On December 6, GSOM SPbU graduate and Talent Up! mentor Ekaterina Startseva  gave a lecture on topic “Digital marketing: native communications for big brands, or how to make a video for a million views.” Ekaterina told students about Russian advertising market, showed the most popular commercials of the year and explained what to study to be able to work in digital marketing.

 

 

Ekaterina Startseva began her lecture with showing two commercials. In the first one, “Zenit” players work at “Gazprom Neft” gas stations, and in the second, “Kasperskiy Lab” chooses a sound to report about virus detection.

 

 

According to Ekaterina, the video about Gazprom looks like it was taken on a hidden camera:

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“This kind of videos look best, because it seems that this is not Gazprom Neft official communication, but something natural, spied.” About the video for Kasperskiy Lab Ekaterina told that its creators identified the “categories of virality”. “There are certain things that attract audience: children, animals, sex, celebrities, and provocations. People share these things,” explained lecturer.

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Ekaterina told that companies are moving away from traditional forms of advertising now.

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“For companies in the last 5-7 years, it has become obvious that Internet is the territory of freedom, and it is impossible to make a person watch something. He can be lured. It became clear that you have to not just sell your product, but to involve people by bright communications,” said Ekaterina Startseva. Now people decide by themselves whether to watch advertising or not, and if they watch it and like it, then brand loyalty is formed.

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Social media plays an important role in this process. Users are becoming more sophisticated, they comment and share less. In addition, pages we scroll in social media are formed depending on our preferences. So fighting for users’ attention, brands use advertising that does not look like advertising. “For example, your favorite community made a post, and you can’t understand, whether they made it sincerely or some company paid them to make it. Now the main task of big brands is to pack everything in a most native way so that you consume this content with pleasure, and voluntarily, because it is impossible to force you to do it,” said Ekaterina Startseva.

To make an example, Ekaterina told about Donald Trump election campaign, whose managers developed about 900,000 narrowly targeted messages, to show one kind to a person from Texas, and another one to a New Yorker. This massages allowed Trump to win the election.

Speaking about trends in 2018, Ekaterina Startseva named: personalization, as in the Coca-Сola video, social networks, like in McDonald's add, storytelling, for example, in M&S video, AR / VR video, like in National Goegraphic, hackvertising by Burger King, self-irony — Tide, bright visualization — Mercedes and expensive production — Doritos blaze vs. Mtn Dew ice.

At the end of the lecture, Ekaterina spoke about the important skills required for working in digital advertising. Such as an understanding of modern media and technical platforms, knowledge of strategy, PR and marketing. In addition, project management skills will be required to effectively organize the work of the creative team and cope with irregular schedules.

 

Ekaterina Startseva is GSOM SPbU graduate and Talent Up! mentor. Ekaterina worked as an account-manager at "Smetana’| agency, was Digital Director at "Great" advertising group and in March 2018 became a founder of digital agency “Роскреатив”. She worked with such international and Russian brands as: Kaspersky Lab, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Zenit, Skolkovo, Johnson&Johnson, Heineken, Mail.ru, Yandex, Fazer, Subaru etc. Moreover, Ekaterina participated in the creation of a promotional application to the “АукцЫон” music album, which won the Bronze Lion at the Cannes Lions festival.

 

Ekaterina Startseva lecture Presentation