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The hero of our time

Alexei Verizhnikov, Ph.D., the Head of Qualitative Department

The new times - the new heroes. The purpose of any brand communication is to catch properly a spirit of the time and draw an attractive portrait of our contemporary. The depicted contemporary's profile should be attractive enough to cause an immediate urge in consumer for identification with the latter.

In the Russian market, in advertising during the past decade both more successful and less successful attempts could be observed what concerns the communication of the attractive contemporary's image. The degree of adequacy in conveying of the topical value-set of the younger generation was accountable for a relative success or, on the contrary, relative mishap in these endeavors.

As for the topical values of the so-called Generation Y, in Russia for the last ten years they underwent a substantial evolution. The noticeable changes in the attitude towards one's work, career, spare time, self-implementation were registered. The responsibilities of a "white collar" working in modern office, once a younger generation's dream, turned nowadays in a complete tedium. Instead of the growing fast, the younger Muscovites currently prefer to enjoy slowly and, if possibly, with a great variety. Instead of the longer hours in the office, the intention to sneak outside before 6 p.m. and have fun generally prevails. The well-established pattern - a number of years in one big company, then a number of years in another big company but in somewhat higher position - gradually becomes a thing of the past. This one is increasingly succeeded by the growing predisposition towards a freelance employment or even a stronger wish to run distantly "one's own project" and not to set a foot in the office.

Alexei Verizhnikov:
"The contemporary Russian managers resemble a great deal the citizens of Ancient Rome - the same lazy. When it comes to their remuneration, it would be more reasonable to call it not a salary, but a kind of rent. Not being too busy at their workplace, they still complain about the so-called "suppression of their personality." Paradoxically, ten years ago they spent up to 12 hours in the office while being truly harassed by the cannibal-type bosses and, still, were quite happy. At least, no complaints were uttered then. Now, they work 8 hours a day to the max. Out of these 8 hours, the real work typically takes only 4-5 hours. The rest hours are shared between browsing in the Internet and socializing with the colleagues. And add to this the non-stop whining about the unbearable overload and so-called corporate slavery."

Research innovations for marketing innovations.
BrandStretch™, Market Landscape™

Maria Potanina, Consulting Director

We all know that successful marketing implies the comprehensive knowledge of your market. In the course of marketing history, marketing research has always been the source & instrument of knowledge about the markets, however - it was often criticized for its somewhat retrospective approach, compared with "rear view mirror", while the Marketing Specialists obviously deem it much more useful to look into the future, answering the question of "what should I do next" - preferably in terms of future sales.

And while package designs, concepts or price range testing is more or less helpful in helping Marketing with next steps, the so called strategic research (Market segmentation, U&A, etc.) tended to be more abstract, providing quite a vague answer to "what should I do next" question.

IPSOS provides a new, state-of-art SERVICE of integrated market segmentation, devoid of the aforementioned criticism and giving a practical opportunity to elaborate very precise (substantiated by measures-based not theoretical) recommendations on...

optimization of current brand portfolio, detailed recommendations on:

Optimization of positioning - both relating to consumer needs and brands choice drivers as well as optimizing your target audience definitions
Verification of brand names/descriptors' compliance with consumer understanding of the market
Checking whether your pack communicates the right and meaningful things to the consumer
Optimization of retail strategy
Optimization of brand portfolio, possible delisting opportunities

recommendation on directions and strategies for innovation:

Search of niches in the market - based on consumer needs and satisfaction - including quantitative prioritization of opportunities
"White space" in the category signifying possible trends of innovation
Quantitatively defined directions for brand stretching, numeric assessment of stretch possibilities
Indication of the higher-potential innovation platforms
Testing of product and brand concepts / ideas
Sales forecast for the worthy ideas

Importantly, this rich body of data is visualized and graphically presented as maps - i.e. a new market niche or new innovation platform can virtually be 'discovered' on the map. That facilitates marketers' dealing with large amounts of U&A/segmentation data.

Maria Potanina:
"I'm so much so impressed by the actionability of conclusions and recommendations resulting from a Market Landscape study. Cutting-edge complex analytics behind this approach is not the goal in itself, but rather helps arriving at simple and clear recommendations as to how the brand should develop in the future".

Download *.pdf file (Russian version only)

Ideation: Open your mind and foster your creativity!

Sergey Sheikhetov, Qualitative Research Director

It often happens that the results of very efficient marketing research seem to be vain for the customer. The seemingly well-composed and detailed report does not give idea of problematic situation and therefore not realized in practice. Many researchers would like to make the results of their work more "actionable", however, it's not always possible with the traditional scheme of customer-executor relationship.

Sergey Sheikhetov:
"New innovative Ideation Workshop consulting service allows going beyond the traditional marketing approaches. Work in cross-cutting teams and application of special creative methods not only helps to make the results realized but also substantiates future creation of new product ideas and strategic decisions for business."

Download *.pdf file (Russian version only)

The effectiveness of sponsorship

Elena Speer, Managing Director, Ipsos ASI Russia & Ukraine

Sponsorship is expensive but appealing; therefore it can produce a profound effect on company's business development and its image.

Sponsorship provides unique opportunities of interaction with the audience, consumers, constant repercussions in mass & social media.

That's the tremendous Sponsor budgets and its unique opportunities make its efficiency most highlighted:

Whether the company uses the maximum of these opportunities or not?
How to attract such sponsor company so that to get its undeniable advantages vs. the competitor?
Is the sponsor company more effective than the ordinary ones and - if it is - in what lines of business and how far effective?
Whether sponsorship has same effect on all participants? If not - what are these differences?

Elena Speer:
"These and other questions are covered by sponsor-based researches held in IPSOS CO. IPSOS has long-time historical links with Sponsorship of Olympic Games and other sports tournaments. This allows gaining profound experience and knowledge the efficiency of sponsorship advertising and comprehending the current trends. For example, sponsors' themes imposed in ordinary ads seem much more intensive and persuasive in terms of brand's qualities and advertising. Or whether sponsorship is the main benefit of the company irrespective whether it's a sponsors' company or not. In which case not only the sports sponsorship is object of our estimate. We use the same approach to any sponsorship - it's effective notwithstanding any kind of sponsor activities".

Cutting edge. Next*Connect

Jared Moran, Director - Ipsos ASI Copytesting Division

Changes in the advertising research market are becoming more dynamic. For Clients it is getting harder to think about separate ads, they are obliged to think about integrated advertising campaigns taking place in different media channels. At the same time the constantly changing dynamics of the modern life, make it harder to attract the consumers' attention - both to advertising and to participating in different kinds of surveys.

The new IPSOS ASI tool - Next*Connect - was created specially to respond to this modern reality. It is based on the evolution of our most effective tool in advertising effectiveness evaluation - Next*TV, but it allows testing of ads in any media (in press, OOH, internet, etc.)

Jared Moran:
"Online data collection is used more and more nowadays, and IPSOS is not an exception. Online tools allow us to use all our advertising research experience - saving costs and shortening timings. But this is not the only reason why online is interesting for us. It also allows us to think about those people who help us in our work - about our respondents. We specially created the tool which would be interactive and interesting for them, and we already see proof that they like to take part in Next*Connect surveys and they share with pleasure their thoughts and emotions".

Download *.pdf file

Ipsos ASI Awards