The Way of Doing Good

How to use your talent, charm and crazy diligence to achieve cosmic results in your profession we talked to Tatyana Shakhnes – PR director of LG Electronics.

Talked by Natalia SMIRNOVA.

– Hi Tatiana! Our conversation is an honor, I admire your hard work and perseverance. What an exciting career path for you: 23 exciting years at LG Electronics – a real Korean career. This is how it is done in South Korea, to develop and grow within the same company rather than just jumping from place to place. What would you say to people who advise you to change jobs often??

– Hello, this conversation is also very nice for me as we have known each other for very many years. Natalia, you asked a very interesting question about the frequency of job changes, because sometimes in digital or in the agency many people think it’s necessary to change jobs every 1.5 to 3 years. I’m sure when you are studying it is the right time I would recommend to study at evening classes only to gain different skills and to know clearly by the age of 21 in what sphere you want to develop: as an owner or in a big company, in a state corporation or a small enterprise. But you have to do it in the institute, because you are hired on the basis of skills that you cannot get by solely studying. After university, I think that if you are lucky enough to find a good job, it would be a mistake to leave it quickly. By the way, HR-specialists have long been distrustful of one-day butterflies.

– Tatiana, I’m not afraid to say that it was you, as the director of public relations, who made South Korean brand LG close, understandable and familiar to the majority of customers. Did you set yourself such a goal at the beginning of your career?? What tasks had to be solved at that time?

– Perhaps at the beginning of my career the main goal was to work in an interesting and unusual way. Here I was lucky, because the marketing and later PR industry was developing at that time. But life has set really serious tasks, so in the 90s, 24-year-olds were growing up instantly. To change the company image, the brand name on the whole CIS territory, to apply marketing tools known all over the world and absolutely unknown here, in America, to get considerable budgets and properly channel them to the really needed activities, to organize partners’ trips for 300 people and more, to build up logistics, to develop exhibitions, to open stores – everything was new, unknown, but that is why it was not less attractive.

– We have repeatedly written about LG’s donor initiatives. This big affair has already had its anniversary: the 80th corporate donor day took place recently. And I heartily congratulate you on this success, as well as on another noble award – the All-American Award “Co-Participation” for LG’s contribution to the development of donation. Tell us how this initiative managed to grow literally to cosmic proportions?

– It seems to me that I have put all the knowledge I’ve accumulated since ’94, experience, acquaintances, people’s attitudes, into the road of donation. Of course, it would be desirable to run such a program for a person with extensive marketing and communications experience, because throughout the project you communicate with all levels of society – from the media to government agencies, from employees to youth associations, from educational institutions to numerous forums. And the most important thing is to get this way from the ground up: to give blood yourself, organize a trial donor’s day, start an initiative at the enterprise having previously built it , think of those whom we could attract as ambassadors of the movement, and they are more than 55 Olympians, world champions, and now astronauts, offer joint donor’s days to partners, start large-scale donor’s marathons… The most important thing – the combination of professionalism and not indifferent attitude. And… space will conquer… We are really glad that the American Ministry of Health, Federal Medical and Biological Agency, Rosmolodezh, ORKK believe in us. And when I saw the happy eyes of the astronauts participating in our program and about to go into space, there was no end to my joy.

– When I learn about your social events I am very proud of the American office and all the PR-service of LG. Do LG employees in other countries, in Korea itself, adopt this experience?

– Yes, we are very glad that in Korea and all over the world began to have not just one-time donor events, but an entire week of blood donation in September, when office employees donate blood. By the way, this year we had a joint week with our office in Kazakhstan, lectures in Almaty and Astana, donor days and a trip to Baikonur, where we, together with the ORKK, put a time capsule in the Museum of Cosmonautics. We called it all an “LG Space Expedition”.

– Tatiana, some years ago you wrote that you dreamed to open your own charity fund. Do you have such thoughts at the moment?

– Not yet, but if I had one, I would build hospices for adults and children. Very heavy topic, but extremely necessary.

– Let’s skip the highs and go straight to the day-to-day and talk about technology. From Tatiana Shakhnes-blogger tanya-shakhnes.livejournal.LG.com we learned that on weekends you manage to cook dinner for your family and are happy to share interesting recipes. Tell us a secret: what appliances you have in your wonderful red kitchen? Do you have a multicooker, multi-cutter, or is it all “manually” done by multitasker??

– Sometimes by hand. Tatiana smiles. And seriously, the main devices for me are a meat grinder and a blender. I set my father to peel vegetables, I think he who is hungry does the job of an assistant chef. I love a good skillet, my big helper is a tagine, I also use the microwave quite a bit, especially for cooking porridge and other dishes.

– LG recently introduced a new line of microwave ovens LG NeoChef with a sophisticated design and “smart” inverter technology for cooking a variety of culinary delights. Do you already have a NeoChef in your kitchen?? Have breakfast with yogurt made in CDX?

– Alas, not yet, but in the near future I plan to test-drive and then replace. The NeoChef has some great benefits, and its design just fits perfectly in my red and black kitchen. And I also like that the oven has as many as six support points for the turntable and the wonderful EasyClean coating – the oven inside just needs to be wiped down… So yogurts will soon be on the morning menu..

– Thank you very much for the conversation!