Ad agencies launch EU promotion campaign
By : Justyna Wrobel
Cityboard Media and Grey Warszawa have launched an advertising campaign to promote public awareness of Poland's accession to the European Union (EU).
By launching "Poland towards Europe," a national outdoor advertising campaign, the Warsaw agencies aim to recapture waning public interest in EU membership. They refused to say how much the month-long campaign would cost.
"Both Grey and Cityboard Media support Poland's accession to the EU, so we simply wanted to promote that process," said Beata Fertak, Cityboard Media's PR manager.
Cityboard, an outdoor ad company, is running the pro-EU campaign on its 300 freestanding billboards known as cityboards. G2, a subsidiary of Grey Warszawa, came up with the ad a comfy blue couch covered with EU stars and the slogan, "Poland towards Europe. It's good to be in the family." The campaign is targeted at educated Poles in the 28 largest cities around the country.
Fertak said that Poles haven't been given straightforward information about the advantages of EU membership and that the campaign hopes to present union accession in a positive light.
Katarzyna Zak, a Varsovian who supports accession, said the billboard campaign is a good idea. But while she admitted the campaign would not be able to address the different problems associated with joining the union, it could at least stimulate interest. "The average Pole doesn't know a lot about what accession means for us," Zak said.
Fertak added that, "we hope Poles will start seeing the process from a different angle. After all, accession also means cultural exchange."
Meanwhile, according to an Institute of Public Affairs (ISP) study last year, about 50% of Poles would vote for EU accession in a referendum. Jacek Kucharczyk, a sociologist at ISP, said the institute later learned that 67% of people willing to take part in a referendum said they favored accession, while 18% were against it.
Kucharczyk added that it was hard to say how many Poles support union membership because many people are still undecided on the subject.
But he also wasn't sure whether the "Poland towards Europe" campaign would have a positive affect on public opinion.
He said a large advertising campaign promoting EU accession could worry Poles, who see the structure of the EU as something much bigger and stronger than their own country. As such, the campaign's elevated cityboards may not necessarily arouse positive feelings among Poles, who could find it too brash. "For some people the campaign could give the impression that the union brings more disadvantages than advantages," Kucharczyk said.
But Fertak said the campaign is only intended to promote interest in the subject. "We would like (people) to pay more attention to this issue."
