The biggest problem Ketchum faced was that the Russians had little clue about how the Western media function. Based on their experience of the domestic media, they were genuinely convinced that we could pay for better coverage – that a positive op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, for example, had a certain price. They believed that journalists write what their newspaper proprietors (or governments) order them to write, and wanted to ‘punish’ correspondents who wrote critically about them by refusing to invite them to press events (thereby, in fact, forfeiting the chance to influence them). They subjected the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent Luke Harding (and his family) to constant harassment, apparently because of an interview his paper published with Boris Berezovsky in which he called for Putin to be overthrown – even though Harding had nothing to do with the conduct or content of the interview.5 At the height of the Litvinenko affair, three members of the BBC’s Russian team in Moscow were attacked in the street. All this was hardly likely to incline the journalistic community towards the kind of positive coverage the Kremlin craved. They would constantly demand that Ketchum ‘use our technologies’ to improve coverage. I had no idea what they meant. The technology we wanted them to use was a West Wing-style press room, every morning at ten o’clock. But it never happened.
In briefing-paper after briefing-paper we hammered away at our basic theme – open up to the press. Mix with journalists, take them for lunches, schmooze, give them titbits off the record, and gradually win them over. Speak to them, explain yourselves, and they will begin to trust you. Give interviews and get on air, because if you don’t your opponents will, and they will set the agenda. It worked for a while. Peskov held a few dinners for Moscow correspondents in fancy restaurants (rather more formal than the kind of thing we really had in mind), and that went down well. They instituted ‘Tuesday briefings’ with selected ministers. The Moscow press corps was delighted. But after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, Peskov became too worried: he knew that whatever the formal topic of a briefing, journalists would end up asking about human rights and democracy. Safer not to meet them.
Much of Ketchum’s work involved the kind of things that most governments get done internally, by their embassies and foreign ministry – in whom the Kremlin evidently had little faith. We organised press conferences for government ministers when they travelled abroad, and provided briefing papers for them with the questions they were likely to be asked (and sometimes with the answers we thought they ought to give – though they rarely used them). We drafted articles for ministers (and even the president) which were generally redrafted out of all recognition in Moscow and became so unreadable that they were difficult to place in any newspaper. Part of the mystery of this aspect of the work was that Peskov would ask us to draft an article for, say, the energy minister, or the foreign minister, but give us no guidance whatsoever as to what they wished to say. He would usually reply, if asked: ‘Just put in what you think he should say.’ So we would draft articles –and speeches – blind. And then they would be completely rewritten. Foreign minister Lavrov, in particular, (rightly) had no interest in having his articles drafted by ignorant foreigners.
Every day Ketchum provided the Kremlin with three press reviews, compiled in Japan, Europe and the United States, which gave a comprehensive – perhaps rather too detailed – picture of coverage of Russia around the globe. The reviews often came to well over a hundred pages, with summaries and full texts of any article that mentioned the word Russia, but with little analysis. During the period of the first contract, for the G8 year, Ketchum employed an outside agency to colour-code every article in the press, with red, yellow or green, to indicate negative, neutral or positive stories, so that by the end of the G8 year this could be plotted on a graph to demonstrate that there were more greens and fewer reds. This is a common PR technique which unfortunately did not transport well to the nuanced world of Kremlin politics. Often the colours seemed to be picked at random, and bore little relation to the content – even sports news or a weather report could turn up with a red or green button. (This ‘service’ was eventually dropped, after it was realised it was useless.)
The Kremlin received regular ‘road-maps’ – ‘big picture’ PR strategies for the coming three months / six months / year, wrapped in management-speak about ‘leveraging opportunities going forward’, ‘deliverables’ and ‘reaching out to stakeholders’. In practice much of the work boiled down to the more mundane business of helping with ministerial visits, organising press conferences and briefing on key developments in the West.
As a newcomer to the PR world I was amused by the nebulous concepts of ‘influencer’ relations and ‘third-party outreach’ – cultivating contacts with experts and ‘thought leaders’ who had an interest in Russia. Ketchum was meticulous in reporting any contact, such as having lunch with someone from a think-tank or attending a lecture, which would all end up in the record of completed tasks sent each month to Moscow. And if one of those influencers produced a positive line in some article, this could then be quoted in a report-back as a ‘success’. I remember one report of Ketchum’s achievements included a quotation from the Canadian prime minister, saying, ‘I think Russia’s made an enormous amount of progress in recent years.’ It was not clear whether the Kremlin really believed that we contributed to that.
One undoubted success was the introduction of ‘tele-briefings’, where journalists could call in to participate in a news conference with Peskov or a government minister. The Russians found these more agreeable than face-to-face meetings, and finally acquired a way to interpret their actions to the press.
Over the three years working with him I got to know Dmitry Peskov fairly well. Tall, smartly dressed and in his early 40s, he has a charming, easy-going style, and speaks excellent English (and also Turkish, having worked for many years in the embassy in Ankara). He was spotted by President Yeltsin during a trip to Turkey in 1999 and brought back to work in the presidential administration. When Putin came to power he became head of the Kremlin’s press relations office and deputy spokesman to the president. Ever since then he has been a priceless asset, almost the only person in Russia with the ability, the authority and the willingness to give on-the-record interviews to the foreign press. As a result he was in huge demand. My colleagues in the BBC Moscow bureau, who had an insatiable demand for talking heads, used to plead with me: ‘Please get them to provide other spokespeople. Dmitry’s great, but he just doesn’t have the time…’ But other than a few ministers, no one else in Russia was willing to give interviews to the Western press. No wonder they found it so hard to get their message across.
I gave Dmitry media training to help him feel more comfortable in front of the television camera. It was an opportunity not just to draw his attention to his voice or mannerisms, but also to subject him to the toughest possible questions, and train him in the art of expressing a few essential ideas succinctly and coherently. Many interviewees who have not studied how a Western news bulletin works tend to ramble on interminably, never getting to the point.
During a G8 summit in Germany in 2007, Peskov approached me with a special task – to rewrite and spice up a speech President Putin was to make in Guatemala City in support of Russia’s bid to host the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The bid was successful – for which I naturally take the entire credit! (In truth, most of my suggestions were not accepted!) When Dmitry Medvedev became president in 2008 I gave advice about videos and podcasts, and saw at least some of my ideas incarnated in his innovative video-blogs.