Chelgate CEO: "Romania is managing its international reputation with hands over its ears"

The most important work that Chelgate does in Romania relates to the European Commission, but the firm also advises international clients on the dos and don’ts of setting up a business here. Terence Fane-Saunders, CEO of Chelgate, gives BR his take on how Romania should handle some of its reputation issues.

How is business going at Chelgate Romania?

We have nine people working full time and at least the same number of freelancers. The revenues we booked in Romania are about EUR 500,000, but a lot of our Romania-related activities are invoiced out of the UK, quite often to shared clients, and I can’t break that out for you. In Romania, we have international clients from finance, telecom and mainly European Union policies. Romanian companies don’t seem to have a tradition of spending money on high-level strategic PR.

We are possibly the most low-profile PR firm that you have ever come across and a significant proportion of what we do is confidential. The most important work that we do in Romania relates to the European Commission. We have international clients, with whom the contracts are in the UK but they have a dimension here. Even though we have a significant government relations capability, I always say we do very little lobbying, if any, in that we will help clients build their relationship with the government.

Have you ever been affected by corruption in Romania?

I can think of at least two contracts which were denied to Chelgate simply because we wouldn’t pay off the right people. There was one contract where we worked very hard on a pitch and found out two or three days before that the contract was going to be awarded to a joint venture between a Romanian and a foreign PR firm, and they had sorted things out with the top key person. We sent our proposal anyway, and the flight of the foreign partner who was writing the project was delayed, so they failed to deliver the proposal in time for the deadline. So we won the contract but we had that contract for about a day before the top person announced that they were not happy with the quality of the submission and they would have a re-tender. So, it was re-tended, and by this time, this other firm also knew our figures.

In another case, there was one government agency that we sued successfully, and where the president of the agency was later sent to jail, but not because of our case. This was in 2008.

For the contract, they had very specific requirements in terms of experience, turnover and so on. We put together a good proposal and we were told we had finished second! The winning firm had been created about two weeks earlier and was run by a lady who I believe had a relationship with a senior person in the government body. It met none of the specific requirements of the tender. The firm that finished third appealed, because they said it was a disgrace. And then we joined in. They were forced to award us the contract but then they tried not to spend any money on the contract and we had to sue them again. We had to go through four different courts. Also, in our early days in Romania, we were approached by representatives of political parties who said they could organize contracts for us, but in exchange the party would want a percentage of the revenues we got from contracts. But we haven’t been affected by apparent corruption for probably three years now.

How do you think Romania should handle its image problems?

One of the phrases I use a lot when we talk about issue management is that you should become the primary source of trusted information about your own story. Romania has failed to tell its own story. If you don’t tell your story, then other people control the narrative – because there will be a narrative, and Romania has abdicated that narrative.
It’s not a marketing problem that Romania has but a reputation and relationship problem. Romania needs first of all to understand properly what its key international stakeholders think about it.

I think that Romania to a degree is managing its international reputation with its hands over its ears. Secondly, forget about branding, I think that Romania has not yet established its own narrative in its own mind. It should be possible to sit down and, on two sheets of paper, write what I call the core narrative, the essence of what Romania is in the world, what is special about it. I don’t think Romania strategically has really thought it through. Then you can start to think about not just messages, but relationships and alliances too, and what I call third voices, because the opinion of Romania around the world is not going be shaped by what Romania says but third voices communicating about you, making decisions about you and advising people about you.

Otilia Haraga

DMCA

PROTECTED