by Anna Gamboa
MANILA – The enthusiastic Yaroslav Orlov shared his presentation, titled “Ideas vs. Money” at the adobo Tambuli Asia Pacific Conference, with a rapt audience in attendance.
Orlov’s talk centered on guerilla tactics his team employed to engage a Russian audience that was increasingly becoming more mobile-dependent, overtaking traditional consumers who rely on television for information.
This young audience, which vastly preferred Russian-made versions of social media and search platforms, formed a large part of the “crash test Russian market” Orlov talked about during last week’s adobo Tambuli Asia-Pacific Conference. “If it works in Russia. It can work anywhere” says Orlov, currently the ECD of Instinct & More, BBDO Moscow.
Humorously showing several campaigns from Orlov’s career, such as “Kitchenview.ru.en” which involved a 2 to 3 month shoot in an airplane hangar with 6 kitchens and actors demonstrating IKEA products, the resulting virtual reality walk-through allowed audiences to interact with products and witness real-life applications in a fun setting or context.
Another campaign, IKEA_PS_2014, was an Instagram-based campaign which also featured a QR code based catalog which young and stylish Russians could use to create their dream interior design tableaus—at zero cost to the client. It proved so popular that other agencies asked permission from Orlov’s group to use the process for their own campaigns.
The runaway winner among the campaigns though was their ingenious use of social media for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics on behalf of their client Nike. It was a triumph for Orlov’s team, as they found a way to promote the brand without naming a wildly popular hockey player the nation was rooting for.
Since the hockey player’s most distinctive feature was a gap-toothed smile (or a missing tooth), a clever visual featuring a dental x-ray missing a tooth helped push the brand as it caught on fire in Russian social media and spread virally, capturing the hearts and minds of nationalistic spectators. “If you have good ideas, money will follow,” Orlov reiterates, adding that it’s the ideas that will create business, which in turn will get the resources to gravitate towards it. Kind of like “if you build it, they will come” –just with good concepts.
