Television viewers are becoming increasingly irritated by commercials, which take up 5, 10, and even 25 percent of airtime. After 40 minutes you forget what you have been watching and on what channel, but mostly why you have been watching it. Meanwhile, commercial slogans are becoming ingrained in your memory: trademarks are turning into all-too-familiar brands and becoming part of your daily life. We learn from ads and commercials how we should dress and live to keep up with fashion, what we should eat and drink, how we should sleep, and what kinds of cars we should drive.
One more minute and this critical mass will surpass the boundaries of consciousness. Half of what you see you forget once you settle yourself in a comfortable armchair in front of your large TV screen. If you say this out loud, you will give a heart attack to an advertising company manager who has invested millions of dollars to promote his products.
After all, he wants to make a name among his equals, to take the lead. This is quite a simple matter. Participants of the REX Brandmakers 9th International Advertising, Marketing, and Mass Media Exhibition were willing to share their professional experience, mostly providing advice on how to establish a strong brand name and convey maximum trademark information to the data-swamped consumer.
If you were to compare the annual Top 100 list of brands from the early 1990s to the 2000 list, you would still see only 30 companies, says Vadym Pustotin, the director of Slidopyt, a brand-consulting company: “The face of the world in the brand realm has been rejuvenated by two-thirds. And the consumer is changing even more quickly.”
they kicked me,” says Mykhailo Koval, a resident of Chernihiv, recalling his time at a militia precinct. All things considered, he got off “easy”: a fractured rib, concussion, and countless bruises. In the next room policemen were working his son over at the same time. I won’t recount the 28-year- old man’s descriptions of his appearance and how he was feeling after he was led from the room. The sight was not for people with weak nerves. “My son asked me not to file any complaints, saying they would simply murder us,” continues Mykhailo Koval. “I told him that they must have broken his spirit and that I’d try to restore it by obtaining justice in court.” Although he did not succeed, he did help law enforcement agencies specializing in combating militia brutality. The Koval case and others were the groundwork of Amnesty International’s report
For example, in the 1990s the whole country bought footwear, clothes, and foods only at bazaars. As a result, Procter & Gamble made a stunning discovery in 1998: advertising had to be done not only in the print media and on television, but at these bazaars.
There is a big difference between consumers of the 1990s and today. Positioning concepts developed 2-3 years ago by using certain identifiable trademarks are becoming obsolete. “If we take an average statistical identifiable trademark,” says Vadym Pustotin, “our consumer masters 50-56% of the information contained in any given brand, doing so selectively and using normal complex communications.” Therefore, some people remember the features of a certain brand’s image; others are plagued by assortment positions; still others by categories of consumer for whom a certain brand is designated. As a result, they may recognize a trademark at first, but will then forget all about it. According to the director of a brand-consulting company, when a new brand of juice, for example, is promoted, few market analysts consider that they will have competition from suppliers of other kinds of juices but also mineral water, soft drinks, even ice cream (depending on the situations in which this brand will be consumed). Therefore, when developing a strategy to promote a product, marketing sharks no longer find it fashionable to take into account the competition and approaches to positioning in only one certain category. Once not just the most cutthroat businessmen master what they missed earlier, the competitive struggle on the domestic markets will also intensify. Many producers will counter that the situation is not calm even now. Pustotin, however, feels sure that “it is not the number of operators that attests to the market instability, but the number of brands that have been memorized by the consumer.” Today’s markets can only be described as pseudocompetitive. Draw your own conclusions: in every large Ukrainian city there are a couple of dozen bread factories, but there isn’t a single brand on the grain market. Consumers who choose baguettes or small loaves rely on their individual taste rather than concrete differences proclaimed by bakers.
Consumers must be coddled with innovations because greater numbers of people are trying to shock those around them and challenge circumstances and age. Psychologists are sure that this is partly a defense reaction and partly the world outlook of the young and merry, aged approximately between 16 and 21.
Pustotin says that any brand accessing the market must demonstrate not only its innate rational and emotional advantages but also the consumer’s character. “A brand is strong only when it is tied to target groups (a large number of people united by common features).” These common features, in turn, are clearly outlined in the psychographic approach built on self-identification of the population. According to Pustotin, there are five groups: maximalists, who take everything from life and must be seen using the brand; individualists, who care about themselves and their careers; traditionalists, who respect family values; realists; and finally survivors — people who live in the past and present. The latter are not looking ahead. The best has already happened, so far as they are concerned. There are a lot of these individuals, especially in small and medium-sized towns.
A brand could be developed for each one of these groups, but it wouldn’t hurt to take into account at least two other groups, for example, the traditionalists and realists, or the maximalists and individualists. “Given this approach to developing a brand, what comes to the forefront is not the kind of rational or emotional advantages the consumer can obtain from this brand, but the extent to which he considers this brand his own,” notes Pustotin.
Naturally, the most desirable category of consumers for a strong brand consists of people with an “average +” income, who live in big cities. This is every producer’s dream. Statistics, however, insist that only 16 percent of Ukraine’s population live there. Fifty-one percent live in towns with fewer than 500,000 residents whose incomes are average or below average. Slidopyt’s prognosis is that the brands that will win are those with a differentiated orientation — in other words, those that target specific consumers who live in small and medium-sized towns, who work in the economic and “average +” segments, and perhaps in the “elite” segment.
Be that as it may, consumers are feeling much better. “In the first half of 1999,” says the brandmaker, “8.5 percent of consumers regarded their revenues as high. In the first half of 2005, it was 25 percent.” People were beginning to feel they are better off. Therefore, the proportion of those who spend between 25 and 50 percent of their income on food is increasing. If an individual feels better off, he can spend more on other things or quality foods. The percentage of those who are spending more on luxuries, entertainment, and health is also increasing. Even now market experts note that in 3-7 years the spheres of entertainment, resort, and health-building will become Ukraine’s main battlefield, where businesses will compete for consumers. They will be taken into account when brand new products are developed. Here is another condition that brandmakers give when they deal with their clients: another excuse for advertising. Then the producer will not be afraid of sinking into oblivion. Acquiring innovative products is increasingly often associated with comfort. As a result, the average individual becomes even more dependent on what he consumes. “It’s a pure bluff that marketing makes man free. The greater the number of goods, the more dependent an individual becomes. Freedom means not only one’s skill at choosing things, but also refusing them,” admits Pustotin.
The Ukrainian consumer is far more emotional than his counterpart in the West. There the approach to goods is rational; here it is emotional, one that goes for the heart, so to speak. One brand or another is perceived as part of one’s life, as a manifestation of one’s ego. In the next 5-7 years, according to the main “pathfinder,” this emotional inclination will remain high. However, the number of pragmatic consumers will also increase.
Brand developers do not reject emotions. More often than not, brandmakers use the moods of the Sincerity group (e.g., happy, family-oriented, warm, friendly, considerate, natural, sensible) and the Sophistication group (e.g., effective, nice-looking, attractive). The Excitement group (modern, fashionable, above-average, merry, sense of humor, tough, independent) group is gaining momentum. We’ll see.
