The comms, PR, and journo world is a small one. Over the weekend, I had half a dozen people send me the same Futurism article via WhatsApp. It detailed UK-based PR firm Movchan Agency, which journalist Maggie Harrison Dupré at Futurism found had created numerous fake PR representatives — including names, email addresses, biographies, and, in some cases, AI-generated/stock-photo headshots — to pitch stories to journalists.
I was disappointed. As a journalist, trust and relationships are everything. I was also confused, because I'd received plenty of entirely legitimate pitches from Movchan Agency over the years that resulted in interviews and coverage, including an interview with Zing coach CEO Anton Marchanka, Gradient Labs CEO Dimitri Masin, Anatolii Kasianov, co-founder and co-CEO of HOLYWATER, and Natalia Shahmetova from nove8, developer of Woofz.
So, I'm struggling to understand why the agency felt the need to create more than a dozen fictional PR personas. In response to Futurism's questions, founder Nadya Movchan said:
“A few months ago (likely after one of Gmail’s deliverability updates), we had a major issue with our domain reputation. While we started working on the recovery, we decided to purchase pre-warmed domains, so as not to halt outreach, as a temporary measure. They came with pre-warmed mailboxes with set names and pictures from the vendor.”
