Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
After a long time, Lazar Džamić is coming to Sarajevo to hold a full-day workshop at Academy 387 on Friday, June 22nd. I’ve known Lazar for almost twenty years. I know how he breathes, and I know how excited he is for the upcoming lecture and workshop in Sarajevo. Lazar is a man who infinitely rationally manages his time, because time is his most important resource. It takes time to write books, prepare lectures for his Belgrade students, and accept at least every third or fifth invitation to travel outside Belgrade and attend a festival or a conference. And yes, he needs time for his family, to whom Lazar is very devoted – his wife Dana and his two daughters.
In case some of you don’t know, Lazar Džamić is a former journalist, associate of The Guardian, and former head of the brand strategy team at Google’s creative think tank The Zoo in London. He was director of strategic planning at several London creative agencies and one of the first digital strategists in the UK. He is author of several books and lecturer at the Digital Marketing Department of the Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK) in Belgrade. When you listen to his lecture, you’ll realize that Lazar is something much more than this simple CV.
In his lecture and workshop, titled How to be noticed in the world of easy ignoring?, Lazar will answer a few very important questions that are now being put before anyone who wants to be successful in marketing:
- How marketing changed completely – and yet stayed the same?
- Why it was never easier to ignore brand messages?
- What is the answer to the lowering influence of traditional advertising model?
- What are the two only ways today to reap attention?
- What is Content: marketing through branded content?
- Who are youtubers and why are they a role model for brands now?
- How to get internally organized for this brand new world?
Media Marketing: After quite some time you are coming to Sarajevo to hold your workshop, and you were one of the first people to bring the wind of digital to our city. That happened 15+ years ago. Have you missed Sarajevo and its people?
Lazar Džamić: Always. I have friends here, and there’s that special spirit of acceptance and welcome. Somehow a man feels as if the whole city was waiting for him to embrace him … I told many friends that I if I had a consumer based business, I would put only Sarajevans in the customer service, because they are fantastic with people! Sarajevo taxi drivers are the best storytellers in the world for me. When we came to the opening of the Mixer House, which closed soon after, Dana and I cried every time we sat in a cab – either from laughing, or because of all the different destinies of people we heard. And several phrases stuck with us, and we’ve been repeating them since.
Media Marketing: I remember your first day-long seminar many years ago, titled “Digital marketing – future that is already here”, which was held at the Coloseum, and which was organized by us (Media Marketing). Back then, it was the first time for us that the number of participants was the same at the beginning of the program at 09.00hrs, and at the end at 17.00hrs. That’s how interesting it was. Do you remember that first lecture in Sarajevo?
Lazar Džamić: I remember it. It was my first time here after all the idiotic wars here. I was driven from Belgrade to Sarajevo by Šefko, whom you (Ekrem) sent for me. A taxi driver with whom I had an unbelievably nice talk all the way. I was very interested in who and how many people would come to the seminar because it was unusual: new, longer and more intense than all that was done back then (and even today). And, of course, I was amazed by the enthusiasm and energy of the participants, and by the fascination for this new story back then, which affected much more than just marketing …
Media Marketing: Next time your plane from London to Vienna was late, so you missed your flight to Sarajevo. We wanted to bring you from Vienna here by a cab, but you couldn’t leave the airport because you didn’t have Austrian visa. You had to go back to London, and I spent the entire night sending emails and sms messages to people across Bosnia and Herzegovina to cancel the seminar. You were sad for having to go back, and we were sad for not having you here.
Lazar Džamić: Oh, yes … the sufferings and tribulations of traveling with the then Serbian passport, before the Schengen and all other good things that have happened in the meantime. I remember that night spent on the benches of airport in Vienna, and I was really sad for having to go back to London.
Media Marketing: Now you’re coming to hold a workshop “How to be noticed in the world of easy ignoring?”. What will be the centerpiece of your story?
Lazar Džamić: It will be the fact that digital space makes one thing very easy – ignoring brand messages. The same applies to the world of new start-up companies. Idea and business plans are a-dime-a-dozen, but there is not so much success, and a good part of it – not all but a significant part – depends on the way we tell our story. I will talk about the only two ways I know on how to be relevant with your messages in such a world.
Media Marketing: We won’t spill the whole story here, but could you answer just one of the many questions to which you will seek answers in the workshop: How to get internally organized for this brand new world?
Lazar Džamić: We need to become agile, to get out of the old linear model of thinking and production where the entire team is waiting for one of its members – usually someone who ‘devises’ the strategy in the beginning – to do their part of the job so that others could start working their own jobs, but again one by one, as in a sausage factory. Because, today, both the client and the agency have to drive in multiple “gears” at the same time. Marketing is ‘always on’ and ‘in real time’, it requires things to be done both long and short – neither the clients, and especially not the agencies, are organized properly to work at these different speeds efficiently. That’s why marketing is broken, unsynchronized, ineffective, and agencies are struggling to gain new expertise fields.
Media Marketing: Who would you like to see at your workshop in Sarajevo. To whom is it primarily intended?
Lazar Džamić: To all who work in marketing: clients, agencies, production houses… I would love to see young, emerging businesses come to the second part of the workshop, as I believe it would be useful for them.
Media Marketing: On the evening before your workshop you will hold a promotion of your latest books. Which books will you present, and where will the promotion be held?
Lazar Džamić: We will talk about my last three books, with the help of two of my great friends and renowned Sarajevo names in their respective fields: Bojan Hadžihalilović, Creative Director, and professor Andrea Lešić. The Cvjećarnicu u Kući cveća which many people in Bosnia and Herzegovina already know, because it is dedicated to the phenomenon of Alan Ford in the former Yugoslavia and makes an attempt to answer this intriguing question of ‘why Alan Ford became culturally what it is only in our region, and nowhere else, not even in its home country Italy?” The second is Čaj od šljiva, a collection of essays on parallel lives in London and in the Balkans: where we are different and where we are the same, in unexpected things like the cake repertoire, sheds, drinking or waiting in cues. The last is somehow old: it’s a special 20-anniversary edition of the Advertising pAge book as a document of Milošević’s Serbia through the eyes of marketing communication in the culture at the time. A book that compares ‘then’ and ‘now’ … I warmly look forward to socializing and talking with people at the promotion.