In established Internet markets in the West, online public relations have recently seen growth as a popular marketing alternative. The 2008 crisis strongly affected the way marketers approached online communications. Marketing budgets have been cut and expectations have shifted away from experimentation. ROI became king.
A key advantage of online PR is that a message is more likely to go viral as a cultural meme online than through traditional offline advertising. Indeed any individual reached online is necessarily connected to some kid of network, be it a social network, a professional network, business networks, social clubs with online presence, chat forums – this list goes on. Basically, an online viewer is just one click away from forwarding content.
Because it leverages the power of search engines, online PR makes advertisers extra-visible. Brands become potentially visible to the 2 billion people on earth with access to the Internet.
In addition, online PR lasts. Forever. Nobody will have access to the wonderful review of your brand published in Forbes magazine 2 years ago because in offline world, when your marketing campaign is over, your message disappears forever. In the online world, messages have staying power because old articles, posts, comments and videos are simply archived but can turn up in random searches like treasures at a garage sale.
Not only is the impact of online PR precisely measurable, unlike offline PR or advertising, it also allows marketers to monitor people’s reactions. A very important aspect of measurement is sentiment evaluation, term describing how positive viewers reactions are in reaction to a message. Conversation tracking technology and methodologies (see Radian6, or SocialMentions for English, BuzzFactory for Russian) helps advertisers understand precisely who their active brand evangelists and loyalists are and what consumers like or dislike about a given brand.
A relatively young market
This is all very well and good, but the question remains as to whether or not the relatively young Russian Internet is ready for all this.
The practice of online PR and social media marketing is just making its debut in Russia and the latest report from Grape digital agency indicates that the relatively few, scattered online communities gathered about particular brands in Russia are still light weights in respect to their western counterparts.
In 2010, more than 70% of all media budgets spent on the Russian Internet were dedicated to paid media, mainly context advertising and web banners. Media budgets allocated to social media and online PR are difficult to estimate because social media marketing costs are calculated essentially over time and other intangible resources.
Furthermore, the Internet is young in Russia compared to other, mostly western countries because Russians have acquired access to the technology more gradually. According to TNS Gallup, as recently as late 2010 only 57% of the Russian population aged 12 and older had access to the Internet on a monthly basis. On top of this, the average experience of Internet use in Russia is less than 4 years.
Still, these figures reveal impressive facts about Russia’s potential online market. Though Internet use is well behind the national proportion in more advanced countries, it nevertheless represents over 50 million people – more than Spain’s entire population!
As for Russia’s blogosphere, it is has already gained obvious social and political influence. The Russian Internet counts today roughly 12.5 millions active blogs, with about 10 acknowledged superstar bloggers, attracting an audience of 25 millions blog readers. Typically, an influential blogger generates about 15,000 unique visits and over 80,000 page views per month. Imagine the potential for any brand that could mobilize the support of just 20 of Russian bloggers!
Case study
Among the most important blog marketing campaigns in Russia in 2010 was the digital marketing campaign for the new Citroen DS3. The challenge was to position the car as young, hip and trendy in the context of a brand history positioning Citroen with a relatively conservative image as a car manufacturer. The marketing team approached the task with the goal of obtaining maximum online visibility before the beginning of the offline campaign.
In a bold move, the campaign reached out to involve some of Russia’s most influential bloggers in a multi-level brand experience including an exclusive test drive before the car’s official release, access to the brand’s executives as well as other forms of interaction with brand content.
Twelve high profile bloggers were invited an art gallery for the presentation of the car in connection with an exhibition of the works of American artist Andy Warhol. The bloggers were then paired off and given the keys to 6 cars for a test-drive.
Following to the first test drive, bloggers and brand executives met for an informal dinner at a trendy art-restaurant with a very cosy and friendly atmosphere. Following a second test drive, the bloggers were taken to a photo studio where a professional photographer gave the participants a lesson in how to do a photo shoot of a professional model decked out in a Lady Gaga outfit next to the as yet unreleased Citroen DS3.
The bloggers were set loose and 12 articles were duely fired off onto the Russian Internet after the event, with an additional 90 tweets linking to these articles. Some 420,000 Internet users were exposed to the message and more than 150,000 people read these articles. Since then, untold brand content has been published online.
Conclusion
Perhaps asking whether “Is Russia is mature ready for online PR ” is finally not the right question to ask, as examples shows that for advertisers it is obviously a tremendous opportunity to create online visibility, generate buzz and recommendations through inexpensive Cost-Per-Contact marketing. The real question remains more like: “Is the Russian blogosphere mature ready enough to collaborate with brands?”
The answer is a qualified yes and no. In Europe, Asia and the US, bloggers have perfectly understood the importance for them of building relationships with brands as an opportunity to make profit of on their blogging activities. Some bloggers are official brand ambassadors, with sponsored posts are announced as such and top bloggers would rarely feel the need to resort to undercover marketing. In Russia, however, most of the nascent blog marketing campaigns are comprised out of copy-paste messages, unapologetic, in-your-face brand placement and spam-like advertising messages. The majority of bloggers still don’t understand that this hurts their image and credibility.
In more mature markets, we have observed the professionalization of the blogosphere over the past few years. Blogs are more specialized and technical and can have often a meaningful influence in the specific segments of their activity. In Russia, on the other hand, most of the existing blogs, including some of the most popular, do not focus on any particular subjects, often being beside “about everything” with a focus on the bloggers style more than the area of content.
As a result, it is challenging to find the relevant bloggers connected to a specific products or even an industry. It remains to be seen if blogging trends will develop along the lines that they have in other, more mature Internet markets and what tactics marketers will adapt to influence and exploit trends.
It is clear that blog-based marketing will only deliver very impressive results to generate cost effective online marketing solutions in Russia only if it is carefully and correctly integrated into mainstream blogging activity, with a focus on creating genuine relationships between brands and online opinion leaders.
