Long before meeting Pavel Shudnev, I’ve gone through his articles on marketing and internet marketing. I enjoyed his style of narrative – simple, decent and comprehensible. It made me look at many things from a new perspective and unequivocally answered my questions. Everything seemed straightforward and just longed to be put into practice.

During that time our company was developing an innovative product, which did not have equivalents neither on the Russian market, nor on the transfrontier ones. And the very first question – how to name the product that has nothing to compare it to – had us, developers, rather perplexed. We’ve tried various names, even sought help of reputable marketing consultants, but all of the variants failed to reflect the nature of the product.

Eventually, when the number of questions regarding the product and its promotion outbalanced the answers, I’ve decided to write a letter to Pavel without really expecting him to help me. But I was pleasantly surprised by his quick response. I laid all of the product name options before him as well as a ton of questions on marketing and promotion. I was convinced that there’s no better name in the entire world than the one that I’ve come up with! Feeling all victorious, deep inside I’ve had a hunch that it wasn’t exactly perfect.

I would describe Pavel’s approach to marketing as a well-known saying: genius lies in simplicity. This exact idea lay at the very core of the product name he suggested. Tell me, what do you call a device curtailing the power intake and lowering the power grid load? It was plain to see, but Pavel was the one to figure it out. LOAD OPTIMIZER – that’s what it was supposed to be called! This name precisely represented the nature and the feel of our product, thus, it was agreed upon unanimously.

When the time came to develop the website for our company, our team had no doubts considering who to contact, even though we’re located in Moscow and Pavel is in Saint Petersburg. The design that Pavel developed turned out to be very well executed, exactly in his (and mine) favorite minimalistic style. Nothing must sidetrack a visitor from the main thing!

Altogether, the website worked out great. Even better than I could’ve imagined it without Pavel’s assistance. Just because I’ve had no idea what exactly to imagine! Not to mention the selling texts!

When the website was almost done, I showed Pavel the recently developed company logo in the shape of a… butterfly. I liked it a lot – all metallic and stuff. I was even somewhat proud of it. But the very first question Pavel asked me made my creative idea crash like waves against the rock. He asked me: “How is a butterfly related to a power saving equipment?” My sincere answer was: “It is not. But it looks cool!” The next day Pavel told me that after a quick survey amongst the target audience he had found out that the image of the butterfly is associated with a moth! And the device itself – with a moth repeller! Was that the expectation that the company logo developers had?

Anyhow, the logo was subjected to a rough redesign. And the butterfly had to go.

The moral of this story is simple. Any significant job should be done by an expert. Therefore, from now on, in case I have to deal with marketing stuff, website development or even life on Mars, I reach out to the trusted professional, Pavel Shudnev. I recommend everyone to keep from taking hard knocks and learning from mistakes, your own and someone else’s, but to avoid those mistakes to begin with. They say: “The East is a delicate matter”. I agree, but I would add to it: marketing is a delicate matter too!

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Pavel Shudnev for his support to our company at its most difficult stage of development, the start-up. I like his punctuality, commitment and sense of responsibility.