Russia
in Bloom 2006
In
1999 we were asked by our client Sutton's Consumer Products Ltd. to
devise a suitable marketing vehicle for Sutton's Seeds, their
hobby garden targeted packeted seed company. The company had,
with our assistance, been one of the first onto the Russian Market, but
since then competition had increased and it had lost its lead.
Sutton's main UK marketing strategy has always been based on
the quality of its goods, but in a geographically very large and price
sensitive market such as Russia, a normal mass media based
marketing campaign would not only be costly, the logistics of
monitoring its results accurately would be a nightmare.
Additionally, because of the average Russian end
users' natural skepticism to all things non-Russian, and the
western marketing overkill situation in Russian mass media in general,
we advised Suttons to peruse the more direct, and a more Russian
approach to the problem, by involving the Russian consumer directly, in
a national community based floral competition, based on Sutton's
products, the results of which would demonstrate the quality of
Sutton's products not only to the consumer themselves, but also to any
potential consumers viewing the displays.
The resulting displays not only highlighted Sutton's
product's superior quality, linking them directly to
the positive value in the Russian saying that "we are not yet rich
enough to be able to afford to buy rubbish!", Sutton's involvement and
support of such community based projects openly demonstrated Sutton's
trust in, and commitment to the Russian consumer, whilst at the same
time distancing themselves from the growing "Us and Them" attitude to
western importers to Russia.
