• interchange of experience between the leading market players;
• customer and industry advocating through developing Social Media Code of Ethics;
• promoting new approaches to PR and marketing;
• social media trainings;
• professional community building;
• developing industry standards.

“Social media market is growing in Russia,” said Anna Rokina, NetMind research director. “And we really need some quality standards and guidelines to be developed for those working here. We also need some measurement standards for evaluating the effectiveness of advertising and promotional campaigns being implemented in social media”. 

The Social Media Association has its steering committee with:
Edelman Imageland Russia (Olga Rasulova), Netmind. Social Media (Anna Rokina), SK Content Group (Sergey Kuznetsov), Redkaya Marka interactive marketing company (Anton Popov), Comunica agency (Mikhail Umarov), IPSOS, Affect agency, BigIdea and ArtStyle MEDIA advertising & communication agency.

The Association will join Russian companies communicating with their customers through social media and blogosphere, agencies offering promotion in social media and doing it effectively, experts and freelancers working with social media and industry analysts and researchers.

“This is the southern view from the New York office. We only have a few months left here in this location, but this is an iconic view here in the States, and I thought it would be a nice addition.”

And I thought that it would be a great idea to give this project the second life.

I’ve made the group on Facebook (I suppose that this social network is very popular among Edelman’s folks as far as Edelman.inc launched the official Edelman facebook community).

Being a part of this group you could add your views and share your videos about your office’s lifes. I think that this uniting idea could help us to know more about our colleagues all over the world and our working days.

Are you on the map? If not – add your views to this collection

Much has been lately said about Russia – either about its world policies or state of domestic economy. Still, much of the coverage is biased by some reasons – foreign media tend to portray Russia’s assertiveness worldwide as a new threat to the world, while Russian media are committed to state interests.

With this bulletin Edelman Imageland Russia, that has been prepared by our experts, will try to provide Edelman colleagues and clients worldwide with a kind of unbiased insiders’ general outlook that might be helpful, when it comes to the relations with Russian partners.

You can download it russia-bulletin_dec-08.pdf or read more in blog.

With the global economic crisis unfolding and much of challenge still looming there will obviously be no safe business heaven on Earth. Still, there are always two sides to a coin.

Bad news is that economic predictions for 2009 sound rather adverse. The decade of economic growth fuelled by high oil and commodity prices is over and leaner times are ahead. Russian economy is not immune to the crisis.  The demand is record low. Industrial output already fell below the 1998 financial collapse level. Russian companies are cutting jobs. In November only, the industrial output plunged nearly 11 percent while the number of unemployed climbed by 400.000 up to 5 mln people, according to official data. The country’s large foreign currency reserves dropped from $583 bln in August down to $456 bln by Dec.1, prompting the S&P to downgrade Russia’s sovereign credit ratings.

Our short-term predictions are greater state intervention in business and substantial redistribution of property in Russia. Some Russian oligarchs may loose their shares in the companies to the state. Russian companies are grossly overleveraged with about $110 bln of foreign obligations due next year. Almost half of top 25 companies faced margin calls from lenders since August (DB, Bloomberg). Key Russian oligarchs are lining up for $78 bln of Kremlin loans to survive the credit squeeze. The government runs in to help. But at a price. It will provide (through VneshEconomBank – VEB, the Russian state lender) a one year loan with assets or shares as collateral. That will be difficult to repay in the coming year. 

Still, there is a brighter side of the current economic turmoil. The first and the foremost is existential – with the oil and commodity boom being over, Russian economy has an excellent chance to get rid of a much discussed in media ‘oil curse’ – emerge from the crisis as a modern and sustainable economy.

GDP slowdown to 4-6% per year would still present a pretty high growth-rate – much higher than of most highly developed countries. As per the World Bank’s ‘Global Economic Prospects 2009’ report (Dec. 9, 2008), Russia’s GDP growth forecast is going to be 6% (2008), 3% (2009) and 5% (2010).

And a huge $200 billion-plus federal bailout and rescue package deployment for the economy is on the way. The Kremlin is working out a list of strategic enterprises to provide state support. Some 400 public enterprises are to make government allocations (government guarantees on loans, subsidized interest rates, securing the state order or tax relieves etc.).

Russian Central Bank keeps on easing its support of the Russian currency depreciating the ruble against major foreign currencies. Inflating ruble will result in the least profitable Russian business entities becoming cost-effective.

Foreign investors are still confident of the Russia’s market long-term prospects. Many World business majors consider current crisis to be the last opportunity to enter Russian market at low cost. Particularly, Daimler has recently paid three times as much a price for a mite Russian commercial automaker KAMAZ share.

‘Over-the-horizon’ trends are even more promising. The commodity prices currently plummeting to a historic five-year boom will eventually bounce back as the world’s hydro-carbon fuel resources are limited. And Vladimir Putin may be right saying that the era of cheap gas is coming to an end. And Russia holds the world’s largest gas reserves and is the biggest gas exporter.

The crisis aside, Russian consumer market is far from demand saturation. Unlike people in most leading countries, the Russians still have far lesser level of possession of most consumer goods and products (cars, cell-phones etc.). When the crisis ends we’ll see the surge of differed demand like in the US in 1950’s.

Given the above said, one can’t help but agree with Thomas Omestad’s recent practical anti-crisis advice in U.S. News & World Report (Dec.29 – 50 Ways to Improve Your Life; Your Mind – Learn to Speak Russian): «…with Russia widely pegged as a re-emerging great power… – mastering the tongue of the Kremlin could well come to regain some cachet».

200 000 people participated in a 7-day popular festival …

… consumed thousands of pancakes and hectoliters of mead and tea …

… enjoyed folk song-and-dance show and traditional amusements.

This is the clip of the project that we prepared for Edelman Europe Video:

There are some main issues of her speech:
- Russian economy’s prospects are now highly trusted by leading World institutions;
- Foreign investors increasingly see Russia as a lucrative investment opportunity;
- High social spending and economy rise increase personal disposed income of Russians thus defining high levels of consumer spending;
- Russian PR-market is one of the most fast-growing in the world, as the demand for its products and services is objectively high;
- Growing number of Russian IPO’s and SPO’s definitely means, the Russian companies do need and will need much PR-support in western markets.

This presentation describes all these points in flash, that you can see online: