Media firms to promote Poland abroad
By : Robert Wylot
Untamed wilderness: Companies are eager to help promote Poland abroad.
Competition is hotting up among public relations firms, ad agencies and publishing houses to win lucrative government contracts to promote Poland abroad.
Last week's award by the Foreign Ministry to a publishing consortium to produce promotional material about the country for the European Union (EU) was only one in a number of recent and future tenders by the government to publicize Poland internationally. As well as the financial rewards, companies are also using the contracts to raise their business profiles when competing for other work.
"It's a growing market," said Pawel Rabiej, vice president of publishing house Business Press. "The concept of exporting intellectual ideas opens new opportunities, while everyone in the Polish publishing and advertising industries is focused on the domestic market."
The Foreign Ministry awarded a consortium of Business Press, Internet portal Onet.pl and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute a zl. 6 million ($1.42 million) contract to produce material on Poland for EU bureaucrats and journalists. In the fall, another tender will be announced for organizing study tours for European journalists, experts, officials and diplomats in Poland.
While the contracts are becoming increasingly popular among homegrown media companies, the ministry said the funds are modest by Western European standards.
"The funds assigned for the promotion of Poland are not as much as we'd wish," said Alina Magnuska, director of the promotion department at the Foreign Ministry.
Unlike most European countries, Poland has no coordinated government body to help promote the country abroad. "The funds are distributed across various bodies and it would be good if we could integrate this," Magnuska said. She said three departments at the Foreign Ministry last year spent more than zl. 20 million ($4.7 million) on promoting the country abroad and that the figure for 2001 would be similar.
For its part, the Polish Tourism Organization (POT) has zl. 40 million ($9.5 million) a year to promote Poland as a destination. In total, the government spends about zl. 60 million ($14.2 million) a year advertising Poland.
"Our promotion budget should be at least as big as Hungary's, which spends $80 million annually," Rabiej said.
By contrast, Western European countries are far more generous in their efforts to promote themselves abroad. Magnuska said the U.K. spends $1 billion annually, while Germany and France spend $1.5 billion each.
Industry sources said the government's contribution should be more. "We haven't promoted ourselves for many years, so we should now undertake radical promotional efforts," Rabiej said.
But despite the lack of funds, companies are flocking to bid for the government's advertising campaigns. The consortium that won the state contract last week will now prepare books, brochures, leaflets, CD-ROMs and Web sites about Poland for the EU's senior civil servants and workers.
The tender is part of the Foreign Ministry's promotion scheme for 2000-2002, but the promotion itself will last longer.
Rabiej sees more opportunities to promote Poland in the future. "We don't want to wait like we have so far for the ministry to announce tenders for specific campaigns," he said. "Instead we want to present our ideas to the ministry."
Winning a government contract is also not only about initial financial awards it also helps raise a company's business profile.
"Promoting Poland is a very prestigious assignment," said Lechoslaw Kwiatkowski, creative director at Lowe Lintas GGK ad agency. "It's a very attractive order."
Rabiej agreed. "Signatures of people such as Xavier Solana or Norman Davies expressing their support for Poland certainly give us more prestige," he said.
