Under Two Years, One Record-Breaking Olympiad: The Rise of Yamoratti Advertising

In the week before the 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad opened in Samarkand, a press release datelined London went out on the international newswires. It was soon being carried by partners as far apart as Australia’s AAP, Japan’s Kyodo News PR Wire and Italy’s Adnkronos. Behind it was Yamoratti Advertising, the London agency running the international PR campaign for the Olympiad’s Uzbek hosts. Founded in 2025 by Yasmina Ibragimova, the agency has delivered more than 80 campaigns for clients in Britain, France and Central Asia in less than two years, and has become one of the fast-growing young names on London’s independent agency scene. Growing fast, on purpose Most agencies grow by doing more of the same. Yamoratti has grown by taking on bigger briefs. It began with video content and creator campaigns, then added international PR, wire distribution, performance marketing, AI-powered production and sponsorship strategy. Today it can carry a global event from the first press release to the last headline. Across all its campaigns, the agency’s work has reached a combined audience of more than 1 billion. “We never planned to grow slowly,” says Ibragimova. “Every project has to be a step up from the last one: a new market, a new format, a bigger stage. Samarkand was the biggest stage yet, and it won’t be the last.” Image credit: Yamoratti Advertising Telling Samarkand’s story to the world On paper, the Olympiad was a gift of a story. For the first time since the competition began in 1927, it was being held in Central Asia. Nearly 400 national teams and close to 2,000 players, more than 230 of them grandmasters, made it the largest edition ever staged. And the host city had history on its side: some of the oldest chess pieces ever found were dug up on the edge of Samarkand in 1977. The challenge was getting that story in front of the right people, in the right languages, at the right time. That was the job the Uzbek organisers gave Yamoratti. The agency shaped the media strategy and produced the press materials in English, Russian and Uzbek. It sent the story out through international wire services, placed features with business and regional titles across the UK, Central Asia and Asia, ran the event’s social channels and followed the coverage in more than ten languages. How the story ended was, of course, out of the agency’s hands. Uzbekistan beat Ukraine in the final round to win Open gold on home soil, its second Olympiad title after Chennai in 2022, and the Uzbekistan Chess Federation was named Best Federation at the FIDE Excellence Awards 2026. More than 60,000 guests travelled to Samarkand, and close to half a million people visited fan zones around the country. “Central Asia has extraordinary stories, but for a long time too few people were telling them in a language international media understands,” Ibragimova says. “Samarkand was our chance to change that. We wanted the world to hear more than the final score. We wanted people to understand why this Olympiad mattered.” The feed is the new front page Ibragimova’s bet is that the line between PR and social media has disappeared. A feature in a business magazine still matters. So does the fifteen-second clip a creator posts from the venue, and the conversation it starts in the comments. Yamoratti plans all three together, which is why its campaigns tend to run on newswires, in print and on short-form video at the same time. “People don’t separate news from their feed any more, so we don’t either,” she says. “A story has to work in a newspaper, in a Reel and in a conversation. If it only works in one of those places, it isn’t finished.” That is also why creators sit at the centre of the agency’s work. Yamoratti has built a network of more than 3,000 creators and treats them as storytellers, not ad space. The founder setting the pace Ibragimova moved to Britain on her own and built the agency from the ground up, and her route into marketing was anything but conventional. She started her first business, Skywin, with about $100 and a laptop. One of its first projects was a virtual gallery in the metaverse for the Uzbek artist Lekim Ibragimov, which caught the attention of Forbes Kazakhstan. Before Yamoratti, she also worked on campaigns involving Coca-Cola Uzbekistan, Garnier, Pandora, Elemis and Erborian. She is a creator in her own right, too. Publishing as Miya Muratta, she shares both the wins and the setbacks of building a business with more than 200,000 followers. That openness has become part of the agency’s character. “I know what it feels like to be on the other side of a brand brief,” she says. “When a creator genuinely believes in a product, the audience can tell. When they don’t, no budget in the world will fix it.” From couture to chess Fashion and beauty are where Yamoratti made its name, with work spanning luxury fashion in Paris and beauty in London. Its client list now also takes in fintech, hospitality, professional services and, after Samarkand, international sport. Clients get one team for most of what modern marketing demands: international PR, short-form video at volume, performance advertising, creator partnerships and AI-powered photo and video production. What comes next “Our ambition is to build one of Europe’s leading independent full-service agencies,” Ibragimova says, “and to open doors for Central Asian brands, founders and creators along the way.” A couple of years ago, that might have sounded like wishful thinking. After Samarkand, it sounds a lot more like a plan. About Yamoratti Advertising Yamoratti Advertising (Yamoratti ADV LTD) is a London PR and digital marketing agency founded in 2025. Working under the line “World PR in Digital Media”, it delivers international PR and wire distribution, social media and short-form video, performance marketing, creator partnerships and AI-assisted content production for clients in the UK, France and Central Asia. Managing Directors: Yasmina Ibragimova and Aleksandra Vlasova. Contact: [email protected] This is a sponsored article.