This article featured in Brand Strategy Magazine in February 2007

Growing up in Canada gave me the impression that Russians are all cold, stoic beings that walk around in non-descript, uncomfortable clothes having very serious conversations in dimly lit cafes. Of course nothing can be further from the truth. If you need a reference, the Italian culture is probably more useful than any other. In fact, the Russian people have had a close relationship with both the Italians and the French for hundreds of years.

Italian architects designed the Kremlin and most Russian cities are littered with Baroque and Beau Arts influenced buildings. It’s not just the buildings that are glitzy. Russians themselves have a flamboyant style in everything from the way they dress to the way they hold-court in conversations with friends.

This flamboyancy is often referred to as ‘The Big Russian Soul’.

Most international marketers have been relatively slow to take advantage of this characteristic of the Russian psyche. Instead, they have depended in the ‘not-from-here’ notions of appeal and superior quality of international brands to drive their wedge into the market. The Italians by contrast have been very quick to recognise the character of the market. Like in Italy, brands such Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Valentino and Hugo Boss reign supreme in Russia. The more glam and glitter the better and it seems that the newly liberated market cannot get enough.

While slick, minimalist, international brands have their place in Russia, they are chiefly consumed by a small number of the elite in Moscow and St. Petersburg. We need to contrast this small ‘minimalist’ niche against every Russian youth owning a drawer-full of the most ‘maximalist’ D&G t-shirts that can be found on the black market. With this in mind, it is time to take a page from Italian marketing books and capitalise on the Dolce Vita aspects of Russian living. Russians prefer images of living life in the large. While the larger than life image changes from brand to brand, life and life-styles are parodied in successful communications. Of course, there is a risk. We need to be cautious with the difference between exaggerating life with a bit of theatre, and making any illusions that is actually how life is or should be. Contrast this against British or American promotions that use aspirational peers to try to push people’s perception of what they should want. As a result, marketers have been adopting this aspirational peer approach with an ever-decreasing level of success in Russia. Most ad agencies are pumping in best practice from Anglo-Saxon markets and finding that the approach simply does not fit the Russian context.

The combination of Western-like capitalism and Italian-like ostentation combine for a less-than-subtle effect best in Moscow. Here, brands are everywhere and billboards are crammed into every conceivable view. Even the area around the Kremlin is wallpapered with gigantic billboards costing a million-dollars a week and featuring brands like Rolex and Versace.

Of course, Russia is also a land of contrasts and while the Dolce Vita may be the ideal, the real picture is a little less sweet. There is a tremendous amount of wealth in Moscow, but your average Muscovite earns US$ 750 per month. Moscow just topped the list as the most expensive city to live in the world last year, so this wage gives an indication for how far the market has yet to develop for everyone.

It’s important not to dismiss the Russian urban/rural divide as something that occurs in every market to a similar degree. The gap is more extreme in Russia, looking more like the gap between urban and rural customers in Asia, than in other parts of Eastern Europe. City-dwellers in Moscow and St. Petersburg dream of vacations abroad and lifestyles that are more a kin to Western European standards. Rural households dream of a buying new winter clothes for their children or to purchase their first mobile phone through systems akin to micro-credits first developed in India.

So, on one hand, we have the Big Russian Soul craving for a bit of bling and on the other we have the constraints of a newly capitalised economy that is still living with extremes (and will do for decades to come). This situation presents interesting dilemmas for brands and branders – especially for mass-market brands such as FMCG, banks and telecoms.

As you can imagine it is easy to intimidate someone that is earning US$ 200 per month with visions of the good life that would make your typical middle class Russian shrink away with an ostentatious yawn. Promoting values that relate to social recognition, respect and achievement are tricky when promoting to the masses in Russia. Banks and telecoms have had an especially hard time in getting their promotions right since messages of achievement are easy pickings in other countries and they are going on best practice. But when they promote achievement-focused messages, they alienate the poor since they are overly aspirational and they alienate the wealthy middle class since they are hopelessly dull. The problem is one of specificity and relating the function of a product to the aspirational values that you want to promote. While fashion brands can make you feel like you are walking down a runway in Milan, yogurt cannot help you become more popular with your friends.

While this situation is true to some degree in all markets, the nature of the situation is exaggerated in Russia. For example, if a mobile phone brand promotes notions of international travel to the market in order to promote a new roaming tariff, they will intimidate the vast majority of customers. Or when a vodka brand promotes people drinking at a trendy bar, most consumers will feel alienated.

Branding people need to exercise caution with the specificity of marketing message in Russia as it relates to the product that they are marketing. If a product is naturally glamorous, then notions of a generally glamorous lifestyle will work wonders (see Big Russian Soul). However, if the product is not directly related to glamour – like a bank account or a soda drink – then presenting an aspirational lifestyle is especially risky.

This extent to which Russians reject insincere marketing messages is severe. After 70 years of communism, Russians know a bit of propaganda when they see it. Up till now, the basic need to grow brand awareness across the country has masked the need for more effort in differentiating brands. But the awareness-growing gold-rush is now coming to an end. As marketing requirements mature from simple awareness building into preference building, market cynicism will make things increasing tough on branders.

Branders have recognised this cynicism and have been trying to define what aspects of Russian culture, values and norms will be acceptable for the mass market. Somewhat ironically, these have culminated in a resurgence of Russian nationalism communicated to the markets through brands. Major brands from beer to banks to telecoms are espousing nationalistic messages and trying to capture the essence of that Big Russian Soul. MTS, the largest telecom with over 70 million subscribers, recently relaunched the brand and capitalised on the Big Russian Soul in the process. They used authentic images of Russian people portraying daily life situations in a way that profiled Russian living and what it meant to be Russian. Further, MTS congratulate the country in advertising spots that celebrate national holidays and other significant occasions.

Other brands like Baltika are trying to leverage the Russian love of all things cheeky. Dark humour reins above all other forms and for all their suffering, Russians know how to laugh at the darker side of life. Still this kind of humour needs to be tempered against a need to be cautious around social norms. Unbelievably, your average Russian young-person feels less need to stand-out from the crowd and poke fun at anything too specific. Specifically, being irreverent as a whole social group is OK, but being irreverent as an individual is a big no-no.

There are many conceptions and misconceptions about Russia as a land and the Russian people. People looking from the outside-in have formed their opinions of the motherland from propaganda promoted during the cold war and often approach the market with a father-knows best attitude. People looking from the inside are looking outside for the answers since they realise that there is so much to learn about the science of branding.

In the end, what’s obvious is that marketers need to look much harder on the inside of the culture in order to get it right and to figure out all the paradoxes that make Russians tick. Marketers need to become more sophisticated with the messages they promote in Russia. Nationalism serves as a good stop-gap for some of the major brands, but is not appropriate for every situation and will soon live out its course. We need to do more work in order to plug into the Russian psyche and unpick the critical, cultured and sophisticated nature of the Russian mind before we build truly great brands for the country.
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