the founder of The Garrison Group – the strategic marketing consulting company which I represent now in Ukraine.

Speaking of the marketing job, I believe that choosing whom you want to be in your life is as important decision as choosing your spouse. In both cases, the perfect match is when your values and motivations are being met by the other half. Marketing fascinates me as the holistic field of business responsible for creating customer value all the way from understanding your consumer needs and wants through implementing those consumer insights in your brand strategy and bringing brand to life via marketing communications. At The Garrison Group we help companies better understand their customers lives relative to companies’ brands benefits that helps them create stronger relationships with their customers – kind of perfect matches on the market-wide scale. Seeing how these “win-win” relationships are being built across different industries and companies is something I enjoy most about my job.

You are Chairman of the EBA Marketing Committee. What kind of activities is the committee involved with?

The EBA Marketing Committee was established as the platform for the EBA members to share their marketing experiences and practices, learn about markets trends and new marketing tools from the recognized experts as well as to provide quality trainings to those starting their career in marketing. Staying focused on our main objectives, we are also looking for ways of developing our principal activities, e.g. this year we are planning on launching a new educational program for experienced marketers from EBA member-companies in collaboration with few recognized business schools. Also, we support social initiatives such as the past Marketing Committee meeting was devoted to. We partnered with Kyiv Mohyla Business School and their Innovations.com.ua project in delivering the topic of “Ukraine’s Brand” at EBA. On the global scale countries compete against each other for foreign direct investments, attracting tourists, developing their export markets etc. The lack of winning positioning in the mind of a decision-maker – no matter if he is a tourist contemplating on where to go on a vacation or a multinational company top-manager looking for expanding his business to a new country – makes the chances of being chosen among all the alternatives quite bleak. Building a country brand is a complicated process where different constituencies should be involved – from the government, who should be responsible for the overall country strategy to businesses and individuals who actually “execute” the strategy. EBA Marketing Committee is open and willing to contribute with our expertise to the initiatives that benefit our society.

Are there any common marketing problems which companies in Ukraine face?

We are living in the environment of constant changes – political, economical, societal, cultural etc. Under these conditions growing business is a difficult task that requires developing a clear customer-oriented business growth strategy that needs to be shared and implemented by all the business stakeholders. Apple brand value grew up by more than 30% during the crisis which is an evidence that building strong brands is the key to company’s sustainability and growth in the long run. Taking it one step further, the success of Apple is highly connected to the loyalty of its customers – sharing the key values of individuality and creativity that the brand provides. Apple have won their customers (as well as their loyal employees) over the years by building connections between the brand and customer needs and values. On the contrary, the typical problem which is faced by many businesses is that they lack clear understanding of their customers – the most valuable asset the business can have. To build really strong relationships with their customers companies should dig deeper into the life of the consumer and then connect his wants and needs into their brand strategy. Who is the customer? – should be the question any marketing planning should start with. Without comprehensive knowledge of whom you want to sell your product to the company may end up throwing out ideas that may or may not work. Too risky and costly, given the tough times all the industries are being through.

The other typical problem is that many brands in Ukraine are quite linear – that is built and communicated upon one brand benefit which marketers call unique selling proposition (USP). As the matter of fact, brands are similar to people being containers of the overall functional and emotional experience a person has with the brand. You never choose a partner because of his one quality – instead you will take into consideration a bundle of his characteristics both functional (what he looks like, what she says, how smart he or she is etc.) and emotional (how you feel being together with this person). The emotional experience a consumer has with the brand supported by the functional brand benefits is the key driver for the purchase decision and loyalty and for that reason marketers should look broader at what their brands are or should be.

Last but not the least, when it goes about marketing communications companies should take into consideration time, place and state of mind of the consumer (which is usually a missing block in the communications strategy) to insure their brand message relevance all the way from creating purchase intent through influencing purchase behavior and till insuring customer’s loyalty and recommendation.

Marketing is a competitive business, what new trends or techniques are developing in the industry?

The new trends are especially visible in marketing communications field. Though TV still remains the major medium for mass communications, the invent of Internet and especially the most recent developments of blogs and social networks such as Vkontakte and Facebook are changing the landscape of media planning in certain markets. The earlier invent of banner advertising was very much like all traditional one-way communications while social media give an opportunity for a dialogue with the consumer – something Internet is especially valuable for.

Relatively new communication trend is mobile marketing. With almost as high penetration as TV is, especially in urban Ukraine, it gives a great opportunity for reaching customers no matter where they are. It has its disadvantages such as perception of messages received from unrecognized senders as spam, but it will be especially useful for the businesses establishing long-term relationships with their customers (such as banking and insurance) and generally for all those who have quality and regularly updated database of their customers (for example, retail businesses). Though, in many cases mobile campaigns remain one-way communication the companies soon will most likely strive for employing the interactive opportunities of mobile phone in order to engage customers with their brands. Many other tools could have been mentioned but in general there is a trend for shifting towards the dialogue with the consumer and integration of the new media channels with the traditional ones.

Apart of that, I also see that approaches to marketing planning are changing quite significantly as the result of recent crisis. Many companies have recognized that it is not the cost-cutting that will grow their profits but the consistent growth of their sales. For that reason, I expect companies will be looking more thoroughly at how to increase ROI on marketing communications while growing their marketing budgets. As BBDO founder Sam Barton said, “In good times people want to advertise; in bad times they have to”.

Is there anything special or unique about Ukrainian consumers?

Though there are similarities, people do differ from a country to country. Every time we cross the border we can recognize differences in how people live their styles, and what values and aspirations they are driven by.

Let me give you an example. One large Western European bank launched back at home a very successful ad campaign targeting small and medium business owners. The key visual of the campaign was depicting a typical business owner playing golf due to free time saved with the bank. When was brought to the Eastern Europe the campaign failed. The reason was, that in Eastern European countries small business owners when get some free time would rather start an additional business than go playing golf. The bank’s message was irrelevant to the local target’s values and for that reason the whole campaign was unsuccessful.

No matter what industry the brand is coming from it should be seeking for connecting its functional and emotional benefits to the lives of local people. Even in countries that has common historical and cultural background such as Russia and Ukraine you would find lots of consumer differences that can count a lot when it goes about communicating your brand values. Some time ago former President Kuchma published his book “Ukraine is not Russia”. Well, good idea to remember when it goes about marketing as well.

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