InnoCentive / YA Corporation and World scientific forum InnoCentive have stoped brain drain.

Background

The Russian science entered into XXI century, having lost more than half of its manpower potential, which it possessed in early 90-ies. The consequences of the Soviet Union collapse became very detrimental to it. Practically total lack of support for sciences, especially in the first years of reforms, forced many scientists to immigrate to foreign countries. First of all, this brain drain process concerned the most gifted middle age scientists of the highest qualifications, which irrevocably led to the aging of Russian science and tremendous economic losses.  By the European Council estimates, annual damage caused by the exodus of specialists (not only for permanent residence but for a work as well) amounts to US $50 billion. The continuing brain drain threatened to finally undermine the scientific, technical and intellectual potential of the country, its security and independence and in the future to make Russia a fuel and raw materials supplier to the developed countries.

Planning

In the year 2002 the YA Corporation communication group was granted an order to develop a large scale PR-campaign across Russia, aimed at attracting the attention of Russian scientific community and publics at large towards brain drain and promoting initiatives to solve the problem. 

The global online forum of scientists called InnoCentive, acting as a virtual portal in Internet, became a project customer. The online portal united prominent scientists and world companies for solving complex R&D problems.  Before the foundation of InnoCentive many international corporations came to a conclusion that one could enlarge its own scientific potential eternally, but it was more cost effective to make the problem known to specialists all over the world and get dozens and even hundreds of solution variants. The InnoCentive global forum became the testing grounds for this mechanism. 
InnoCentive put a number of serious problems before the YA Corporation to be solved over one year. Firstly, it was necessary to build up a positive image of InnoCentive as a company, providing opportunities for Russian scientists to work on challenging but exciting problems in chemistry, biology, genetics, without leaving its country for a substantial even by world estimates award. Secondly, there was a need to win support
of Russian scientific community leaders to promote the project across the country.
To achieve these goals, the YA Corporation decided to arrange series of analytical and topical publications, presenting concrete proposals and position of InnoCentive leadership towards developing the project in the Russian market. The media campaign was intended to bring Russian scientists into InnoCentive community. The PR-campaign also envisaged to regularly inform target publics about achievements of scientists, solving InnoCentive problems and supply the leadership of top national universities with in-depth info on new problems, placed on http://www.innocentive.com/.

Research

Drawing up the plan of the PR-campaign, the YA Corporation managers made a special research on current situation in Russian scientific community, selecting top priority organizations, to be connected with in first turn for informing about exclusive and unique opportunities, provided by InnoCentive for Russian scientists. The PR-practitioners of the Agency also singled out scientific opinion leaders to serve as consultants in working out and implementation of the strategy for promotion of the global scientific web-site among R&D centers.

Implementation

Within the framework of the PR-campaign the YA Corporation carried out a number of activities, which secured involvement of key national scientific institutions in the InnoCentive sponsored events.  The PR-efforts concentrated on three major stages. The first stage (September 2002 – March 2003) was called initial and included InnoCentive global project presentations through arrangement of exclusive interviews in key national daily newspapers with a large circulation - the "Komsomolskaya Pravda", the "Rossiyskaya gazeta", and a trend setting press conference at the new sky scrapper of the Russian Academy of Sciences HQ on the Sparrow Hills. The first stage ended up in the international scientific conference at the Chemistry R&D Institute of Saint-Petersburg State University and international conference at the largest and oldest national institution of higher learning – the Department of Chemistry of the Moscow State University on the Sparrow Hills. The second stage (May 2003 – September 2003) was devoted to promotion of Innocentive among a young generation of Russian scientists and within R&D centers across the country. To these ends, the YA Corporation arranged participation of InnoCentive in the "Young Chemist Day" on the MSU Department of Chemistry compounds and an official presentation of the online scientific web-site in the course of the XVII Mendeleev Congress on General and Applied Chemistry in town of Kazan. The third phase (November 2003 – December 2003) was used for an active involvement of InnoCentive in the Russian Chemical Society events. For example, there was a special conference, marking the 175-th jubilee of the Society and the first in history Internet Olympiad on chemistry for students and post graduates, interested in solving problems, placed on http://www.innocentive.com/.  
All the events involved record high numbers of academicians, professors, scientists and students, specializing on chemistry, bio chemistry, biology and life sciences.

Results

During the PR-strategy implementation the Agency achieved a full exposure of InnoCentive to various layers of Russian scientific community. Over 32 Cooperation Agreements were signed by InnoCentive with top national universities, employing more than 20 000 scientists from all over the country.
Just solely within one year 4 outstanding Russian scientists solved complex problems in the field of synthesis of new chemical compounds, displayed on InnoCentive web-site.  Over 3500 Russian scientists, actively working within the InnoCentive project, registered as solution providers at http://www.innocentive.com/. This fact proves once again that the national science has a vast potential that needs to be developed on a regular basis. Thanks to InnoCentive the Russian scientists were given a unique chance to prove to themselves and to the entire world that they are still capable to solve world class problems without going abroad. The R&D Institutes obtained an opportunity to conduct research and development, concerning interesting problems and receive a substantial award, which help renovate a scientific basis and stimulate a scientific potential of its employees, preventing the brain drain.
In the year 2003 the project was marked by an Honorary National Diploma of the Russian PR Association called the "Silver Archer" as the best professional account of the year. 

RAO "UES of Russia" / RAO UES of Russia. New Generation project (2002 – 2005)

Background

In the year 1998 a new Board of Directors led by a former Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation Mr. Anatoly Chubais assumed office in the Unified Electrical Systems (UES) of Russia company. The new leadership set a goal to bring about reforms in the electricity producing industry of the country. According to the plan, the UES was to be divided into smaller but competing electricity producing and supplying companies. The new companies will work along with the existing vertically integrated regional electricity producers.  
According to the new CEO of the UES, the reforming of the electricity producing industry will allow to bring about $50 billion of investments within 10 years. This, in its turn, will create a basis for an introduction into operation of 50 million kilowatt of new power producing facilities. For achieving so ambitious goals, the UES team of top managers set forth a program aimed at the total liberalization of the electricity producing sector, eliminating energy commissions, being under the sway of politicians, which set all the prices on electricity consumption.

It goes without saying, that an idea to reform an energy monopoly caused displeasure within various layers of the society. In order to minimize negative information moods in the society, to avoid a large scale conflict of
interests between political and business elites, between the center and the regions and to convince the grass roots that the energy sector reform will not bring hard consequences for ordinary citizens, it was decided to urgently develop and implement a PR campaign to boost a positive image of the UES in the country.

Planning and implementation

The implementation of the PR campaign was assigned to the YA Corporation public relations agency. The YA Corporation account team was given a task to create a favorable and information environment for restructuring the electricity producing industry of Russia and to position the leadership and senior executives of the UES as a team of professional managers, who are always successful in their activities.
The PR-support program, approved by the UES, consisted of three long term phases:
2002 - Jubilee and promo events of the “UES of Russia”: 10 years since foundation»
2002 – 2004 - Full organizational support for strategically important conferences and annual share holders’ meetings 
2002 – 2005 - Special projects in the field of education

The 10 year foundation jubilee of the UES included several projects, united by a single idea – to  positively position the UES with the help of public opinion leaders, who are loyal towards the UES activities in the country. The 10 year foundation celebrations and the Day of Power Engineering Specialist (December 2002) were selected as the apotheosis of the PR-efforts. 

The “Public opinion leaders” project consisted of specially arranged articles in target business media with thoughts and views of prominent Russian trend setters in culture, science and business on the importance of the UES and its role in modern Russia. 

The participants of the PR-support program were Nikita Mikhalkov (an outstanding movie star and a film director), Anatoly Pristavkin (a prominent writer), Daniil Granin (a famous writer) etc.

The exhibition “Energy of Art” was held from December 16 till December 21 in the Central State Museum of modern history (the former Museum of Revolution). For the special exposition there was a special selection of 14 masterpieces from the Tretyakov Art Gallery – the “Black square” by Kazimir Malevich, pictures by Alexander Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova and pictures by modern Russian painters.

The PR-program included a UES scientific conference which took place at the conference hall of the Radisson-Slavyanskaya hotel on December 17, 2002. Thanks to active support by the YA Corporation the conference was attended by 500 representatives of government and business circles of Russia.

Within another PR-effort «Organizational support for strategic conferences and share holders’ meetings, the YA Corporation provided a full assistance in holding pivotal annual conferences of the UES “New generation” and the share holders’ meeting “The JSC UES is an open company”.

The projects in the field of education envisaged arrangement and staging of a number of competitions among young scientists and specialists in the field of energy production for boosting loyalty towards the UES. In the year 2002 a special contest was set up to single out a best scientific course work “New Generation” aimed at further development and support for creative activities of students of the institutions of higher learning.  The contest involved students of the Moscow State University named after M.V.Lomonossov, Moscow Power Engineering University, Financial Academy under the auspices of the Russian Federation Government, the Higher School of Economics, Moscow State Technical University named after Nikolay Bauman,  Russian State University of Management named after Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Ivanovo State Electricity Power Engineering University named after V.I.Lenin.

There was also arranged an open contest for the best composition «Power Engineering of Russia in 2050» among students of the Moscow Power Engineering University (MPIU) and schoolchildren of the secondary schools, specializing in pre-university training of the MPIU network in the year 2003. In the year 2004 the UES of Russia and the Russian Academy of Sciences set up an annual contest of scientific works in the field of power engineering and adjacent sciences for the young scientists of the RAS and students of the Russian universities.

PR-campaign results

The full implementation of the public relations program “New generation”, no doubt, made a substantial contribution to the formation and build up of the UES image as an open, transparent and socially responsible company.  Thanks to all the concentrated efforts, undertaken by the YA Corporation, there was a vivid increase in the number of positive or neutral publications in the media and positive impressions or attitudes towards the UES from the side of scientific and general publics, thus creating a highly positive background for the reforms, being carried out by the energy monopoly.

West / Case study on promotion of tobacco brand West through associative

1. The background

There’s no secret, that Formula-1 is of the most entertaining and colorful sports and yields in a small degree of attention only to the football world championship. Thousands of people on F-1 circuits and tens of millions spectators at TV screens watch  with passion two hour race with F-1 cars racing at speeds close to the speed of a small sports air liner. On straight lines racing cars accelerate up to 360 km/h (Hokkenheim - David Coulthard) and so the spectators sitting on benches could see the car for a few seconds, not always having time to distinguish the pilot. Speed, power, dynamics, dramatic nature and advanced achievements of a scientific and technical idea make Formula-1 so popular. Popularity and mass character of the show in turn attracts sponsors who for the 50 year history of Formula-1 have learned to use auto sports for promotion of products by means of public relations, direct and indirect advertising.

Taking this into consideration, many companies working in the risky business of manufacturing products which advertising becomes more restricted and limited almost every year (for example, tobacco), intensively search and find non-standard information channels of influence on the target audience.
One of bright and, the most important, effective examples of use of the newest PR-technologies is successful cooperation of three well-known brands: West tobacco brand, which is being produced by Imperial Tobacco/Reemtsma tobacco company, automobile giant Mercedes and Bruce McLaren design office in the form of West McLaren Mercedes Formula-1 team. The history of unique and successful the West McLaren Mercedes team is a long and dramatic way of rises and falling, new technical decisions in modernization of F-1 cars and desperately courageous and at the same time flexible tactics of pilots. However, an important fact, even if West McLaren Mercedes team did not become the leader of the championship, it always managed to remain in the center of attention of publics and mass-media.

Support of WMM team by West tobacco brand solved the following important tasks:

 - Due to popularity of the team, continuous presence of the brand in the information field, including publications and photos in press, TV news and information portals on the Internet.
- Creation of favorable associative communication of the brand with target audience (admirers of auto sport and fans of Formula-1)
- Creation of attractive model to imitate style, philosophy and attributes of the team on the basis of West brand logos
- Development and realization of the intermediate and long-term PR-actions providing constant contact with target audiences

2. Research and development

Research carried out before development of the general PR-program helped to reveal important points:
- To define the subject of messages about Formula-1, that could guarantee the interest of mass-media
- To develop unique events which could provide constant interest of journalists and target audiences to the WMM team in general and to the West brand in particular.
- to analyze activity of competitors and to reveal potential allies

Basing on the results, received during research, PR-strategy has been developed with a stress on special PR-events, active media relations in scale of the whole country, the promotion events and photo sessions. In turn, tactics provided innovations in technologies of classical realization of the PR-program: setting up of journalists’ press-pool, creation of fan clubs West McLaren Mercedes team, regular distribution of two press releases for each Grand prix (announcing and final), arrangement of a special information portal on the Internet, exclusive press tours to F-1 circuits  and headquarters of the team in Paragon, organizing special all-Russian event West Race Day in mid-season period, presentations of new F-1 car in the beginning of each season and providing regular unique TV-features to TV channels, competitions among the journalists on the best story of the team successes and many other things.

3. Practical realization of PR-strategy

Practical realization of strategy was split into two periods: during the race season of Formula-1, when almost on weekly basis there was a guaranteed stream of the news information (March - October) and in so-called "dead season" (November - February).

So depending on the period special PR-events were organized. During the races press conferences basing on the results were organized for the journalists, press-tours “four days with WMM team”, visits of F-1 pilots between races, demonstration of carting races.  
During the calm period on information field the accent changed from news to image events like West Race Day, one day on a yacht with a WMM pilot in Ibiza, test drive trips to testing grounds in Span and to the headquarters of the team in the Great Britain.

4. Results and an estimation of efficiency

Due to active and offensive PR-strategy in a short period of time the West cigarette brand has reached big recognition basically due to colorful and original events with West McLaren Mercedes team participation. As a result of the events organized together with the McLaren team, Imperial Tobacco/Reemtsma managed to achieve a high degree of visibility and recognition of the West cigarette brand among wide social groups and entered the TOP10 of the most popular cigarette brands in the world. The attractive image of the brand was formed and strong positive reputation was generated, negative attitude of mass-media disappeared, by the quantity of positive materials in mass-media the West brand has outran most of its competitors. The number of materials in mass-media every year was more than 100.
The effectiveness ratio of the realized PR events has exceeded 7.0. Especially it was noticeable on the sports channels and in sport blocks of news on leading TV channels. By the efficiency of the influence on the target audience PR-events surpassed advertising, and at the same time not conflicting with the current legislation on restriction of smoking tobacco.