Sarajevo Film Festival is easiest to recognise by its places. By the queue in front of the cinema, the crowds around the National Theatre, the Festival Square, the red carpet and the streets that take on an entirely different rhythm during those few August days. But the Festival audience has long been more than just the people we can see at those locations. Some follow the programme from another part of the city, some from another city, some watch an interview on their phone, while others will only discover through social media what happened in Sarajevo that day.
For BH Telecom, this dispersed audience was one of the important starting points of this year’s presence alongside the Sarajevo Film Festival. Instead of one central activation carrying the entire campaign, the concept “My Sarajevo. My Story.” was developed across television programming, the web, social media, festival locations and partner projects.
The idea was broad enough to accommodate many different formats. Sarajevo is shared, but the way we experience it during the Festival is not. For some, it is the film, for others the conversation after the screening, for someone else music, a meeting, a photograph or content they follow outside the festival centre. That is why the second part of the concept, “My Story”, also left room for the festival experience not to be built from just one perspective.
Such a campaign also required many people behind the scenes. Strategic and communication management was handled by the Promotion Management Sector of BH Telecom, together with teams for digital communications, web and social media, design, television production, partner activities, procurement and operational implementation.
The core team included Nađa Lutvikadić-Fočo, Head of the Promotion Management Sector, Alma Bičakčić, Promotional Campaign Management Specialist, Nermin Kuldija, responsible for web, social media and digital communication, as well as Almir Šečkanović and the MY TV team from the development and production of the special television programme. The wider design, production, digital and operational teams of BH Telecom also took part in the implementation, as did the hosts and reporters of the MY TV programme Minja Tufo, Nedim Malkočević and Alisa Čajić.
Partners included the Sarajevo Film Festival, HBO Max, Honor, Woman.Comm and other collaborators involved in individual programme and experience segments.
The largest production part of the campaign was created on MY TV.
During the Sarajevo Film Festival, the channel available on the Moja TV platform received a special festival programme with daily live conversations, festival-day recaps, original features and content from key locations. More than 50 guests from the film, cultural, business and creative industries took part in the programme, while a total of 126 minutes of special video content were produced.
The programme was also rebroadcast daily on TVSA, taking it beyond the Moja TV user base and reaching a broader local audience.
The collaboration with the Sarajevo Film Festival also brought three exclusive interviews for Variety with Diego Luna, Emily Watson and Woody Harrelson. In this way, BH Telecom’s own television production gained an additional role in bringing conversations with some of the most prominent guests of this year’s Festival to audiences.
While MY TV assembled the festival day into longer television formats, the digital channels worked at a much faster pace. Reels, interviews, short-form video content, “either-or” questions, festival stories, giveaway activities and materials created directly at the locations were published on social media, YouTube and the BH Telecom website.
A dedicated festival subpage on bhtelecom.ba brought together information about the programme, promotions and activities, along with video content. A live camera added another way to follow the Festival, particularly for those who at that moment were not among the audience at the city locations.
From the screen, the campaign then returned to the people
During the Festival, the BH Telecom Premium Showroom became an HBO Max experience zone featuring The Dragon Skull installation, inspired by the series House of the Dragon. Visitors used it as a backdrop for photographs and videos that they then shared on social media while tagging BH Telecom. The activation thus gained a second life beyond the showroom itself, through content created by the audience.
At the entrance to the Festival Square, BH Telecom and Honor created a space based on a somewhat different type of interaction. A photobooth produced personalised festival photographs, while the Retro Phone brought a new question each day to which visitors could leave a message. Over seven days, more than 350 smaller prizes, 15 daily prizes and three grand prizes were distributed through the activation.
In the same festival space, part of the programme was also aimed at a younger, digital-first audience through a collaboration with Cerix. The four-hour gathering combined gaming and entertainment programming, with 50 BH Telecom gaming vouchers distributed. Cerix’s TikTok announcement generated 2,559 interactions, including 1,975 likes, 186 comments, 253 saves and 145 shares.
The photobooth, voice messages, gaming and photographs with The Dragon Skull were not the same type of experience, nor were they intended for the same audience. What they had in common was that they did not leave the audience simply standing in front of a visual or a logo. Each of these activities asked for some form of response: a photograph, a message, a post, a game or participation in a prize activity.
Another part of the campaign was developed through a partnership with the Woman.Comm platform.
The masterclass “Beauty Behind the Scenes” brought together women from the communications, media and creative industries through lectures, panel discussions, networking and partner activities, while the programme concluded with the Woman.Comm Summer Party “Shift Yourself”.
BH Telecom was present in the partnership through digital and PR communication, web and LED visibility, interviews, product placement, participation of company representatives as speakers and a mini video series with participants. MY TV, HBO Max and Voyo were also presented across different parts of the programme, alongside topics of domestic cinematography, social responsibility and support for women.
When all activities are viewed together, it becomes clear why the campaign could not rest on a single format. Television could offer a longer conversation and a recap of the festival day. Social media offered speed and daily contact. The live camera provided a direct view of the atmosphere. Festival zones gave people a reason to stop and take part. Partner projects provided access to specific communities.
The numbers behind the festival story
From 14 to 21 August, BH Telecom content generated a total of 5,613,542 views, representing an increase of 66%. Video content recorded 132,892 views lasting at least three seconds, an increase of 2,616%, while the number of one-minute views rose by 857%, to 3,456. Total watch time reached 27 days and 13 hours, an increase of 2,210%.
Particularly interesting is the data on who watched the content. As much as 80.4% of views came from audiences who had not followed BH Telecom profiles before the campaign. Paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram generated a reach of 1,423,241 people and 8,982,873 impressions, while another 1,279 people began following the profiles during the campaign.
In a campaign that wanted to take festival content beyond the audience that was already there, reaching new people is precisely one of the most concrete indicators that this direction made sense.
The Festival will always be remembered most strongly through real places and the people who fill them during those days. Through the queue in front of the cinema, a chance encounter on the street, a conversation that continues after the screening and a photograph that ends up on a phone before the evening is even over. But today’s Festival simultaneously lives far beyond those few Sarajevo streets.
“My Sarajevo. My Story.” tried to capture exactly that kind of Festival: one that someone follows from the front row, someone from the sofa, someone through a short video, and someone through a message they left at a festival location. And perhaps that is the best description of BH Telecom’s presence this year: it did not try to tell everyone the same festival story, but to open enough different spaces for everyone to find their own way to become part of it.
