Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Adnan Arnautlija
The Golden Drum Festival recently announced Dr. Stojan Pelko as the new vice president of the Festival, responsible for competition and program. Dr. Pelko is a man of broad education (Master’s degree in philosophy and PhD in sociology), he has won awards for his work in advertising, and has political and diplomatic experience; all – and more – that is necessary to reign with due sovereignty over the creation of one of the most important advertising festivals in Europe and the world.
Media Marketing wishes to welcome Dr. Pelko into the Golden Drum family with this interview, and to introduce you, our dear readers, to a man with an intriguing professional career.
Media Marketing: You have joined the Golden Drum team. How did this collaboration come to be?
Stojan Pelko: I was invited by Mojca Briščik, director of the Slovenian Advertising Chamber and president of the Festival. It’s a special honor for me to have been proposed by my colleague Janez Rakušček, because he was “responsible” for my entry into advertising in first place. A long time ago – in the previous century – after returning from Paris, I edited the Slovenian magazine for film and TV called Ekran. We wanted to modernize it by covering hitherto insufficiently covered areas of audio-visual production, such as TV ads and music videos. Janez began to write about that for Ekran, and I wrote the first few advertising pieces. Then when Janez went to Studio Marketing, I “filled” his place in Luna. One small step for him, but a giant leap for me.
Media Marketing: How did you react to the invitation from SOZ?
Stojan Pelko: I was happy to receive Mojca’s invitation, because, after four years away from Slovenia (I spent a little more than three years in Pristina, and a little less than a year in Dubrovnik) it was not easy to catch up with the local currents. Now it seems to me that that working distance from the day to day scene actually helps in trying to create the program of the Golden Drum across the regional borders. I have fond memories of Golden Drum from the period of Jure Apih and Meta Dobnikar: we won some awards and I even coordinated the work of the jury for a couple of years. Even then, the rule was that the creativity of New Europe can be credibly judged only by the best creative minds in the world. I’ll never forget how nice it was back then to debate with Fred and Farid for example, who came to Portorož shortly after they won the Coca-Cola pitch for the whole of Europe.
Media Marketing: Many remember you as a creative director, but you’ve also dealt with political marketing, and you were a representative of the EU Office in Kosovo. We could say that your career path has been quite colorful.
Stojan Pelko: Sometimes I smile when I think back to how proud I was when I was checking the labels of Uncle Ben’s sauces at a local store to see if my Slovenian translation of the declaration had been printed without any errors. Back then one of our clients was Master Food. That says at least two things: how old I already am, and how naively I “jumped” into different times after the change of the social system and the regime. By comparison, for example, from “communism” to “consumerism”. The historical truth, of course, states that my generation in this region never experienced “harsh communism”, but it was rather Gramsci’s period of “morbid symptoms” when the old was already dying and the new had not yet been born, and it is exactly such a transitional time that is typically the period of the greatest freedom. It is no coincidence that the Golden Drum is in fact a legacy of those times and of those areas: it knew to take the good from both, and not trust either.
I’m saying all this because at that specific time the shift from marketing to political marketing was very short – in just a few days, and, in my case, literally during the holidays. When Dr. Drnovšek and his closest associate Gregor Golobič were looking for someone who would meet with Jacques Seguela on 1 May 1996 when he came to Ljubljana at the invitation of the Prime Minister, there were only two conditions: that you have some experience in advertising and that you speak French. The fact that I met both criteria has in many ways determined the last 20 years of my life. I learned from Seguela a lot about the real European political marketing, which I then practiced in Slovenia and beyond. When a consultation turns into the creation of a political agenda it soon leads you to express your loyalty to the program, your colleagues, comrades, through political involvement.
And, when you mentioned Kosovo, I should say that in those three years with Samuel Zbogar, as the EU Special Representative in Kosovo, I learned the difference between politics and diplomacy. Had the Golden Drum remained where it was at the turn of the century, it would hardly have attracted me back. But given the fact that it has moved into the sphere of a broader sense of creativity, I believe that with my experience of regional politics, diplomacy and strategic communication, I can contribute to making the Golden Drum press forward: in terms of content, geography, concept…
Media Marketing: Since we mentioned your versatility, it’s an interesting fact that you are a philosopher from the academic standpoint.
Stojan Pelko: Only very few people have the privilege of confidently presenting themselves as philosophers. I am not one of them: I have a master’s degree in philosophy and a PhD in social sciences, but I’m not a philosopher. I was lucky that I was able to study (and later to hang out) with the extraordinary people the world now knows as the “Ljubljana trio”: Dr. Mladen Dolar, who inspired me to look at film conceptually and philosophically; Dr. Alenka Zupančić, who had been my colleague at Paris University; and Dr. Slavoj Žižek, who in the end was my mentor for my master’s thesis, and my co-mentor for my doctorate thesis. If anyone is ever in doubt about the real gravitas of this trio, they should go into any serious bookstore in the world and they will see their work on the same shelf with Hegel, Heidegger, Deridda or Foucault. If I were to take a step further into our “mental” neighborhood, I could imagine bearded Žižek discussing Antigone with Sophocles, just before going for a coffee and a cake with Socrates. That’s our street, that’s our city.
Media Marketing: Let’s go back to the festival. Your role, firstly, is related to the competition. Can you tell us anything about the innovations we can expect?
Stojan Pelko: Together with the members of the Golden Drum Competition Council, this year we have only optimized the competition somewhat and made the final event more dynamic. But we are already building changes to the competition and program for the year 2018, which will be the 25th anniversary of the Festival. In terms of the program, Golden Drum has already set such high standards with their speakers that it’s a challenge to top it every year. We will not turn a blind eye to reality, and as always we will try to select speakers who face the challenges of our time: people’s desire to put everything on the line so they can go from one part of the world to another; the anxiety of people who do not want to be just a number in some cybernetic process or algorithm, but the decision-makers of our common fate. Stephane Hessel wrote: “To create is to resist. To resist is to create.” If we want to be a serious festival of creativity, we must never forget that.
Media Marketing: What would you like to see at this year’s festival, in your first time as vice-president of the festival?
Stojan Pelko: It sounds a little paradoxical, but I expect that the migration inland from the coast, into the capital of one of the young European countries, will make it more accessible for all those influences we are washed with by the waves of the Mediterranean, the basin of all good ideas – from tragedy and philosophy, to healthy food and good design. Golden Drum in Ljubljana will perhaps be a little shorter than that in Portorož, but it will be much more long-term.
Media Marketing: Finally, what does Golden Drum mean to you personally?
Stojan Pelko: When Jure Apih – to whom, as a client with understanding, I owe the only gold watch I have received in my life as creative director of the year for Delo’s campaign Journalists – lucidly concluded that the market of New Europe has a potential of 400 million consumers, he placed us on the map as a generation and as a branch which substantially expanded our then youthful horizons. This is the invaluable merit of this festival: we thought in one instant that there was only one world. Then it took us some time to understand that there is more than one world, at least two – the 1% and the 99% world. I see the current Golden Drum as our (the remaining 99%) attempt to change our world, but not by trying to elbow our way in among the rich authoritarians, but rather to expand the boundaries of the freedom of our world, our Mediterranean.