McCann Romania and Rom won the bet: Romania changed its internet image in just one month

Romania is the 1st country in the world that changed its image on the internet, as a result of “Romanians are smart” campaign launched by McCann Erickson Romania and Rom chocolate bar.

In just one month since launching the campaign, the negative suggestion generated automatically by Google’s search engine when “Romanians are” words were typed for a search were changed, Romania becoming the 1st country in the world that manages to change its image over the internet.

At the start of the campaign, on November 17th, a simple search on google.ro, google.com, google.fr, google.it, google.es or google.de woth the mentioned words was coming up with automatic suggestions that were capable to offend the most non-nationalistic Romanian. A month since campaign’s launch, the suggestions generated by Google were replaced by “Romanians are smart” and other positive attributes, such as “educated”, “beautiful”, “”talented”, ïnnovative” or others.

“Romanians are smart” campaign is fighting for a cause Rom showed it trusts in: bringing back to life of Romanian national pride. The fact that this campaign reached its purpose confirms the path we took is the correct one and that we have our contribution in changing Romania’s image. Rom trusts and trusted the Romanians and they, by adhering the cause we launched and by their support in changing Romania’s image, showed their trust in us. We thank them for that

Gabriela Munteanu

Marketing Director Kandia Dulce

The success came after, during 30 days, supporting the campaign were half million searches on Google with “Romanians are smart”, tens of TV transmissions, including abroad, hundreds of websites and blogs all over the world and numerous local personalities.

We are mainly talking about a symbolic gesture. We changed the automatic predictions on Google, but we have still work to do until the internet will not look alike a shooting place in which us, Romanians, are everybody’s target. The real change will come when the internet content generated by ourselves, Romanians, will be itself a positive one. When we will write more bravely about our successes, without being afraid to look naive or that we are not generating ratings. We must learn to achieve high ratings by writing also good things about us. That is why the campaign continues and we invite all Romanians, especially the ones that can influence public opinion, to write also good things about Romanians

Dinu Panescu

Group Creative Director McCann Erickson

The 1st success of the campaign came from France when, at the start of December, the 1s suggestion given on google.fr was “les roumains sont intelligents”. This was followed by favorable predictions on google.it („i rumeni sono intelligenti), google.es („los rumanos son inteligentes”), google.co.uk or google.com („roumanians are smart”) and even google.nl.