THE ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE RUSSIAN CONTENT MARKETING CHAPTER OF THE CANNUAL REPORT 2017
Reviewing the history of Russian advertising is a rather complex task. It only goes back some 20 years, while the American advertising history is much older. However, this can also be an advantage.
Russian marketing history can be divided into two chapters: the first is represented by people from the older generation – those who were there at the very beginning of the local advertising story. They took inspiration from the West and tried to adapt it to the Russian post-Soviet culture. Starting from the early 2000s, another generation of advertisers – cool guys with bold ideas of their own – landed on the market. They travelled fearlessly, read, observed, learnt foreign languages and spent a lot of time mingling with foreigners. They looked at the West with fresh eyes, seeing the people living and working as equals and they refused to accept Western creative patterns as a standard.
In Russia, young professionals join the workforce at the age of 21-22, bringing a fearless and fresh approach to the table, that can give rise to unique and crazy ideas. At that age, people are unfamiliar with limits and not afraid of rolling out the most insane ideas. This is what makes Russian campaigns stand out.
How to Reach 92 Percent
The impact of this approach can be observed in the content marketing solutions of progressive teams. We consider ourselves lucky because Louder has opened its doors exactly 10 years ago, and it grew up with brave young people who have always been up to creating something new.
During our work with the strongest international brands, we learnt to put efficiency first in every campaign. We deploy diverse communication methods, assessing the results continuously and recently it has come to our attention that 92% of consumers rely on the recommendations from influencers. Based on our decade-long experience, we have crafted a comprehensible, efficient and up-to-date service, and by doing so, we became the first ones to provide unequaled influencer marketing services in Russia a few years ago.
Influencer marketing has nothing to do with purchasing posts from bloggers and celebrities; most of them lack creativity and originality. Payed blogger posts with hashtags have been recognized as purely promotional materials for a while, as they just create an excessive amount of content.
Influencer campaigns are not about pushing the brand message into people’s faces everywhere, but rather about engaging relevant communities. You have to implement the brand policy into the everyday life of major opinion leaders – those respected by their like-minded peers. Campaigns must provide the newsfeed of the audience with an added value, that is, credible content from a trusted voice.
Influencer Marketing Tactics
Influencer marketing tools fall into two categories based on their goals. Those in the first category are to connect brands to their target audience via leading opinion leaders of the lifestyle category. The other set of tools should help tell stories through tailor-made influencer marketing campaigns and collaborations with the best content creators.
However, in order to be able to provide quality service, an agency must have a reasonable degree of expertise. Agencies have to be equipped with a huge pool of tools and established relationships between brands, and influencers should be honored, as their activity pay off during campaigns.
Not every agency can provide this kind of high-quality service and Russian clients are aware of this. Provided that a marketing team aspires after efficiency, they have to be on the same page with the target audience in terms of culture. We often look for trendsetters to join our team because if our network of social media influencers is not enough for a good reach, we can attract one of them to work with us.
