Sponsoring Romania

During my last days in Romania there was a lot of debate on the change of country slogan: "Romania, simply surprising" has recently become "Romania, the land of choice", although only temporarily, until the national tourism brand will be ready.

A silly change, a silly issue? Well, nothing is so silly when talking of such a lucrative industry as tourism, that implies also decisions on the strategy and discourse of a country when it decides to promote itself, and that is clearly underdeveloped in Romania. I'm sure that any of us who have lived a little bit over there, and our visitors, will agree at least on that.

Nothing is so silly when:

• The new slogan was launched in a concert of Bosnian Goran Bregović in Mamaia. OK, maybe a manele concert would have not been a right start, but they could have been chosen some fine local artist to become the voice of the campaign... By the way, it is funny for me that they chose a Balkan singer, no matter how great he is, as in Romania, certainly a crossroad, they stress the "Latin" heritage, forget the Slavic and Turkish ones and reject to be considered "Balkanic". Little Paris wants to be considered not only European but part of the heart of Europe. God knows what the hell that heart contains, though.
  
• The national tourism brand, financed by European Funds (FEDR, POS CCE), will cost a lot, 75 million of Euros. An international auction has already been launched (or maybe I should say at last, because that funding started to be operative by the beginning of 2008), and the company in charge will be selected during the spring. A lot of money, and, so I heard by the radio, a previous story of dubious actions related to this contract, not exactly corruption but what in Spain we call "amiguismo" ("friendshipness").

National tourism brand? What is Romania nowadays? What does Romania want to be?

A few weeks ago I was in Constanţa while Romania and Serbia played there a classification match for the World Football Cup. I don't pay much attention to football, but when I bump into a match (and its supporters) in that way, I usually pay my compliments, so I did watched this match at TV (Romania lost). What I noticed is that during this match the Romanian footballers wore a T-shirt with the logo of ALL the sponsors printed on it, not the clean one that is sold as merchandising, where only Adidas logo on it, not the clean one that was used last year at the UEFA EURO 2008.

There are quite a few, so the footballers looked like multi-purpose banners. But the sponsors, that can be checked also at the Romanian Federation of Football, are also quite significative:

• Adidas. Sport clothes.
  
• Ursus. Romanian brand of beer, controlled since 1990s by the breery SABMiller plc.
• Raiffeisein Bank. Austrian Bank with a wide presence in all Central and Eastern European countries.
• Pepsi. Refreshing drinks.
• Dacia. Romanian brand of cars, currently part of Renault group.
• Carrefour. French supermarkets that are spreading all over Romania.
• Samsung. Corean brand of electronic equipment.
• Gillette. Shaving razors.
• Bigotti. Italian brand of clothes.
• Konica Minolta. Photographic cameras
  

I would stress four of them: Ursus, Raiffeisein Bank, Dacia and Carrefour. Romanian flavours, financial markets, cars and hypermarkets. Modern, transnationalised Romanian consumer society. "National pride" (national team) supported by foreign investors, through their own brand or through Romanian ones they control.

But I suspect that if I take a deep look into other countries' symbols of pride, I would also find interesting situations...