Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
On Wednesday, Vedrana and I head for Zagreb. We arrived late in the afternoon. A quick rest and then a party organized by one of Europe’s leading cosmetic companies, Reviderm, amid the rebranding of its products. Vedrana is a partner of Reviderm. She uses their products and appliances in her salon. We thought we were just invited for that. But that was not the only reason. Reviderm thanked several of their best partners in the region that evening. Among them was Vedrana. She got a plaque made of glass. Beautiful and elegant, just as it befits a cosmetic company. And the champagne bottle to celebrate it.
Thursday started with morning coffee and a meeting with Damir Ciglar (Imago Ogilvy). We talked about different modalities of our cooperation, interests are mutual, we put some key ideas on paper. Damir will talk with some of Imago’s clients next week to motivate them to engage in cooperation. This makes me particularly happy. I will get complete proposals by the end of next week, and next month we will start negotiating the 2019 agreement. This isn’t a beginning for us. We’ve been collaborating for a couple of years now and now it is time for this cooperation to get a framework, and to define the values that are essential both to Imago and to us.
After leaving Damir, I went to the Addiko Bank‘s headquarters for a meeting with Maja Čulig, regional marketing manager whom I met in Bihać during the Creative Republic. The brilliant story of Addiko Bank rebranding fascinated me, so I wanted to get her interview as soon as possible. And I got it. An excellent and useful story for the entire industry on how to handle such a complex project (to replace Hypo Bank with a bank with a brand new identity) in an extremely short timeframe. When they received a proposal for the bank’s name from an agency from London – Addiko – they asked what it meant, and received the answer: “Nothing. Your task is to give that name a meaning and create a banking brand.” Thus, they started collaborating with the Bruketa&Žinić&Grey agency, which was given an extremely short deadline for the implementation of the entire project – and then even that deadline was cut by half, because the bank had to start working sooner. To learn how this was accomplished, what results have been achieved and what is currently present in the Addiko Bank’s marketing, you will have to read the interview with Maja Čulig soon.
From Addiko Bank I returned to Sheraton where I had an arranged interview with Božo Skoko (Millennium Promotion). We had been going back and forth for some time now, but never could get our schedules in tune. Now we somehow managed it. Božo is a man with great experience in PR and with great knowledge, which has earned him the position of an eminent university professor. There’s a wide choice of topics for conversation with Božo. PR, destination branding, the media industry, the democracy of media expression… We did an excellent interview, not because of my questions, but because of Božo’s answers. What’s specially sunk in for me was his claim that when it comes to portal today, it’s not important how many visits they have, but how relevant a portal is, and Media Marketing is certainly the most relevant medium of the regional communications industry. And that’s not my own claim, it’s something that we are told by those who read us.
From Sheraton I switch to Esplanade Hotel to meet with Andrea Štimac, a consultant operating in the triangle Zagreb – Zurich – Tel Aviv. Andrea is a member of the HURA Management Board with many years of experience in agencies. She has been running the latest project of drafting HURA’s guidelines for calculating agency fees. She is highly dedicated to advising in the field of changes in agencies and looking for new models of their business. To be successful in the future, agencies need to change. I ask Andrea whether it is enough for just agencies to change in the agency-advertisers-media relationship, or is it necessary to reach a consensus on changes of all three pillars of the advertising industry in order to secure its future? Andrea made several very interesting suggestions and ideas. Nearly two hours which we had at our disposal passed as if they were minutes. I would love to bring Andrea’s thoughts to the portal, because they are very valuable. We are going to make an interview next week and to do something on finding the modalities for closer cooperation. The interests are mutual.
The last meeting before I left for Rovinj was with Damjan Geber in Brigada agency. You know them, it’s the agency from Bruketa&Žinić&Grey system that deals with creating user experiences in sales facilities and designing fantastic exhibitions, the most successful of which is Croatia is Hrvatska for which they could soon receive the INSIDE/WAF – World Architecture Festival Award, award tantamount to Cannes Lions in the field of architecture (they are in the finals), in addition to numerous domestic and international awards they won so far. I did an interview with Damjan for the front page of the printed edition of Media Marketing when Brigada was launched ten years ago. Now I did it again. Great chat with Damjan. You will enjoy reading.
You may wonder why I threw myself in the making of interviews? This is part of our strategy to raise the quality of portal content. As the interviews are among the most popular content, we decided to focus on them. We will do interviews only with people who have something to say, who have gained reputation in the industry, and who are respected for their work. We need useful stories. And we’ll have them.
It’s already late afternoon. We were heading towards Rovinj. Vedrana was telling me about the Reviderm seminar she spent all day at. This story turned into a brainstorming from which a brand new Beauty Weekend by Vedrana was born. We put together her experiences over the last couple of months while she was working on the opening of the beauty salon Beauty by Malak at the luxurious hotel Malak, and the things she had heard that day at Reviderm. Even though I was caught up by fatigue at the exit from Zagreb, as soon as we started talking about Vedrana’s new brand, Beauty Weekend by Vedrana, I was energized. I enjoyed all the talk, ideas and the ride to Rovinj. After all, we were going to the Weekend.
We arrived at Lone around 22:00hrs. We needed to rest. The agenda for Rovinj is packed to the last minute.
September 20, 2018