While Lithuania stumbles over its efforts to draft the nation's branding strategy or choose a logo for the country, Bulgaria has its own hero.
Three weeks ago I received a short email from a friend in the US saying You may have already seen this and a link to a YouTube video. I'm not a big fan of email jokes but sometimes I do click on the links that my friends promise to be funny, interesting or impressive.
When I first clicked on this one, the video had already been watched some 400,000 times. Three weeks later the number of times the video has been viewed is well over 4 million! A marketer's dream to generate such attention and traffic... The girl in the video became an international star overnight... I wonder how many people has this video made think about Bulgaria, i.e. how many people have learned about the country for the first time?
Have a look at this video and don't take it too seriously. It's a short (1:14 min.) snapshot of Music Idol, a TV amateur song contest, in Bulgaria. Make sure you watch up to the final seconds! Tomorrow, 1 April, is a Fool's Day.:)
31 March 2008
11 March 2008
Holiday. Celebrate!
Lithuanian politicians are interesting folk. Their decisions are sometimes beyond common sense. For example, as regards public holidays and turning them into extended weekends.
It's been a law for a while that when a public holiday falls on a weekend, an additional day off is given as compensation for the "lost" day off. It sounds like an attractive (populistic?) law and most people should be pleased with it. However, purely from the business perspective such additional days off mean lost business income and consequently lost tax revenues for the state. Business losses due to such idle days are estimated at millions of litas.
Don't get me wrong - I do like holidays but sometimes such prolonged weekends are a nightmare for a marketer. If you consider launching a marketing campaign, calendar weeks that consist of only three working days are lost weeks. Unless you trade in Easter bunnies, then this March is an out-of-business month. It's been calculated that this present month of March has as many as 13 days off in Lithuania. Almost half the month! It's impossible to squeeze in a marketing campaign and run it effectively.
By the way, some public holidays always fall on the weekend because they are a weekend-type holiday by nature (e.g. Mother's Day, which is the first Sunday of May). In Lithuania, this is also compensated by an additional day off on Monday. I heard that this particular compensation may be called off.
Today (Tuesday) is a public holiday, the Day of Restoration of Lithuania's independence, and we've had a four-day long weekend (Monday as a working day has been moved to the coming Saturday). Go and celebrate! Because the state tells so.
It's been a law for a while that when a public holiday falls on a weekend, an additional day off is given as compensation for the "lost" day off. It sounds like an attractive (populistic?) law and most people should be pleased with it. However, purely from the business perspective such additional days off mean lost business income and consequently lost tax revenues for the state. Business losses due to such idle days are estimated at millions of litas.
Don't get me wrong - I do like holidays but sometimes such prolonged weekends are a nightmare for a marketer. If you consider launching a marketing campaign, calendar weeks that consist of only three working days are lost weeks. Unless you trade in Easter bunnies, then this March is an out-of-business month. It's been calculated that this present month of March has as many as 13 days off in Lithuania. Almost half the month! It's impossible to squeeze in a marketing campaign and run it effectively.
By the way, some public holidays always fall on the weekend because they are a weekend-type holiday by nature (e.g. Mother's Day, which is the first Sunday of May). In Lithuania, this is also compensated by an additional day off on Monday. I heard that this particular compensation may be called off.
Today (Tuesday) is a public holiday, the Day of Restoration of Lithuania's independence, and we've had a four-day long weekend (Monday as a working day has been moved to the coming Saturday). Go and celebrate! Because the state tells so.
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