Russian PRBI member firm Buman Media, headed by Natalia Bucelnikova, recently conducted a survey on the status of Russian PR, in which 100 participants provided feedback on topics such as in-house PR services, as well as external services.
The key findings from this survey are highlighted below:
- Although Russian companies feel that Russian PR agencies lack transparency and creativity, 70 percent still use their services.
- Eighty percent said their budgets will remain the same as the previous year, while 40 percent will actually increase their budgets, and only five percent already have or will decrease.
- Fifty-one percent said their budgets are equivalent to $270,000 (in U.S. dollars), with more than one third being spent on PR agency services. Twenty-eight percent said their budgets for PR agency services range from $76,000 to $200,000.
- Sixty-three percent of respondents currently use PR agency services. Seventy-seven percent of companies will use PR agency services next year.
- Over 50 percent said they choose to appoint smaller, more specific tasks to agencies, although only 20 percent said they would let them create the PR plans.
- More than one third of companies utilize PR agencies for crisis communication services.
- In regards to social media, more than half (58 percent) prefer to use Facebook, while only four percent said they opt to use LinkedIn.
Overall, public relations in Russia has grown and will continue to expand in 2015 as Russian business executives increasingly see the value in outsourcing work to external PR firms. As the Russian economy continues to improve, budgets for public relations services will keep expanding.