Hungarian Advertising and Media

Last week I talked with a hungarian girl about the Media and Advertising situation in her country. 

She told me that since Viktor Orban's politics the situation of freedom of speech and the conditions for medias of the left wing is really tough. 

In 2016 a man named Lorinc Meszaros bought 12 of the 19 regional newspapers. Lorinc Meszaros is a close friend and ally of Primeminister Viktor Orban. This act caused a lot of discussions, as there are many suspecting political motives behind this move. 

Since then there were a lot of changes in ownerships with the solution that almost the whole media is pro-government covered. 

Currently Social Media is an important source for news since the tradiotional media channels are not longer trustable, especially for the young generation. 

But many people of the older generation still use the televison as their source of information.

This is really shocking for me. In Germany we can read almost all newspapers and watch all televison channels without being afraid of fake news or politically influenced media. 

This also means, that the decision makers of advertising in international companies have to consider that the best chanel to use for advertisments, is the online one. It also makes it more difficult for liberal international brands to get into the hungarian market without supporting local politics and the government. 

This clearly shows that cross cultural communication and marketing is an important and time costing topic for companies and strongly dependent of local politics and regulations.