Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
I once heard a story about Coca-Cola, which said that you can reach the function of the company president only if you started at the lowest level and then progressed. I don’t know how much exactly this is true, but what follows is a story of a man who climbed from the position of a trainee in Radenska to its Managing Director (there are similarities of course: both companies are engaged in the production of carbonated soft drinks, it’s just that one does it through chemistry, while the other uses natural means). Alojz Behek started off as an intern in the marketing department of Radenska started as an intern in the marketing department, from where he rose through the positions of independent officer, chief marketing officer, then Deputy Managing Director and eventually was appointed as Managing Director. And he has been in this highest position in the company for nearly ten years.
Even before him Radenska was a quality and well-known brand, but with him it has reached the sky. He has devoted his best and most productive years of life and career to this company. He was one of the most influential Slovenian managers, a man who knew how to lead a company both in the times of socialism, and in the new market conditions. Alojz Behek, in an exclusive interview with Media Marketing explains how Radenska became one of the most popular brands on the Yugoslav market of twenty million people.
The story of Alojz Behek is a story of Radenska, in the same way as no story about Radenska can be complete without Behek. In the 46 years that I’ve spent wandering wilderness of the advertising industry, I worked with a hundred and more marketing directors, but none of them loved their brand as much as Behek loved Radenska. He was utterly dedicated to her. At about the time when Behek was employed in Radenska, I started working at Radio Sarajevo. At that time, among other things, there was something like “buddy marketing”. If you were good with the marketing director of a company, you could make a deal that perhaps isn’t really in the best interest of the company, but it is in your best interest. Comrades would sometimes turn a blind eye. It lasted about twenty years. I became friends with Alojz Behek after our first meeting. This friendship developed through years of cooperation, but Behek was my only business partner and friend with whom I had never even thought of trying to make a deal on a “buddy” basis. Preparations for a meeting with him were a most difficult thing. I had to weigh up all the ideas that I wanted to pitch, because if something wasn’t fully in the best interest of Radenska, everything would end with just a courteous lunch at Radin hotel. Fortunately, I had only a couple of such lunches, because I was very professional in presenting the interests of Radenska before concluding a deal.
Behek has always been a fair and reasonable man. I remember when we were organizing the Manager of the Year event in 1988 at the Holiday Inn. Our main sponsor was Radenska. When I entered the hall, chills went up my spine when I saw Sarajevski Kiseljak on the tables. I entered the hall together with Behek. I looked at him, but I saw nothing on his face that would hint that he noticed the same thing. At the table were prof. Hasan Muratović, the then Prime Minister, Behek and I. TV broadcasted the ceremony live. At one point, Prime Minister Muratović said: “Mr. Behek, look what Ekrem did to you. Radenska is the general sponsor, and Sarajevski Kiseljak is on the tables.” Calm, as he always is, Behek responded: “I saw it Mr. Prime Minister, immediately after entering, but it’s not Ekrem’s fault. People in Radenska’s marketing were well aware that we are the general sponsor, that there would be a gala dinner and that the event will be broadcast live on television. They were supposed to have that in mind and that will be something we will have a serious chat about as soon as I get back to Radenci.”
Behek had spent almost his entire working life in Radenska. We collaborated until he left the company. I spoke recently with him about the times when the modern marketing scene of former Yugoslavia was being born. It all sort of coincided. A little more than 40 years ago Studio Marketing was founded – a leader of the new agency wave. On the other hand there were large Slovenian clients who made the first serious campaigns. Fructal, Radenska, Paloma, Mura… The virus of marketing began to spread throughout the country. More and more young people started succumbing to the infection, as we became addicted.
Media Marketing: You had a successful career at Radenska. It was the golden time for the brand. How do you look at such development of your career today?
Alojz Behek: I’ve lived in Radenci since I was born. Even then, all of us locals were more or less destined to work for Radenska one day. The same was true for me. I was lucky that I got a job in a company that was heavily involved in the domestic environment, since the beginning seeking its position in foreign markets, which in those days was not very common. I remember that Radenska was always led by people who knew how to handle both the domestic, “national planning” and later “self-governed” market, and in foreign – “capitalist” market. Such openness to the world meant a competitive advantage and the ability to be one step ahead of others. Employees felt loyalty to a company that was built for generations, and I was no exception to that.
Media Marketing: How big of a role did the luck factor play in all that?
Alojz Behek: Yes, I was lucky because my bosses at that time gave me the opportunity to prove myself through work. I was fortunate that I was educated at home and abroad, and had worked with excellent people with whom I jointly sought new ways that enabled Radenska to strengthen its market position at home and abroad. I have no intention of evaluating my own career. It wouldn’t be correct. I leave it to the others to make judgment. In any case, I’m still honored that I had led Radenska for almost a decade, and that I collaborated with excellent people throughout that time, without whom Radenska would not be what it is.
Media Marketing: Your start in Radenska’s marketing coincides with the beginning of a new era in Yugoslav marketing. The Slovenian marketing scene was being formed, which had sparked a new wave in the entire state back then. Studio Marketing became a torchbearer among the agencies – Debeljak, Apih and then Repovš became true stars for marketing. We all came to Ljubljana to learn. How did you learn? What kind of conditions for development did you have?
Alojz Behek: That’s true. Those were the times of flourishing of market communications, which increasingly gained in importance in the business environment of individual companies. But let’s not forget some facts.
As much as we were lucky as individual clients (Radenska, Fructal, Paloma …) that new agencies and people had appeared, who brought new ideas and new knowledge to the profession, they were equally lucky that there were companies, or rather clients, in the Slovenian space who had the budgets to use those potentials.
Studio Marketing and people like Debeljak, Apih, Repovš (not to mention others), brought to these areas a new and fresh wind, so much necessary in a time when the market of the former common state was increasingly opening up to foreign competition and urged domestic enterprises to include new marketing trends in their business.
Media Marketing: On which principles did you establish relations with Studio Marketing, which was Radenska’s agency of record for many years?
Alojz Behek: I started learning and getting used to collaboration with agencies when Radenska worked with the marketing agency Vjesnik in Zagreb, and abroad with the agency Lintas in Vienna. Later, and practically until the end of my work in Radenska, we worked with Studio Marketing from Ljubljana, and the agency Eggert from Vienna. The principles of good and successful collaboration are essentially no different from the principles in any other field. Both sides must find their own interests in such cooperation and mutually respect them. It is (even if it may sound contradictory) the one common interest which is the foundation of good and productive cooperation.
Media Marketing: First serious market research also appeared about that time. Practically no company was founded until a market research was done beforehand. How did these processes come to be?
Alojz Behek: That’s right. In Radenska we generally didn’t start any marketing activities without prior market research. Information on the beverage market, on consumers and their habits, as we know it today, did not exist back then. Foreign markets had such research, and quality market information were part of the service that the agencies offered in the process of preparing and making decisions on individual activities. At home, we had to make effort to obtain market data on our own, or, most often, in cooperation with the Food Technology Institute in Zagreb, and later in cooperation with Studio Marketing.
Times change, and they change fast. It would be interesting to compare the habits of consumers of twenty or thirty years ago and their habits today.
Media Marketing: What was the greatest challenge for you back then?
Alojz Behek: For me personally the biggest challenge was always the fact that with a good job I could always meet with the best global practices. And not only in our industry, but also in the field of marketing activities in general. All that we implemented in our daily work as far as possible and with the appropriate content. Let’s not forget that today, in the time of internet and other options that technological development allowed us, this is something that is implied. Then it wasn’t so. In principle, even today’s challenges are not really any different from the ones of the past, which I applied in my work as well: to be a step ahead of time and be better than the competition. This is a universal principle that applies even today. Only the ways and means to achieve this goal today are different than before.
Media Marketing: It was, as we said, the time of the emergence of marketing as a profession. Knowledge acquired in different way, and most often by reading foreign literature, started entering market communications. But there was also love. You were in love with Radenska as a brand. You were an ideal marketing director for a brand that you loved dearly. How important are these emotions – back then and today?
Alojz Behek: Emotions and common sense are always categories that are necessary not only in the professional life of every individual, but also in the life of every human being in general. You have to be lucky enough to work in an environment with good collaborators and productive climate. With awareness of the importance of our work and possible consequences, even negative ones due to possible mistakes, we were forgiven some folly here and there. Self-critically I admit that in the field of marketing communications and even when making business decisions we made the occasional mistake.
The awareness that mistakes should not be the rule, that they are quite possible and that they will not get you fired from the job, created a feeling that enabled us greater creativity and more courage in introducing innovations, and even joy in the work that we did. I fear that today such freedom and relaxation are gone.
Media Marketing: First major Yugoslav campaigns appeared in Slovenia in the eighties. Fructal in collaboration with nature, campaign Muralists for Mura, Radenska Three Hearts… How much passion was there in these campaigns? How were they born?
Alojz Behek: I personally knew almost all colleagues in competitive and other Slovenian companies that were responsible for the marketing of their brands. Without exception, these people were adorned by the great loyalty to their companies and the job they were doing.
Loyalty and responsibility are something I still believe in, although today’s priorities may be different. The passion for work adorned the people I talk about and with whom I once worked. Today this passion, as a “soft category” of leadership and behavior of people in the workplace, is more of an exception rather than the rule. I don’t want to compare what happened yesterday with what is current today. The world and life goes on. Past experience and the years that I lived give me the right to assess in myself (without nostalgia and the desire to convince someone that I’m right) that the world is not on the right track. It’s true that not everything is good today, same as it’s true that not everything was bad before.
Media Marketing: Radenska was among the first companies in Yugoslavia that internationalized its communication activities. You did campaigns abroad. Can you recall those times for us?
Alojz Behek: I can’t remember any other company or brand in our sector which in those times was so strongly involved in the international flow of goods as Radenska Three Hearts mineral water. Such openness to the world was a constant already when I arrived in Radenska in mid-seventies. This allowed me to very quickly get a deeper insight into the laws and principles of action of the related international brands. Good practices in the world were a second university for me, and a practical experience that very much helped in my work. The possibility of education abroad and contacts with the world market of mineral water and soft drinks helped me and my associates in many ways to do better in the domestic market.
Media Marketing: Criminal privatization accompanied the privatization process in Slovenia. Soon after the Laško brewery privatized Radenska you had to leave the position of Managing Director and leave Radenska, because you wouldn’t allow lawlessness, whose actors are sitting in jail today. What was the reason for your leaving?
Alojz Behek: History of Radenska is full of successful and less successful periods. One of the less successful followed the first privatization, and ended the latest one and the arrival of new owners. I believe that Radenska now is on the right track and that better times are coming.
Why I left Radenska? You already gave the answer in your question. I don’t want to add any more to that because you said it all.
Media Marketing: You never went to the company after that, but you still claim that Radenska is the best natural mineral water.
Alojz Behek: Radenska is a great brand, strong enough to survive a little less favorable periods. It employs great people. I’m still convinced that Radenska Three Hearts is the best mineral water in the world. I believe it has a bright future and that the challenges stand before the employees who will know how to use them as an opportunity.
Media Marketing: How well informed are you today in terms of the communication industry? Do you follow trends? Do you maintain contacts?
Alojz Behek: I admit that I still can’t shake my old habits, and that I follow the events in the industry. Although only as an external observer – an outsider – who imagines that he once, together with his associates, made a significant mark in the drawing up of the mosaic called the Story of Radenska. A lot of things have changed, and I don’t think that in times such as they are my presence could be productive in any sense. The answer is, therefore – no. I don’t have contacts with people from the industry. And I think that’s OK.