Enoiu, McCann: We are hoping for growth in 2011

For Bogdan Enoiu, who has been running communication group McCann Erickson Romania for more than a decade, 2008 was a year best forgotten quickly because it will not return very soon. 2009 is a lost year because of the political rulers, 2010 will be just as bad, and one needs to start preparing for 2011, when one can hope for growth on the media market.

"We are preparing for a 2010 that will be worse than 2009. 2010 will be a year of adjustment, overall. Next year media providers will have to come up with competitive prices, so as to reboot consumer spending and to see the media market rise in 2011, even if by only 5%, the psychological threshold."

In 2008, the media market revolved around 550-600 million euros.

Enoiu, 50, believes the important thing this year is for jobs in the private sector to be preserved. "We, the advertising world, are among the first to become aware of economic growth, and we can adapt the growth. Even if we sacrifice the profit margin in the private sector, we have to preserve the jobs, they are important to the employees."

Amid a dramatic decline of the advertising market this year, with companies having to cut marketing costs to the bone, considering the decline in demand for goods and services, Enoiu set as targets as small a decline as possible and gaining market share from those unable to survive 2009. Another target he set is to keep the group's number of employees steady.

"My job is to keep the over 275 jobs at McCann Erickson and to generate profit, so that the Finance Ministry can rely on the group paying a similar amount of taxes to the state budget as last year." McCann Erickson wants to keep its turnover in euros from declining by more than 10-12% this year against 2008, and to post a similar profit in RON (and similar to the 2007 level in euros). In terms of market share, the growth target is from 18% to 19-20%.

In 2008, full service advertising agency B.V. McCann Erickson and media agency Universal McCann posted 75.6 million euros in turnover, to which Enoiu adds 4 million euros from the public relations agency McCann PR, digital communication company MRM Worldwide and BTL agency Momentum, and another 7 million euros, which clients pay directly to local televisions. These sums do not show in Finance Ministry data for the end of the year, but are taken into consideration officially. Enoiu says the business totalled 87 million euros.