Branding Romania
Posted by Lee Wilkins | Filed under: Branding, Politics, What
Today saw the launch of Captivating Romania.
CaptivatingRomania.com is the first place you should have in mind when you’re thinking of travelling to Romania, or simply when you need some inspiration for things to do while you’re there. CaptivatingRomania inspires, captivates, informs. Find out from your friends where they’ve been and what places they recommend. Share your experiences with them.
News quickly spread through the Twittosphere about how its now competing with the likes of Unseen Romania, Turismatic (launching next week) and other online portals out there covering Romania.
I have a big fucking bone to pick here.
We as a country can’t even re-brand (ok, brand) ourselves with a budget in excess of €4m. So how are the likes of these 3 players mentioned above actually competing?
What are they competing for?
Don’t get me wrong here, I am friends with the creators of each of the three projects and I admire their individual efforts in this space and I wish them each much much success. What they are collectively doing is giving Romania a face. A face that €4m and thousands of wasted hours on consultants can’t even achieve.
I had a conversation based around this subject last week last week.
It went along the lines of:
“We should create a collective network of talented people and work on this Romania branding exercise.”
“The Romanian Government is hiring muppet’s who have zero experience in Branding/Re-Branding a single country, and we are working with people (our company advisors) who have successfully re-branded two of the largest nations in the WORLD!”
I beg you all to stop this retarded shit about competition on everything that is launched. Imagine the greater benefits of 3 different views on Romania. That is not competition, that is greatness and innovation from the people behind the projects.
Move on, there is nothing else to see here, unless you want to talk serious € and actually do something about branding this nation.
p.s. don’t be afraid to comment!
technorati tags: captivating+romania+unseen+romania+turismatic+romania
I think people are very cynical and sceptical about ‘new’ attempts to brand/re-brand Romania because they can’t say for sure who actually achieved anything with a website or a campaign. With no data to measure efficiency, success, awareness or who knows what, people might get the feeling that another ‘branding Romania’ approach is a bit like crying wolf if you know what I mean.
While various websites and points of view are embraced and praised as parts of a whole (”Him, him, and him did a lot towards branding the country”), their individual value might not be what the creators had in mind when approaching the collective (obviously not quality-wise, they’re all excellent creations) because the ‘why did we need three websites to say the same thing’ / ‘why can’t we agree on just one website that says the same thing’ mentality is stronger than the idea of working slowly but surely to achieve some kind of overall success or image. Deferred gratification is a hard thing to do with Romanians from what I’ve noticed at least.
I wouldn’t see it as competition, if it’s competition of any kind though it would have to be the healthy type – more websites, more content, more integration with Romanian communities perhaps (Flickr is huge as you may have noticed) and yes, I would very much like to see them compete in terms of who comes up with more ideas (and better ideas!).
Response by Andrea — 28/11/2008 / 19:33
Thanks for mentioning our launch, Lee.
I sense some compliments there, we’re chuffed and thank you for this.
Speaking on behalf of the team, let me clarify for the benefit of the blogosphere, that we launched as a solely independent initiative, thinking about the net effect we could achieve in the end, which is to promote Romania. To us, this project is “un proiect de suflet” (enjoy translating :- ) ) and we are only interested in partnerships, ideas, destinations, hotels, offers, photos, videos – everything that is special and promotes Romania in a positive light. Talks about competition, banter etc, are not on our agenda at the moment.
The blog is only a taster of what we’ve been working on this year. We have over 7 years of proven experience in the travel sector at a global level, an amazing team of people and are incredibly excited about putting all that knowledge into this project. So watch this space! :)
On a separate note, branding Romania is a delicate matter because it needs substance and strategy. Substance goes beyond just some travel ideas – for example – the talented people who represent us at olympic competitions are far greater country ambassadors than a website or a leaflet. The strategy needs to be a system of beliefs that needs to be invested in a group by us, looking at a medium to long term opportunity.
Response by Ciprian — 28/11/2008 / 19:52
UnseenRomania is not competing with anyone. It’s just a place to show the beauty of this land.
I would be glad to help UnseenRomania team up with anyone having the same purpose.
Response by Mihai Dragan — 28/11/2008 / 19:58
That website is purely awesome!
It reminds me of my first website I made when I was 14, in junior high, doing html in notepad.
They should have spent $5 on an SBUX latte for some enthusiast kid, and get a great job done.
Response by Robert M — 28/11/2008 / 23:22
Congratulations. The site looks really nice. Let’s jope it remains this way :)
Lots of foreign visitors have a very bad idea about the life and lifestyle in Romania. That’s not quite true…
Response by vlad gidea — 22/01/2009 / 16:29