Wanted: The Consumer

Ziarul Financiar and the Romanian Bureau of Circulation Audit (BRAT) on Thursday, May 3 organised at Crowne Plaza a seminar entitled “Wanted: The Consumer,” a discussion dealing with the accurate profile of the Romanian consumer of printed media. Several special guests, such as Rene Schmutz, general manager of WEMF (the Swiss Bureau of Circulation Audit), and Harald Amschler, the technical audience director, attended the meeting.

The seminar reunited several publishers and representatives of advertising companies: Dan Balotescu, media director of Initiative Media Romania and BRAT president, Cristian Grigorescu, media director with Mobifon, Cristina Simion, deputy general manager with the Romanian Publishing Group.

As consultants for the Romanian project of printed media audience research, Rene Schmutz and Harald Amschler presented the advantages of the project called National Readership Survey, which is the international standard for sampling and interviewing methods and provides viable data on newspaper and magazine coverage in Romania.

Any domestic or multinational company usually allots funds for advertising and a share of them is directed to the printed media. As the decision to invest in the advertising industry is based on information, companies need accurate and valid data so as the investment proves efficient.

Strong companies are investing significant amounts in advertisements placed in the Romanian printed media and these investments will increase if publishers can prove that people do buy their newspapers and magazines. The budgets allotted to the printed media have increased since 1999, as publications became more credible since they underwent surveys and reports.

The data supplied by NRS are useful both for the advertising companies and the advertisers, who may draw professional media planning, and for the publishers, who may assess the trends on the printed media consumer market at different moments in time.

As NRS reports have a deep impact on the advertisers’ decision to buy advertising space, the project has to meet several requirements in order to be credible and competitive.

One of them is high-quality market research with accurate results whose error margin should not exceed the statistically admitted limit of 5%; the results should be provided to the interested parties through annual newsletters.

Amschler said that the project should be adjusted to Romanian realities and applied in stages, as “Rome wasn’t built in a day, either.”