Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
On Thursday evening I was invited to the ceremonial introduction of Vučko, the mascot of the Winter Olympics Sarajevo 1984, and Foxi, the mascot of the Olympic Committee of Slovenia. I was invited by Radovan Arnold, Partner and Creative Director of ArnoldVuga Ljubljana, agency of the Olympic Committee of Slovenia.
I met Radovan last summer in Ljubljana. I came to interview him because I heard a lot of interesting things about this fastest growing Slovenian advertising agency. We’ve been talking for almost an hour, but I somehow lost the recording of our interview, so it was never published. I was sad about it because I thought we made a great story that would be difficult to repeat. Now that we had been hanging out all night in Sarajevo, I learned from Radovan some interesting things about the agency I didn’t know, so it might be that the loss of that recording was simply fate.
Agency Arnoldvuga has in the meantime opened its office in Sarajevo to serve Mercator as one of its biggest clients more efficiently. That was news for me. Same as the great news that Radovan gave me in Sarajevo – Arnoldvuga has become a partner of the media giant Havas for Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina! Tomorrow morning, after a joint dinner in Sarajevo, Radovan sent me the news which we published as breaking news piece, because it is. That’s how it goes with Radovan. There’s always something new.
He told me about the projects that Arnoldvuga worked on in the second half of last year and in the first months of this year. Some of them are still not finished so I can’t write about them now, but when the time comes. Of course, we spent the most time talking about the Olympic Committee of Slovenia, for which Arnoldvuga created the logo, a mascot and a communication strategy. They are now working on contracting and realizing the rights to the application of Foxi and the OKS signs on some mass-produced consumer products intended for children. The sales results of these products are excellent. One of the topics was of course Mercator, as one of the most significant Radovan’s clients.
Radovan is radically different from other CEOs and creative directors of agencies in the Adriatic region. He is very simple and direct in communication. He is extremely creative and productive. Arnoldvuga agency employs – if I remember well – 18 people, and it works more than many agencies that have two or three times more employees. Radovan’s simplicity has also been transferred to the organization of the agency, creating a highly productive team that, without many procedures, solves the most complex problems for its clients. I hope I will have a chance to talk to him again and to transfer this conversation to our portal.
As the Slovenian Olympic Committee is a client of Arnoldvuga, Radovan came to Sarajevo for an event organized by the Olympic Committee on the occasion of the participation of Slovenian national team at the European Olympic Youth Festival – EYOF, which was held in Sarajevo and East Sarajevo last week. Forty years ago, I worked closely with the Slovenian sports federation, first and foremost with their skiing team and with the organizers of the competition in ski jumps at Planica, so I’m well used to the culture of camaraderie of Slovenian athletes.
This same culture, which has grown into tradition, could be recognized that night in Sarajevo. Everything was very well organized. Since they came to the city that once hosted the Winter Olympics, Slovenes invited Vučko to meet their Foxi. It all went in an extremely friendly tone, even though wolves and foxes aren’t great allies in the nature. The peak of the evening was when Groodvy, the mascot of EYOF, joined them in the hall.
The Slovenians wouldn’t be what they are if they didn’t take everything into account, so they invited to the ceremony three of their contestants who performed at the Winter Games in 1984 in the Nordic disciplines in Sarajevo. All three came with their original starting numbers from 1984.
It was very nice to mingle with young Slovenian athletes, their Olympic management and Radovan Arnold.
The next day, Friday, I went to Trebević, one of the Olympic mountains above Sarajevo, with my entire team. 35 years ago, Olympic bob-sleigh contests took place on Trebević. We went to Hotel Pino where we trained in our own sports discipline – creating a creative and efficient team that will guide the development of Media Marketing. We have a team and that is what matters most to me.
We have an excellent team, five people who nurture the same values, are full of positive energy and love to work together. For three hours we talked about the most current topics for us. We went through projects, saw progress on each of them. I was surprised with some of the ideas they talk about every day. And this is probably because I’m not in the office so they can talk completely freely, I do not have to worry about them. After a three-hour meeting, we went to the hotel restaurant for lunch, so we continued to talk another two hours in a relaxed atmosphere at the gallery that was open only to us this afternoon.
Coming back from Trebević, I realized that I should give my associates full freedom. They are great, and most importantly they have quickly built up a relationship full of positive energy. I most like to work from home, so I leave them all the freedom to go imagine new things all day. I would like to have three more people in the team, to smoothly sail into the quieter waters and pull out from the daily operational things.
During the weekend, Asja and I completed the book Creative Portfolio 02, which should go into presses of the Zagreb based Printera company on Thursday. The dot on the “i”, as in the first book, was the ranking of ten most successful campaigns, agencies and advertisers on the basis of results achieved at national and regional festivals last year.
Asja processed all that quite methodically, so we are both pleased with the results. Only pity is that some campaigns did not go outside the frames of national festivals. With awards at at least one of the three regional festivals, they would have much better placement. My message to all agencies is to go beyond the limits of their local markets and show their creativity at regional festivals. Then they will be much more appreciated in their own environments. The culture of sending works to festivals outside the borders of one’s own country is most prominent with the Belgrade agencies.
February 18, 2019.