Communications with Consumers

Competing for Attention

As Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale, the Swedish authors of best-selling Funky Business point out in their book, we live “in a world of abundance and excess”. They say that this is the age that is characterized by the word ‘more’: “More products, more markets, more competition”. Yes, and more consumption, more opportunities, more fun but more fear and more uncertainty. We have entered an era of exuberance and this is shocking. Do you remember what was on your TV screen in the 1970s and 1980s when GUM – the largest department store in Moscow was shown? Almost bare shelves were there and a burly Russian guy standing by the empty counter with a bottle of some combustible liquid “impersonating” vodka, in front of him. A lonely Moscow housewife was staring at vacant shelves and while in this realm of confinement, she was dreaming of abundance. Today the abundance is around us. That woman from GUM in Moscow can watch 47 TV channels or serf a quarter of a billion Internet web sites providing information on various goods.  The supermarkets however don’t offer many products that she could afford.

A modern-day customer is a spoilt being. He is spoilt by the wide choice of goods available, which enables him to indulge in curiosity. It’s not enough for him to know the product’s characteristics and attributes. A lot of thoughts are tumbling in his mind when he is about to buy something. Before paying for a purchase, he wants to know about the product much more than he can read in an advertisement. What kind of a brand name is this? Who manufactures this product and where do they do that? What is the product’s history? What is it that makes it better than the similar item made by the competitors? Is the price justified? What would his fellows think about all this? Who are the people that are trying to make money due to him as a customer, after all?

You have to provide the right answers to all these questions. And the answers should be bright, convincing and simple. This is the reason that direct advertising is not the only tool, and not the most effective one, to be used for marketing goods and services. 

To be most efficient, you have to exploit those channels of communications that bring the necessary information, about the brand in question, to the proper target audience. You have to get the consumer involved in the developments, which exhibit the brand’s advantages, and monitor his reactions. Moreover, you have to keep an eye – yes, keep an eye (!) on what he tells his friends and loved ones about your product. So the question is - how to attract the consumer’s attention and not to let him get lost in the abundance of information.

At the Publicity PR Agency, we create the communications models that are based on our professional experience and the latest data obtained through the research of the customers’ preferences, in order to offer you an approach that suggests different levels of dealing with the customers. First and foremost, we endeavor to make the customers’ perception of the brand congenial; we provoke their attention but don’t interfere in their lives.

Today, apart from facilitating relations with the media, which include providing news and advertising materials, we are also able to:

Create the brand’s legend;

Develop an expert field around the company, product or service;

Offer techniques that induce and stimulate demand;

Organize promotional acts, raffles and quizzes for the customers;

Hold workshops coaching the staff how to deal effectively with the customers;

Help promote trademarks in the regions of Russia;

Design communications programs aimed to shape the customers’ loyalty;

Carry out diagnostic and analytical research of the customers’ preferences.