Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
Association of Marketing of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce held a session Wednesday, as representatives of leading companies of the Croatian marketing industry gathered to discuss the new Law on Electronic Media and the help of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce in seeking students for practice.
“Our goal is to articulate the interests of the profession towards legislators at national and European level, in order to raise the local marketing to a higher level. Only with our serious engagement, with the support of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce, we can keep up with international competition,” said the President of the Marketing Association of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce Božidar Abramović, adding that now is the right opportunity to co-create the first draft of the new Law on Electronic Media. Towards this goal, he invited members to submit their proposals and requests to the competent institutions through the Association of HGK as soon as possible.
Members of the Association also discussed the state and trends in the Croatian marketing industry.
“With the help of creativity, we solve the challenges that our clients place before us, and in these cases the function mostly dictates the form. Domestic companies are experimenting with some of the most up-to-date advertising principles, and thanks to the Internet, every company, even the smallest one, can reach its customers today,” said Davor Bruketa from the Bruketa&Žinić&Grey agency, noting that the classification of social networks into electronic media would not have too much influence on the marketing industry. He also said he sees influencers as partners in business, and that Croatian companies are quite open to advertising innovations.
Luka Duboković from the agency BBDO Zagreb said that the profession has changed significantly over the last ten years, primarily in terms of the use of digital. “Today, a campaign is practically unthinkable without Instagram, and five years ago it was practically unused. Changes are constant and change the way we address the users, so we have to constantly adjust. Using digital will continue to intensify, and will attract more and more marketing budgets accordingly,” Duboković stressed, adding that the market will be greatly influenced by new regulation and tools such as artificial intelligence.
Nikola Vrdoljak from Agency 404 stressed that the focus of marketing is always on consumers, rather than the channels through which they are reached. “Social networks have grown to become the largest media in the world, but traditional media are still largely present and will stay for a long time, at least in our region,” said Vrdoljak, adding that when it comes to campaigns the most important thing is to find a good channel mix.
Legal regulation, the use of new technologies and the lack of workforce are among the biggest challenges for the industry. Petar Pavić from S.T.A.R. Digital held a brief presentation on the impact of large technology companies such as Google and Facebook on local market development and the need for regulation.
“The areas of big tech that concern us the most are: privacy of personal data, propagation of controversial content, non-payment of taxes, monopolistic market position and copyright,” said Pavić, adding that one of the major challenges is the lack of understanding among the institutions for which this is a completely new area. He stressed that enormous lobbying investments of large companies, the fragmentation of the media-marketing profession and the new paradigm of monopoly where the product is free are also big challenges, and are confusing for the legislators that have only now started to react.
Tomislav Presečki of McCann agrees with this, and says the biggest challenge in the industry is adapting to the digitization of the industry, and the second major problem is the lack of quality workforce. “Young people coming from colleges don’t have all the necessary knowledge, but this discrepancy can be solved through practice,” he said.
Following this conclusion, participants in the session unanimously accepted the initiative that the Croatian Chamber of Commerce serves as an intermediary for linking companies and students interested in marketing. “The Chamber cooperates with the University of Zagreb, but also with other universities, and are willing to help us find young people and even make pre-selection of students,” Abramović explained.
There were also discussions on lobbying for the change of the National Classification of Occupations in which there are only two categories for jobs in marketing, and the Head of the EEN Department (European Entrepreneurship Network) for EU Programs and Support Funds for Small and Medium Enterprises at HGK, Vesna Torbarina, presented to the members services of the Chamber related to support when entering foreign markets.