The average person aims to stay up to speed with the most recent clothing styles and haircuts. From country to country, styles vary and the ideal image is often rooted in cultural influence. Still, a popular movie or a celebrity influences worldwide trends uniting people across the globe to wear a particular pair of sunglasses or cut their hair a certain way.
Sure, cold winters and cultural norms persuade Russians to wear awesome fur coats and beautiful leather boots but there are many other fashionistas contributing to Russian fashion trends.
Recently, analysts at Yandex analyzed search queries for “как у кого,” which most simply translates to “like somebody’s.” This common query explains how Russians are searching for the item or style feature of somebody else that they wish to emulate.
Analyzing a query like this is actually a bit easier in the Russian language. In English we would likely search something like “Taylor Swift’s shoes” or perhaps, “shoes like Taylor Swift’s.” In Russian, the possessive grammar structure makes the query “shoes of Taylor Swift” or “shoes like (of ) Taylor Swift.” Therefore, analysts could look at the query “shoes of” or “shoes like of” and know that a user is searching for shoes of someone else and then view the most popular endings to that query. In English, analyzing the query “shoes like” would be the most similar. Just something to keep in mind if you are selecting keywords and wanted to include something like this.
Top image searches
Russians most frequently turn to their local search engine Yandex to search for the ideal haircut. It seems as though the Russian mullet is out and guys these days just want to look like Messi. Not a bad look.
Users also frequently search for a certain look for “eyes” and “makeup.” Of course, changing your eye color is doable these days with color contacts but these searches are mainly geared towards eye makeup -a very special aspect of women’s image. We all know that one woman with eye makeup that is a bit scary and another that makes you wonder how in the world she has managed to pull off the smoky eye look for daytime. Russian women are thinking the same thing.
The list below shows the most frequently searched queries to emulate someone’s image. The orange bars indicate the percent out of the overall combined queries for “like somebody’s.”
The Russian ideal male and female images
By combining these queries, Yandex research analysts were able to piece together the most frequent queries to create ideal images for male and female characters. While some aspects of these ideal images include international names that you likely recognize, many Russian names probably have you guessing.
Certainly there are a decent amount of FC Barcelona fans in Russia, given the interest in Messi and Neymar. Surprisingly, Russians are still smelling what the Rock is cooking and are most frequently searching for tattoos like Dwayne Johnson’s. Interestingly, when testing this search query on Yandex, the SERP also returned other frequent searches for Steve Austin, Triple H, The Undertaker, and other wrestler’s. There must be a following for the WWE in Russia. Who knew!?
Russian men are interested in Grigory Leps’ glasses, a famous Georgian based Russian musician. They also are interested in watches like “Fizryk’s,” which is the main character to the Russian TV show “Fizryk” otherwise translated as PE Teacher.
Meanwhile, the Russian women are focusing on a few celebrities. Between Angelina Jolie’s eyeliner and tattoos, she really has the attention of Russian women. Elsa, the main character in Disney’s Frozen, who has charmed the whole world, has charmed the Russian female population into emulating her hairdo.
The Disney influence continues with Russians’ desire to have a diary like Violetta, the main character in a show about a teenager returning to her home town of Buenos Aires.
Olga Buzova and Ksenia Borodina, two Russian television show hosts, have clearly stolen the hearts of Russian fashionistas’. Thanks to Borodina, hats with a veil are now trending and may not be popular anywhere else.
Conclusions
Clearly, Russians have a big interest in staying up with current trends. From sports stars to actors, pop figures have a big influence on Russian fashion and the idea of the ideal image. Given the mix of international influence and emphasis on specific domestic figures, it’s safe to say that the Russian population is very open minded to Western pop culture but also still maintains an interest in local happenings.
For those of you running a business relating to local and international television and movies, you’ve done a great job spreading media to Russia. For those running celebrity gossip websites in Russia, you have an audience. For those selling watches or shoes, you’re on track to keep the Russian people up to speed on the international trends. There is no shortage of interest in looking stylish and emulating the season’s hot looks.
Interestingly, celebrities we have otherwise dismissed in the US, like Eminem, still maintain a presence in Russia. Staying informed on these search trends will surely help you decide how to best run your e-commerce business in Russia.
This article first appeared on Russian Search Marketing.
