«Brief» report of new Business Director 4Press Andrew Salamatov about his visit to Lvov within the Workshop «Communications: costs or investments?»

For not to be bored, professional information alternates with informative and entertaining. So, it turns out that I get to Lvov only because of my job. This time, Katerina Vershyna and I visited the city of Lion under the invitation of local office of the European Business Association. The occasion of the visit is workshop in communication management, which had already taken place in Odessa and Dnieper EBA. Disclaimer: I am writing only the essential and briefly. So, I apologize in advance for uneven handwriting and insider language. We tell you the details (for publicity purpose) here wave.od.ua/programs/communication.

FOCUS ON EUROPE. It is quite logical that the businessmen of, perhaps, the most European city in Ukraine are looking towards the EU markets. According to one of the workshop’s participants, his visit was pushed by the words of Nicholas Burge - Head of Trade and Economic Department of the EU Delegation in Ukraine. Answering the question "How should Ukrainian manufacturers get to the European markets and compete there?", Mr. Burge said that they should pay more attention to marketing and communications. Indeed, compared with the EU, in Ukraine, there is almost no competition in many market segments. In order to understand it, it will be enough to visit any European supermarket. For example, will the Ukrainian manufacturer’s packaging, which today competes on the shelf with a few similar ones, be presentable on the shelf surrounded by several dozen foreign colleagues? Hardly. And it's not about the difference in the aesthetics but about the unconcerned approach to the packaging design and other design products with disregard to competitors’ visual communication and the correlation of what and whom you are selling with how it looks.

RESEARCH. The most discussed subject, before, during and after the workshop, was the process of communication tools development. The situation, where business CEO sets to the marketing the objective to develop or modify them, just at the CEO’s discretion, was familiar to many participants. As an antidote, it was told about design thinking and the pattern "Research - Prototype - Testing - Development - Launch - Rework - Upgrade", of which the majority traditionally applies only points 4 and 5.

THAT’S THE LIMIT. Expectedly, one more urgent problem was the process of the manager’s decision-making at the level "like/dislike". Traditionally, it’s particularly painful when the company has several decision-makers. A new life safer was thrown to the audience - the term “Quality gates” meaning “Conformity criteria". It is a list of restrictions and requirements to design product based on research, users’ scenario and other substances mythical to most businessmen.