Marketer Marek Prchal quit Babiš. He worked for the ANO movement for ten years
Marketer Marek Prchal and head of the ANO movement Andrej Babiš ended their ten-year collaboration. Prchal confirmed this to the Info.cz server. According to him, the reason is not the result of the presidential elections, the end of the ANO marketing team was said to have been planned even before them. Prchal was recently expelled from its ranks by the Art Directors Club, an association of advertising professionals, because of Babiš’s unethical advertising in the presidential election.
“It was ten years, which are once in a lifetime,” Prchal told the info.cz website. “Andrej Babiš and I said goodbye and wished each other good luck,” he added.
Prchal has been part of the ANO marketing team since 2013, when the movement entered the lower house with a gain of 47 mandates. It became part of the government of Bohuslav Sobotka together with the ČSSD and the KDU-ČSL. Ran as an expert in online communication and the social network, he has been with every campaign since then. Babiš called him a “social media genius” after the parliamentary elections in 2017, and praised him for the book What I Dream of When I Happen to Sleep.
Prchal was also at the birth of the Médiář.cz website, which focuses on marketing and media. In the past, among other things, he worked on the presidential campaign of Karel Schwarzenberg or advised the mayor of Prague, Adriana Krnáčová.
A few days ago, he became the first member of the Art Directors Club Czech Republic in 30 years. According to the members, Babiš’s campaign crossed not only professional but also ethical boundaries.
The leader of the ANO movement faced criticism for billboards with the text “I will not drag the Czechia into war. I am a diplomat. Not a soldier. President Babiš.” Critics accused him of scaring voters. Babiš admitted that the text was not successful and promised to change it. Then new posters appeared on the billboards with the inscription “The general does not believe in peace” with the postscript “Vote for peace. Vote for Babiš”.
In the end, Babiš lost by almost a million votes to General Petr Pavlo in the second round of the presidential election. In an interview for Mladá fronta Dnes on Monday, Babiš said: “It is true that our marketer did not manage the campaign completely. The billboard, on which there should not have been a soldier but a general, and it was supposed to talk about peace. And not war. We had also stick more to the motto that I help people.” However, he did not give the specific name of the marketer.
Video: I have never experienced such a disgusting speech. Babiš knows nothing about this country, says Pithart (January 20, 2023)
Interview with Petr Pithart. | Video: Blahoslav Baťa, Jakub Zuzánek
