Kontur-Extern (the system developed by Yekaterinburg-based SKB-Kontur) won the third prize in the Brand Of The Year/EFFIE 2008 contest in the High-Tech Goods & Services category. The first and the second prizes were awarded to Rostelecom and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd’s Samsung X360 laptops.

The Brand Of The Year/EFFIE annual contest has been held since 1998, awarding prizes to the most successful brand-building projects on the domestic market. The Russian national Brand Of The Year award joined EFFIE, the international prize awarded to marketing experts in thirty-thee different countries, in 2001. Brand Of The Year/EFFIE assesses the brands launched on the Russian market using the global standards scale.

‘Our company’s creativity, marketing techniques, and PR levels are now quite worthy of being presented at such a prestigious contest. Given that we competed in one of the most challenging categories (High-Tech Goods & Services), we see our third prize as a victory. It is an honor to be outstripped by such estimable rivals, and, as a matter of fact, the budgets that we and our competitors could afford to promote the products are simply not comparable,’ says Kontur-Extern’s supervisor Anton Sobitov.