According to the annual international RECMA ranking, which analyzes, function of 14 parameters, the quality, evolution and performance of media agencies, Media Investment keeps the first position in Romania, with 17 points, being followed by Zenith Media, with 14 points, and OMD Romania comes third, with 13 points.
OMD Romania and Media Investment are the only agencies rated in the A category by the report.
On the other hand, the MediaBrands IPG agencies in Romania (UM, Initiative and BPN) have announced that they have been no longer participating to any RECMA survey starting 2012.
The reason they gave for this is that RECMA allegedly refused to improve the methodology of the report, in spite of discrepancies between the published results and certain and objective market sources in Romania, such as the reports published by the Ministry of Public Finances, MediaBrands IPG says in a press release.
The methodology used is “non-transparent” and “not adapted to the local market,” according to MediaBrands IPG representatives.
“The RECMA ‘methodology’ behind this report is based exclusively on the statements made by agencies concerning the names and volumes of clients, taking into account only the clients whose total volume exceeds EUR 1 million. RECMA is doing only a brief cross check of these statements, and cases in which a customer appears in the statements of several agencies- with different volumes in each case- are frequent, and the solution to these is reached depending on “methodology subtleties” that RECMA has refused to publish. Similar, unknown subtleties are used when RECMA checks if the volumes of clients declared by each agency is indeed over EUR 1 million,” according to the official position of MediaBrands IPG.
Otilia Haraga