Source: FENA, Darinka Mitrović, Photo: Almir Razić
SARAJEVO, 29 May – The role of the media in presenting, reporting, communicating and bringing economic policies closer to the public is necessary and very important – it was emphasized today in Sarajevo at the conference titled “Media as a communicator of economic policies”.
The conference was organized by the Chamber of Economy of the Federation of BiH (P/G Chamber FBiH), and it covered three central topics within three panels – strategic communication of economic policies, the real sector in the media labyrinth, and consumer ethnocentrism and the media.
The Chamber of Economy of the Federation of BiH, as its vice president Marko Šantić said, is organizing such an event for the first time, where they tried to bring together the government and real sectors, the media and the Chamber in one place.
– The Chamber of Economy of the Federation of BiH is launching a new campaign for domestic products in the sixth month, and that is ‘Ja BiH naše’, and in that spirit we designed the third panel at the conference to point out that the media, not only in economic policies from the government sector to the public, but also from the real sector to the public, will have a major role in communicating domestic products. What, in my personal opinion, is a weakness of the domestic economy is that we promote domestic products too little. We have very high-quality domestic products, and their preference in the domestic market is still not at a level that could satisfy – Šantić told Fena.
He added that they strive to contribute to such promotions, and will continue to do so through the upcoming campaign and the awarding of labels such as “Original domestic” and “BH quality” which they have protected at the Institute for Intellectual Property of BiH.
The patron of today’s conference is the Federal Ministry of Development, Entrepreneurship and Crafts, the co-organizer is the Financial-Information Agency (FIA), while the media patrons are FENA, Dnevni avaz and Večernji list.
The deputy director of the Federal News Agency (FENA), Ilija Musa, one of the panelists on the second panel on the topic “The real sector in the media labyrinth”, said that precisely such events show how the real sector and the economy as a whole should communicate with the media.
– The choice of panels, their topics and participants show how the level of cooperation between the media and the economy should be raised with the aim of informing the public about what is actually happening in our economy – Musa pointed out.
According to him, the discussion on the topic dedicated to finding one’s way in the media labyrinth should help in building better public relations for companies, but also make it easier for the media to communicate everything that the economy expects from them, and to familiarize the economy with what the market expects from the economy on the other side – Musa said.
In this way, he added, we can expect that this cooperation will improve, that with the help of the academic community and international organizations, better presentation of the economy in BiH media will be enabled, just as we can expect greater help from the economy to the media and from the media to the economy.
The vice president in AS Holding for product, brand and marketing development, Edhem Numić, said that the criterion of ‘domestic product’ alone does not sell a product, but that work must first be done on product quality.
– That is the basic thing, and when we work on large projects, especially in AS Holding, which has 25 to 30 brands in our 20 or so companies, we first work on product quality. When a product meets quality and price, then people decide for the domestic product. In working with the media, we try to draw attention primarily to our quality products and different topics – Numić added.
Some of those topics, he added, which have been particularly successful for them, relate to exports, and the media often report on the success of their brands such as Zlatna džezva and the Maza cream spread. Of course, there are also Klasa products – flour, biscuits, bosnian lokum and others.
– The media are interested in these topics and whenever we have something to say we get a good response from them – Numić added.
The director of the Relax tours travel agency and Pino Nature hotel, Aida Terzić, stated that they have extremely good cooperation with the media, which, when it comes to the tourism sector in general, was especially pronounced during the pandemic in communicating with the authorities and clients in order to maintain the tourism economy.
– This will be a positive story from practice today. I believe that perhaps we should move away more from political topics, emphasize economic growth more and speak affirmatively about tourism, our wealth and resources – Terzić pointed out.
