Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
Aftre each one of the festivals, I always need a couple of days to gather my impressions and write the Diary, or any other meaningful text. This year I attended the Days of Communication in Rovinj since I couldn’t clone myself and be present at SOF and the PRO.PR conference as well. I regret greatly all three of these major events happening at the same time as I heard that not only SOF in Portorož was awesome, but people returned from Zlatibor (PRO.PR conference) fully impressed too.
Days of Communication have always been good in every respect, but this year they surpassed all expectations. Three thousand attendees! Almost incredible. A full fifth more than last year. The program was fantastic. When Dunja Ivan Ballon, the Executive Director of HURA and the Program Director of the Days of Communications announced the festival in an interview a few days before its start, she was very modest, even though that announcement, as it was, sounded quite impressive. The production and screenplay of the awards ceremony were simply perfect. And the overall atmosphere was superb. There were many young people, all in a very good mood, cheerful and happy. One could conclude that the Croatian communications industry is doing really well. Unlike other festivals, where I have not seen industry leaders, everyone, or almost everyone, came to Rovinj. That is something very important to the industry, especially the youngsters. Seeing their bosses attending the festival, totally changes their point of view. Of course, the main credit goes to the agencies, which invest in their young people by sending them to festivals, making an expense not at all small. All these investments return with the first good campaign.
I didn’t have time to attend all the lectures. I had many meetings to hold, but I will talk about them a bit later.
From the lectures and presentations I have attended, I would especially like to underline four.
Romanian Gabriela Lungu, a revered PR expert who judges PR solutions at festivals and award shows such as Dubai Lynx, Cannes Lions, Effie, D&AD and Clio, stood on the stage in Rovinj drawing some very interesting parallels and pointing compelling differences between PR and advertising professions, agency culture and interpersonal relationships in agencies on both sides. She showed the audience just how much PR and advertising people can learn from each other. Some of the ideas she mentioned, such as that advertising professionals have much more desire to grow and win, because there are way more opportunities for advertising agencies to compete, never even crossed my mind. Also, in PR agencies, all agency people have the opportunity to participate in the creative process, whereas creative teams are strictly separated from the rest of the advertising agency. And so on.
There was great commotion when it came to the presentation of Brad Parscale, the man who headed Donald Trump’s digital campaign at the last presidential election in the US and was already named the head of the entire 2020 campaign. Not even a match could find an empty spot in the presentation hall, and those who came to hear Parscale speak, did not leave disappointed. He explained just how he based the whole strategy of the campaign on the first iPod ads by Apple – those which, not even for a second, described to us what an iPod is, but rather how we will feel once we own it. Parscale killed with the facebook campaign, unimaginably stronger than that of Hillary Clinton. I am among those who dislike Trump, and wish his campaign failed so he’d never get the chance to become the most powerful man in the world. But, irrespective of this fact, chapeau to Brad Parscale.
The whole team of Media Marketing was, by far, most impressed by the global creative director of Twitter Jayanta Jenkins, who spoke about how uncool it is for a brand to try to be cool, how much more important it is to care about values, to inspire people, to connect them, to have empathy, spread love and positive vibes, to have a purpose surpassing the ego. There was never so much Zen in any festival hall, as there was in half an hour spent with this man. We all went out as if some magical powder of infinite love and peace was sprinkled all over us.
Particularly interesting for the profession was the presence of eyeo, the German software company behind Adblock Plus, the most popular browser extensions in the world, whose primary function is to block intruding ads. Eyeo’s Head of communications, Laura Sophie Dornheim, confirmed that not all advertising is bad but that the company wishes to influence the creation of better ads. She presented the Acceptable Ads initiative, which provides guidance for just that.
There was plenty of great campaigns at the competition. The agency of the year is Bruketa& Žinić&Grey. Although they have been around the top for the past three years, I felt that they were not too interested in winning. I guess they were tired of awards. This year, winning was probably again important to them since this was the first time they appeared as Grey. And because of that, they made an effort and won. All other award-winning agencies can be proud of their results too. Young Lions gave us a surprise. The same team as last year won again. I hope they will make a clean sweep in Cannes this year with their last year’s experience.
I will remember this year’s Days of Communication as an event at which I started my new adventure called the video content of Media Marketing web portal. We’ve been intending for a long time to introduce our own video content, but it somehow wasn’t happening. Two weeks ago, we started working on a “new” web portal. We will improve the content, refresh the appearance and introduce new advertising formats. Video content is one of our priorities and that’s why I’ve brought a four-member filming crew to Rovinj, the best one in Sarajevo. We had our studio in the Press room. It looked pretty impressive so other reporters thought there was a serious tv crew present. Some tv crews even used our lighting. We have recorded a lot of interesting material and now, as Lazar Dzamić would say, I caught the unbearable itch in Dubrovnik to come back home as soon as possible and look at the materials as soon as possible as well as to start working on the graphics. From Rovinj, I didn’t go strait back home to Sarajevo but to Dubrovnik and the FestiWine. Tonight, as soon as I’m done writing this Diary, I am going to attend the dinner dedicated to the union of oysters and wine. We will taste over 20 wines in order to choose the one best suiting the oysters.
In addition to outstanding program, huge numbers of people present and the magnificent award ceremony, I will remember Days of Communication by the many contacts I made. There was a lot of talk about advertising on the portal and the sponsorship of our video content. I was surprised by one thing though. More advertisers asked us to talk, than the agencies. Advertisers wish that we write more about their marketing activities and are ready to partner with us. The whole time as I was driving from Rovinj to Dubrovnik, I tried to figure out one thing that was on my mind the whole three days in Rovinj. Why agencies, always, really always, if we asked them to write about their campaigns, reply that they are not able to give us any information without their client’s approval. They would then send us the information seven to ten days later, and we regularly had to refuse to publish anything that old, being a daily portal. Now the advertisers themselves are offering us what we could not get from their agencies all these years. A brilliant example of a responsible advertiser is Mercator Slovenia, who sent us their new campaign with 2Cellos on Sunday, April 8, at 8pm, two hours after the onset of the campaign on Slovenian tv. We wish for that kind of cooperation! Give us all information, now and immediately. Do not wait for tomorrow, tomorrow is already too late. I left Rovinj feeling content because things are changing and the portal has a great future. I’m particularly surprised by the interests to sponsor video content.
From Rovinj we first went to Vižinada and the next day to Dubrovnik. In Vižinada we spent time with Jelena Fiškuš and Sean Poropata from Studio Sonda. It was beautiful. They first killed us with shellfish, shrimps and fish, then took us to see their presentation of the Center of Creativity they will be building in Vižinada. A grand idea!
Finally, let me go back to the very beginning of the journey to Rovinj. On the way, I stopped in Sveta Nedelja, in Pritera printing house, to agree on the last details before printing Creative Portfolio 01 The Best of Adriatic Advertising 2017, the book in which we are presenting 179 campaigns which won awards at last year’s national and regional festivals. Straight from Printera, I went to Ljubljana to meet with the creative team of Futura DDB and take one last look at the final materials. The book looks really good. The cover page created by Žare Kerin is top, top of the tops. I can hardly wait for Monday and the beginning of printing. In a week, once the book is printed, we will focus all our powers onto the video content
Today, we have started exploring your satisfactions as our readers. This is the first time we have asked you to express your opinion about the content we create on Media Marketing web portal. A few minutes ago, I was informed that the response to the survey was excellent, that we had already received a large number of completed questionnaires, and that even the questionnaire was too short for some of you, so you sent separate e-mails and made sure you expressed your views. Mostly positive ones. We need no praise, you will do us the biggest favour by offering us you objective views. We will have more benefits from your criticism.
If you have not already done so, fill out the questionnaire you have received by e-mail now.
Dubrovnik, April 18 2018