Political marketing: a developing business in Romania

Political marketing, or how to “sell” the image of a political personality or a party, is on its way in Romania, as parties tend to resort more frequently to specialists in this field, and the price of such a campaign might even reach one million dollars.

“The first product of political marketing in Romania was Theodor Stolojan” back in 1992, states Bogdan Teodorescu, chairman of IMOLA Communications, a firm specialised in public relations. As a Premier, Stolojan had an efficient image campaign that led to the positive image of his ruling and to the high popularity he also enjoyed after going abroad, Teodorescu adds. According to Teodorescu, another first-time creation in the domain was FSN’s anti-privatisation campaign, based on the concept “We will not sell our country.”

The campaigns’ development and costs vary depending on their objectives and on what kind of services the buyer wants. Radu Florescu, managing director with Saatchi&Saatchi, states that such a campaign can start from 100,000 dollars and can get to one million dollars. “The party usually comes with a certain budget and we tell them what we can do with the respective money,” Florescu states.

According to Teodorescu, “there is a big difference between the campaign of a candidate wishing to become Romania’s president and a candidate running in the same race, but intending to negotiate the votes he obtains.”

The activity develops following certain rules. Corina Vintan, public relations manager with Saatchi&Saatchi, says that the firm establishes a creation concept, a public relations strategy and a strategy for media advertising contracting. Every campaign is preceded by a field research settling the themes of the electoral agenda, that is the subjects that are important for the electorate, which are however differentiated along social-professional segments, shows Vintan. Then, the agency’s specialists create the messages through which the respective themes are subsequently conveyed to the electorate and are tested on representative samples. Methods depend on the renown of the promoted person. For a no-name candidate, advertising in itself is preferred, the more so as its appearance is certain and nobody interferes with its content, she also says.

These services are related to monitoring, analyses, strategy, creation, production and implementation, Teodorescu explains, adding that the duration of a campaign depends on its purpose and target electors.

A problem occurs as to the cooperation with parties, as they do not have communication and image specialists. “They have good people for politics and good enough people for communication, but they rarely have very good people for both these activities. This is more of an arrogant attitude of politicians, who believe they can do them both,” Florescu thinks.

A company providing political marketing services likes to select its customers. “We cannot work with all political parties. There is a limit imposed by morals and common sense. At least, not with all parties at the same time,” Radu Florescu says. “In order to avoid conflicts of interest, our company works with only one candidate or party in a given period of time,” Bogdan Teodorescu adds.

Political marketing is barely emerging in Romania, but the main strategies are those used in Western countries, the Saatchi&Saatchi manager says.

However, the chairman of Imola Communications says that there are many differences between the Western market and the Romanian one, due to the attitude of the politicians involved. They either feel a certain reserve towards such services or use them only during electoral campaigns. “There is a lack of an awareness regarding the need to continuously polish one’s image, by exploiting the period between electoral years as well,” Teodorescu says. He adds that another difference is the “unprofessional attitude” displayed by certain institutions that conduct polls, “which sometimes take the liberty of playing with figures.”