Mmd Russia Blog

So, I have just finished interviewing a candidate – a good one actually – for a mid-level position here in our Tech PR team. She is on the hunt for a new job having quit one of Russia’s biggest agencies (with a big international brand-name to boot). As you would expect our conversation turns to web 2.0 (how do you experience it; has it changed how you do your job? – memo: the answer, if you wish to work here is ‘duh! Of course it has’).

And then she told me about a blogging campaign she recently worked on for a major Russian B2C brand; creating a blog and a chat room. And how: “we used several different computers to initiate conversation between our ‘heroes’ [the faked protagonists in the online community that their campaign created]…and we were very careful to make everything seem natural and real…

“… For instance, one time I was playing the part of a housewife who had sent her son to Summer Camp and wanted to know how I could control her son’s use of his cell phone while he was away, yet still keep in touch with him…

“…the client was very happy with the result, because the dialogue of all the heroes covered off all their products features and benefits…”

I wonder what his standpoint
would have been in the Age 2.0?

In this case it is clear that neither the global agency’s Russian outpost, or the client, had the vaguest clue about how 2.0 communications really works. I wonder, actually, if the client was a party to this fakery; or was led to believe that this online forum’s membership just spontaneously behaved like dream consumers. I mean, it is one thing to have a strategy that sets out to lie to the public – which is what fake blogging is, don’t kid yourself it is anything other – but I wonder if they crossed that magic line and bald-facedly lied to the client about provenance of the content. I suspect the client was in on this from the beginning. In Russia, as of today, the practical consequences of lying to consumers online are not much thought through by Russian clients or their PRs.

The leading case study, globally, about fake bloggery, is Sony and its PlayStation3 fiasco. It is nicely summed-up here. My friend, competitor and PR hero, David Brain, EMEA CEO of Edelman, is spot-on when he says ‘viral marketing is not a strategy, it is an outcome’.

The idea that reputation is in the eye of the beholder; is about trust and nurturing, is not yet completely accepted in Russia; although people are on nodding terms with the concept. Most Russian companies think that reputation is something bought, rather than awarded. Russian-style PR goes something like this: “public criticize us? Buy 30 pages of editorial; fake an online community and have Channel One TV do a 10-minute prime-time puff-piece on us’. In Russia, in 2008, you can do all that; if you have the 2 or 3 million dollars to hand to achieve it and no compunction about the means you use to get to your ends.

It is why most of our clients tend to be western multi-nationals operating here in Russia, BTW, rather than Russian clients.

I’ll end today with how this Advertising Age piece quotes one of the leading commentators on gaming who savaged Sony for its fakery:

“The reality is that no agency can create viral marketing, this is the sole domain of the consumer. Viral marketing is what happens when a campaign works — when we allow their message to travel via our own super efficient conduits…

“…Good advertising doesn’t rely on tricking, lying to or deceiving your target audience” [so why should ‘good’ (sic) PR?]

The candidate who revealed to me the fake blogging campaign her current bosses had triumphed with – who kind of shrugged her shoulders when we walked her through the ethics of what they were doing – is still a candidate. She wouldn’t be the first new staffer we’ve hired because of their innate skills and personality; knowing from the outset that we have to ‘wipe their brain clean and re-engineer’ their professional ethical compass.

Sometimes new media is just a nontrivial way of using the old ones.
In 1999 Moscovites driving along Kutuzovsky Prospect were quite puzzled by the billboards saying: “Stop tolling, stop looting Russia”, and a bit later even more puzzled by others, saying “Stopping tolling is looting Russia”. Very few of them had what on Earth tolling is, let alone had any opinion what exactly it does to Russia. The secret was simple - the billboards were part of a lobbying war And the target audience of the billboards were those ‘few’ who actually had some idea of what tolling is. Kutuzovsky Prospect is one of the so-called ‘governmental routes’ connecting Central Moscow where the government offices are located with the prestigious suburbs to the West of Moscow stretched along the famous Rublevka road, where many of the top-rank officials had their countryside residences.

I have recalled all of this when this weekend I saw banners along the road and on the parking lot by the beach at a village of Walberswick in Suffolk. Prime-Minister Gordon Brown was enjoying his vacation in the area, and the locals decided to take this opportunity to draw his attention to the recent decision of the Government to stop funding the coastal protection measures, which effectively means that over time large spaces of land next to the village would be taken over by th sea, and even perhaps some of the cottages would be flooded.
Banners, saying ‘Gord Help Us’ were placed in locations that made them likely to get noticed by the prime minister. I am not sure this will really help the village to get back the funding it needs, but a nice try anyway.

Эта мысль вертелась уже достаточно давно, но здесь в Лондоне в ходе общения с местными блоггерами и коллегами по PR оформилась окончательно. Российская блогосфера в данный момент в значительной мере находится в заложниках у собственных же достоинств. Тот факт (надо признать - достаточно случайный), что ядром, вокруг которого строилась российская блогосфера стал в свое время Живой Журнал во многом определил то, какой она стала. Возможность оставлять ветвящиеся комментарии создала основу для оживленных и структурированных дискуссий; “друзья” и разграничение доступа к записям превратили ЖЖ в подобие социальной сети; механизм приглашений сделал ЖЖ игровой площадкой не только и не столько для гиков и “технарей”, сколько для гуманитариев; сообщества подменили собой аггрегаторы новостей и дали шанс любому достучаться до большой аудитории.
В итоге значительное число блоггеров из числа тех, кто на западе скорее вел бы блог на собственном домене, оказались пользователями Живого Журнала. С одной стороны - это знаменитости в “реальной жизни”, пришедшие в ЖЖ, чтобы найти новый канал общения со своей аудиторией, но с другой - это те, чья популярность и влияние сформировались собственно в ЖЖ. И вот они как раз оказались в весьма затруднительном положении. Как только блоги перестали быть в своем роде элитарной забавой и превратились в массовое увлечение, интерес к которому стали проявлять маркетологи, рекламщики и пиарщики (за которыми стали маячить соответствующие бюджеты), выяснилось, что по сравнению с авторами самостоятельных блогов, тысячники ЖЖ сильно ограничены в свободе действий. Они не могут размещать обычную баннерную или контекстную рекламу в своих блогах, и по сути любая другая форма рекламной активности вытесняет их в своего рода “серую зону”. С другой стороны, далеко не все из них готовы покинуть Живой Журнал, поскольку понимают, что пусть на новом месте им и не придется строить аудиторию с нуля, но и автоматически перетащить даже простое ее большинство тоже не получится. Я думаю, что то распространение, которое получили в российской блогосфере сомнительные с этической точки зрения методы маркетинга - в значительной мере следствия этого противоречия. Масла в огонь подливает и тот факт, что владелец сервиса компания СУП тоже не прочь подзаработать на рекламе разного рода, в том числе опираясь по поддержку пула дружественных им тысячников. Мне вряд ли придет в голову винить ее в этом, однако все события вокруг собственно приобретения СУПом сначала лицензии на обслуживание русскоязычных пользователей ЖЖ, а потом и всего самого сервиса, показывают, что значительное число блоггеров так не считают - по сути они воспринимают себя как своего рода акционеров Живого Журнала, имеющих право голоса в решении вопросов его развития.
В результате вместо открытой и не вызывающей вопросов у читателей баннерной или контекстной рекламы или же постоянных спонсорских контрактов российские титаны блогосферы вынуждены прибегать к разного рода утконосам.
Думаю, что долго такое положение дел сохраняться не будет, так как уж слишком невыгодным оно является практически для всех сторон: блоггеры не имеют стабильного дохода от блога, читатели все более раздражены, компании в весьма уязвимом положении и т.д. В конечном счете, часть блоггеров, готовая сделать это своим основным занятием неизбежно откочует на собстввенные домены, тогда как другая вероятно поймет, что хобби не может приносить денег и перестанет волноваться насчет “монетизации” своих блогов.

Изучая ситуацию с PR в социальных медиа в Лондоне, я наткнулся на весьма полезный пост в блоге Веро Пепперрелл.
Полный текст “открытого письма PR агентствам” и сопровождающую его дискуссию можно посмотреть здесь, а немного сокращенный перевод, включая рекомендации для PR агентств - ниже. Кстати, этот пост вывел блог Веро на один уровень популярности с gapingvoid.com, например.
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Our sister-agency Trimedia runs an initiative called Trend Club, something that they describe as a ‘virtual think-tank’, bringing together their own leaders with other experts to discuss the current trends in corporate communications and PR industry, while Trimedia staff, clients and media get a chance to ask their questions to these experts live online.
Stephen Lock of Mmd was invited to take part in a webinar on crisis communications in the Web 2.0 age along with Lieven Stas, CEO of Trimedia Belgium, hosted by Glen Thompset, on July 1 2008.

There is also a full transcript of the webinar available online.

Some interesting quotes from the webinar:
Lieven Stas: “I remember in the early 90’s a book called ‘The First 24 hours of Crisis Communications.’ Today in the internet era it’s not the first 24 hours it’s, I would say, symbolically the first 24 minutes which counts to reach out there on the internet.”

Stephen Lock: “Senior management like books of press cuttings, you know static, they can touch it and feel it where as they find intrinsically that having to understand what’s going on with the ever-changing internet is very difficult for them.”

My colleagues in Mmd’s Eurasia Strategies Group have come up with a new (third!) Regional Bulletin that this time covers Krasnodar Krai.
Krasnodar is a remarkable region for a number of reasons and on many different levels, but I guess the sole fact that it would host Olympics in 2014 is perhaps enough.
As usual the regional bulletin provides an overview of Russian region politics before going into details on Krasnodar Krai with a special of focus on the follwoing topics:
- Governor Tkachev’s political role in the region;
- the economic strategy of the region;
- regional authorities’ investment agenda.
Vladimir Melnikov has gathered and analyzed a lot of information, both from public sources and face-to-face interviews with experts and officials, so it is a must-read for anyone interested in Krasnodar Krai, or understanding how regional politics work in Russia.
Jason Jarrell has contributed an insightful section on the economics and politics of Sochi Olympics. Olympics are perhaps the most advertised Russia’s investment projects at the moment and there is a huge interest for it among the potential suppliers, partners and investors. Jason’s piece will help to get a better understanding of how the Olympic project is structured and what are the internal tensions among the different parties involved in managing it.
And as usual, the report closes with a section on the regional media landscape, written by Natalia Bucelnikova, from Mmd’s PR department.
So, all in all an exciting reader for anyone interested in Russia, its politics and investment climate.
Coming to a browser near you.
The report is available for free download here.

Jason Jarrell commented on President Medvedev’s speech at the 12th International Economic Forum in St.Petersburg live on Russia Today last night:

click to see the video

Пересматривая любимый сериал, вспомнил один отличный пример того, как изменились медиа за последние годы. В 2000 г. в одной из серий “Западного крыла” пресс-секретарь Белого Дома говорит про одну крайне неприятную для администрации историю: “It’s gonna break tomorrow. It’s on the internet today”. После чего у нее ещё есть какое-то время, чтобы дать пресс-конференцию и самим рассказать о проблеме, отчасти перехватив инициативу у своих политических оппонентов. Я думаю, сегодня того, что это “в интернете”, было бы вполне достаточно, чтобы считать эту ситуацию уже проигранной.

Tags: PR, media, the west wing, news cycle, internet, Mmd

With oil still hovering above $130/bbl, as I tap this out, you might be thinking that Russian oil companies are just coining it in right now. Well they are not poor; but actually they get to see surprisingly little of the benefit of world-record high prices per barrel. In our New Year ‘thinkpiece’ we wrote about the paradoxical issue that Russia was getting rich on hydrocarbon prices, but oil companies were not; and oil and gas production growth was beginning, worryingly, to slide.

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A ‘tax escalator’ is in place which means the higher the oil price, the bigger the percentage proportion the government takes.

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This tax system was the brain-child of now-imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It was developed at a time when oil prices were low and, the thinking went, ‘subsidized’ oil company profits in the lean years, but balanced this out by the government netting a windfall in high oil price years. In recent years, this approach to hydrocarbon extraction tax has made the Russian treasury hugely rich, allowing Russia to pay-down its foreign debts in record time; boost regional, health, military and other politically acute government spending and store up a vast financial war-chest.

Conversely, though, when foreign investors – looking to invest in global oil and gas development – see the harsh extraction tax regime in place in Russia then, even while Russia’s oil and gas reserves are enticing, there are just other, more profitable, oil and gas projects around the world in which to invest. The same is true for the global oil majors. It has been a relatively new concept for the Russian government to learn that there is competition for investment and that having great reserves is not enough: that investors look for great returns too.

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At the same time, cynics would argue, some of the Russian statist oil companies having been using the hydrocarbon extraction tax system – and the alleged investment disincentives they provide – as a convenient excuse to cover-up poor oil production growth (due less to taxation and more to inefficient Soviet-style management practices, critics would argue).

Either way, it seems that Prime Minister Putin has got this message; and yesterday he unveiled some important hydrocarbon taxation reforms. According to a Troika Dialog brokers’ note issued today: “It implies a cut in MET by $1.32/bbl and implies around $5 bln in tax savings for the industry. While we feel that the market has been hoping for more (such as increase in the cutoff rate to $21/bbl as proposed by Rosneft), we think that currently high oil prices, as opposed to limited tax cuts, was (and will likely continue to be) the cause of rally in oil stocks.”

Elsewhere, other analysts were disappointed, saying that the reforms equaled too little and over too slow a period of implementation. It is to be hoped it is a first step. It is costing oil firms more and more to produce less and less oil in Russia. New pipeline deals – about which European media excitedly chat about in the context of ‘energy security’- need more flow to fill them. Unless we tackle the causes of underlying production growth decline, there will not be enough flow to feed those pipelines. The oil is down there. We just need to make it profitable – versus other global exploration * production projects – to get it out. That also means, though, that the Russian oil firms need to drive more efficiency into their businesses; especially at the middle to higher-middle levels.

Four of my colleagues from Mmd have won tickets to today’s Champions League finals in a surprise office raffle today (BTW think of it when we post another job opening here ;-). I am normally less excited by football, so I am sitting home and thinking about it from a bit different angle.
If you had been watching Russian politics lately, you could have noticed that Russo-British relations have got to be quite, eh, difficult in the past several months. So I guess I was not the only one caught off-guard when the Russian government announced the unprecedented visa-free entrance to the country for British football fans (not the most welcomed crowd in many countries, you have to admit). There is no lack of witty bar-stool analytics around the decision, with Roman Abramovich being the central figure in many of the versions (one of the bloggers I use to read called him ‘the Master of All Russia coming for inspection’ when he saw police officers in full dress uniform in the Moscow Metro today). But I have another idea, not dead-serious, but worth writing a few words about, and here it is.
What if the Russian government is merely taking a swing at what once used to be called ‘the people’s diplomacy’. After all, Russia’s image abroad is not too positive. Recent developments in political life make many people see Russia as moving backwards. On the other hand, Moscow looks exciting and prosperous, a city to admire by any measure, despite all the drawbacks and negative things you might find here. Being a UK citizen on a short trip to Moscow you are far less likely to experience or even see many of Russia’s sad realities of today, but you are bound to see a booming, vibrant city, that disproves both negative images of modern Russia: it is neither an oppressive totalitarian metropolis, that the recent ‘back to the USSR’ accounts of what is happening in Russia may make one think of, nor a 90s-style decaying heart of a country that has been knocked down and is falling apart.
So when the fans are home and through with blogging and twittering about the game, they might post some of their impressions and pictures of Moscow, or say ‘Nah, it is not that bad there - you should have seen GUM‘ when in a pub someone tells them about another opposition march brutally dispersed by OMON.
I know, I know, I know that football fans are perhaps not the best influencers to target for these purposes, but as of now we have no way of bringing in 50,000 of journalists, analysts, investment bankers, celebrities (or whoever you would consider to be a better audience) to Moscow.

Tags: Russia, football, Chelsea vs. Manchester United, people’s diplomacy, social media, UK, England