Ukraine as a fast growing brand: see you in London

Hi everyone! Hope, you are doing great!

Today I decided to share with you something, which is probably not that much related to marketing, PR and digital, but is something which I know about a lot! No, it is not shopping or food and not even TV series, it is Ukraine! The country which I love and will be always coming back to!

There are two reasons I decided to write about my country just now:

1. I have started this new online course in brand management, and it made me think of the importanc country` brand plays in the overall brands hierarchy. We know French macarons, Belgian chocolate, Russain vodka! Of course other countries do produce chocolate and vodka and macarons, but they are less known for this stuff. So I thought, lovely Ukraine produces all of these food products and cars as well, by the way. We`ve got great IT people who created their own search engine and tablet, but you know....there is something missing for the Ukrainian brands strategy. I believe one should start from raising awareness. This is what I`m gonna do in the next couple of paragraphs.

2. The other reason would be this lucky coincidence. :) I am in the UK now, and suddenly, turns out that UK is soon hosting the first ever days of Ukraine in London! What a news! So I thought I will give this event a little promotion among my belowed readers.

Well, if you want to get to know more about Ukrainian art, music, cuisine, literature and fashion, but you are to scared to go to this mysterious place far-far-away, you should be packing your stuff and be looking forward to this great event in London!


In a nutshell, Days of Ukraine in the UK is organised by Firtash Foundation, which is this great organisation that helps  talented Ukrainian youths achieve their dreams and receive outstanding educational opportunities (as studying in Cambridge, for instance). The Foundation also takes active part in building Ukraine as a brand. Therefore, this event seeks to attract people from all over the world (because you can meet them all in London) to Ukrainian culture and traditions. So if you are going to spend those days in London, you will have a chance to familirise yourself with the best possible examples of Ukrainian stuff.

What: great mass event with free food, many positive emotions, great music, dancing and everything folk.

When: October, 17-19, which is Thursday, Friday, Saturday

Where: London. Different locations, so you better check out their website to see where you would like to go.

Who: 
Oleg Skrypka and Le Grand Orchestra. This guy used to be a real hipster back in 1989! When this word has not even been created yet. Check this hillarious video and you`ll see for yourself!

Now his music is a bit different, but the drive and the mood of his songs remains as fascinating as years ago! :) He created this two great festvals in Ukraine, makes amazing modern folk music and is also a judge of 'The Voice" show in Ukraine. If you ask me, which musician represents Ukrainian culture, I wouldn`t hesitate and answer Oleg Skrypka! This is one of his more recent videos:

BEVZA - prominent Ukrainian designer! Coco Chanel invented the 'little black dress' concept, but did you know that 'little white dress' concept can be trasted back to Svitlana Bevza? I would say the girl works in the best traditions of the western fashion trends and would be loved by COS, AllSaints, Reiss and Hobbs fans. Very simple, elegant and clean cut. Just to give you an idea, here is the video of her collection on the Ukrainian Fashion Week S/S 2013. 

And many more artists, musicians and fashion designers! You should totally come to London. :)

I am really happy this event is taking place, and I do agree that people performing at this festival are brilliant. It is just that I find myself representing Ukraine little bit differently. First, I start with showing some marvelous pictures and say 'Ukraine has it all - mountains, cliffs, 2 seas, snow and sand, forests and rivers'. I don`t have all the astonishing photos with me at the moment, therefore, I would recomend you take a look on the work of photographer Oleg Zharij and his series 'Gorgeous Ukraine'. 

 

                              

My friend has a house just on top of the cliff :) I remember we used to watch dolphins from there. This is Black Sea coast in the southern part of Ukraine, the place is called Cape Fiollent and is also a popular movie location...for quite unpopular movies, unfortunately. :)

                                                 

Last December we saw the first snow in Glasgow that winter and people were so happy seeing tiny snowflakes and I said to myself...you wanna see snow - come to Ukraine. In April (when I went back home on my Eastern Break) it was still snowing! 

                               

 

This is how those Carpathian mountains look like during the summer - all green and marvelous.

 

                                           















Secondly, I would tell about some modern Ukrainian music. (I chose to talk about English-singing projects here, because they would be easier to understand).

    1. Kazaky - hot guys dancing on high heels whom you can spot in Madonna`s 'Girls Gone Wild' video and on the D&G runway. The following video kind of gives you an idea of how Customs and Border Office works in Ukrainian airports. :)

   2. HARDKISS - newly formed band of extremely creative, stylish and talented people who do great music.

    3. Esthetic Education - they were doing songs like those by Daft Punk (in terms of melody) in 2007 or even earlier. Love those guys. :)

That`s enough music for today. I am so looking forward to see (meet) all of you guys in London, October 17-19 where we will get the chance to have some real Ukrainian fun. In the meantime I wish you relaxing weekend full of joy and nice moments. I do hope you like this post, as for me, it seems like a nice idea to post something less serious at the end of the week. Let me know if you want to read more about Borshch and Varenyki (delicious stuff), Ukrainian cities or anything else!

Enjoy! :)

'Wrecking' Hannah Montana Part 2

Hi guys!

I knew this was coming! Remember what I`ve told you about Miley Cyrus a couple of posts ago? Just today the girl released her new video 'Wrecking Ball' where she is nacked, rides the big steel ball, licks the thing and smashes everything with a baseball stick. I say 'weird'! What do you think?

In terms of marketing part of the whole event, the video aims on beating new record on Vevo (previous one was for the song 'We Can`t Stop'). By the time of me writing this post, this video already had more than 14 million view. Good luck with that!

By the way, did you know, that the outrageous VMA performance made Hannah Montana the most widely mentioned person on Twitter with 4.5 million mentions during the performance only?

Enjoy the video, tell me what you think about this new image of Milley and come back tomorrow for a really serious post! 

Marketing advice from my Master's dissertation No.2

Rainy-windy-busy afternoon to everyone.:)

That's been a really loooong and pleasand weekend for me, hope you enjoyed it as well. 
It is Monday now and time to read and share more interesting ideas and useful tips. As I've told you last time my dissertation seems to be full of PR and marketing insights, so I cannot wait to share the second finding with you. In fact, this will be my own thoughts with reflection on something very engaging.  

Just the day before I finished my last chapter somewhere in the labyrinth of the Internet I`ve found these amazing video. Created by extremely talented motion and graphic designer Shimi Cohen and based on Sherry Turkle's book Alone Together, it made me think of this second tip. 

2. Don't make people feel lonely

The main conclusion in the video is that SNSs, although designed to connect people and facilitate communication, in fact, made us feel even more lonely. That is because of this three paradoxical assumptions that we all have as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ users (any other SNSs counts):

- We can put our attention wherever we want it to be
- We will always be heard
- We will never have to be alone

This is the actual video in case you have not watched it yet.

What has all of these to do with marketing? Hm...I suggest it might be true that people became  less connected, less happy or even  less sociable. On the other hand, it also is true that we make those 3 above mentioned suggestions and want social networking sites to make us less lonely. Therefor, why don't you,  marketers, give people what they want?

1. Be a friend - be that company which will always make its customers day - with its oustanding services, high quality products, helpful website and attractive social media content. 

2. Always listen to your customers and make them feel you appreciate them. 

3. Never ever leave your clients, customers, readers, visitors etc. without support. There is nothing more annoying than a customer service that cannot be reached when you need it most; nothing more dissapointing than my 'witty comments' on Facebook left unnoticed by the page owner; and nothing better than a cute picture of a fluffy cat and a 'good read' posted somewhere on Google+ at 2 pm just on time, in case I could not sleep. All of this makes the digital world better, transforming users illusions in some very real customer care. 

This is it for today. :)

P.S. How cool would that be if the word loneliness meant 'no friends online', while in real life somebody was always there for you? Like abso-bloody-lutely cool! :)

Infographics and video editing for bluffers

Infographics are being widely used by all types of companies as the new form of content. 
From the maps and cartography -  











through the road signs -

the use of icons evolved into the whole image-based stories and business reports -

This is how infographic was born, I guess. I always admired how this type of content looks and always wanted to create one my self. So here are some tips concerning infographic I would like to share.

1. It is simple

There is probably no better way to explain the big data and heavy statistics to the ordinary person except for visualising it. Easy-to-understand pictures may not only display your products, reveal key information on the company's achievements, but be an informative piece for the stakeholders and business partners.

2. A form of content and the content per se

Infographics are now quite commonly used by the marketing, PR, advertising and digital blogs and news outlets as a way of delivering complicated data (statistics, rankings, process descriptions). On the other hand, when a brand decides to create infographic, this often becomes a newsworthy story itself. Take Google, for example, who supplemented the ‘9 years of Gmail celebration’ with the colourful illustrations making the event more ‘catchy’.

3. People love infographics

Cool cat`s images and infographics (as more serious stuff) represent the two examples of the most sharable content. This is especially true among the Internet users who not as much read, but observe. While with the articles and news stories the information may be more in-depth, it only takes few seconds to get the idea of the infographics and repost the picture to your social media page.

4. Infographic cannot be too long

The blog post may be too long, so can the video, but with infographics it is more like a comics book - you want to know the end of the story. Thus, this format of content is rarely boring. So it is like bonfire, waterfall or 'another person working' - something you can watch forever. :)

5. There are so many tools to make infographics

In order to make an infographic you do not necessarily need to be a photoshop guru. There are at least 3 great free online editors to help you start visualising your content.

- Piktochart

-  Infogr.am

-  Visual.ly

6. Users love them, search engines don’t.

The biggest problem with infographic is that they are not SEO-friendly, Being an image infographic content cannot be recognized and indexed. Therefore, it`s use have to be very dosed and always supported with some kind of a pitch or a hashtag.

7. Good infographics are not so easy to make.

Even though the above mentioned programs are quite handy, they cannot compere with professionally designed ones. Therefore, I would still recomend to get yourselves introduced to the basics of picture editing.

FURTHER content visualisation 

If you want to take the visualisation to the next level, it is might be worth trying to create video.
To say the truth, I was not at all familiar with any video editors (except for the Movie Maker). 
However, I was a huge fun and frequent user of Instagram, so after they introduced the 'video option' it was my first expereince in fim making.

Later on, I discovered Vine and it was absolutely surprising how 7 seconds can make you a star or help creating successful marketing strategy .

But the service I want to share with you today is VideoScribe. If you have always wanted to create a video like this, this video editing software will be extremely useful. What it does, it makes this 'hand drawn stories' in a few minutes, so I really enjoyed the 7 days trial free version that I have installed. If this is something you would use for your content marketing, it might be worth buying though.