Experts Pool Strategies At Baltic PR Weekend
By Yelena Andreyeva
Special to The St. Petersburg Times
The seventh Baltic PR Weekend took place at the Grand Hotel Europe in St. Petersburg from Thursday to Friday last week. The conference was organized by the Russian PR Association, SPN Ogilvy Public Relations and the International PR Association. This year, the event gathered a record of more than 450 participants, as well as leading PR experts who gave presentations and led round tables during the two day conference. Among them was Ivan Bunin, general director of the independent fund Center for Political Technologies; Andrei Barannikov, general director of SPN Ogilvy Public Relations and vice-president of the PR Association of Russia; Andrei Braginsky, Marketing Communications Director for Sochi 2014; Vladimir Medinsky, State Duma Deputy and the president of the PR Association of Russia; Andrei Vasiliyev, Editor-in-Chief of Kommersant and Mikhail Umarov, PR director of AO VimpelCom. However, at the press conference held on the first day of the event, Barannikov said that this year “significantly more Muscovites than Petersburgers were taking part in the PR Weekend,” and expressed his hope that the situation would change next year. Among the topics discussed at the conference were professional issues of PR and its impact on the social and political life of Russia. One of the key presentations focused on the forthcoming elections in Russia and was given by Bunin. He forecasted that after the 2008 presidential elections Russia’s political system would develop into a new form of diarchy which will limit the authority of the new president (“Putin’s heir”) and allow Vladimir Putin to retain the status of the country’s informal leader, control the state system and continue the further implementation of his reforms. As for the upcoming State Duma elections, Bunin said that “it is obvious now that the new Duma will consist of United Russia, the Communists Party, Just Russia and, most likely, LDPR.” According to him, the open questions are which party will take second place presuming United Russia gets the biggest number of votes, and whether there is a chance that the Union of Right Forces will enter the next Duma. Bunin also talked about changes in the field of political technology, which has been influenced by changes in Russia’s political system, for example, by the abolition of elections for governors. “Before that there were many agencies that worked for the elections and which are gone now. On the one hand, it had a positive influence on the market, where now almost exclusively highly-skilled professionals work. On the other hand, now politicians want not just to win the elections but to maintain their positions, such as the United Russia party which, for instance, would like to get not just 48 per cent but 51 per cent of votes.” Braginsky talked about the implementation of the “Sochi 2014” project. He emphasized that they started working on the project two years ago, although the project only received major media and social support in February 2007 when Sochi reached the finals. Braginsky said that in their work they used the experience of their colleagues who worked on the other Russian Olympic project “Moscow-2012”. Asked if he was prepared for the event of Sochi not being chosen to host the Olympics, Braginsky said that their purpose was not just to defeat the other city-candidates, but also to improve the Russia’s image in the world, and so they could not really have lost. “Our slogan ‘Sochi. Gateway to the future’ reflects the idea of our PR campaign in the best way” he said. A report by Tony Cowling, TNS president, covered the IT aspects of PR work. He said that the “digital revolution of recent years” had completely changed not only the instruments of PR but also approaches to work. The development of the Internet and interactive elements in the media allows PR professionals to research a wider number of target audiences and their media preferences, and increase the number of methods of promoting media products. Cowling was very positive about the prospects for the development of telecommunications in Russia, due to the significant growth dynamics of Russia’s advertising market and the active, successful implementation of Internet technology. Kent McNeley, head of marketing at VimpelCom, continued the topic of technology innovation and talked about his company’s successful PR campaign to win a tender for 3G licenses. The lack of professionals in journalism and public relations and unsatisfactory university programs were discussed during the round table on professional course strategies in corporate communications and the media. Among possible solutions, it was suggested that practical journalism laboratories should be set up has been done at INGEKON, where students apply all the theoretical knowledge they learn in practice and produce a newspaper, “Para”. Pavel Pletnyov, head of the corporate culture department of “Rosneft” talked about that company’s effective practice — a special service that is in charge of staff teaching and intercorporate communications.
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