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The features of Public Relations for high-tech sector in discussion by Cnews, the leading IT-publication in Russia, and Phil Gurov, the founder of Gurov and Partners, a Communication Group focused on the IT-companies promotion.

 

CNews: Gurov and Partners by now has been focusing on the high technologies promotion for eight years. What key changes in the industry have you been facing? Have the PR-agencies operations undergone serious changes?

 

Phil Gurov: Back in 2007 we were the first in Russia to choose a narrow focus on the high-tech area. We actually were the ones to form the market. In the recent years many PR agencies have claimed to hold “IT-practices”. However their service level in most cases leaves a lot of space for improvement. Most PR specialists fail to master some key features like vendor vs integrator promotion differences.

 

I recently visited a meeting of our industrial association. The RP agencies operation quality assessment was on the table. The main message was that the PR agency cannot generate financial output. This is correct in general. However what is the sense in PR than if it only reduces itself to generation of articles in media and likes in social networks? The recent two crises were unfortunately a little lesson to the communications agencies.

 

Promotion must be pragmatic and solve practical business tasks of the clients. And the main focus of work is to move from the “Presence at the media field” to the lead generation and helping the customer to have their clients moving down through the marketing funnel. The customers came to this vision already. The PR-specialists still didn’t.

 

Read the complete interview on Cnews.