Romanian companies continue to use PR services

Cristina Blanaru Marketing, PR

CCRP realized, together with Daedalus Consulting, the 2nd study regarding the perception and usage of Public Relation services inside Romaniaan Companies. The study tried to identify the significant changes that appeared on PR market in the last couple years, after the exponential rise of online and considering the new economical circumstances.

Daedalus Consulting conducted 200 interviews with representatives from companies that are using or intend to use PR services. The consulted people were the communication directors, the marketing directors or general managers.

The structure of the Romanian PR market changes in the last years, the number of small companies using PR increasing a lot starting with 2006, from 12,2% to 25% nowadays.

Taking in consideration the impact of the economical situation, companies asked their PR agencies services of marketing communication, but also communication with the business partners or internal communication. Big companies continued, also during the economical crisis period, to focus on corporate communication and CSR.

According to the study, companies started to use PR agencies also to motivate and inform their employees, not only to create a favorable image among the target publics, maintain a good reputation or support services and products through informational activities.

This year’s edition of the study shows that the owner / general manager of a company has now an equal role with the marketing manager in choosing the PR agency and running the communication campaigns, while in 2006, the owner /general manager was taking the final decision in this matter.

When selecting a PR agency, the clients take in consideration the quality of the services, the ability to respect the deadlines and the level of understanding of the business and client’s needs.

Compared to 2006 edition of the study, the PR services’ prices and the capacity to fill activities in a giver budget also became very important, especially for small companies. On the other hand, when evaluating the PR agency’s activity, clients mentioned as esential factors the quality of the execution, the creativity of the strategu and the client service relation.

The study also showed that the PR budgets are extremely tied with company’s turnover. This way, considering the actual economical situation, the number of the companies with a PR budget decreased, as it decreased also the number of companies that externalized the PR services.

In spite of that, from the companies that have special PR budgets, 41% maintained them at the same level like last year, 16% increased them, while 42.6% decreased the budgets. Most of the companies that decreased the PR budgets were small companies.

In what concerns 2011, 54.8% from the companies mentioned they will maintain the same budgets, 24.7% intend to increase them and 20.5% think about decreasing them.

Romanian PR Companies Club (CCRP) reunites 13 of the most important Romanian PR companies: 2activePR, DC Communication, Free Communication, GMP PR, Grafitti PR, Image Promotion, Bortun Olteanu, Ogilvy PR Worldwide, Perfect Ltd, PRAIS Corporate Communications, Lowe PR, Premium Communication and  The Practice.