PR firms who worked for Oligarchs might feel the heat

Yesterday we noted that PR firms who worked for oligarchs might be about to feel some heat.

I wrote: “What happens next? Well, here is my bet: that Fleet Street increasingly turns its guns on the enablers of bad behaviour, which probably includes at least some of those same PR firms.”

I got pushback from a couple of senior flaks today, who think the kicking has already happened, and that it is time to move on.

They are also, I note, rather downgrading the level of the relationships they had with the Russians.

They worked for a subsidiary of an offshoot in which the oligarch had a small interest!

Honestly, they barely knew the guy! They certainly didn’t spend many billable hours editing his Wikipedia entry.

Ok, sure.

But I think the idea that we are ready to move on here is wishful thinking.

This is one of those occasions where the corporate world thinks, indeed assumes, we should be looking at what happens in the future.

And hack land is going to be at least as concerned with delving into what occurred before.

The line from the flaks is that they can’t, of course, work for Russians just now. But that assuming there is proper regime change, it may be possible to resume activities before long.

Consumer giants will return sooner than later, and when they do they will need PR.

That looks like a jump too far ahead, even conceptually.

Certainly, the idea that everyone is entitled to a lawyer, and by extension to a PR man, looks shaky just now.