More than PLN 130,000 was spent in 2008 on promoting the authorities’ activities alone. This sum produces a tangible result. The mayor has no opponent because none of them has access to such public funds that could be spent on building a positive image.
Local television, funded with public money, therefore shows the mayor during important school and state ceremonies, opening the Days of the City and the Ceramics Festival, and finalizing investments in the city, even when it is just a few metres of pavement. Television even shows Piotr Roman acting as master of ceremonies before more attractive concerts, cracking jokes and entertaining the audience, as happened at concerts by Janusz Radek and Tercet Egzotyczny. It is an open secret that whenever the mayor is present at an event, his television station must also be there.
In programs paid for from the city budget and in articles in the also publicly funded free newspaper, the mayor is portrayed as a good manager, an efficient politician and a likeable person.
The PLN 130,000 is money well spent, and in this case the result is easy to measure—the mayor remains in office and will probably be elected for a third term. Measuring the results of spending the remaining half-million zlotys is more difficult.
Producing 250 ballpoint pens in cases as part of the city’s promotion cost taxpayers PLN 13,588 last year. Receiving an elegant pen as a gift is certainly very pleasant, but does it provide the city with any measurable benefit? Of course, apart from the recipient’s gratitude, which, as we know, is priceless.
Since 2008, the city has had its own patron saint. It was decided that she could also help promote Bolesławiec. PLN 12,200 went to a little-known television station from Lubań for producing and broadcasting a documentary-promotional film about St. Maria de Mattias. The station also produced 250 DVDs with the film. But who watches the film once nobody pays for further broadcasts? And does the fact that someone has cameras and calls itself a television station mean that a film made by such a company is valuable and deserves such a large expenditure?
What if the same money were used to establish Maria de Mattias scholarships? Adding the funds spent on cups and calendars bearing the saint’s image, the total would easily reach PLN 20,000. Such scholarship recipients could promote both Maria de Mattias and Bolesławiec, as well as the generous authorities, much better than a documentary on DVD.
The amount spent on subsidizing the activities of children and young people, groups, organizations and athletes who promoted the city was equal to the cost of two films, cups and calendars about Maria de Mattias. Let us pray that their director does not come up with the idea of making a sequel.
Why was it decided to spend only PLN 253 on promoting cycle paths on the Internet, while PLN 26,400 was spent on updating Grzegorz Matoryn’s album “Bolesławiec. Places—People—Events” and purchasing 600 copies? What is the effect of distributing 600 copies of a book compared with the reach of a well-designed and well-promoted website about recreational cycle paths?
An example of a lack of understanding of which media should be used for advertising is the expenditure of PLN 10,000 on materials on Radio Wrocław. In Wrocław alone, that radio station ranks only tenth in terms of listenership—at the beginning of 2008, only 4.2% of those who listened to radio listened to it.
We do not know why the city hardly advertises on the Internet at all. It is, after all, the best and cheapest place to promote itself among potential tourists and investors around the world. In 2008, less than PLN 4,000 was spent on online advertising.
Bolesławiec and the Ceramics Festival are advertised in the media; leaflets, brochures and advertising spots are produced, as are promotional gadgets led by ballpoint pens in cases, and it is clear that the Development and Promotion Department is making a great effort. Yet nowhere can we find even a single poll, study or report showing how many tourists were attracted to Bolesławiec by this form of advertising. Is the city better known in Poland? How many tourists associate it with ceramics, and how many with the Lower Silesian Forests or the “Blues nad Bobrem” workshops? We do not even know how many people attend each year an event advertised as heavily as the Ceramics Festival. Nor do we know how effective media advertising is. We do not know which advertising, and where it is placed, contributes to increased tourist attendance. Elżbieta Chojnacka, head of the Development and Promotion Department, admitted to us with disarming candor that no one has ever measured these results. And when the mayor was asked the same question during a press conference, he cut the subject short.
Conclusion. We have word-of-mouth advertising and guessed-at results. And while word of mouth, used to promote Bolesławiec, cannot be criticized for being costly, some of the ideas of the image-marketing specialists from the Promotion Department are completely incomprehensible.
(report by Grażyna Hanaf and Krzysztof Gwizdała)