Industry professionals share their experience with Ad&PR students

Classes in the course "Integrated communications’ management" under the guidance of Alexander Mozhaev are held for the final year students in a special format: each lesson is a workshop from an industry practitioner who shares his personal experience in communications with students.

This way the students get a full understanding of what different specialists are doing and it helps them in the future to choose their professional vector.

E-commerce and the modern consumer

Viktor Marenchuk, the brand manager of Yandex.Market, talked about the current state of the e-commerce market (trading on the Internet – ed.). Students got a full overview of this area and also got to know the key players (for example, Wildberries has been confidently leading in Russia for several years), the most popular segments, consumer motivation and customer behaviour. Viktor introduced the students to the subtleties of Yandex.Market and the Beru marketplace. At the end of the workshop, he suggested that the students try to develop a creative frame for Yandex.Market in 2021 themselves, as brand managers.

Retail and hedonism

Yulia Zaripova, the brand Director of the Lenta hypermarket chain, told the students about communications in retail. The workshop began with an immersion in the industry with an analysis of the competitors (for hypermarkets, these are small supermarkets “at home”), the main directions in communication and the formats for attracting new customers. After a detailed review, Yulia went on to the case of Lenta and told about the creative campaign "Everyone has their own pleasure", in which the network arranged a number of promotions and invited an influencer to participate. At the end of the workshop, the students had to complete a task based on the gained knowledge to determine the audience of one of Lenta's competitors and suggest a way to "lure" these customers to the hypermarket. It will be much easier to solve such problems in practice after some " training” at seminars.

Public relations and sports

Ekaterina Tuton, the Head of Public Relations at S8 Capital, told the students about the work of the press service of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee. Ekaterina talked about the coverage of the main events in the framework of the championship, as well as the features of Public Relations in the context of a sports event of such a large scale.



So, the specialists had to face a number of restrictions, for example, increased control of all actions, which was explained by the federal scale of the event. Ekaterina also shared the main tools used by the Public Relations specialists. They are traditional press releases, interviews, press conferences and press tours, as well as public inspections of stadiums before matches start.

FMCG and gaming

Elena Vorobyova, the Head of customer relations at BBDO Moscow, and Yulia Kharlamova, the brand Manager at MARS, dedicated their workshop to communication in the confectionery market. They shared interesting statistics about the category, for example, the percentage of impulsive purchases (saw – wanted – bought) is very high in the confectionery market, but the most popular category is chocolate. At the same time, the development of a communication campaign for such a seemingly simple product as chewing gum is a serious work. The speakers told about the promotion of “Five” chewing gum, which included all possible channels: TV, PR, printed materials at points of sale, promotional activities and promotion in digital. The highlight of the campaign was the game activation "Battle for gear" which was aimed at gamers. Participants were invited to fight for clothes and accessories that formed the appearance of their character. After all, appearance is very important in the world of computer games like in real life! At the end of the lesson, the students were given a task by the speakers to imagine themselves in the place of chewing gum manufacturers and find a way to the hearts of gamers. It was exciting!