Running It Up the Danube

"Apple juice is good for you," proclaims a billboard in Budapest. "Capture time, take photographs," urges a TV commercial in Prague. "Fly by airplane," reads a Soviet poster. Rudimentary as they are by Western standards, such ads are sign and symbol that the men in the grey flannel oeltoeny have found a place in increasingly consumer-minded Eastern Europe.

This was nowhere more in evidence than at last week's annual World Marketing Congress in Vienna, where Communist admen traded Madison Avenue jargon with some 500 Western experts. "The common efforts in the technology of research, interpretation of results and empirical analysis are the same East and West," said Rumania's representative, Michael Demetrescu.

In fact, East Europe learned the techniques of marketing and advertising from the West. Every Eastern European country has at one time or another invited teams of Western admen to initiate them into the subtle art of probing the mind of the consumer. The Czechoslovak!an Institute of Merchandising in Prague has done market surveys that covered up to 3,000 people. In Hungary, the National Market Research Institute keeps 3,000 to 3,500 households under continuous study, in an effort to find out their tastes in articles ranging from coffee percolators to children's wear. A Bulgarian outfit is conducting research on a sample of 4,000 families. "The Bulgarian consumer is now being X-rayed to guide production of cars, TV sets and refrigerators," announced Simeon Panev, a 29-year-old analyst from Sofia.

, That Is All There Is. These new marketing institutes are recording for the first time the preferences of the consumer. They are commissioned either by a state agency or an individual enterprise; they earn useful hard currency by accepting assignments from potential Western exporters. Said one West German marketing man: "Over the last few years, 'Socialist' marketing has entered fields that were once the province of the secret police--inquiry, research and social research."

Jaruse Vydrova, a chic blonde from Prague, proudly reported last week that, acting on "research into selling methods abroad and market research at home," the Czech refrigerator industry introduced free installations and delivery service. And when the domestic TV industry recently faced a serious production surplus, it took some advice from the marketing researcher and started TV rentals, with great success.

East European marketing people still have a relatively easy task. "They don't have to bother with motivation of buying Surf, Duz or Tide," commented a U.S. marketing expert in Vienna. In most cases, the consumer buys a product because that is all there is.

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