Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Dejan Letić
Twenty years ago (1996), Marin Šimurina founded the agency Grey Belgrade as an agency fully owned by the global chain Grey, and was the first and only employee. Grey Belgrade now has fifty-two employees, and is one of the top ten agencies in Serbia.
Media Marketing: Your agency site says “We’re not a traditional network. We are networked. Rather than being a loose collection of agencies who happen to share the same logo, we operate as one business across multiple locations”. What do you mean by this?
Marin Šimurina: It turned out that neither affiliations nor the centralized model are enough to act promptly and efficiently in the digital world. As a global chain, Grey made a model we call the Open Operating System. Just like computers and phones, agencies also need an operating system to communicate. Thanks to the Internet, for most of our work it has become irrelevant where you physically sit, just as it’s irrelevant whether you sit in the agency on the first or the third floor, and whether this floor is in Belgrade, London or New York. One agency, in many offices around the world.
Media Marketing: With whom do you have the best collaboration in the region, and with whom globally?
Marin Šimurina: That’s the essence of our Open OS. It’s hard even to say that we ‘collaborate’ with the agencies within the Grey network. It would be more accurate to say that due to our work we are constantly in touch with the offices in the Adriatic region – ie, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro. As for the world, we have the most ties with London, Moscow and Berlin. We are also proud of the different forms of collaboration that we have established with the media in the context of projects in which creative use of media was necessary.
Media Marketing: To what measure is it possible to conduct this kind of collaboration in such a specific market as the Balkans?
Marin Šimurina: There’s no need to ask to what extent it is possible, simply because in today’s world it’s impossible to grow and develop in such a small market like the Balkans, without cooperating with everyone. As communication theorists say, the world has truly become a village, and the Balkans is just a tiny house in this global village. How can tenants survive if the kitchen is not cooperating with the living room?
Media Marketing: What has characterized your business over the last twenty years?
Marin Šimurina: The unexpected successes of our clients – from Heineken with Zaječarsko Pivo, Imlek with a complete restructuring of their portfolio, to Eurobanka, P&G, Telenor and many others. Somehow we manage to do the seemingly impossible together with our clients.
Media Marketing: What has changed over these twenty years?
Marin Šimurina: Clients think much less about the future. People in marketing departments are under enormous pressure for short-term results. Therefore, it can be said that during the past ten years the only major brands developed in this period were Zaječarsko Pivo and Nectar as corporate brands.
Media Marketing: What does today’s client actually look like?
Marin Šimurina: Scared.
Media Marketing: What is missing in the Serbian market, and what in the market of the Adriatic region?
Marin Šimurina: The markets of Serbia and the Adriatic region lack professional and brave people in marketing.
Media Marketing: Over the next few months you will unveil…
Marin Šimurina: Big and brave things. We are working on two projects about which I currently can’t say much, except that these are the first steps for future big brands in this market. We are also preparing a large digital project for a foreign client. Soon a new campaign for Eurobanka will roll out, for which both we and Eurobanka have high expectations.
Media Marketing: Everyone commonly talks about 360 marketing. You talk about 365. What’s the difference?
Marin Šimurina: We like to say that today it’s more important to think of 365 than of 360. No one thinks of the need to cover various channels of communication, simply because it’s taken for granted. But what gives our clients an advantage is that we manage to maximize the effects of investment through extending the effects of the campaign – that is, we like to say that our campaigns, even when the brief says something else, give lasting results throughout the year.
Media Marketing: Is there a “secret ingredient” that you use, which brought your company so many awards in the period behind us?
Marin Šimurina: Well it’s not a special secret. In an industry which is characterized by very high staff turnover, we have a fantastic team that has been together for more than ten years, and is very mutually supportive. Above all, all of us still love this job, so we leave vanity at the door when the success of a client is in question.
Media Marketing: Which award makes you especially proud of your team?
Marin Šimurina: None of us at Grey are in this business because of awards. For years we didn’t even send our work to festivals. For our part, we are proud of the sales results of Zaječarsko Pivo, Eurobank, Mars, Wrigley, Fiat, Procter & Gamble, GSK … and everything that we are yet to do this year. You’ll see.