PR in Romania

There is a good reason why I chose Romania to my subject this time.

I found out that Romanian Ministry of Administration and Interior - Information and Public Relation Directorate organized the Third Edition of the International Conference in the Field of Public Relations, 17-19 June 2009, at Sibiu, Romania. The main topic of the conference was this year- "PR Strategies-Key Documents in Communicating Law Enforcement Institutions".

After finding this fact I started to search more information about the subject 'PR in Romania'. I needed few minutes of surfing to discover some interesting writings. With you I would like to share an informative slideshow and an interesting article called "Is There a Minimum Age for Being a PR Expert?" (in Romania).

The slideshow is quite long so if you are interested to read it (what I truly hope) please go to http://www.slideshare.net/katamper/pr-in-romania.


And now about the article by Ruxandra Scortea. She writes that by all conventional knowlege, ‘expert’ is not instantly associated with ‘young’, yet the Romanian PR industry proves this assumption wrong. Romania has been playing a game of ‘catch up as fast as you can’ with the Western world over the past 15 years. While the PR industry is still young, it has come a very long way in a very short time, growing in leaps and bounds to respond to the economic development.

As with other ‘new’ industries in a young market economy, PR in Romania is about 10-12 years old, therefore many of the senior people are in their late 20s or early 30s. This is intriguing for business people not familiar with the region, its culture and history. Part of the same crowd myself, especially in the first career years, I could sense skepticism from a distance. Talking about practical experience, especially in crisis communications, always did the trick: “And how old are you?”

Of course ‘hours of flight’ are essential – understanding media relations does not make one a consultant in reputation management. But it took some good years for a young industry to prove itself and become awarded on the same stage with countries that have a long-standing tradition in PR.
In our office the average age is 28 and we make no exception to the industry. Of the people I interviewed for jobs in the past two years, I can count those above 35 on the fingers of one hand. And the consultants in a team for a large project some years ago were all under 35, from lawyers to HR or PR experts. Luckily there is no language barrier for professionalism. Regardless of age or culture, professionals recognise themselves as such, move beyond any preconceptions and simply roll up their sleeves.

In my now (respectable) early 30s I realise the privilege of growing at the same time with my industry, which is what we, the Action network, have been doing in fact so successfully for more years than I’ve been around.

After reading this I couldn't help but wonder what is the average age of PR professionals in Finland? Group 3 or anyone who knows, please inform me.