Spectacular success
To the Editor,
This is with regard to the article "Ceraco declares victory" by Tomasz Stepien that appeared in the Oct. 11-17 issue of your esteemed newspaper.
The article presents one of Warsaw's business parks currently being developed by Ceraco. According to Jerzy Wysocki, a real estate broker involved in the project, several factors such as location and rental account for what he calls "spectacular success" of the development, which meant 80% of 7,500 square meters rented. The article after Wysocki compares by contrast the rental rates in Ceraco's business park to overstated rental rates in the Mokotow Business Park. Actually the rental rates in both complexes are at the same level ($27 per square meter plus a $5 per square meter service charge).
Whether Ceraco's project is a more spectacular success than the Mokotow Business Park is disputable. We can only say that we are happy with our project's performance: 99% of the total 92,000 square meters has already been rented!
Best regards,
Zygmunt Chyla
Marketing Manager
Globe Trade Centre
Bad ranking
To the Editor:
At the beginning of January 1999, Partner of Promotion received a questionnaire concerning the results of our firm in connection with the next edition of the Public Relations Agencies ranking.
The questions in the questionnaire focused around the idea of "gross fee income from PR activities." That was the first time when the above term appeared in the Warsaw Business Journal. Up until then (for example, in the survey from August 1997), the WBJ inquired about "net fee income from PR activities," which was understood by both other agencies and us as income from PR activities.
During our conversation with Ms. Sonia Kamler, we asked for a detailed explanation of what the WBJ understood as "gross fee income." We were told that the WBJ was in the course of preparing a new ranking, where the PR agencies' "operating profit" was taken into consideration. As we learned, this category was to be the closest one to the English term "gross fee income." In a long discussion we attempted to convince Ms. Kamler that an agency's turnover gives the most information about the clients as well as its scope of activities. Finally, we agreed to render accessible our "operating profit." We defined the term as "turnover minus expenses of the principal activities." Consequently, we were assured that all of the existing PR agencies would be classified according to the same criteria. On Jan. 25, the ranking of PR agencies was published in the WBJ. Surprisingly enough, many agencies made available their turnover (which was easy to check by comparing the ranking from January with the 1998 Book of Lists.
Without delay, we contacted Ms. Kamler who let us know that indeed, some agencies had understood the intentions in the wrong way and published their turnover. As she further explained, there was no time to correct it. At the same time, Ms. Kamler assured us that the next edition of the BOL would include the corrected data, the more so as the information published in January's edition referred to just the results from the first half of 1998.
Last week we decided to check how advanced the work was on the Book of Lists 2000. Unfortunately, we found out that the BOL 2000 was almost ready. Thus, yesterday (late October) we phoned Ms. Magdalena Poradowska, the coordinator of the BOL project, to make things clear. Ms. Poradowska claimed that first of all, the Book of Lists 2000 was being printed, and secondly, there had been no time to bring the ranking up to date before printing.
To summarize, we are not only surprised, but also feel resentful and indignant about what happened. So far, we were reading the WBJ carefully and with great interest. It used to describe well-known affairs from a foreigner's point of view. Today, the abilities of the professionals working in the WBJ do not seem too trustworthy.
What does one call such a piece of information which has not been checked on purpose? Such a piece of news which has been stale for months! Information like that is not information at all! Why don't you publish a ranking of the most widely read dailies, considering the number of people who have not been working in their printing houses for two years?
Now seriously, we think that there is a way of settling the problem.
First things first: We suggest that you should make another survey, which would evaluate the PR agencies according to their turnover in 1998 and 1999. This is the most objective and trustworthy criteria (one can check it in the CIT 8 financial report), and at the same time it shows the clients' preferences together with PR firms' scope of activities.
Next: We suggest supplementing each issue of the Book of Lists distributed after the publication of the altered ranking with a copy of the newest version of the document.
I strongly believe that my remarks will appeal to you. The activities that I describe will contribute to increasing the number of readers and will strengthen the image of the WBJ as reliable.
Piotr Talarek,
Managing Director
Partner of Promotion Group
