Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
Last week was full of excitement.
On Wednesday morning, Vedrana and I went with Zvezdana Žujo to Belgrade for the Grand Slam awards. The trip went quite okay, as befits a Porsche Cayenne which Zvezdana masterfully drew.
We arrived at the Belgrade hotel Square Nine in the early afternoon and immediately met with Iva Balent, Executive Director of Marketing at Agrokor, to whom that evening Media Marketing would present the Grand Slam for the contribution to the development of the advertising industry in the region. And immediately, at the very meeting – tears. Zvezdana’s birthday was on Friday, so Iva took the opportunity of the meeting in Belgrade to deliver her a birthday present. I’ve never seen such a big and such a beautiful basket of flowers. The gift was beautifully packed in a large box so I can’t tell you what Zvezdana got, because I couldn’t see it, but the flowers were so beautiful that they caused a flood of tears. It was so touching that even I was on the edge of tears.
Soon came Lazar Bosković from AgitProp agency for the meeting we agreed earlier. Lazar writes very good columns for our portal, on the topic of Digital, so we discussed the expansion of cooperation and future plans. As Lazar is an expert in digital, he accepted the proposal to do the localization of ads on our MM portal. Since we are a regional media, the problem of selling ads on the portal is that there are very few regional budgets. In the last year we have received dozens of queries whether ads may be localized so that only visitors from the same country as the advertiser can see the ads. Now we have decided to enable this to improve the advertising revenue.
After the meeting with Lazar, a short break and a trip to the Yugoslav Film Archive, which is located right next to the Square Nine. I meet up with many friends from Belgrade in a nice atmosphere, which is customary before a big event. After a welcome cocktail we entered the hall and the show could begin. The theme of this year’s Night of the Ad Eaters, which will be held in seven days in the Sava Center, is ecology, and at the beginning we watched films with environmental themes. Great films. Alex Đorđević, who runs the program, successfully holds all the strings in his hands.
The first award goes to the CMO of m:ts, a multi-year sponsor of the Night of the Ad Eaters. It’s always fitting to publicly thank a good sponsor.
Then followed the recognition for Miša Lukić, CEO of Publicis One in 30 countries, for his contribution to the development of advertising in Serbia, which was presented by Goga Grubješić, the alpha and omega of the whole story that was taking place that night in the Cinematheque. Goga says Miša should have received this award several times already, but noted that it was all actually waiting for him to become one of the key people of Publicis One in the world.
Then the time came for me to climb the stage and hand the Grand Slam which Media Marketing awards for the development of the advertising industry in the region. A month earlier when we were invited to propose a laureate for the Grand Slam, we opted for Iva Balent relatively quickly. After all, we wanted to hear what the industry says, so we formed a sort of a jury among our friends, industry leaders. We suggested a few names, and they unanimously decided for Iva Balent. It’s not a recognition that is automatically assigned to Agrokor, as the largest advertiser in the region, which by that fact alone has the greatest influence on advertising. This is a tribute to Iva Balent, for all the energy she brings to our industry, for the way she full heartedly does her job and leads a team of over 600 people. The marketing team of Agrokor employs more people than all Croatian agencies combined. The applause that Iva received was the best proof that we made the right decision.
The finale of this truly unique ceremony was awarding of the Legendarium – a special lifetime achievement award given by the Institute for the History of Advertising, founded by Vlado Čeh. This award, worth every respect, was posthumously awarded to Dragan Sakan. The presentation, which was planned to last 12 minutes in the program, lasted almost half an hour, but Čeh prepared it so masterfully – showing all Saki’s campaigns – that even if it had lasted another half an hour, it would still have been interesting. All the time I thought of Saki and how much I miss him, how sorry I am that we haven’t spent more time together, even though we socialized quite intensely. But it was too little. For one part of the presentation I even led a dialogue with him, constantly thinking that he is up there on some star, looking down on us smiling. He can be satisfied. His sons Žarko and Lazar, who received the award, continue to successfully lead the Agency, winning even the Cannes Lions which Saki dreamed of.
For this year’s and all the previous laureates, a gala dinner was organized at Square Nine, that lasted late into the night. One of the most pleasant sit-ins that I have ever attended. Sponsor of the dinner was I&F McCann Group, whose president Srđan Šaper is among previous winners of the Grand Slam. Everything was perfect, even the fact that Vina Belje wines (Agrokor), were on the tables, as befits when Iva Balent is among laureates, although she had no idea that she would be drinking “her” wines that evening.
Thursday began with a breakfast with Iva. I asked her to be the president of our Woman.Comm Conference on women in the communications industry, which we plan to organize in March at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. She asked me what it meant and I answered: “I have no idea, but it will be a great conference and we will not burden you with obligations”. Iva laughed and said: “I accept.”
Then followed a meeting with Marija Vićić in I&F McCann. We’re finishing the agreement on strategic collaboration for the next year, and are talking on some projects that will be realized in 2017, the year that marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the first McCann agency in Belgrade. Every conversation with Marija is inspiring for me. We also recalled the events of the night before, and the conversation we had at dinner. Marija said that all the awards were absolutely deserved. Of course, as a woman, she had most compliments for Iva Balent.
Later I went to New Moment for a meeting with Žarko Sakan, also our strategic partners. At New Moment, I ran into Miloš Simić, president of IAA Serbia with whom I went out for a coffee. He told me about the Effie Awards they are organizing in Serbia, as a major project of the IAA Chapter, and promised an exclusive interview on this occasion for Media Marketing (as I write this diary log on Sunday evening, Jelena Ivanović, director of IAA, sent news about that you can read in the section News).
Meetings with Žarko Sakan are always short and very effective. He’s very satisfied with the Legendarium and presentation that Vlado Čeh gave. We moved on to business, as he listed his impressions from India where they work on a second campaign already. Jobs in Serbia are also going well. They just won a contract with Telenor for the next three years. Huge! He promised he would soon send us some news. We agree about the ad of New Moment in the book The Best of CDs and the key issues pertaining to the following year.
Time flies, so I was already late for a meeting with Zdenka Milanović, chief marketing officer of the Skopje Brewery, which is responsible for all Heineken brands in Macedonia and for the marketing activities of Coca-Cola. Zdenka is my mentor. She and Marija Vićić introduced me to I&F McCann Group while Zdenka was regional director of the Group. She introduced me to Milena Garfield, with whom I have great cooperation today. She gave me some key ideas for making the business plan for the next year. She was critical of the interviews which we published recently, stating that most of them had too much of a promoting character for the interviewees, and said that we should pay more attention to interviews. As soon as I got home I looked at a couple of interviews and saw that Zdenka was absolutely right. The entire weekend I spent working to create a better concept and made the list of 30 people whom we will interview next, and much better. As we were discussing at Square Nine, we received a message that Zvezdana’s Porsche was towed away by the police, so Zdenka and I had more time to talk. We chatted about everything, but I forgot to ask her if she would accept to prepare a lecture for the Woman.Comm Conference in Zagreb. (I must send her an email right now).
Zvezdana arrived with her mom Mira, who was going to Sarajevo for her daughter’s birthday, and we were ready to go home. Since the departure for Belgrade until our return to Sarajevo 37 hours passed, and there were only seven hours of sleep. However, it was beautiful.
On Friday night Vedrana and I went to a dinner on the occasion of five years of Al Jazeera Balkans. Again we meet with many friends and have a beautiful evening. Keynote speaker was Melina Kamerić, PR director of Al Jazeera, after her Edhem Fočo, the initiator of the arrival of this global TV network in Sarajevo. Fočo said one almost incredible thing. From the idea, to the moment when the Qatari Emir signed consent, only 15 days passed. It’s almost unimaginable in Muslim countries, and is a testament to how good of an idea this was. Then spoke Goran Milić, the first program director, saying, among other things, that he is retiring and is sorry for that, because he feels that the real challenges of transformation of television as a medium are yet to come. He would like to be a part of these changes, but even Goran doesn’t have three lives, although he has lived five of them so far. Then came a film about the five years of Al Jazeera Balkans, made by Goran. It’s fantastic and almost unbelievable how many good things have been done in these five years. Cherry on top was placed by the CEO of Al Jazeera Balkans Tarik Đođić who, among other things, said that Al Jazeera Balkans is bringing the world to this region, and this region to the world. In the end, Tarik awarded the first internal award for outstanding journalistic work to correspondent of Al Jazeera Balkans from Skopje, Milka Smilevska.
As this week began with Zvezdana Žujo, so it concluded with her birthday on Saturday night. Great people, great atmosphere, very creative decoration of the restaurant… everything was great. And don’t get me started on the musicians. They were awesome!