Publistery: building a brand-journalism agency

I conceived Publistery and brought it to market as CEO and managing partner: Russia's first brand-journalism agency — a service where editorial standards work on the communication goals of brands.

Context and task

Publistery works at the seam of content, strategy and editorial craft. The idea is simple — make stories for brands to the standards of a real newsroom. That spot, between classic digital and PR, didn't exist on the Russian market before. The demand for that kind of content was already there; what was missing was a player who'd fold media quality and a communication goal into a single service.

The agency's birthplace wasn't a coincidence — the News Media Holding ecosystem, where editorial culture and the brand business already lived side by side. My job as CEO and managing partner ran wider than launching a product: turn a format into a company — with investment, a team, an economy and a market position.

Brand journalism begins where classic social media marketing ends.

Solution

Product first. I conceived and packaged brand journalism as a service, took it to market, and slotted the agency into the News Media Holding product portfolio — tying the editorial and brand halves of the holding together. To fund the scale-up I raised an investment round from the holding's shareholders, which gave us the resource to grow faster than the market.

Then the team and the processes. I assembled and trained a core of top management — strategy, creative, production, finance — and scaled the team to 80 people, with outsourcing and contractors, keeping it flexible. I brought in KPIs unusual for a communications agency: engagement, content velocity, NPS, hypothesis testing.

The result — steady growth. Revenue added 50% year over year, the portfolio widened by five to seven new projects a year — federal and venture-backed brands among them. Over that stretch Publistery went from an idea to a market segment of its own, and to Russia's first working model of a brand-journalism agency with an economy that adds up.