Reuters, Business Operations Report
There are 260 Bulgarian companies currently offering public-relations services - solid testimony to the growing importance of the communications sector in Bulgaria, even if many are small firms of questionable quality. Most have been established only since 1994, and the industry virtually stagnated until 1999. According to Konstantin Ivanov, one of Bulgaria's few journalists who specialises in PR developments, it is extremely easy to penetrate the media in Bulgaria, allowing companies to minimise their advertising budgets.
Maxim Behar, the CEO of M3 Communications Group, uses the example of his agency's campaign for AMOCO (US) to illustrate the potential impact of public relations in Bulgaria. When AMOCO came to Bulgaria, he says, M3's market research revealed that 3% of Bulgarians knew who they were. Two weeks later that figure had risen to 75%. That, claims Mr Behar, came without spending a penny on advertising. To achieve this Mr Behar first organised a lunch in the Sheraton hotel, to which he invited all major media decision-makers. A former editor of a daily newspaper himself, Mr Behar believes that had the media bosses not been impressed, his efforts would have met resistance. The lunch was followed by a presentation of the corporation that "emphasised the human factors". Three days later a follow-up event was launched, this time for the journalists. The only difference, says MrBehar, was that much more detail was provided about the company's project in Bulgaria. "Of course, we also stressed that the company was a solid investor, a payer of taxes, and a good creator of local employment." The media tend to ask for money when writing a story about a big company, says Nikolai Nedelchev of MARC Communications. "You have to be very careful about this, for word spreads fast. If it gets out that you've given money once, there's no looking back." On the other hand, Mr Ivanov points out that journalists are keen to become friends of CEO's, who in turn should be entirely open and available all the time. Mr Nedelchev advises inviting editors - or key journalists - to breakfasts or lunches in order to create an impression of accessibility.
A company must have a face, says Mr Behar. It is very important at a very early stage when presenting a company to introduce the face and for that person always to be accessible to the public. In the AMOCO campaign they went to much effort to present the head of the company as an attractive and funny personality. If a journalist does get something wrong, it is always possible to speak with the editor-in-chief, says Mr Ivanov. However, it should be remembered that all the newspapers are connected with some economic interest group or other, and that it is therefore not necessarily the journalist who is to blame. "To Bulgarian clients, media coverage is very important. They are very focused on getting their name on the front page of the paper," says Mr Nedelchev. However, he believes that PR goals are best served by separating event and media planning. Thus, Mr Nedelchev delegates tasks such as organisation of a cocktail party for journalists to MARC's sister company, EVENTIS, while his company concentrates on devising newsworthy stories and presenting them to the public, sending out press releases, and providing media training for clients. Despite the relative receptiveness of the press, Mr Nedelchev believes that effective PR requires an ability to identify what is newsworthy, to know how and to whom it should be submitted, and to do the follow-up. One of MARC's most successful campaigns demonstrated that Bulgarian journalists respond well to gimmicks. For the fabric softener Coccolino, MARC launched a competition to look for "The ideal husband", combining preservation of clothes with reinforcement of family values. In launching their campaign, wives who thought their partners fit the bill were asked to say why. Promising candidates were invited to a competition in which they were given tasks such as ironing or washing a shirt, or sewing on a button. The media gave it considerable coverage, says Mr Nedelchev, and this year the competition took place in Sofia, while next year's will be extended to several other cities as well.
The focus of PR in Bulgaria is on publicity and information rather than getting feedback from the public and trying to counter negative impressions, says Desislava Nicolova, the head of ROI communication and a lecturer in communications at the New Bulgarian University. She maintains that this is due more to the relative passiveness of the Bulgarian public than to the inexperience of local PR companies. Negative sentiment is simply of limited importance. "Bulgarians are still not too concerned about ecologically friendly products, for example. Price is still the bottom line," says Ms Nicolova. Nor can the relatively unsophisticated approach to public relations in Bulgaria be blamed on the agencies themselves, argues Ms Nicolova. There are few clients prepared to spend the money required for more sustained and advanced campaigns - and very little competition among the type of major clients who are. She believes that preferences still change too quickly in Bulgaria for most clients to want to invest in a long-term campaign. She cites as proof the recent general election, in which the exiled former king returned to the country two months before the elections, said little to the press (or, indeed, anyone else) and still won a landslide victory. The campaign violated time-tested PR rules - merely indicating that the rules' time has not yet come in Bulgaria.
Send to Kindle
