Final Word from Friday, February 22, 2008
Christian Guinot, a 20-year veteran of media and advertising, moved to Moscow a year ago to head Mediaedge-CIA's local office and told the Financial Times about his experience there. He said he doesn't speak a word of Russian but doesn't really need to, because most of his business is with international clients. Finding experienced staff is difficult, he said, because the media market is so young, and there's also probably higher turnover there than anywhere else. His agency's job, he added, is to help clients identify how best in the media to get their message across. So let's see if we understand this correctly. He can't speak a word of Russian and has trouble finding and keeping good people who do, but he's advising clients on media strategy. Most of them don't speak Russian either, so they don't know the difference. Whew. It's a good thing that it's Russia and that this could never happen here.[Czech Republic France French press television]
Glossary of difficult words
nope - informal variant of No;
Mediaedge-CIA - it calls itself the first global communications and planning agency;
turnover - the rate at which employees leave a workforce and are replaced;
whew - used to express surprise, relief or a feeling of being very hot or tired (in this case it expresses relief).