Marketing directed at Russian female1 April 2008  With an increasing economy, women in Russia have gained financial independence unheard of during Soviet times and the economic chaos that followed. The alcohol industry acknowledges this trend and launches new advertising campaigns to increase sales among Russian females.
A concern is that that promoting vodka to women could turn a large part of non-drinker into drinker in a country which has large alcohol related problems. 35% of females was an abstainer compared to 9% of their male companions in 1996 (WHO, 2004). However, with a marketing strategy directed at women and an increasing income, it is expected that the number of drinkers increases fast.
For more information see the EUCAM trend report and the original article
A new Russian revolution
The nation where vodka is king is marketing booze, smokes and cellphones to women like never before
March 31, 2008
Michael Schwirtz
THE NEW YORK TIMES
MOSCOW-The vodka ads tiling the walls of the Moscow metro station's lengthy escalators abound with hypermasculine imagery. One poster for the Olymp brand in the central Tverskaya metro station shows a boxer with Cro-Magnon features wearing armour and chain mail, and carries the slogan: "The time for the strong has come."
Recently, a new billboard has appeared here, displaying a lavender-tinged bottle with a distinctive feminine shape, adorned in a white skirt billowing upward, à la Marilyn Monroe, to reveal the label: Damskaya.
"Between us girls," is the catchphrase for this vodka intended for women, a marketing campaign as jarring as, say, a Super Bowl commercial for women's Budweiser.
As this country's economy continues its skyward race, marketers are taking note of Russian women and the discretionary income they represent. Scores of seemingly unisex products, from cigarettes to juice, breakfast cereals and even mobile phone plans have adopted a feminine flare. A fleet of pink taxis with female drivers spares the women here the callous flirtation of male cabbies.
And now there is vodka for women."In Russia, vodka is definitely a masculine product," says Natalya Shumilina, marketing director for Deyros, the distillery that produces Damskaya. A woman also likes "to relax with her girlfriends" and drop a few shots when the children go to bed, Shumilina says, but desires a vodka with a bit more femininity that retains a traditional kick.
In truth, vodka is vodka, and much of what makes this particular brand feminine is marketing. Damskaya, which is about $12 a bottle, comes in five flavours, but otherwise tastes about the same as similar, mid-price brands. It is still 40 per cent alcohol, as required by Russian law to carry the vodka label, and is meant to be consumed neat rather than in cocktails.
Still, the trend is indicative of a changing dynamic in relations between men and women here.
With an infusion of new wealth, women have gained financial independence unheard of during Soviet times and the economic chaos that followed. The English word "shopping" has entered the Russian lexicon to mean a recreational activity often associated with women, many of whom are increasingly seeking products tailored specifically to suit feminine tastes.
"We are leaving - but not quickly - the idea of men supporting women and the idea of women seeking men who will support them,'' says Lena Vasilyeva, editor-in-chief of the Russian edition of Cosmopolitan magazine.
Unlike in the Soviet era, when husbands and wives traditionally kept their money in a single account, women are increasingly creating bank accounts separate from their husbands' and saving a portion of their salaries to spend on themselves without input from their families, Vasilyeva says.
In large cities, Russian women have indeed grown more active in business and politics - there are two female cabinet ministers at the federal level - but are as disinterested in breaking from traditional roles as wives and mothers as shedding their patent-leather spike heals and miniskirts.
"Society is dictating new goals, like making a career, et cetera, but the core still remains," Vasilyeva says. "For a Russian woman the family will always come first, I am certain, but this won't interfere with her building a career."
These are the women Deyros covets. "This is not some super businesswoman, simply a girl who wants to visit her friend and relax a little because her husband is home with the children," Shumilina says.
The concept is a radical one for Russia and violates a golden rule of alcohol marketing: never advertise solely to women.
"You alienate the men, and women think it's too girly and feminine," says Adrian Goldthorpe of FutureBrand, a global branding consultancy that counts Russian vodka distributors among its clients.
Yet Goldthorpe violated the rule with Damskaya, helping to lead the team that developed the bottle design and label."It felt like it was a golden taboo in alcohol that we could actually break," he says by telephone from his London office. ``When we look at Russia, we look at a very machismo society on the surface, but there is also a very, very strong matriarchal undercurrent that runs through it."
Others worry that promoting vodka to women could turn a bastion of sobriety in a country with a fondness for alcohol into hard-core drunks.
"Most likely, the next step will be infant's vodka for infant consumption," Gennady Onishchenko, Russia's head sanitary doctor, the equivalent to the U.S. surgeon general, said in a recent interview about Damskaya with the Interfax news agency.
He called the creation of a vodka for women "nothing more than refined cynicism" and said Russia's consumer protection agency would look into filing charges against Deyros for violating consumer rights laws.
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