Communication Olympics

Between March 23 and April 16 you can register for the 9th edition of the Communication Olympics, the most important national competition for youth interested in a career in Advertising, Public Relations or Political Communication. The competition is the best opportunity for young aspirants to get noticed by the professionals in the industry, because more than 70 of them have been invited this year to be part in the competition jury (you can find more information about the jury here).

For 2009, there are four main themes for the pre-selection of candidates:

Corporate Communication – Campaign to persuade the Romanian employees to do more sports.

Advertising – Campaign to convince the audience to buy mainly products made in Romania, as opposed to imported products

Political Communication – Campaign to convince the Romanian electorate to vote through a referendum for a change of the current republic into a presidential or parliamentary one

Public Relations – Campaign to encourage the population to recycle electronic waste

You can find more information about the competition here.

The teams that will pass the pre-selection process will have the opportunity to work on a real communication project for a company, a brand, a public institution or a public individual. After two weeks of work, the teams will be able to publicly present their projects and the best ones will be recognized and awarded prizes of 4,000 Euro in total. If you want to see examples of successful projects from past years, check out here!

For more information about the event, check out www.olimpiadelecomunicarii.ro.

Romanian Government Logo

On November 30, 2008, less than 50% of Romania’s eligible voters exercised their constitutional right for the Parliamentary Elections . Despite being the lowest voting presence since 1990, the results were not surprising at all. If two weeks ago the options for the Romanian Government were still a mental exercise, we now know the two parties that have decided to go hand in hand to create a comfortable majority in the Parliament and thus form the Government as well.

The Democrat-Liberal Party (PDL) and The Social-Democrat Party & Conservator Party alliance (PSD+PC) created a governing coalition and have already negotiated to decide which party will lead which ministries. Although, in theory, the two parties created a common governance strategy, in practice, each party will hold power on a specific set of ministries (they split them 50-50 in fact) and thus will be able to enforce its own policies in that direction.

As it looks right now, the Democrat-Liberal Party (PDL) will lead the following ministries:

• Ministry of Public Finances
• Ministry of Economy
• Ministry of Transport & Infrastructure
• Ministry of National Defense
• Ministry of Regional Development & Housing
• Ministry of Communications & Information Society
• Ministry of Culture, Cults and National Patrimony
• Ministry of Youth & Sports
• Ministry of Tourism

The Social-Democrat Party & Conservator Party alliance (PSD+PC) will head the following ministries:

• Ministry of Work, Family & Social Protection
• Ministry of Education, Research & Innovation
• Ministry of Public Health
• Ministry of Agriculture
• Ministry of External Affairs
• Ministry of Internal Affairs & Administrative Reform
• Ministry of Environment
• Ministry of Small Enterprises & Business
• Ministry for the Relationship with the Parliament

The Ministry of Justice will be given to an independent technocrat since it’s quite a sensitive portfolio that the EU is extremely concerned about, because of the rampant corruption running amok through the Romanian political system. Since we’re dealing with a political coalition that spans over both left and right oriented doctrines, I guess it will be interesting to look at specific ministries and see what will be the possible implications generated by the center of power governing that specific institution.

The first thing that stands out is the fact that PDL controls both the Ministry of Economy, as well as the Ministry of Public Finances (two different ministries that used to form a single one in the previous governance). Since PDL is allegedly a more liberal party rather than socially oriented, we can assume that the economic and financial policies will tend to be more liberal oriented. PDL also controls the Ministry of Transport & Infrastructure, the Ministry of Regional Development & Housing, as well as the Ministry of Tourism, all three of them quite important for the business environment of Romania.

On the other side, the PSD+PC alliance controls more public administration oriented ministries, which in a sense fits better with their theoretically more social oriented doctrine. However, this also gives them a lot of power controlling huge beaurocratic entities, such as the Police or the Workforce Territorial Inspectorate, both of them highly powerful in corruption related issues, for example.

However, the outlook is pretty positive, overall. Ministries directly involved in the economic and financial development of the Romanian business environment are more liberal oriented. The risk comes, however, from having the long term development of the country (education, health, etc) in a more socially oriented and corruption prone control. However, all these are mere speculations, the future will actually show us what will in fact happen.

originally posted at: blog.ceubusiness.ro

Update: An article today in Cotidianul brings more details related to the various ministries and their access to European funds. It appears that PDL will control 85% of GDP and 30% of incoming EU Integration funds, while PSD will control 15% of GDP, but 70% of incoming EU Integration funds, especially those going to the Ministry of Environment and Agriculture.

Political Map of Romanian Parliamentary Elections 2008 (image source: www.realitatea.net)

According to the Central Electoral Bureau, the final results of the Romanian Parliamentary Elections that took place on November 30, 2008 are the following:

Senate

• Democrat-Liberal Party (PDL) – 51 senators
• Social-Democrat Party & Conservator Party (PSD+PC) – 49 senators
• National Liberal Party (PNL) – 28 senators
• Democratic Union of Hungarians from Romania (UDMR) – 9 senators

Chamber of Deputies

• Democrat-Liberal Party (PDL) – 115 deputies
• Social-Democrat Party & Conservator Party (PSD+PC) – 114 deputies
• National Liberal Party (PNL) – 65 deputies
• Democratic Union of Hungarians from Romania (UDMR) – 22 deputies

For the first time in Romania, after 1990, only four major political parties have managed to score enough votes to surpass the 5% treshold that allows them to enter the Parliament, leaving outside a couple of the other smaller, but traditionally present in the Parliament in the previous years, political parties. For the first time, the Romanian population has consolidated the fragmented political arena into four major political forces that actually matter.

A quick look at the numbers tells us that there is no political party or electoral alliance that won a majority in any of the two chambers of the Romanian Parliament. What this means is that in order to ensure a proper governance, two or more of these parties need to form an alliance. While the orientation of the four parties is quite clear (PSD+PC left orientation; PD-L, PNL right orientation; UDMR populist orientation) and in itself suggests a logical alliance, the game is by far not that simple.

In fact, all parties have initiated negotiations among themselves on different fronts. PSD+PC is already negotiating with both PD-L and PNL. In the same time, PD-L is already negotiating with both PNL and PSD+PC, although they declared that they would prefer the logical right oriented alliance to be formed, also having the historical collaboration from the 2004 elections. Back then, the PD-L & PNL alliance won the elections, but broke up because of leadership conflicts after only a year. Ironically, the legal entity that the alliance was in 2004 is not yet dissolved, so it could be used as a vehicle for governance with a minimal effort.

If a right oriented political alliance is formed, the implications on the Romanian economical and business environment are pretty clear. A more liberal government will most likely push for the economic development of the country and the better liberalization of the business environment, sacrificing somehow the population in the short term, but improving its chances for a higher quality of life in the long term.

If a mixed right and left oriented political alliance is formed, the implications on the Romanian direction of development are unclear, to say the least. The alliance, most probably forced by rather personal or leadership affinities than by country needs, will have conflicting ideologies and governance programs that could result in an unclear development path for Romania, if any at all.

There’s also the option of a minority governance of one of the two parties that won most of the places in the Parliament (PD-L most probably, since it’s supported by the President, who is not a fan of any of the Prime Minister options that the other parties are offering), but this governance would be a weak one. Always at the whim of the opposing parties, who could form an opposition majority, the minority governance would most probably be unable to implement any policy that contradicts in a way or another (ideological or personal) the priorities of the opposing parties.

There’s also the option of a national unity governance, where all parties in the Parliament govern together, negotiating among themselves the key positions in the Parliament (head of Senate and head of Chamber of Deputies) and the Ministries. However, based on the affinity (or rather the lack of it) among the four Parliamentary parties, this option is a rather improbable one.

In the end, whichever the result of negotiations are, the impact on the Romanian economic and business environment will probably be a major one that we should be highly aware of and highly attuned at. Personally, I hope that the right oriented parties will reach an agreement and form a governing alliance, because at the moment it looks to be the most logical and most beneficial for Romania at this moment. However, in order to do this, they will need to be able to hold on to the alliance for the entire four years duration of their mandates and not break up in one or two years as they did previously.

(originally published at: blog.ceubusiness.ro)

On Sunday, Realitatea.NET was the only news site to register over 1 million page views, breaking its own previous record of 823,000 page views from September 1, 2008. In the same time, Realitatea.NET had three times more page views than it’s main competitor, Hotnews, gathering also 16,000 more unique visitors and 22,000 more visits. The peak traffic was recorded between 18-19 hours, when the website registered more than 100,000 page views and more than 13,000 visits.

Realitatea.NET was also the second most attractive news website on the elections day, its visitors spending a lot of their time within its pages. The average visit time within the website was 18:29 minutes, only surpassed by Cotidianul with an average visit time of 20 minutes.

Right before the exit poll results, Realitatea.NET will be broadcasting live together with Ionel Lespuc (Editor-in-Chief Realitatea.NET), Robert Turcescu (Executive Director, Realitatea.FM) and Aurelian Muntean (Median Research Center). Ionel and his guests will explore today’s events and will present some information from the exit poll results and the testvot.eu MRC project. The live broadcast will also feature an analysis of today’s online polls through which the site visitors could express their opinions related to what was their main motivation for voting today and whom they thought will be the next Prime Minister of Romania.

Realitatea.NET Alegeri 2008 (www.realitatea.net)

Don’t Vote Video:

Romanian version:

Source: IQads & Dorin Boerescu

If you want to help Romania become a better place to be, send this information to all your friends and relatives so that they can make an informed choice at the incoming parliamentary elections. I believe it is not fair to elect representatives that will not be there to vote for a better life for us more than 50% of the time.

Vivi, congratulations for an extremely interesting and useful political marketing tool!

Congratulations Barack Obama! Congratulations America!

However, please remember that the US elections are merely the hook that triggered the marketing lesson taught by Seth Godin, and you should not get yourself drowned in it because the teachings of the story are somewhere else. The real marketing lessons that Seth Godin is teaching us are in the short, bolded phrases in his post: “Stories really matter,” “TV is over,” “Permission matters,” “Marketing is tribal,” “Motivating the committed outperforms persuading the uncommitted,” “Attack ads don’t always work,” “We get what we deserve.”

Using the US Elections as a hook, Seth Godin is actually teaching his marketing lessons through his own marketing tools, the books he has published on various key areas of marketing, promoting them in the same time by telling his story to his tribe with the tribe’s permission because the tribe is getting what it deserves.

“Sorin Tudor is the Managing Director of Project365 Communication, a company with expertise in political marketing, communication and public relations. He started his career as a journalist in 1990, entering the public relations realm in 1993. Between 1999 and 2000 he taught the Public Relations & Advertising course at the Political Studies Department of University of Bucharest.

He started his work in political marketing in 1996, coordinating political marketing campaigns at national and regional level during the elections from 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008. Starting in 2006, he focused on online communication projects.” (source: Sorin Tudor)

Congratulations Sorin and best of luck in your future political marketing projects!