We bet big, and it paid off

The interview was published in Media i Marketing Polska (MMP) magazine.

On the one hand, we have what global groups also possess, that is, global know-how and branches in various markets, and on the other hand, we have 100% autonomy – says Zofia Bugajna-Kasdepke, co-founder and CEO of SEC Newgate CEE.

“MMP”: The perception of public relations as more than just running a press office has already reached broader awareness—at least in the marketing or media industry. How would you describe this “something more” in the case of SEC Newgate CEE?

Zofia Bugajna-Kasdepke: Drawing on our previous experience in international network agencies, Sebastian [Hejnowski] and I focused on the seniority of the team and created a reputation consulting and Public Affairs agency.

We mainly work with company boards and are part of the decision-making process. The moment a press office order comes in, it’s the last element in executing a strategy, meaning everything has already been devised, a decision has been made about what to do, and now it’s time to announce it. We work with the board to determine what should be done, and together we come up with flagship projects for the company or corrective programs, or we plan transformations related, for example, to legislation. Today, SEC Newgate is both a public relations and a public affairs agency, so the projects we run often focus on, for example, the legal regulations in a particular industry and how they affect business. We have many people in the agency with 15-20 years of experience because they need to have a great understanding of how various industries function.

This specialization toward a strategic agency has led us to focus exclusively on issues concerning corporate challenges. Sometimes the challenge is to tell the story of something good happening within the company, and sometimes there’s a problem that needs to be addressed or at least explained because mistakes have ocurred in stakeholder or journalist relations. We engage in projects that require specialist knowledge, a good understanding of how business looks from the client’s side. After three years, we are one of the largest PR firms in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe.

What can you do differently in the agency you founded compared to large groups like Publicis?

First of all, we choose sectors in which we have expertise, such as energy, heavy industry, fintech, or large digital transformations. We select team members based on these topics, sometimes bringing in people without communication experience but with business experience. This gives the client consulting that helps them make better decisions. By specializing in selected sectors, we can work faster, and in a way, that agility is rewarded.
A key decision was choosing SEC Newgate Group as an investor in the early development stage. This means that three years after saying, “Hello, we’re in!” we are, first, a hub for the Central and Eastern European markets, and second, Sebastian is on the global board, responsible for the entire CEE region, the Balkans, and the Persian Gulf, acquiring companies, integrating them, and transforming them. Thanks to this, we were able to move forward with a real sense of momentum, taking on projects in several markets or migrating clients from Poland to London or Brussels.

So, on one hand, we have what global groups have—global know-how and branches in various markets—and on the other hand, we have 100% autonomy. Everything we do here depends on our decisions. We’re neither overly regulated like large corporations, nor are we at risk of something like, “China didn’t meet targets, so we have a freeze on raises for our best people.”

We consciously chose SEC Newgate as a group in a growth phase with sufficient resources to maintain this momentum. We didn’t want to join an international organization that has been on the market so long it has a rigid structure. SEC Newgate is a company that began its international expansion only 10 years ago, and today, it’s the twentieth-largest group in the world. This is a great moment because we have a real impact on the shape of the group, the direction of its development, and the selection of agencies for acquisition in the CEE region. I manage the Warsaw office, which is a hub for CEE, and Sebastian is responsible for the entire East EMEA region. We are proud of this because, although the group’s owners in Milan looked at us enthusiastically from the beginning, they still checked if what we promised would indeed happen, and since it did, we gained their trust.

In the second year of SEC Newgate CEE’s existence, we integrated MARTIS Consulting, a company that had been on the market for 20 years (rebranded during the transition period as SEC Newgate Polska). Today, we have a really good team, which cost us a lot of effort and money. For six months, we even had three offices in Warsaw (two old ones and one new one—shared for the merged company), which was a bit extravagant, but it paid off. People got to know us, trusted us, and the transition of clients also went relatively smoothly. After three years, we are on the verge of crossing the threshold of 10 million in annual revenue from fees, so we believe we’re progressing at a good pace. Especially since we started in a difficult moment in March 2021, during a total lockdown, when even those wishing us well were saying we should reconsider. We took a risk, bet big, and it paid off—less than two years later (results for 2022), we became the 11th largest agency in Poland according to the PR Check ranking.

We have a large client portfolio, and more importantly, we have long-term clients like TVN Warner Bros. Discovery, Strabag, The Nielsen Company, or Nestlé, with whom we are expanding our areas of cooperation. An example is the Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), one of the most important NGOs in the United States, which, after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, decided to engage in Poland and invested $100 million in humanitarian aid for Ukraine in its first year. We started with handling GEM in Poland, and within a year, the collaboration expanded to cover the entire EMEA region.

What was your first project?

Our founding project was “lex TVN,” the fight for free media in Poland. A start-up agency had to fight against the government, which required courage. The stakes were high, the client was very demanding, a large corporation, and there was a lot of media and politics involved. Our mission is to “create positive change,” and I believe we succeeded in that. If the law had passed and TVN hadn’t received its license, it would have significantly weakened civil society. We were finalists of the PRWeek Global Awards in the “Issues and Crisis” category for this project.

You say about yourselves: “We are the people you need when you want to seize an opportunity or solve a problem.” In many cases, a problem or challenge opens up an opportunity as well, right?

You know, generally, when a client comes to us, it’s not that they say: “Ladies and gentlemen, we need to do this and that,” and then the agency says, “OK.” Instead, they usually talk about the kind of challenge they have, and we try to suggest how to approach it, selecting the right means, which sometimes involves working with the media, and sometimes with selectively chosen opinion leaders like think tanks. One such challenging and demanding client we currently have is Metinvest.

The company is not very well-known in Poland, but if I say it owns Azovstal in Mariupol, then everyone has probably heard of it. Metinvest is the largest taxpayer in Ukraine, and we handle it in Poland, but also in the context of the entire European Union.

Looking at the list of areas you operate in, which one do you personally feel most connected to? Is it sustainable development, ESG?

Yes, I like the area that includes DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), and that is definitely my domain because I am also involved in women’s foundations. As an agency, we strategically chose two areas in which we operate non-profit, and one of them is DEI, so we are engaged in LGBTQ-related initiatives, for example, for the Equaversity Foundation. We support the Business Women’s Foundation as a strategic advisor and also collaborate with Joanna Przetakiewicz and the New Era Women Foundation – for example, we did the “Coalition Against Loneliness” campaign with VML, which started with a big PR stunt (guests thought they were attending a fashion show but came to the launch of a social campaign), where power speeches were given by the health and education ministers. The second area, alongside women and LGBTQ+, where we work pro bono, is art, and here we executed a major project – a communication strategy for the Polish Pavilion project at the Venice Art Biennale.

ESG is important because it concerns business transformation, which is a significant focus for us. So, it’s not about actions like “we plant trees and make a show out of it,” but about things that genuinely change business. We create integrated reports, help companies with ESG strategies, and even have our own tool showing how this is evolving in Poland and globally – the SEC Newgate ESG Monitor. We are keen to manage large business transformations, where companies need to change entirely, or adjust their production chains or social functions – such projects are something we gladly handle.

Advocacy is also important to you. Can you explain that concept?

These are projects where it’s important to win people over and find allies—local communities, the business environment, or politicians—for a given cause. We worked for the Ministry of Climate on a campaign for nuclear energy, but another example is the “Coalition Against Loneliness,” where one goal is to increase Poland’s investment in psychiatry.

You have experience as a juror in many competitions. This leads me to ask, as raised in a campaign run recently by the Association of Public Relations Firms: what can be done to make young people fall in love with PR and to ensure that this industry, which sets very ambitious goals, truly attracts top professionals?

In the agency, there’s a joke that to be an intern at SEC Newgate, you first need to be a president, because the last three interns we had were actually presidents of their university scientific club at the University of Warsaw. I think we have a strong pull on talented young people. This year, our zoomers, Agata Nowotnik and Szymon Dziewięcki, won the Young Creatives competition and went to the Cannes Lions festival. In 2021, Szymon won the same competition with Ewa Grabek, and they went on to win the NEXT Gen and take bronze in the global ICCO competition. They were also nominated for the Ad Wo/Man Young category.

Our employees come from diverse backgrounds, for example, we have people who previously worked in law firms, which would have been unthinkable 10 years ago, and many have worked in lobbying or consulting firms before, because what we do is largely strategic consulting, which has little to do with media relations tactics.

We’ve placed a lot of emphasis on direct communication and transparency in the organization, meaning, for example, that our financial results are 100% available to everyone, including interns. Every three months, we survey employee satisfaction, asking how they feel at work, whether they have enough support from their superiors, and whether their workload is reasonable. Once employees realized that we actually respond to every comment, we started receiving a lot of great suggestions for things that could be improved or things we simply hadn’t thought of.

We are a rainbow organization, and this is very important to Generation Z, as we see in our surveys. We have 100% agreement that we are a place that supports diversity. Flexibility at work, a colorful office, a relaxed atmosphere, and avoiding corporate jargon—all of these things lead to us receiving applications through word of mouth. We have hired many people from internships, which also builds our success story.

What else, besides contact with young talent, have you gained from working on various juries?

Nothing gives you better insight into the situation in a given market than being a juror, reflecting on where we stand as Poland compared to other countries. When an individual agency shows its cases, it’s sometimes difficult to say how strong it is compared to competitors or whether it’s below or above a certain standard. But when you’re a juror in a competition, you get an overview of the work from all market participants.

For some time, Poland was a country where you could test concepts, but that period is over—clients in Poland are quite conservative now. The most interesting professional experience for me was a competition in Dubai—it showed me what can be achieved when you invest in developing creativity. The Persian Gulf was not associated with creativity, but after investing in the Cannes Lions license, bringing in jurors and speakers from abroad, and creating the Dubai Lynx festival, they managed to go from zero to a total of about 150 Lions in a decade. And that, in my opinion, proves that it’s not about saying one nation is weaker; it’s always a systemic issue.

Competitions build the entire industry, helping clients develop as well, seeing what they can demand and what they can dare to do. From this perspective, they are essential.

As we talk, I keep looking at that bookshelf behind you, so I can’t resist asking about your private and professional connections to culture.

Yes, culture is important to me professionally too; I’ve already mentioned our collaboration with Zachęta – National Gallery of Art. This year, we were their strategic advisor for the Polish Pavilion project at the Venice Art Biennale. It was a difficult project, partly because there was a change in the team responsible for the exhibition amid high political tensions. And they weren’t Polish but Ukrainian, which was challenging due to declining sympathy for Ukraine. Moreover, it was a video installation, so it didn’t have the “Instagram-worthy” appeal of the previous exhibition; it required some explanation. In the end, it was a great success, with the Polish Pavilion being shortlisted among the best, and major global media outlets wrote about it.

So fortunately, the fact that I love opera, enjoy reading books, and am generally interested in contemporary art translates into the projects I handle professionally.

Do your employees also often combine their private interests or passions with their professional work?

We try to select people for the agency who have passions in diverse areas, so we have a woman who performs with fire, a cosmologist, a beekeeper, or a guy who can read cuneiform script. We always make sure that work, which is obviously important, leaves room for the often incredible things people do privately.

Each of our employees received a two-person pass to a museum exhibit at the National Museum last year. By encouraging participation in culture, we send a signal that this is something we value as an agency. I think this is also about creating a work environment that is creative and open to diversity.

The fact that we’re not a homogenous team also affects how we solve problems or approach a given case. We have a rule that we hire people with different political views, both conservative and ultra-liberal. We have representatives of five religions, a Polish ethnic minority member, a person with disabilities, and quite a diverse set of neurodivergent individuals. It’s hard to predict or even understand the arguments of the other side if you don’t have someone on the team with a different worldview, who asks you all the annoying but necessary questions. We invest a lot in creating a work culture where differing opinions aren’t a war, but a kind of sparring, where the clash of ideas helps develop better solutions. It’s not good when everyone is cut from the same cloth…

…and we live in informational bubbles created by social media.

The advertising or PR industry is sometimes dominated by the, let’s say, liberal side. Personally, I’m also on that side, but from the perspective of organizational hygiene, a good grounding in reality, I need someone to shake me out of my comfort zone and thought process. Going through such sparring sessions allows us to present different arguments to the client or show how a particular statement might resonate in various environments. I think that’s a significant value we offer today.

What would you wish for yourself and your agency in the near future?

It might be easier for me to start with a long-term ambition—to become the largest firm in this industry. Today we have 52 employees, but we are hiring intensively and looking for new people. I think in the shorter term, it would be nice to maintain the atmosphere we currently have in the company. That’s the biggest challenge, but also the greatest joy when it works out. We have good feedback—our people say there’s good internal communication and a lot of kindness. We’ve worked hard to ensure there’s no competition within the agency but rather collaboration between teams. So my greatest satisfaction would be to maintain this despite the agency’s dynamic growth. If we do, we will surely be in a good place.

Interview by Paweł Piasecki