Author: M.D. Sadchenkov, general director of national brand "Made in Russia".

The challenges facing the Russian economy in the coming years are complex and multifaceted. Identification of national identity and issues of forming an information agenda from what we are ready to provide to the world as our contribution to the development of humanity will become key instruments of international competition in all spheres, from business to culture. In today's world, gaining such competitive advantages is directly related to the quality of life of the population, which under external economic and political pressure makes the transformation and formation of a new consciousness of society and the state an extremely difficult task.

Recently, a lot of experts, politicians and businessmen have been talking about the harm of isolation policy pursued by Western countries in relation to Russia, partly so, but this phenomenon has another positive side. There is more talk about Russia today than ever. The number of searches directly or indirectly related to the "Made in Russia" brand is growing exponentially, and contrary to expectations, their context is in search of information about culture, history, business and common humanitarian meanings.

Given the significant changes in scientific approaches to assessing the effectiveness and results of national brand development in recent years, it is no longer enough and ineffective to conduct endless image campaigns aimed at promoting and creating the kind of positive changes. National branding today is primarily a systemic approach, strategic planning and results that lead to structural changes in all areas where it is necessary to achieve a common, collective goal.

We can safely state the fact that over the years of uncontrolled spending of budget funds we have never been able to achieve these changes. Today, government spending on direct and indirect marketing, according to a study by the Institute for Applied Political Research (IPPI) for 2017, conducted by order "Made in Russia", is more than 110 billion rubles, excluding funds allocated to Russia Today and regional marketing budgets. The lack of strategic planning and proper professional evaluation leads us to an endless cycle of duplication of expenditures and redistribution of functions between federal executive bodies, state corporations and public organizations.

All this leads to the fact that the budget loses billions of rubles annually, and the state is not able to build a long-term strategy capable of accumulating the efficiency of marketing expenses and enter the cycle of constant growth of returns from each spent ruble. This can be achieved only through the creation of a single national communication strategy, capable not only to systematize the funds allocated to marketing, but also to provide a fundamentally new level of evaluation of the effectiveness of these costs. It is important not to start another redistribution of resources, but to form a single vector, to define clear limits of authority of the process participants, to teach and make transparent the methods of evaluating their activity. Up to the present moment in the history of modern Russia there have been no such attempts to systematize the state marketing, but this very direction, if implemented correctly, is able to give essential results in strengthening of economy, society and development of humanitarian senses.

Significance of "Made in Russia" brand

Stereotypical thinking has always affected best practices, ideas and projects that go beyond traditional perceptions. The understanding of national branding in Russia is on average 8-10 years behind those countries where these issues are studied and developed as a priority. The systematic role of national brands in the development of all sectors of the economy and their transformation from an advertising tool into a tool that allows creating an environment for growth is becoming obvious. It is no longer enough to draw a picture and invest in advertising, because a national brand requires its own ecosystem, affecting all areas that form the basis for a profound change in management and development processes.

It is important to accept that the brand "Made in Russia" should be understood not as placing a logo on the package in accordance with certain criteria, but as forming a system that includes and unites all aspects of the formation of demand for goods and services of Russian business. Aggregation of data, provision of services, synergy of efforts of the state and business, aimed at the development of consumer patriotism and formation of national consciousness, where the brand logo itself is given only the function of one of the communication tools for contact with potential consumers and partners.

As part of the national communications strategy, the role of the brand is to form upper-level values capable of uniting efforts aimed at creating and promoting Russia's own identity, the work of federal executive bodies, state corporations and public organizations. Only in this way can "Made in Russia" be competitive within the framework of global information flows. Regular attempts to limit the scope of the Made in Russia brand within the activities of individual organizations, ministries or public organizations are doomed to failure in advance. It is impossible to create a success story without being able to cover all sectors of the economy, without uniting Russia's regions with a single concept, and without coordinating key market players.

Export .

One of the important parts in the promotion of the national brand "Made in Russia" is consolidation of efforts of the government and business in the formation of a common policy in the field of export promotion, capable of producing results through the synergy of related areas of international cooperation, as well as in the formation of an environment for the emergence of strong regional and federal brands, in providing Russian business with communication and interaction tools.

The strategy chosen by the key development institutions to promote a limited number of successful companies is a mistake, the same mistake will be any attempt to impose restrictions based on quality criteria, the level of localization, success in the domestic and foreign markets. Such measures are a consequence of orientation on receiving fast result and satisfaction of key performance indicators, instead of formation of the working environment on which it is required essentially more time.

The fruits of strategic miscalculations are also reflected in the duplication of costs. An example is the creation of export product catalogues. Tens of millions of budget money have been spent on absolutely identical sites. JSC "Russian Export Center" has its own catalogues. (REC), Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, regional export centres and state corporations. The lack of coordination, interaction and strategy has resulted in the lack of evaluation of the effectiveness of these products, the lack of interaction, and the lack of synergy to achieve the goals of important states, rather than individual structures. The situation is similar in all areas of export promotion.

This is the result of the lack of a working system in which only the creation of individual elements has been successful, and the lack of systematic, cooperative work among them has not yet been achieved.

To solve this problem, export promotion should be made an integral part of the national communication strategy, the development of which should take place with the participation of all interested organizations, the results of work should lead to the formation of a single vector of development, which will provide a transparent and understandable system of management and control over export marketing, as well as effective interaction with other areas.

Culture, tourism and sports

Combining these three directions into one is no accident. Culture, tourism and sport are universal and effective tools that are closely linked to each other and provide exceptional opportunities for public marketing both within and outside the country. While tourism still requires serious infrastructure development, culture and sport are at their best.

Here we should make a small remark, anticipating the indignation of the words that everything is good in sport and culture. In terms of communication, the current state of affairs is an intermediate, fluid link between the history of achievement and existing potential. I think no one will deny our historical achievements in these areas, as well as the huge potential of the Russian people, and periods of ups and downs are characteristic of any development process.

Another issue is that these sectors, as well as others, suffer from the lack of coordination of state marketing, being among the most progressive in it. An example of this is the brilliantly organized competition for the creation and development of a tourist brand in Russia, which, however, has not been completed. They have not been able to approve the final version of the logo so far, despite the fact that the final work is undoubtedly very strong and correct from a professional point of view. Many people did not like the references to constructivism and Suprematism, but earlier these themes were beaten in the show at the opening of the Olympiad in Sochi, were met with an exceptionally positive image by both Russian and foreign spectators.

Such delays are primarily due to underdeveloped public-private partnership instruments, insufficient involvement of the expert community and transfer of large functions to it, including the harmonization and approval of national, territorial and regional brands. To ensure the effectiveness and speed of implementation of these important initiatives for the state, it is necessary to eliminate the factor of unprofessional and subjective evaluation. The branding and design market in Russia has been developing at a faster pace all these years, and our specialists are already capable of and delivering world-class products. The degree of trust in their expert assessment, work and depth of understanding of the issue on the part of the state should be increased and transferred to a new level.

All this, as well as coordination with the directions of export promotion, human capital, national quality system, as well as spatial development should be combined in the national communication strategy with the participation of all interested parties.

Human capital

The personnel problem has been and remains one of the most urgent in Russia. Today the country does not have a systematic work on the development of human capital, which is impossible without the development of speaker institutions, the creation of tools for the promotion and capitalization of Russian industry experts. The development of a national brand as a tool for cataloguing and popularizing experts is an important part of the national communication strategy. The formation of a pool of specialists capable of telling and promoting the country's interests and image both in Russia and internationally through communication is an integral part of the soft power tools required by the state both to strengthen human resources potential within the country and to form a positive perception on the external circuit through interpersonal contact with the best representatives of the public and private sectors of the economy.

In many industries the expertise of Russian specialists is already equal or superior to that of foreign colleagues. Nevertheless, the attitude to them remains neutral at best. Being in a constant position of catch-up, we do not pay due attention to the protection, development and formation of values capable of creating a national brand with the conventional name "Russian experts".

At the level of the state at the present time there is no understanding that the development of human capital has a broad sense, which affects exports (services), tourism (in the fields of culture, education, convention and exhibition activities, etc.), culture, science. The cost of creating tools to communicate and capitalize this potential at the state level is negligible, and the result will have a huge impact on all branches of the economy. It is for this purpose that the creation of the national communication strategy is required, first of all, for the purpose of description of the order of interdepartmental interaction, zones of responsibility and creation of uniform national communication tools capable to give the state the necessary base for realization of this task.

Spatial development

A separate area of presence of the national brand "Made in Russia" should be the spatial development of Russia, which is closely connected with the development of human capital, the industry of folk crafts, and is the basis for the creation of strong regional and international brands in the format of small but effective enterprises, registered and located in small territories and monocities.

The role of a national brand in this direction should be to preserve and maintain traditional economic and humanitarian ties between regions. This can be done by cataloguing cultural and territorial brands, companies, as well as by supporting and providing communication tools in the development of human capital of territories.

Formation of a new way of thinking and attitude of the population to the territory they live in is possible only with effective tools of communication between the population of the region, government and business.

The objective of a national brand is to provide regions with the competence to register, protect and capitalize territorial brands, and to create their own regional brands in order to preserve cultural identity and identity. As in other areas of development, it is very important that the meaning and communication products of "Made in Russia" organically complement the work of the regions, rather than duplicate or replace the already existing infrastructure.

National quality system

There are different opinions on what should be presented and what values should be promoted by the Made in Russia brand. One of the most popular is the theory of quality. The state has already achieved some success in creating certain elements of the common system, such as the Russian Quality System (Roskachestvo), but at the national level there is no working model yet. One of the key points of contention was and remains the question of what is quality? How can the procedure for defining quality products be described in regulatory documents? If the criteria for safe products and how to define them are clear, there are still many questions about the definition of quality.

As in the example with the terms "safety" and "quality", the distribution of functions and synergy between the implementation of the national brand project "Made in Russia" and the Russian Quality Mark are also required. If we initially assume that all products manufactured in Russia must be of high quality, then this task will not be fulfilled by one brand. Building a quality system requires a well-developed interagency cooperation and creation of an environment in which the competitiveness of our economy as a whole will play a key role. On the other hand, to ensure the competitiveness of Russian companies, it is necessary to work to stimulate demand, including using national brands as tools to promote certain values and act as a collective means of communication.

In this regard, implementation of the national communication strategy should be developed taking into account synergy with the national quality system. The tools created by the state should be united by a common goal, taking into account the need to develop the responsibility of business towards the consumer, employees towards the employer and the state towards their partners and consumers of the products, both inside the country and on the external market.

The national brand "Made in Russia" can be used as a tool to promote the national quality system, the Russian Mark of Quality, as well as for the humanitarian meanings embedded in them in order to form a new perception of both labor and its derivatives of goods and services. In this case, the wide scope of the project and its development in all sectoral areas create conditions for expanding the government's capacity to promote initiatives that have a positive impact on the economy.

Cooperation and inter-State development

Communication, in the broad sense, is the basis for effective interaction in all spheres. Initiatives and projects that require interagency cooperation or, worse, interaction between the state and business, are conceived to remain unrealized precisely because of a chronic inability to agree on and find the right approach to a particular task.

Not always effective and logical distribution of powers between federal executive bodies and state corporations leads to the fact that they try to solve tasks requiring collective participation on their own. The lack of systematic communication between them leads to the downtime of non-financial instruments available to the state and capable of both reducing budget expenditures on marketing and significantly increasing their efficiency.

The colossal resources used to provide a competitive advantage for our business, both domestically and internationally, suffer from the lack of a national strategy. As in other sectors of the economy, we manage to create individual elements of the system, but fail to provide them with a unifying management and control system.

A possible solution to such a problem could be both the creation of a separate structure responsible for state marketing and being a managing and controlling body responsible for the national communication strategy, and the use of existing structures that have a status neutral in relation to the federal executive authorities and state organizations, as well as having the opportunity to act as an expert and communication platform.

Teamwork is the way to success

Summing up a brief analysis of the key areas of development of the national communication strategy and "Made in Russia" brand, I would like to emphasize once again the need for a systematic approach to collective interaction. The interests of the state should be raised to absolute value, but with a balance between the interests of individual organizations and those of people. Often, when implementing projects that require the involvement of a large number of parties, a failure occurs at the level of individual elements of the system, acting in the personal interests and unwilling or simply unable to come to a consensus. Today, the state does not have the tools to overcome such barriers, which leads to irreparable damage to economic development.

A good example of this is the above mentioned situation with the project of tourist brand of Russia, where from the professional point of view, really high quality and strong work has not been approved due to the lack of tools to resolve such issues. The creation of a national communication strategy and the "Made in Russia" brand is a unique opportunity to work in an area where no systematic steps have ever been taken before, where there are no complex, longstanding contradictions and there is a unique opportunity to make a working system from scratch.It is hoped that success in this direction will create a stable foundation for the development of a different, effective and transparent approach to interagency communication, public-private partnership and the effectiveness of government instruments that can work for the benefit of the Russian economy.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)