Image credits: Tom Fishburne


I really enjoyed the IAA Romania Young Professionals workshop on comm strategy that took place yesterday, 12 March, in the evening. It was, how should I put it, an interesting experience, and this, for at least 2 reasons. Firstly, the topic of the discussion: "Strategy, marketing efficiency and the current state of the economy" promised alot, and secondly, the speakers: Calin Clej - Marketing Manager PepsiCo Romania, Stefan Chiritescu- Head of Planning Graffiti BBDO and Mihai Dragan – Manager MB Dragan, were the most qualified to debate on this subject. I had to consider three point's of view: client's, ad agency's and the one of the online interactive representative. Almost everything a young fellow should know nowadays.

In a nutshell, the topic was good, the speakers were the finest, but the delivery failed. It felt like they weren't prepared at all. 2 of them had presentations in english to back-up their words, but they presented in romanian (must have been recycled slides and presentations from other events). The online savvy had some offline games to enforce his keynotes, but he forgot to provide pencils and paper, so I had to be very imaginative and temper my patience.

My spoils of war from participating in this event are two questions to sleep on:

How would "the-life-after-the-financial-crisis" look like?
How would the client-agency relationship be after this budget cut and chop frenzy?

And my last thought. If you are a marcom professional and you have to deliver a presentation to an audience comprised of young aspiring professionals be sure not to follow The Director's path in preparing a presentation. One thing is for sure, I will never forget this piece of valuable advice.