Round table “Financial PR during crisis”

On April 8th I was at the round table “Financial PR during crisis”. The event was hosted by the Bulgarian PR Society and supported by one of the local banks – Postbank. I was not surprised to see nearly 100 people attending this event – mainly PR and Communication head, but also reps of the PR agencies and media in the sector. I liked the presentation, particularly the one of Iliana Zaharieva, but I was disappointed by the discussions. Most of the attendees were shy and not willing to share. Most of the time we were sharing information that we already have and pretended that is all fine. The only bomb was thrown by Vassil Atanasov – Managing Editor “Business” with Economedia, who said that with a risk to destroy the idealistic spirit at the round table, the PR is actually not helping the media to do its job. This was not enough for the PR experts to finally get the mic and speak freely. Almost immediately the host announced a break, which ended the discussion.


After the break it was close to a disaster: most of attendees left, Rumiana Markova Chief PR Expert at the Fund for deposits presented a leaflet, which to my understanding she sees as the peak of her achievements, Diana Dimcheva with Synergon Holding decided to make a full report of her activities in house, which was supposed to be sharing of experience but to me was more like a reporting to her CEO. At least after the break we missed the prompting advices of the auditorium.

Still, end of the day, the event was useful. I personally did some networking together with our new partners with Grozdanov Communications Consulting. I met lots of friends from the sector: Hristina Mashkova, back to work at Investor after giving a births, Luci Marinova – my former colleague with Publicis, Alexander Durchev – head of All Channels Comm – leading Bulgarian PR agency, Vassil Atanasov – already mentioned him – Grozdanov introduced me to him, Vicki Blajeva – PR Manager at UniCredit Bulbank and Alexander Urumov – PR Head of the Bulgarian National Bank. Alexander Urumov had a very nice and inspiring speech and I find him quite interesting as a professional. I almost missed to mention Alexander Grozdanov and Dobromir Stoyanov with Grozdanov Communications – we were at the event together and we shared contacts.

NEno

Photo: by BDVO