#Projects
attention to all minor aspects. The project sponsors
provided special forms to the participants to be filled
in so as not to miss any details in the course of the
visit. Following the visit, each team – a pair of an office
worker and a specialist from the Sales Department –
prepared a slide with interesting observations and
insights that could be useful for the business.
Anna Matushkina: “The office workers took a fresh
view of the points of sale, including competitors’
activity, promotion campaigns organized by the
stores and new products, and their opinions were
important for us. In addition to the observations
during the visit, we also asked the participants to
answer several general questions about the tobacco
OWING TO THE URBAN SAFARI PROJECT, THE EMPLOYEES LEARNT THE SPECIFICS OF WORK
IN THE FIELDS, HAD A CHANCE TO COMMUNICATE WITH SELLERS AND BUYERS, AND FORMED THEIR
OWN OPINIONS ON SMOKERS’ DEMANDS
market before and after the visit in order to compare
how they changed their opinions.” field visit, tobacco stores were rated the highest,
while all other sales channels got similar scores.
Before the field visit some of the employees thought
that electronic cigarettes and consumables for them
were only sold in vape shops and the Internet. Tobacco
stores were the last in the survey results. After the Our employees are very well aware of the reasons
why smokers switch to e-cigarettes. The most
important one is the trend (43%), followed by
health issues and the intention to quit smoking
conventional cigarettes (33% and 29% respectively).
And in their opinion, not the least of the reasons is
the convenience of use of e-cigarettes as compared
to conventional ones.
As regards capsule cigarettes, the opinions before
and after the field visit became significantly different:
Oxana Trubina, DSD Demand Planning Manager, participant in Urban Safari: “The idea
to make the video occurred to Merchandiser Representative Alexandr Pechannikov
with whom I had my field visits within the project. Alexandr is a true dealmaker; the
sellers know him, like and trust him. Almost in every POS, he managed to find the
right approach to a seller using various arguments: ‘if this does not work, we will
remove it’; ‘what a charming butterfly you have on your T-shirt, and we also have a
butterfly on Jadé – we really need you’; ‘Oles, you are a star – it would be impossible to
do without you’, ‘Olga, you are so artistic that we cannot afford to pass by, and your red
lipstick is really devastating’.
Devising slogans, we almost never used my ideas because it turned out to be very difficult to develop an
advertising phrase without a verb in the imperative mood: ‘smoke’, ‘hover’, etc., which, as Alexandr explained,
was not the best choice in a talk with potential buyers because that could repel them. Later I considered what
wordings I had been using when talking and observed how the merchandiser representative communicated
with the clients. And that was striking: he never used the imperative mood! I never heard anything like ‘you
have no more cigarettes – buy these’, ‘your shelves are empty – pay’, ‘you should buy’, ‘purchase this new
product’, ‘you should place’ – yet, they still agreed to everything, never refused, never reviewed the prepared
order list – only full trust and consent. That really shocked me, I was amazed! Where can I find the courses to
learn how to speak that way?
Later, using the recorded videos, I selected clippings from movies or cartoons and made the video about the day
in the fields. I hope it will inspire more and more people to take part in such events.”
initially, our employees believed that forest berries
and menthol were most popular flavors for capsule
cigarettes, while after the visit, the majority of the
respondents said that watermelon was the most
popular flavor.
The opinion regarding the reasons for choosing
cigarettes of the SKS format changed after the field
visit: initially, the majority of the employees thought
that the key reason for choosing the product was
that one cigarette was not enough for smokers,
while after the visit they concluded that the main
factor was consumers’ desire to save money.
In 2018 the field visits were organized already for
the second time. The first experience of such visits
was in 2016.
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