Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
Dunja Ivana Ballon, Executive Director of HURA, leads the team working on the organization of the Days of Communication, which will be held from 12 to 15 April in Rovinj. Dunja is also the program director of the Days of Communication. The interview that is before you came about during the night from Sunday to Monday.
Probably the last thing Dunja wanted to get by mail on Sunday were questions from Media Marketing. But she braved through it, and shared with us these last minute information.
Media Marketing: Days of Communication are growing by all parameters this year (number of delegates and number of entries). Satisfied?
Dunja Ivana Ballon: Yes! Satisfied, happy, proud and excited – I can’t wait for the Festival to start! :) But it wasn’t easy… You know how it goes: when the results are good, everyone thinks it’s easy, but at the planning stage, it was far from it. Last year we surpassed the result of the previous year by 50%, so achieving that result was challenging in itself, especially in the context of the Agrokor crisis, the fact that this year festivals in the region overlap due to Easter and other circumstances … All in all, I am really very pleased.
Media Marketing: From the vantage point of HURA’s executive director you have the best overview of the Croatian advertising scene. What are your impressions? Is it growing, developing…?
Dunja Ivana Ballon: There is growing optimism. It will be interesting to see how technology will affect innovations in our industry. I wonder how much it will change over the next couple of years, and we want to offer this insight into the future at Days of Communication.
Media Marketing: One interesting piece of information is that the number of registries for the Young Lions Croatia is on the rise. Does this mean that the youth are coming, that Croatian advertising doesn’t have to worry about its future?
Dunja Ivana Ballon: This year we have 30 teams competing, which means that we achieved a 58% increase over last year. This is the third year we are organizing this competition so we learned from experience (not to say mistakes and successes) … we worked a lot on its reputation, we refreshed the competition by introducing the category for the media people, and at the same time we organized it in Zagreb (instead of Rovinj). With this move we dug into our own budget and decided to invest it in young professionals and competition. This is just one of the initiatives we are doing towards supporting young talents in the industry.
Media Marketing: Program is excellent, with a host of interesting speakers. Which lecture is a must for you?
Dunja Ivana Ballon: May I say all of them? :) Actually, as the author of the program, I have this privilege that listening to all the lectures is part of my job description. We will discuss different practices, so at the advertising festival we will open a dialogue with no less than AdBlock! We will host world-class creatives, such as one of the most awarded creative director in the world, and until recently the chief creative director of the Ogilvy China, Graham Fink, and Morag Myerscough, who was named one of the top 10 female designers in the last 100 years by Design Week. Then there’s Susan Credle, one of the most influential women in the industry (globally) who designed the legendary animated M&M’s candy spokesmen, and her lecture won’t leave anyone indifferent. Alemsah Ozturk will talk about agency culture, James Kirkham (former global head of social and mobile for Leo Burnett, who lectured in Cannes six times!) will talk about sports marketing, Oliver Kibblewhite will talk about using virtual reality for brands, and Steve Lok, who runs martech for the prestigious The Economist, will declare war on GDPR. We will meet iPhone’s Siri (Susan Bennett, who gave Siri her voice), and we will talk about Aida, an AI which is used by one of the largest Scandinavian banks for communication with clients. Some of the most prominent public relations experts are coming, people who chaired international juries for PR and won awards for the best agencies according to Holmes report – Gabriela Lungu and Hermes Holm. A completely unusual lecture will be held by Mr. Bingo, top illustrator and “troll for hire”. Much attention will also be drawn to the man who holds the highest creative position at Twitter, Jayanta Jenkins, and there will also be Kodi Foster, VP of data strategies of the sixth largest media conglomerate in the world which stands behind movies such as Iron Man, Titanic or TV channels like MTV and Comedy Channel – Viacom.
Each of these lectures is unique, important, useful and inspirational, but also unprecedented. I would never miss listening to the man whom I can ask if online advertising was the thing that brought him the victory in the presidential campaign in the US – Brad Parscale. He was the director of digital media in Trump’s campaign, and I want to ask him about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, but also about his thoughts on GDPR. Since he was recently named Trump’s 2020 campaign leader (which made it seemingly likely that he would have to cancel his visit, which we managed to avoid), he will certainly be the highest-profile guest of the festival.
Apart from foreign content we have a lot of domestic topics – numerous workshops and seminars for students, our well-known Beer After the Program (PPP), presentation of Young Lions, Effie finalists, and as of this year the winners of Grand PRix competition organized by HUOJ, which will be presented at festival. The new format that we’ve introduced are debates, and we will have two of them. In addition to this, several different lectures, panels and discussions with local experts are in the program. In the evening we will declare the best of the best in the domestic industry – the most efficient and creative, online and offline, advertisers and agencies …
The program takes place during three days, in three halls, but we tried to put equally attractive content in each of the halls at any moment, so that participants can make the best use of their time at the Festival.
Media Marketing: Whom would you like to especially thank for support this year? Sponzors, partners, associates…?
Dunja Ivana Ballon: Organization of a Festival is a jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces. We decide on the frameworks together with the organizing committee of the festival. Our diligent team takes care of flawlessly delivering all the parts, and the quality of course also depends on the support of our sponsors that we owe our thanks for helping our festival and our industry. I would love to list here all those who helped us in this endeavor, so I’m going to do it :) – starting from my girls in HURA, Iva Pavelić and Silvija Kovačić, to producers Lara Stolnik and Damir Stupnišek, then brothers Matošić who take care of the equipment and setup in Rovinj with the help of Damjan Geber from the Brigada and Kristina Gotovac, Igor Živković, Manja Žutić, Luka Maričić, Ivana Josipović and their colleagues from our agencies BBDO, OMD, Komunikacijski laboratorij, iZone and web.burza, who tackled the communication campaign of the festival. Our reinforcement in recent weeks were Jelena Babić and students Lana Stjepanović and Matko Perić. It was not easy for colleagues in the organizing committee – Jan Jilek, Damir Ciglar, Anđela Buljan Šiber, Slaven Fischer, Nikola Žinić, Andrea Šumanovac, Andrea Šimac and of course President of HURA, Davor Bruketa. We’ve invested a lot of effort into this project, so come to the Days of Communication, have a coffee with us in the sunny Rovinj, talk to your colleagues and see for yourself the lectures we’ve prepared for you. See you soon!