History

The CROS Group has been active on the Russian public relations market since 1997. CROS founder and president Sergei Zverev is well known to the public for his work in political consulting and PR, as well as in other areas. CROS employs over 90 highly-skilled professionals with different backgrounds and expertise, including consultants, journalists, sociologists, political scientists, economists, lawyers and historians. CROS employees have worked for the PR departments of major Russian and international corporations, followed careers in federal ministries and other government agencies, and also held leading editorial positions in mass media. By pooling the professional experience of employees, the company has earned the reputation of a brainstorming network, generating ideas on a daily basis, an intellectual centre devising the strategies and ideologies of PR campaigns, developing new methodologies and successfully applying tried and tested technologies. At CROS we create tailor-made solutions for client-specific requests.

CROS became widely known when it implemented one of its first public relations projects, involving media coverage and other publicity for the 2002 census of the Russian population. The magazine Sovetnik (Adviser) called it “the biggest PR project of recent times, second in scope only to the presidential elections.” CROS was subsequently awarded the “Silver Archer” annual National Prize for the Development of Public Relations in the Best PR Project category.

CROS has over the past few years substantially expanded the range of services it provides, optimized the company structure, reinforced business contacts with players on the media market, made its presence felt at both federal and regional levels, and started to represent the interests of Russian clients and other corporate figures internationally.

Today, CROS provides the widest possible range of public relations services, facilitating the creation of a positive image for its clients, promoting brand names on the Russian market and implementing wide-ranging public campaigns.

Key areas of work include the planning and implementation of PR campaigns, project management in government relations and investor relations, as well as a number of other areas: reputation management, public awareness campaigns as part of federal programs, crisis management of stories that have broken in the media, work with the media, cooperation with legislative and executive authorities, holding of public events and press conferences, conducting research on a company’s share of voice/media coverage, conducting public opinion polls and expert surveys, assessment of the effectiveness of publicity campaigns, establishment of websites and much more.

CROS has implemented a number of corporate PR campaigns for Russian and foreign clients, including Sberbank of Russia, Gazprom, Gazprombank, Norilsk Nickel, AK Sibur, Microsoft, Nestle Food, Sun Inbev, and Toyota Motor Corp., Wimm-Bill-Dann, Carrefour and others.

Besides, CROS stands out among its competitors owing to another key asset: its implementation of a number of federal campaigns, public awareness work as part of the 2002 Census of the Russian population, provision of media coverage and other publicity support for the federal program “Reform of the State Service of the Russian Federation,” media coverage and other publicity for the federal targeted program “Electronic Russia,” the priority national project “Healthcare,” the federal targeted program “Development of Physical Fitness and Sport in the Russian Federation for 2006-2015,” the 2006 Russian Agricultural Census, media coverage and other publicity for the additional shares issue of Sberbank of Russia (“the People’s IPO”).