Romanian marcom professionals are teaching for a cause -“I learn, I help”

Cristina Blanaru Creativity, People

IQAds.ro, Romanian marcom news portal, and IAA Romania are launching an intensive program of 5 workshops dedicated to communicators. The program is also organized in charitable purpose, as one Romanian ad professionals needs financial support for a difficult surgery. The money collected from selling the tickets for “I learn, I help” series of trainings will be donated to the cause Help Smaranda 

The program is aimed to help Smaranda Milu Nemethi, Creative Director Hybrid Studio, project founded together with Dan Milu, her husband. Smaranda is 33 and she was diagnosed with stage 4 pulmonary cancer with frontal metastasis. After a number of medical investigations and a brain surgery, Smaranda underwent a medical consult in Germany, where a stage 3 cancer was detected and another treatment – costing Euro 150,000 – was recommended. As Romanian medical insurance doesn’t cover the mentioned amount, additional help is needed and it could come from industry colleagues.

Romanian marcom professionals that offered their expertise to Help Smaranda cause are Lorand Balint (Managing Director, Leo Burnett & Target), Dan Petre (Managing Partner, D&D Research) si Anca Popescu (Qualitative Researcher/Psychologist, D&D Research), Monica Jitariuc (Co-Managing Partner, The Practice), Sorin Psatta (Integrated Communication Director, BBDO Romania), Razvan Matasel (Strategy director and Partner  Arsenoaiei & Matasel).

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The 5 workshops are scheduled to take place from April 20 to May 27th, at IAA Romania’s headquarters, each Tuesday, between 18.00 – 21.00. The participation fee for the entire series of seminaries is Euro 300 and the ones that want to participate must apply until April 28th. The entire amount coming from participation fees will be donated to help Smaranda

The workshops part of the series I learn, I help are:

  • Dan Petre and Anca Popescu: Start up yourself. Personal development and talent management
  • April 29th

The training starts from the idea that any lasting construction benefits of a good viability study and a solid resistance structure. Dropping the metaphor, one can say that a personal and professional development process is ideally based on valid information on the person doing that. The main objective of the training is increasing, for each participant, the level of understanding and acknowledging of the personality structure. To achieve the objectives, the participants will be applied, before the event, a personality check. As a work instrument the Singer-Loomis Type Deployment Inventory is proposed, offering an individual self-knowledge and development report and also info on the well known MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) typologies, to be discussed more detailed during the event.

  • Lorand Balint: Brand Strategy Session
  • May 6th

The training is centered on participant, making sure that the learning process goes beyond the individual experience and the participants will be involved, energized and dared by the discussions during the training. There will be explored the theory and applications for key brand strategy concepts and the work will be done with a Harvard Business School case study: “Mountain Man Brewing Company: Bringing the Brand to Light.”

Chris Prangel, an MBA graduate, comes back home in West Virginia to manage the marketing operations for Mountain Man Beer, family business he will inherit in 5 years. Mountain Man only makes one beer assortment, Mountain Man Lager, known as “West Virginia’s beer” and popular with the working class. Due to changing preferences in customers’ taste, the company faces sales’ decreases for the 1st time in history. To counter that, Chris wants to launch Mountan Man Light, a light version of Mountain Man Lager to appeal youth. Still, he faces resistance from his superiors, as Mountain Man Lager’s brand equity is a fundamental pillar for the company. The question that follows is: the launch of Mountain Man Light will increase, diminish or destroy this brand equity?

The objective of the training will be to explore the brand equity: how it is created and how brands are used as growth platforms; which are the risks and benefits of a brand extension that uses the name of an already existent brand; which are the challenges coming from choosing between qualitative and quantitative data in making strategical decisions; what cannibalizing a brand and alienating a brand mean.

During the workshop there will be developed the following key concepts: Brand equity, Brand management, Consumer marketing, Demografice, Marketing, Present value, Product differentiation, Quantitative analysis.

  • Monica Jitariuc: Online reputation (for brands and people)
  • May 13th

In an era when anyone that has a Twitter or Facebook account has the power of an investigative reporter, brands and companies reputation is harder to protect than ever.

In an era when 24/7 really means 24/7 conversation, the brands face challenges bigger than ever.

In an era when people first look each other over the internet and then meet face to face…

Managing the online reputation is more important than ever

Monica Jitariuc’s workshop on online reputation management will follow: dos and don’ts in building and maintaining reputation, local and international case studies, online crisis situations and their management, examples of good practices and success stories 

  • Sorin Psatta: His Highness, the Consumer
  • May 20th

One of the most difficult questions in Sorin Psatta’s questionnaire at Journalism and Communication Sciences Faculty in Bucharest is “What defines a market?”. The answer options are: products or services / consumers / producers / distributors. The reason why many students are answering wrong to the above question is simple: the correct option – consumers – is somewhat against common sense, because our rational mind leads us to believe something else.

During his workshop, Sorin Psatta will discuss with the participants about the most important and, most of the times, the most neglected element in the marketing process: His Highness, the Consumer.

The workshop will offer participants all the info they ever wanted to know about consumer, tips & tricks, truisms and revelations, jokes and science, gathered from books and from Psatta’s 20 years of experience. “To guarantee, I can guarantee just one thing: at the end of the 3 hours, I promise that we will all be, similar to wise, tired and content Chinese”, Psatta said

  • Razvan Matasel: Ideas’ hierarchy in communication. From strategic idea to creative idea and, not the least, to executional idea
  • May 27th

Razvan Matasel’s workshop is developed to fight against the disappearance of the idea and against promoting pseudo-ideas and targets marcomm professionals that operate with ideas and that find themselves in the situation to ask, evaluate, develop or sell ideas

“Our industry should be about Idea and we must regain the pleasure and passion to find and promote efficient and interesting ideas. And not to speak anymore about so called “festival” executions, but ideas that build brands and position them clearly in consumers’ minds and hearts”, Razvan Matasel says.

During the workshop, the participants will receive answers for problems like: what types of ideas are incorporated in a communication campaign; which are the criteria to use to evaluate different communication ideas; which are the steps in developing a strategic idea; how the creative leap is made or how to reach from the strategic idea to the creative idea; how do you sell an idea internally and externally