OREANDA-NEWS. June 26, 2008. On-Line Press Conference of PR Director Leonid Ignat “The Concept NEXT of the Financial Style of the 21st Century” on Alfa-Bank’s Website — Moscow, Russia

Leonid Ignat, Director for Information Policy and Public Relations, held an on-line press conference “The Concept NEXT of the Financial Style of the 21st Century: New Methods for Promotion of the Services of an All-Service Bank on the Territory of 11 Time Zones” on the website of Alfa-Bank.

At the conference Leonid Ignat answered the questions regarding the promotion of brands and banking services and spoke about the advanced methods of promotion of VIP services, the strategy of the work with regional mass media and the top management’s approach to the dialog with journalists.

Leonid Ignat told about the media possibilities in social networks, which may be regarded as the Runet’s novelties and stressed that this instrument was not always suitable for the promotion of goods and services. “Social networks are an extremely important thing, particularly for the residents or „urban jungles.“ With the huge volume of external information our communication is catastrophically small. The social networks compensate for this. Their residents live in them according to their own rules, which must be respected. In this connection it is hard to overestimate the positive comments about your goods but to do so rudely, through stooges, try to pass off bad goods — as a minimum this is serious underestimation of the intellectual potential of people living in the social network,” said the speaker.

At the on-liner conference Leonid Ignat commented on the new PR, marketing and advertising technologies and drew attention to the latest trends on the media market. He said: “Financial institutions must be very cautious when using blogs as a means of promotion of services. I don’t think the bank must engage in virus advertising.”

The speaker also made forecasts for the future “The Internet has outstripped radio in revenues. I think the Internet will occupy the niche which it has occupied the world over. It will hardly beat television and newspapers. The hopes which were placed on the Internet before 2003 — that it will become the main supplier of information, advertising medium and selling instrument generally did not come true. We see that Internet advertising is connected with the niche of the goods which are sold on the net. Internet advertising will develop at an accelerated pace but, on the whole, it will hardly beat TV and outdoor advertising.”

At the on-line conference Leonid Ignat answered 98 questions from 52 federal and regional publications. For detailed information about the press conference please visit Alfa-Bank’s website at http://www.alfabank.ru/press/conference/.