ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

Russia correspondent Oleg Popov asks what we will remember most about the summer of 2016.

Normally the summer isn’t filled with many events. Most people are on holiday, while the rest dream about holidays, watching news they don’t care about on television just to fix their eyes on something. That’s what’s been so surprising about this summer. Not a day has gone by without something big happening. Two key events – the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and the release of the game Pokémon Go are reflecting new trends in business.

Everyone in our country was really looking forward to the Olympics and followed how well the Russian teams were performing. Their interest in the games at Rio de Janeiro was heightened by the doping scandal - the story was covered by all media on a daily basis.

What makes good business in a situation like this? Playing on people’s emotions and using news as a basis to promote oneself. In one case, an internet electronics store created a game where a Russian female athlete has to outdo the doping officers and pole vault into the air.

No matter how many people play it, there’s no doubt people worrying about the athletes will help them better remember the store’s brand and they will associate it with patriotism. And the stronger people’s emotions are, the better the business’ promotion works on them.

An unexpectedly glamorous media event was the release of the game Pokémon GO. The augmented reality plus the viral promotion of the news demanded people’s attention. And not only its target audience. A post was going around on Facebook about how a retired man asked a girl in the subway what Pokémon are and she was overjoyed to start telling him about what augmented reality is. As a response, the man told her sadly “the world has gone nuts”.

In order to keep from going nuts, we must keep ourselves informed about what’s going on around us. Sometimes we don’t want our lives to change and for new technology that we will have to master to go mainstream. The more innovations that come about all around us, the older we feel. And it’s not an issue of our actual age.

The classical business model is currently experimenting with gamification in order to make it into the news ticker. We are starting to see more and more instances of this. For example, a large Russian bank ‘settled’ Pokémon into its retail divisions and announced free insurance to players for possible injury. After visiting one of this bank’s divisions recently, I didn’t find any virtual creature ‘catchers’ there, but the news got around. For a company that is interested in building a modern image for itself, it managed to work its way into the information flow.

Of course, those types of promotional paths work best for the B2C market and they require budget and careful planning. But we could take a lesson from this and apply it to cleaning as well:

1. Don’t be afraid to share, especially if you have a lot of competitors and everyone is offering the same type of service. If even a conservative businessman likes catching Pokémon, then it’s time for cleaning to become more modern and dynamic as well.

2. Today’s youth are our future clients. Try and understand them and keep on the same page. A high level of neglect doesn’t do anybody any favours and it doesn’t help business either.
3. Technology is saving time and making business more profitable. It’s time to take advantage of it.