Extendance: When did the company start?
Eugene: Officially in June 1997, but I had been working on this as a hobby since 1989. In 1991, I got a job at a Russian IT company; well actually that was not the Soviet Union any more — in 91 there were some private companies already (in the Soviet Union there were no private businesses at all). There were the first private companies, and an IT company managed by my former teacher. He knew me, believed in me and let me work with computer viruses. That was my hobby, there was a bit of money, and at that time in Russia a hundred US dollars salary a month was good money, so I survived!
Slowly it became a business. I developed it step-by-step. I got people one by one, building this team where all of them in the beginning were just software engineers. I made these guys pay more attention to the quality of the protection, to the quality of the engine, to the quality of the product. And in 94 we got the first awards — actually that was the first anti-virus tests in Hamburg University, the first anti-virus tests in the world, and in these tests we came first. So we started to get requests from European companies from individuals, from small companies, because who was going to work with an unknown Russian software security company, in 94?
Extendance: Obviously, Kaspersky is a Russian company. In retrospect would you say that it was more difficult or easier to be a Russian company?
Eugene: Yes and no. In the past there was also that perception that Russian companies were not trustworthy. The question was not direct (but it was) "They are an IT security company from Russia!?" Now it's different: there are no more questions of trust. It's the opposite — Russia is respected as a country with very well educated software engineers, so now it works in different ways. But what was more difficult is that we didn't have the experience, we didn't have teachers. We had to learn it by ourselves. Actually, we were the first generation of IT businessmen, the first generation of people who started international businesses, and still in Russia many people have the Iron Curtain in their minds because they were born in the Soviet Union, so we are the exception. People of my age, they have this. So that was a very negative impact of our Russian origin. But I think there are more positive impacts. First of all, being Russian, we are partly European and partly Asian — so is Russia Eastern Europe or Western Asia? I think that it's easier for us to understand both West and East. And also there are not two Russians. It's a much younger society than Germany or Britain. English, Scottish, Welsh, they do not mix. We have an employee from Cambridge. She was 30 years old, she went to London to an exhibition center. She had never been there before starting the job! That was her first time in London. So the positive thing is that it's easier to us to understand others. We can feel the differences. And the most positive thing is that Russia has a very strong technical education system. So we have direct access to Russian brains!
Extendance: Educational public relations?
Eugene: Yes really we educate people, we explain what's bad, what's good, what to do, what not to do. And actually I think that's our major part of marketing. Actually, we also have the traditional marketing, we have advertising, but it's not so important. I think that much more important is to educate people and by education we just build the brand. We build the respect for the brand, we make people trust the brand.
When you re talking about security, people don't buy products, they buy trust. If you don't trust a security product, why would you buy it? So I think that's the key in marketing. That's where we are different to others.
When we were starting up, many of our partners (not all of course but some) cheated us; that's reality. But we agreed to that, because that was a kind of promotion. Let them not report 100% of sales, that's okay, they promote us. Because we didn't have any money at all. And later, when we got some muscles, we started to develop our annual presence at CeBit in Germany starting from 96. It was a very small booth, now it's like 500 square meters. Actually, that was quite interesting, because at that time we didn't have money so we followed the optimal way in terms of money because we had nothing to spend, but at the same time that was the optimal business way because we didn't waste our money on the traditional activities, we did it differently, we understood the psychology of the malware creators, we understood what they were doing, we were able — still are able — to predict what's next, and we were spreading this news.
Extendance: What is the division between online marketing versus traditional marketing in spending?
Eugene: In the future it will be 10% traditional, 90% online, and in online, it will be 10% traditional online and 90% the new generation online, communities, because the real difference (from) traditional marketing is you can talk to the wall, but the wall doesn't talk; but online in the future people will exchange their information, exchange their opinions, especially the younger ones who were born in the Internet era. We're the old guys, we're the dinosaurs, we still remember how we were living without the Internet, without mobile phones without smartphones.
Extendance: So in online marketing... search engine optimization, do you do any of that?
Eugene: I think there are people who do this, but I don't know it. I don't know all the details. I don't think people type “antivirus” on Google when they want to buy an antivirus. People know which product to buy, or they call experts.
Extendance: ...so that's where the education comes in...
Eugene: Exactly, yes. Also, they ask kids these days. I heard many stories from journalists or from our partners or distributors, people that have business with us, that people say “We used your product because my granddaughter told me about it”.
“ The task is how to get the communities, how to build the communities. That's not easy because the people in the communities are not slaves, they are free people. If you don't like that, then forget about it. ”
Extendance: Which online marketing activities will you be more interested in doing in the future? I think you've probably already answered this!
Eugene: Yes, communities. The thing is, the task is how to get the communities, how to build the communities. That's not easy because the people in the communities are not slaves, they are free people. If you don't like that, then forget about it.
Extendance: Have you got any examples of very successful marketing tools, marketing campaigns you started from the beginning without knowing beforehand whether they would be successful or not?
Eugene: The best marketing tool, which really accelerated sales, was a special technology which we used to control the piracy level. So we have a list of the activation codes and a list of key files — we don't sell products, we sell subscriptions, because we provide updates to technology: 1, 2, 3 are all technology, and the technology is developing updates. It's like petrol in your car. An antivirus without updates is nothing. We could see that millions of people were using the same key file. And we put this key file on a blacklist, so when your key file is on a blacklist you can't get updates any more. The product still works. Our sales jumped 3 to 4 times in Russia, in Germany, in the UK, in the USA and in France: that was a surprise. When we block the key, some people will switch to another product, some will find another pirated version and many people will switch to the legal version. That was a “DoS attack” on our activation service (laughs) — the head of operations in America called up the VP marketing in America and said, “What did you do?” The company strategy is that piracy is not a question of mind, piracy is a question of the wallet. And actually this is one of the reasons that we are building a business very effectively, although now we are predicting that the speed of our growth would be a bit less than 100%, because people are switching to pirated versions. At the same time, we have special antipiracy protection in our products, and that means about 10 things that they have to do to make the pirated version work... So if it's more expensive to buy the legal version you will do that. It depends if your time costs more. It's a kind of balance.
Extendance: Is there anything that the US and Europe can learn from each other to improve their marketing approach?
Eugene: Good question. It's not a question about Europe and the United States. I think it's a question of Europe, the States, and Asia. We can learn from different markets, we can learn different things. What Americans can learn from Europe is European service, because in the United States in some cases it's not as comfortable as in the same situation in Europe. Like in Texas, in a five-star hotel I go to the restaurant and there is a menu. On the left side is hamburgers, meat, chicken, fish, vegetarian. On the right side, hamburgers, sandwiches, meat, fish, chicken, vegetarian. Drinks: Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola light. I can't remember which airline it was, I was sitting in first class in seat A1. Facing the toilet. Americans don't have the same feel as the Europeans, the British are somewhere in between. What we can learn from Oriental countries is a higher level of service. In Japan, everything is done in such a way that you want to be Japanese! What European countries can learn from the United States is global expansion, not to be afraid of global expansion, not to be afraid of having offices around the globe, not to spend on the domestic market only but to spread, not to be afraid to invest a lot of money into the business — actually investment is not the right word nowadays.
I think the different countries, different cultures can learn a lot from each other and their colleagues around the globe.
Extendance: 公司是什么时候成立的？
Eugene: 公司正式成立是在1997年，但是我从1989年起就已经把其当作兴趣来发展了。我于1991年得到一份俄罗斯IT公司的工作，那个时候实际上已经不是苏联了：在91年已经有一些私有公司存在（在苏联时期是没有任何私有公司存在的）。那是第一批私有公司，其中的一家IT公司是由我以前的老师管理的。他认识并且相信我，他让我做计算机病毒相关的工作。那是我的兴趣，钱虽然很少，但是那时在俄罗斯100美金一个月的薪水已经算是很富裕的了。所以我存活了下来！
渐渐的这成为了一项生意。我逐步的开发，一个一个的招人，由起初仅由软件工程师们组成继而建立起了整支团队。我让我的团队成员更多注意的安全、引擎和产品的质量。1994年我们获得了第一个奖项，实际上这是汉堡大学的第一个反病毒测试奖项，也是世界上的第一个反病毒测试奖项，在这些测试中我们获得了第一名。谁会在94年和一个不知名的俄罗斯软件安全公司做生意？所以我们一开始就从欧洲的公司、从个人、从小型公司接订单。
Extendance: 很明显，Kaspersky是一个俄罗斯公司。回想起来你觉得作为一个俄罗斯公司相对其他公司的经营是更加容易还是更加困难呢？
Eugene: 两者都有吗。过去的看法是俄罗斯公司不可靠。经常会有这样的问题出现："他们是一家来自俄罗斯的IT安全的公司！？"现在情况已有所不同：已经不存在信任的问题了。刚好相反--俄罗斯被认为是拥有诸多受过良好教育的软件工程师的国家，所以现在情况很不一样。但是相对困难的是我们并没有许多经验，我们也没有老师，我们必须得自己学习。实际上我们是第一代IT商务人士，是第一代开始进行国际商务的人。在俄罗斯仍然有许多像我一样年纪的人的心里有着一道坎，因为他们出生在苏联时期，而我们是个例外。因此这对于有着俄罗斯血统的我们有着非常负面的影响。但是我觉得正面的影响是更多的。首先作为俄罗斯人，我们一部分是欧洲人，一部分是亚洲人（俄罗斯人到底是更加东欧呢还是西亚呢？）。我觉得我们更加容易理解西方和东方，我们是一个比德国或者英国都要年轻许多的国家。比如说英国，英格兰人、苏格兰人和威尔士人他们并没有融合。我们有一位从剑桥回来的雇员，30岁，她去了伦敦一个展览中心工作。她在开始工作之前从来没有去过那里。那是她在伦敦的第一份工作。因此正面积极的事情是我们更容易去理解别人，我们能感觉到其间的差别。最为正面积极的事情是俄罗斯拥有一个非常强大的科教系统，而我们有更多的机会可以使用俄罗斯的人才！
Extendance: 教育公共关系？
Eugene: 确实是我们在教育人们，我们解释哪些是坏的，哪些是好的，哪些不要去做。事实上我觉得那是我们市场营销当中最主要的部分。我们也有传统营销，我们有广告，但是并不是非常重要。我觉得更重要的是教育人们，通过教育我们建立品牌，建立对品牌的尊重，我们使得人们相信这个品牌。
当你在谈论安全的时候，人们并不是在购买商品，他们购买的是信任。如果你不并相信一个安全产品，你为什么会去买它？所以我觉得那才是市场营销的核心。那也是我们与其他人不同的地方。
当我们刚刚起步的时候，有很多合作伙伴（当然不是所有的）欺诈我们，那是现实。而我们接受那样的做法，因为那对我们也是一种促进。他们不汇报100%的销售，没关系，这样反而促进了我们。然后呢，当我们拥有了一些力量，我们从96年开始在德国CeBitde年度展会上崭露头角。一开始只有很小的一块地方，而现在已经拥有500平方米的场地了。事实上，有趣的是那个时候我们并没有钱，我们使用最优化的方案因为我们没有可以花费的东西。但同时那又是最优秀的商业方案，因为我们没有浪费钱在传统的活动上。我们采取的方法有所不同，我们理解恶意软件开发者的心理，了解他们正在做的和他们所能做的，并能够预见他们下一步要做什么，而且我们传播这些信息。
Extendance: 网络营销方式与传统营销方式应成怎样的比例较合适？
Eugene: 将来的趋势是10%的传统方式，90%的网络方式；在这90%的网络方式中又有10%的传统网络模式和90%的新一代的网络社区模式。因为真正的差别在于传统营销就像是你对着墙壁说话，但是墙壁不会反驳一样。而通过网络的方式，将来人们可以交换他们各自的信息，交换彼此的意见，尤其是出生于因特网时代的年轻人。我们已经是老家伙，已经是恐龙了。我依然记得我们在没有因特网，没有移动电话，没有智能手机的情况下是如何生活的。.
Extendance: 关于网络营销方面，你有做过关于搜索引擎优化方面的事情吗？
Eugene: 我知道有些人有做过搜索引擎优化，但是我不了解这方面的东西，我也不清楚具体的细节。我不认为人们会在他们想要买反病毒软件的时候仅仅是在Google上面输入"反病毒"几个字就够了。人们应该知道买什么样的产品，或者他们会咨询专家。
Extendance: 那也是之所以需要教育的原因。
Eugene: 的确是这样的。其实他们也询问小孩。我从一些新闻工作者那里、从我们的合作伙伴那里或者是从我们的经销商那里听说了很多这样的例子，那些跟我们做生意的人常说："我使用你们的产品是因为听我的孙女谈起过你们的产品"。
“ 其任务是如何获得社区，如何建立社区。这并不是一件简单的事情，因为社区里的人并不是奴隶，他们是自由人。如果你不喜欢，那么把它抛在脑后。 ”
Extendance: 你将来会对哪些网络营销活动感兴趣？（我想你可能已经回答过这个问题了）。
Eugene: 是的，是社区。关键在于如何去获得社区，如何去建立社区。这并不是一件简单的事情，因为社区里的人并不是奴隶，他们是自由人。如果你不喜欢，那么把它抛在脑后。
Extendance: 你有过什么非常成功的营销手段的例子吗？那些在一开始的时候并不会事先知道它们能否成功的例子。
Eugene: 那些能够促进销售量的最好的营销手段是我们用以控制盗版水平的技术。我们拥有一系列的激活码和一系列的密匙文件。我们卖的不是产品而是使用权，因为我们提供技术更新。1、2、3都是技术，而这个技术就是指更新。就像是汽车里的汽油。一个没有更新的反病毒程序是没有用的。当我们看到数以百万计的人在使用同一个密钥文件，我们就会把这个密钥文件放到黑名单里去，然后你将再也得不到任何更新。但是产品仍然是可以工作的。在俄罗斯、在德国、在英国、在美国和法国，我们的销售量成倍的增长，这是一个惊喜。当我们阻断一个密钥的时候，有些人会转而使用其他的产品，有些人会去寻找另外的盗版版本，但更多的人会转而使用正版。那就是我们激活服务的一个"阻断服务攻击"（笑）-- 在美国的运营负责人打电话给美国的营销副总裁说："你都做了什么？"公司的战略是：盗版并不是思想的问题，而是钱包的问题。而事实上这也是我们能够高效建立业务的一个原因，即使现在我们预测我们的增长将低于100%，由于人们在转而使用盗版。同时，我们的产品都拥有一套特殊的防盗版保护系统，这也就意味着他们必须得做大约10件事情才能使盗版生效。所以如果买正版比这个过程所花费的要更加昂贵的话，你可能会去这么做。这更取决于你的时间成本。这是一种平衡。
Extendance: 有什么是美国和欧洲可以相互学习以此来改进他们的营销方式的地方吗？
Eugene: 这个问题问得很好。我认为这不只是关于欧洲和美国，而是关于欧洲，美国和亚洲。我们能够从不同的市场学到不同的东西。美国人能从欧洲学习的地方是欧洲的服务，因为在美国有些情况下并不如欧洲同样的条件来得舒服。像是有一次在德克萨斯的一家五星级酒店我去餐厅吃饭，菜单的左侧是汉堡包、猪肉、鸡肉、鱼和蔬菜。右侧是汉堡包、三明治、猪肉、鱼、鸡肉和蔬菜。饮料是：可口可乐和健怡可乐。另一次是（我记不起是哪个航空公司了）我坐头等舱在A1的座位，结果是对着厕所的。美国人没有像欧洲人那样的感觉，而英国人处于当中。我们能从东方国家学习到的是更加高等级的服务。在日本，所有的事情都是以这种方式完成的。欧洲国家能从美国学习的地方是全球性的扩张。不用畏惧全球性扩张，不用畏惧在世界各地都有办事处，不要仅仅是在国内市场投资而不做扩张，不要惧怕投入大量资金在业务上（事实上投资今天并不是一个好词）。
我认为不同的国家，不同的文化可以从对方那里，以及从世界各地的同事们那里学习很多东西。 |
