On March this year, the Ministry of Tourism of Romania launched a call for tender with the overall objective to carry out a “tourism destination brand” for Romania, a project whose maximum budget allocated is 2 million euros.
The contract, which was to be awarded following an international public procurement procedure, is to include: research regarding the image and perception of Romania on source markets, competitive advantages of Romania, identify best possible branding position, brand toolkit, logo, imagery, creation & design, implementing guidelines and communication strategy.
According to the Romanian ministry, they “welcomed applications from any professional company with long established experience in the field of branding”. The deadline for submitting the applications was April 15th, 2009 and Marius Ursache has collected an interesting list of all tender participants:
- Colorado
- Saatchi & Saatchi Design / GfK NOP
- Siegel+Gale/Grapefruit / Flamingo Research
- Saffron Brand Consultants / Brandient / Acacia Avenue
- Kohl & Partner / McCann Erickson
- Brandflight / ReD Associates / Patres
- Inarea Strategic Design / Cappelli Communication / IPK International
- Nouveau Monde DDB / Detente Consultants / IPSOS
- BBDO Portugal / Graffiti BBDO / Mercury Research
- Landor Associates / Millward Brown
- Hypermedia / FutureBrand
- THR / Taylor Nelson Sofres
- TBWA Bucharest / GfK Romania
As you see, there are nation branding experienced consultancies such as Saatch&Saatchi, Saffron, Brandient, McCann Erickson, Landor, FutureBrand among others less known.
The first thing to spring to mind about Romania is a feature on Euronews when they joined the EU. The main zoo in the capital has lions with deformed legs because they were malnourished as cubs. That sort of publicity will always be bad with any European animal-loving country such as Britain.