What Happened to RMAA Agency During This War-Troubled Year?

In this article, I'd love to tell my story of very recent events, how, as an entrepreneur from Russia working with businesses around the world, my company was transformed into the new conditions of 2022 and with what we have come to 2023.

The main reason that prompted me to write this article is messages and calls from my partners and friends from different regions of the world with a sincere interest in how I am and how the company's business is doing. I am writing this article for people who know me personally or know me indirectly through my company and/or social networks.

Fast facts. How it all started more than 10 years ago

I want to start with the initial data: for more than 10 years I have devoted myself to the development of the RMAA marketing agency, the core of which was cross-cultural relations. The big idea of the agency was and is today to help international businesses build communications with the Russian-speaking audience, both in Russia and in the CIS countries. Today, our company helps businesses to reach not only the 144 million population of the Russian Federation but also 115 million Russian-speaking people around the world, regardless of geography.

Since the founding of the RMAA, I have helped foreign companies enter Russian business. In the early 2010s, these were mainly Asian companies. Later, in 2017 when I moved the company’s office from the capital of the Russian Far East, Khabarovsk, to Moscow, companies from Europe, the USA, and the Middle East appeared in the client portfolio.

February 2022, point of bifurcation

February 2022 marked a turning point for the RMAA's business. Foreign brands began to announce their positions. Some completely curtailed their business in Russia, while others continued to work but froze their advertising and media activities. In addition to this, there was practically no local business from Russia in our client portfolio, which complicated the situation for us a lot.

The point of bifurcation has come. Either death or growth was ahead. It was necessary to respond quickly to changing business conditions and make decisions.

Thanks to the COVID-19 crisis of 2020, I met the new black swan of 2022 in a more balanced and calm way. Despite the fact that the impact of 2020 was much less in strength, it was this experience that greatly strengthened me and the team.

The first thoughts of self-pity “More than 10 years of my work became worthless in one day” were almost immediately put aside and the decision was made to overcome the crisis, look for solutions and move on.

Ironically, right before the events of February, our team held a strategic planning session, where we defined our development plans for the coming years. As circumstances changed, we had to bid farewell to many of our plans. However, some of the promising ideas that were initially included in the non-priority backlog have now become priorities.

Thus, the plan for the globalization of the agency and work in new language territories was put into practice.

The next big thing

As I wrote above, the core idea of the RMAA business is cross-cultural communications, so this idea, like the business model, was also transferred to the new agency, which we established in 2022 and called 1235marketing (why the agency got such a name is a topic for a separate publication, but for now you can go to the site and write your guesses in the comments). From the point of view of the company's legal registration, the choice fell on Serbia for a number of reasons.

In short, 1235marketing is a marketing agency specializing in emerging markets like Latin America, Russia&CIS, the MENA, and South-East Asia, dedicated to connecting digital products with today’s modern consumers. Agency services and products are mainly suitable for companies that produce digital products from the following industries: SAAS providers, game developers & publishers, and IT&tech companies around the globe.

Let me give you a simple example of how 1235marketing works in practice. Imagine that you have developed a game and are going to bring it to market. Most likely your priority is the English-speaking market, but then you have questions about where to go, and where are the most promising regions & consumers of your product. 1235marketing will determine the most promising regions for launch, and after choosing a region, will make a quick launch, for example, with the help of local influencers.

Product launch speed is one of the agency's key services. How long will it take for a game developer from South Korea to negotiate with 10 Hispanic bloggers in Latin America who specialize in space game reviews? For a company from a non-Latin American region, it takes up to a year, while 1235marketing solves these issues as quickly as possible. Of course, the number of agency services is much wider, and the one described above is a particular example.

In 2022, we laid the foundation for building teams in the regions of interest to us and also built the technology to quickly launch an influencer campaign in a number of developing regions.

Meanwhile in Russia...

Of course, in parallel with this, the work was carried out in the main agency of the RMAA. What was the situation in the Russian market?

About 50% of the agency's volumes were put on hold in March 2022, as clients took a stand-by position or had already decided to leave the market.

For the other 30% of projects, clients were ready to continue working with us, but there were bureaucratic difficulties. In order to restore work for these clients, we had to completely rebuild our financial and legal ecosystem, to which I dedicated the spring of 2022 to.

New political and economic realities have attracted new clients, primarily from such a rapidly growing industry as real estate. The flow of relocating businesses and simply Russian-speaking people have seriously increased the competition between real estate developers from Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Cyprus, and other regions of the world for this segment of the clientele. The general redistribution of markets, and the change of key players in a number of industries, have seriously changed the market situation, including the advertising business. Therefore, 2022 brought a large number of projects from the real estate, computer games, tourism, and pharmaceutical sectors to the RMAA agency.

By the way, we even released a White Paper with analytics called “Russian Market Under The Influence Of Western Sanctions Possible Prospects For New Brands”, please check it out if you are interested.

Around the middle of the summer of 2022, we felt that we stood quite firmly on our feet and could continue to scale up the business, and even expand into new directions and regions (we are talking about the development of the new 1235marketing agency).

Results of 2022 and plans for 2023

Based on the results of 2022, the following results can be recorded:

First. We divided the business of the agency into two large areas:

  RMAA is an agency for companies interested in communicating with Russian-speaking people around the world.

   1235marketing is a new product launch agency in emerging markets.

Second. Despite the difficulties and problems we faced, 2022 was the largest in terms of turnover for our agency in its entire history, but not the largest in terms of net profit, and this is due to the drop in project margins during the crisis, as well as our investments in a new direction;

Third. The agency team has become as distributed as possible, so today we have people from Russia, Belarus, Poland, Greece, Cyprus, as well as the Latin America region working in our team. 2022 was also very rich in travel for me personally, as a result of which I moved between Moscow, Belgrade, the cities of Cyprus, and Istanbul.

Even more difficult times and obstacles may lie ahead of us, and despite all the emotions that we experience from what is happening, it is important for me, as a leader, to concentrate on the business tasks and the responsibilities that I have to my team, my partners and clients. Therefore, we are only moving forward and looking with excitement at the new business challenges that we have to overcome.