«Russkiy Tabak» website is an industry website for professional tobacco industry, and each website visitor is industry specialist, having his own opinion on every nomination. This is why the voting is so unbiased. If the nomination is too professional than the visitor from a different sphere of tobacco business may have no opinion and he will skip the voting. On very specific nominations the amount of voters during similar period of 7-10 days is usually less than on wider nominations – like choosing «The Most Active» or «The Most Popular» cigarettes manufacturer.

You can vote from any computer once a day, but again and again we see that not everyone follows this simple instruction. In almost every annual cycle there are a couple of nominations with driven up numbers. The unprecedented case happened in 2012 when for 4 night hours somebody drove up almost 600 votes to keep answers legal. We usually just cancel such votes, reinstating the justice for all participants.

There was also a similar case this year: three nominations enticed people, when for less than 10 minutes over 10 votes from the same IP-address were driven up. In «Most Popular Manufacturer» nomination even two similar cases happened (after the fake numbers were corrected, the active user saw it as a challenge and intensified his efforts). On the 3rd of January some «user from Hamburg» during 1,5 minutes drove up 10 votes for Imperial Brands, which were cancelled by us, and on the 10th of January 27 votes came from the same IP for 3 minutes. (All screenshots are stored and available). On the 1st of March 21 votes for 3 minutes came in favor of this company, more specifically – in favor of its GR-specialist, the IP-address leads to Hamburg, but if company’s hosting is assigned (historically) to Reemtsma office in Hamburg, than you can’t say from which computer the voting was being made, it could be from Moscow. Anyway, the company didn’t manage to even get to Top 3 in its nominations. «Industry’s most ecological production center in 2016» - here some employee of ‘Philip Morris Izhora’ couldn’t help supporting his company, he was pressing buttons from his flat in Saint-Petersburg on the 19th of January. It’s nice to see that nobody has violated the rules in favor of Baltiyskaya tobacco factory or «Donskoy Tabak» - our traditional disturbers. It looks like they have realized the pointlessness of these efforts.

Despite all these technical mishaps, the voting gives the objective situation of industry annual results, because every vote here is the vote of industry specialist, not a random person. «Russkiy Tabak» website keeps being genuinely popular among industry professionals, we have been working on it over the last 16 years.

But the voting is only half of the story. The winners are awarded publicly, in front of colleagues, competitors and partners. The value of Certificate is in industry credit, which has been confirmed by free general choice of specialists, industry experts. The applause on the ceremony are obviously extremely valuable as well. Over the last 16 years many companies were awarded with «Russkiy Tabak» certificates, and they all proudly display the Certificate in their offices, demonstrating their well-deserved award.

This infographic on 2017 voting features not only winners but also the whole pedestal on each nomination as well as vote percentage. There is an element of randomness in this voting, and this is why not only first but all 3 winning places deserve attention and credits for being the best in the nomination.