1. Био. Представьтесь, пожалуйста. Краткое резюме. Стаж. Занимаемая должность в настоящий момент.

● I am in advertising from already for 18+ years – in 1992 I have joined one of very first ad agencies in Latvia. Then I was co-founder of Balta Communications (1994-2001), Domino BBDO (2001-2010) and also IGLOO, company focused on design and marketing for retail, sister company of Domino.
● I became passionate about Account Planning (Strategic Planning) somewhere around 1997/98 and still love it, practice it and that my main speciality (“remeslo”)
● Currently I am Strategic Planning and Digital Director in Instinct, an agency of BBDO Group Moscow working directly on campaigns for IKEA, Mega Mall, Nike, Effes Brewery and being involved many “digital” and “interactive” projects and developments all across agency.
● I am writing a blog about marketing, advertising and design in Latvian and sometimes also English, tweeting quite a lot both in Latvian (@zz_zigurds) and Russian & English (@zz_ru) and time after time being invited to present my view on issues related to marketing and advertising in Digital Age.

2. Ваш анализ российского digital-рынка.

Digital in Russia:

1. Increasingly influential. If we look only on numbers Russian advertising market is still dominated by mass-media. But in many important target groups, particularly among young, urban people mass media starts to losing it’s positions. Russia already is country #1 in the World by the spend of time in social media thanks to power of local social networks. This is good basis for further growth. Quantity sooner or later is has to be growing into quality.
2. Growing. Like in most countries Digital in Russia is the only segment that grows consistently. Past growth and future growth expectations of the segment is creating the flow of investments by established marketing and advertising players and, whats most importantly, growing number of entrepreneurial activities.
3. Decentralized. Thanks to low entry barrier the number and variety of players in the market is high. The number, diversity and professionalism of different kind of digital suppliers will grow rapidly. Existing ones will continued gaining experience but many new start-ups will enter the market. In most cases these are competence rather than investment based businesses, therefore number of independent players will grow particularly fast. For creating successful projects it will require more of new skills of co-operation and creating alliances and less or changed approach to “project-ownership” and “control”

3. Наиболее понравившийся Вам российский кейс.

Even after more than one year there it is almost impossible to pick only one of few.

4. Ваш прогноз трендов на 2011, с учетом происходящего в мировой индустрии и развития российского рынка диджитал услуг.

I think 2011 will be dominated by several trends:

1. Mobile Internet. This is going to be the year of mobile Internet going mainstream. Rapid penetration and more active usage of smart-phones in 2008/2009 will lead to both increasing usage and to increasing supply of mobile solutions. That is self-reinforcing system that fosters further growth. 2011/12 will be a year of Apps, mobile services, real-time services and simply mobile extensions of most of the campaigns.
2. FB & Tw. They are big. And they are coming. Facebook reached “tipping-point” in the beginning of 2010 and since is growing very fast. And it seems that Twitter has finally got momentum of growing outside the narrow “opinion-makers” groups. Both of these will change a lot – from increasing competition for peoples time to more of openness and flexibility in cooperation with suppliers of content.
3. Changing role of social platforms. Rapidly increasing access to social network through mobile will stimulate new wave of mobile-enabled creativity and content creation. But with “short-content” moving to micro-blogging platforms and walls of social networks, the role of locally created content will increase. Besides of that social networks for business will become the platforms for creating meaningful value to customers. Everybody is now rushing there. But only who will create outstanding content or be able to provide exceptional value to client will win.
4. Quality of production. Although there is wide variety of local suppliers on market, only limited number of them can do innovative work with outstanding execution in all the details – from designing interactions to overall design culture. There still is room for growth and with increasing competition in the segment the demand for superior quality is increasing already. The stakes in campaigns are very high and if local companies will be slow on adjusting and growing significant part of the work will migrate outside the country.
5. Digital Literacy among Marketing people. During 2009/2010 there has been quite a significant increase in digital competences among agencies, big and small. Not yet among many clients. Helping them to learn and understand the nature of Digital Age and the changing paradigm of marketing and communication probably will be one of main missions of agencies in 2011/2012 that could accelerate both quantitative and qualitative growth of the segment (or limit it in a case of absence of proactive>
6. Elections. We should not underestimate the impact on such a big and socially important events on overall media and social landscape. With one of possible candidates being passionate user of digital tools we can clearly expect smart usage of digital techniques directly and indirectly and continuously having Digital Literacy in the agenda from news to practical applications.

5. Показательный кейс с вашим участием.

In Riga: Winning nine months long integrated political campaign (1998); full re-branding and and wide variety of campaigns for Lattelecom that helped to repositioning it from incumbent telephone company to modern telco focused on broadband Internet and providing digital services (2005 – 2009).

In Moscow: Being a part of Nike “I run. Consider me abnormal” campaign (2010) and very recent IKEA Blin-Portrait project for Maslennica (2011).

6. Ваш вариант формулы успешной диджитал кампании.

1. “The days of making funny things that may or may not have effect on clients business are ending”, Jeff Benjamin, CP+B, 2008
2. “The magic of social media is not what happens in social media, but what happens outside of it because of it” by Paul Isakson, 2009
3. “It’s not what you say that matters. It’s what you do” (When you do, digital is easy)

• вирусные формы: кейс Чужая;
• SMM: кейс Reima Club;
• специальная премия Palmira Palace: кейс Reima Club.

Следующая новость: СОХО вошло в комитет диджитал агентств при ВРК. На круглом столе, посвященном созданию комитета было сформировано понятие диджтал агентства – агентства, осуществляющего комплексную экспертизу в следующих сферах деятельности – коммуникационной стратегии, креатива, производства, медиа планирования, нон-медиа коммуникаций (SMM, SEO, контекст) и с собственным клиентским обслуживанием.

Если мне не изменяет память, то в истории украинского диджитала еще не было ни единой работы, связанной с 3D маппингом (речь идет о связке ATL и диджитала). И поверьте, в нашей стране есть достойные специалисты, которые могут сделать роскошную 3D “картинку”. Дерзайте!