Besides, there is an opportunity for the company to participate in the project on a partnership basis. That’s what we did. Now our HR expert represents Edelman Imageland as an employer on blog.ventra.ru, telling our users about Edelman appraisal system, Edelman Global University and other interesting programms for Russian candidates. Very interesting notice, when expert really understands his/her goal and all benefits which are results from blogging – it takes just short period of time to teach him/her to blog. And I have to admit, that our HR director – Anna Govorina - is very natural in this new way of communication.

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».

All photos in this flash I’ve got from our colleagues from different offices of Edelman within the project Views from Edelman offices. Now in this collection 17 offices from 54. By the way, if you don’t find your view here, please, make a photo from your window and send it to me via orasulova (@) imageland.ru.

Potential growth rate of online market in Runet is extremely high – particularly in boom of new media and social networks – for example the audience of the most popular Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru welcomed more than 20 mln people just for two years! Vkontakte.ru – 17 mln people, My.Mail.ru – 15 mln people.

But most popular Russian social networks used for personal communication or instant messaging. They are effective for contacts not for engaging campaigns.

At the same time average Russian blogger and opinion leader (internet-savvy, highly educated middle class consumer) is generally more critical and suspicious of any information, than its average western user, as well as able to obtain information by himself. Expert opinions usually placed on Internet forums, discussion boards and blogs (over 6 mln). Most preferable blog hosting platform for this blogger – is LiveJournal.Com.

Internet campaigns in general are more effective in Russia as a part of offline complex marketing campaigns.

More popular and long live communities in Runet are those which have continuation in real life (offline regular meetings on Auto.ru etc.)

Microblogging in Runet is not as popular as in global Internet due to poor ability in expression – 140 characters are available for Latin symbols and only 70 – for Cyrillics. Russians need more space to express their thoughts!)

The more localization of internet-campaigning – the better. Global Google looses to its competitor Yandex due to localization – services that appeal to particular Russian consumers interest (for instance Yandex-guru consumer advisory feature or Moscow traffic online navigation feature etc.).

So, if you are going to come to Russian online market, or are already present here – try to use at least several independent information source and communication tools, to know more how you could be more local and effective here providing your global company’s strategy.

I was so curious about this new one though I hadn’t seen the old before. So, I’ve asked Simon Collister to show me this new office in pictures. He kindly uploaded some on Flickr and while I was looking at, I thought that it would be interesting for me or may be for others, too – to make a collection of views of/from Edelman’s offices.

And now the set View from Edelman offices counts 72 photos from 17 Edelman’s offices:

Montreal (Canada) 

Press to see another view – in winter! 

(photo by Katheryne Boileau)

Vilnus (Lithuania)

(photo by Wolfgang Lünenbürger)

Portland

(photo by Rian Merrill)

Chicago

(photo by Leticia Gomes)  

(photo by Dmitry Dolgov, he’s made it when was in Chicago Summer school) 

San Francisco 

(photo by Leah Jones) 

Mexico

(photo by Vianey Campos from Edelman Mexico) 

Buenos Aires

(photo by Leonardo Ayala from Argentina)

Paris

(I had been there for two marvelous weeks!) 

 Hamburg

(it was a great digital summit!)

Moscow

(it’s our view from conference room in Moscow office) 

Sao Paulo

(photo by Simon Collister) 

Seattle

(great view from Jason Mical) 

New York

(photo by Leah Jones)  

London

 (photo by Jason Mical) 

Frankfurt 

(photo by Bjoern C. Hasse) 

Shanghai

(photo by Adam J. Schokora)

Miami

(photo by Valeria Lento)

This collection is supposed to be updated with new views, so, please, if you have some – let me know here or via www.twitter.com/olkarose.