Romania Rising: How Bucharest Became the Most Exciting City in European Advertising

If you haven’t had the chance to dig into the Romanian advertising scene, you really ought to make a start. The country is buzzing with creative and economic optimism. The burgeoning art scene in Bucharest has seen the city dubbed ‘Little Berlin’. Over the past decade or so, the local movie industry has consistently impressed at the Cannes Film Festival; this year Romanian director Cristian Mungiu took the Best Director Award (shared with French director Olivier Assayas). 

And that cultural energy comes hand in hand with a supercharged economy. Romania has one of the fastest growing economies in Europe – in fact in the second quarter of 2016 it had the strongest growth in the whole of the EU. And as the country rises, so too has its advertising industry. 

A hunger to prove itself

To understand why Romania’s growth is just so extraordinary you have to go back to the beginning. Compared with more developed markets, Romanian advertising is relatively young. Until the overthrow of president Nicolae Ceaușescu and his Communist government at the end of 1989, the country had no advertising industry. Just over a year later in 1991, the very first agency opened, and it bore a suitably punky, anti-authoritarian name – Graffiti. In 1992, BBDO became the first global network to enter Romania, acquiring Graffiti, and the rest flooded in.

There was, explains, Cosmin Raddoi, MD at Graffiti BBDO, lots of catching up to do. “Compared with most mature markets, which have nearly 200 years of advertising history, Romania may still look like it’s in the earliest stages of development. On the contrary, we’ve made huge progress. For so many years we were disconnected from the real world, and because of this my generation was eager to learn and assimilate everything. We had to grow & mature quickly to fight against all the adversity that stood in our way during the transition.”

To get an idea of just how far the country’s ad industry has come in a short space of time, just talk to Jorg Riommi, the CCO at Publicis Romania. The Italian/German creative first moved to the country in 2007 after stints at Saatchi & Saatchi Italy, Puerto Rico and EMEA. His friends thought he was crazy.

“Back then, Romania had just entered the EU and everything was in ‘building’ mode. I moved to Romania because I was following a Cannes Grand Prix winner from the UK who took the lead of Saatchi's here in Bucharest, as well as following a personal dream of growing fast and doing some amazing work. All proved correct, and Romania somehow became my American Dream!”

Taking the knocks

The hunger to learn and prove themselves has fuelled the Romanian advertising industry – but it hasn’t been a straight, upwards trajectory. The 2008 Eurozone crisis left the local market in tatters, with budgets cut by almost 60%. So for the past eight years, the industry has faced double the pressure of more established ad markets in Europe – rehabilitating after the crash and rushing to catch up with the international market.

The hard work has paid off. In 2011, the country took home its first ever Grands Prix (McCann for its clients Rom) and Romania has been winning consistently ever since. In 2016, it took home 11 Cannes Lions, and anecdotally, most European regional leaders we’ve spoken to have named their Romanian office as the strongest or most exciting in their EMEA group.

This grit is reflected in the local talent pool, says Jorg at Publicis Romania, who also notes that Romanian creatives who have gone abroad to work are now returning home, bringing with them a new perspective. “Local creativity is fresh, disruptive, fearless, provocative, truly experimental and has a certain smart charm and humour. I think it comes from a peculiar pleasure for improvisation and dealing with difficulties and limitations, always making the most of it. A bit like it was in Italy in the best creative years of the past. It’s about the drive of growth and the care of proving yourself,” he says. “Romania is now the Brazil of Europe.”

A new kind of creativity

Hunger and determination alone, though, are not enough to explain Romania’s success. On the award circuit, at least, the growing appetite for clever thinking and case study videos suits the Romanian way of blending creativity and technology. To this date, production budgets are very tight and so the craft can lack a little polish.

Andrei Cohn, Creative Director at Cohn&Jansen JWT points out, “In the past, when they only gave awards for individual ads, it was much more difficult for the local flavour to shine through. Today, the jury looks at case studies, so we embraced it as an opportunity to do very local and extremely exotic stuff. If case studies were forbidden, I’d anticipate a dramatic drop in our festival performance. Often the reasoning behind the ads is far superior to the ads themselves.”

Roxana Memetea agrees that where the country lags behind in craft it more than makes up in innovation. “The new set of communication rules has worked to our advantage, as production budgets locally cannot compare to those in the western countries. Romania is an avid fan of creativity and technology, ingredients absolutely vital in 2016’s communication mix. Nowadays even the simplest idea, based on a universal observation, can come to life through a mechanism or technology that abolishes all boundaries,” she says.

No baggage

And that hunger for innovative thinking isn’t the only thing working to Romania’s advantage. For so long, the relative youth of the market was seen as something to strive against – but today as the whole industry faces huge disruption, Romanian agencies find themselves with less historical baggage.

“Agencies and businesses here are not as developed, size wise, as they are in the Western countries, so this makes us more flexible,” she says. “The changes are storming over us, we are trying to the adapt to this new hybrid way of working, where you have to bring to the table a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but we’re fans of this new creative species; it’s more robust and complex. The entrepreneurs in charge of the agencies have vision; they know exactly where they want to be and how to get everybody on board with their plan to get there faster.”

This flexibility, says Cosmin at Graffiti BBDO, also means more speed. “Romania might not have the tech know how of the San Francisco area, but we are working with cutting edge ideas that are easier to sell here than in mature markets like the US, where it usually takes one year for a campaign to get approved through all the corporate structures and endless focus groups and research. In a fairly new capitalist economy clients are willing to take more risks.”

Drawing energy from Romanian ‘effervescence’

Local clients, it seems, are also full of interesting problems and puzzles for agencies to solve, giving them plenty of fodder for categories like Activation, Direct and PR. What’s more, according to Andrei, there is lots of opportunity to tackle real social issues.

“When the advertising is good, it at least seems to honestly try to fix social issues, of which we have a lot,” he says. “Even campaigns that would seem ridiculous or obsolete in other markets: campaigns to encourage teeth brushing, online education and consumer rights, for example.”

“Lots of clients come to us with real and difficult problems to solve, and this creates the opportunity for crisis management ideas, sometimes very innovative. We keep hearing ‘either we do something very visible or nothing at all.”

Cosmin picks up this thread and notes that he thinks around 70% of the awarded Romanian campaigns are related, in some way, to Romania itself. Going deeper, he suggests that the success and growth has come about by tapping into the Romanian psyche.

“I think that the local creative effervescence draws its blood from the effervescence of the country, a country that threw out a communist regime which led to a rollercoaster of changes and identity questions, such as: Who are we in the European landscape? What defines a true Romanian? This tension is reflected in commercial communications, and I think that international juries appreciate it,” he says. 

A creative scene with lots to discover

A vibrant ad scene is often only as strong as its creative scene – and Bucharest is brimming with gems to be discovered. The people we speak to are full of suggestions for anyone who wants to immerse themselves more deeply in Romania’s underground art scene. Adrian Ghenie is one of Sotheby’s best-selling contemporary painters, based in the town of Cluj. Mircea Cantor is a Romanian conceptual artist well worth checking out. The Sweet Damage Crew is a street art collective that’s gaining momentum.

“More and more people are saying that Bucharest is a little Berlin when it comes to art,” says Cosmin. “Old communist buildings are turning into art scenes.” 

The ‘People’s Building’ – or the Palace of the Parliament – is the world’s second largest government building (after the Pentagon). It regularly hosts galleries, electronic music festivals and even the biggest 3D mapping show in Europe. It’s a tangible expression of Romania’s creative renaissance.

And that artistic and creative energy feeds a feeling of true optimism. “Anything can happen. You get the feeling that you can do anything here,” enthuses Publicis CCO Jorg. “Bucharest is just like New York or Cape Town or Sydney or Bangkok or Berlin… just cooler and cheaper!”