This interview is also available in Russian.

- So, could you please tell us the fascinating story about how a young foreign communication specialist came to live and work in Russia. 

— In 1992 I moved to Moldova with my parents.  Originally I had intended to learn Moldovan, as this was the national language at the time, and the politically correct language for the son of a diplomat to be learning.  But after being in the country for two weeks, I realized that to live in Moldova and not use the occasion to learn Russian would be foolish. So I switched to Russian.

This did present a challenge because whenever I would see any government officials, I would have to pretend that I spoke Moldovan, and pretend that I didn’t speak Russian. Something which became increasingly difficult as time went by.

So it was the Russian language that brought me to Russia (albeit via Chisinau, Simferopol and Ashgabat).

- When did you first feel that you have a heart for PR work? 

— Early in my career, I was offered a job working in the London office of a Russia-focused PR firm.  I had no interest in going into PR, but didn’t have any better ideas at the time, and this job would give me a chance to continue working with Russia.   My general plan was to do the job for a couple of years and then to do a Masters in Finance in order to transition into doing a proper job.

The turning point was when my boss at the time invited me for breakfast one sunny Saturday morning in Moscow on one of the many recently erected summer terraces.  We were speaking about the future, although frankly I wasn’t really listening to him.  Instead I was watching the attractive and good spirited Moskvichki walking up and down Petrovka.  When he asked if I would agree to stay on for a few more years, I just said yes without giving it a lot of thought. That was 10 years ago.  It was definitely the right decision.

— What was your first impression about Russia (and Russian business and PR)? And how do you feel about it now? 

— PR in Russia is extraordinary.  I compare it to if I were doing PR in the UK for some dreary UK business. The most exciting thing you might deal with is missing or exceeding production targets by 5%.  In Russia, every day is an adventure.  Each morning you wake up, you have no idea what bizarre situations you will be asked to help with over the course of the day.  From an experience perspective, one day in Russia is like 10 years anywhere else in Europe.

— Do you think that PR is different in every single country? And what are the characteristics of PR in Russia? 

— Certainly every country has its specifics.  I am currently spending a fair amount of time in China and it’s a whole new world there that I am having to learn from scratch.

What I like about PR in Russia is simply the pace at which things move.  Some people associate Russia with slow bureaucracy.  Of course with some companies that association is accurate.  But with the newly formed dynamic private companies, you meet some of the most impressive and fast-thinking entrepreneurs, who have built their careers on an ability to think and act quickly and to adapt to a rapidly changing environment.  You need to be quick and at the top of your game to keep up with them.

Compare this to working in the UK or, worse, in Germany.  Where everything is planned weeks and months in advance.  Very tedious…

— What made you decide to set up your own agency in Russia?  What were the difficulties (bureaucratic / psychological) of opening an office in Russia?

— I had already been working in Russia for several years doing financial PR / IR.  Before setting up EM, I was running the Russian office of a company called M: Communications.  My colleagues and I would often talk about setting up our own agency, and in 2013 an opportunity presented itself to buy ourselves out from our previous owners, and effectively transfer the whole team and clients into a new entity, which we set up and now own – EM.

Naturally we retained our focus on Russia as this was the market we knew best and where were very committed to developing further.

In terms of difficulties, when we were negotiating the terms of the MBO, my biggest fear was not whether our clients would support us (I was confident they would), but rather whether we would be undone by Russian bureaucracy.  For a variety of reasons, we needed the transition to be as seamless as possible.  While, setting up a new company in Russia can be time consuming, and I knew that transferring contracts over to the new entity, even with the best will in the world, had the potential to take months.  Fortunately our clients were fantastic and did everything possible to help us to ensure a successful transition as quickly as possible.

— Is it hard for you to run a PR agency in Russia? 

— Definitely.  Not only in Russia of course, I think it’s hard to run a PR agency in any country.

One of the things that is unique about EM is that we have almost no hierarchy.  For example, we don’t really use job titles.  Initially, it was difficult to persuade people to sign up to this system, because I think it’s very non-Russian.  I find job titles to be divisive, and they create needless barriers and limitations to people just getting on and doing whatever it is they do best.

What we have today is a team with some of the best professionals in the market, but just without titles.  I can say from experience that this is much better than having a team full of “senior vice presidents”, none of whom are any good…

— EM is specialized in financial PR. If I am not mistaken, there are not so many PR agencies in Russia that are specialized in this or that particular segment. Do you think it's right strategy for an agency — to be specialized? 

— I am convinced this is the right strategy, and the only way to ensure consistent quality in what we do.  I am always surprised by agencies that try to be all things to everyone.  The reality is that they all have their particular areas of strength (and weakness).  My preference is to focus on what I know we do better than anyone else in the market.  And I think our clients and potential clients appreciate that – they know that if we take something on, we are going to do it very well.

If clients need support in consumer PR or government relations or other areas outside of our core expertise, we would much rather bring in reliable specialist firms to work alongside us, rather than try to do something that we know we would be hopeless at!

— I could guess that financial PR suffers the most during every financial crisis. How does your agency feel now? 

— Definitely we feel better when capital markets are lively and there are a lot of new IPOs to work on.  Our team has led the communications for more successful Russian IPOs over the years than any other team at any agency in the world.  And yet something tells me this specialist knowledge we have isn’t going to be in huge demand at least for another year or two.

But it’s not all about IPOs.  There are a lot of really good, publicly listed Russian businesses who continue to want support in terms of their ongoing communications with the financial markets.  If anything, it’s in difficult markets like we are in now where we have even more opportunity to be helpful to clients.

It was also important for us to respond quickly to “new realities”.  Before this latest crisis, our team was based in Moscow, London and New York, and frankly this was sufficient.  We know now that is not enough and if we want to provide a true global service to our Russian clients, we need to be able to look East as well as West.  This is why we moved into China last year.  We are still in the early stages of developing our business there, but we are making good progress and we expect to have more news about EM’s China expansion later this summer.

— Tell us about your team. How did you find and hire them? 

— When we started building this business about five years ago, we felt that there was a niche in Russia that was not filled.  To put it simply, it is where IR and PR overlap – this is what we do best.  For this we need to understand investors as well as we understand financial media, and how to bring all of this together.

Accordingly our team consists of former journalists, former bankers, former in-house IR people, and life-long consultants such as myself.  It’s a great mix of expertise, and when we really pull it all together, we are able to provide a very valuable service to clients that I don’t think anyone else in the market can provide.

— You have a lot of foreigners in your team. Why is it so — because you are a foreigner and it's easier for you to work with Europeans, or because they are just better than any one else you could hire? 

— Companies in Russia tend to hire us above all for our knowledge of international financial markets and access to international financial media, etc.  So it’s logical that a significant number of our people come from those target markets – such as the UK and US.  And we will probably make our first Chinese hire in the near future.

But we do also have some excellent Russians in the team, and this is very important.  Ultimately what separates us from our peers is our ability to understand the local specifics of the Russian market environment, and then to know how to translate that in a way that is understandable and attractive to international audiences.

In short, we need a balance of local and international, and I think we have the right balance today for what we get hired to do.

- Many members of your team are bilingual and the vast majority speaks at least one foreign language. Is it a sort of strategy — to speak to a client in his/her mother tongue? Do you think it's crucial for PR professionals to speak English or any other foreign language? 

— I think it would be very difficult to what we do in Russia if we didn’t speak Russian.  Not all of our clients speak English, and frankly even if they do speak perfect English, that doesn’t mean they always want to.  There is always something bizarre about the scene when you have 10 people in a meeting in Moscow, 9 Russian and one non-Russian speaking foreigner, and so everyone has to speak English as a result.  It’s just wrong...

So fortunately most of us speak good Russian.  (Helped by the fact that we are almost all married to Russians!)

— What programs and applications do you use daily (that can be useful for PR pros)? 

— I am generally regarded to be the most technologically inept member of the EM team.  There are probably all kinds of programmes and applications that I should be using; my aim for 2015 is to move into the 21st century in this respect.

One resource that looks like it will be very cool when launched is Closir, a new online community connecting IROs and the investor community.  I see a lot of potential in this space.

— What sites do you visit daily? 

— My morning starts with a quick scan of Vedomosti and the FT.  (Although RBC seems to be getting better and better and so I am conscious that I should probably add that to my priority reading list).

I look at Facebook, which among other things I find to be a useful aggregator of news that I might otherwise have missed.

And lastly I tend to keep an eye on the Dozhd’ website, which I find to be a great source of more analytical coverage throughout the day.

— What could you advise to a person that wants to build a career in financial PR? 

— There are a lot of good books on how investors think and build their investment strategies.  Read one or two of these.  In essence, financial PR is about developing content for investors (and then finding ways to distribute that content to the market).  You can’t do this effectively if you don’t have a fundamental understanding of the kind of information that investors look for and what can influence their opinion.

You have to have a decent level of financial literacy. I would say that if you can read and understand everything that is written in the FT, you are probably doing ok.

Also reading everything in the FT daily is a useful exercise in its own right (beyond simply serving as a test of financial knowledge).  Having an understanding of what passes as financial news and how this news tends to be presented is critical to your ability to know what stories are “pitchable” and how best to do this.

Lastly, I would just say that at EM, we are a fun and dynamic business, with some very interesting plans for our future development.  So for anyone looking to work in financial PR, if they are talented and ambitious (and also enjoy having fun from time to time), they should probably give us a call.