Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
Preparations for this year’s Slovenian Advertising Festival, which will be held on 6 and 7 April at the Hotel Kempinski Palace in Portorož, are reaching the final stage. Organization of the festival, same as the organization of Golden Drum, is done in partnership by the Slovenian Advertising Chamber (SOZ) and the Ljubljana agency Paideia.
We talked about SOF with Mojca Briščik, director of SOZ, and Mojca Majhen, director of the agency Paideia, yesterday (Monday) just before they boarded the plane for Prague, where they will conduct negotiations with large international agency chains on their participation at this year’s Golden Drum.
Media Marketing: You had your trial by fire in the position of the Director of the Slovenian Advertising Chamber and director of a festival at last year’s Golden Drum. How much does this experience mean to you?
Mojca Briščik: Since I took over the management of the SOZ and chairing the Golden Drum just over half a year before the festival, and since we are already in full swing preparing for this year’s SOF and Golden Drum, I still didn’t have the time to personally grasp the size of the role I took over. The truth is that I had participated at the Golden Drum for the first time 20 years ago, as a student. Back then I thought the festival was magnificent. There was Jure Apih, the legend of Slovenian advertising. Today, when, if you will, I’m standing in his shoes, I’m not only honored, but I work and make decisions fully aware that I carry a great responsibility towards the heritage that this festival embodies, towards the profession that it represents, and all the people who are related to its existence and activities.
Mojca Majhen, with her agency Paideia, until last year’s Golden Drum mainly did production deals when it comes to festivals. The Golden Drum was the first time they practically worked on everything: program, production, sponsorships, registration fees, the entire organization. Based on this experience, SOF should now be a piece of cake.
Mojca Majhen: The process of transferring the entire festival organization is really very demanding because last year – and this year as well – we introduced new features. Slovenian Advertising Chamber owns the SOF brand, and it keeps a watchful eye over the competition program of the festival, and our task is to implement the instructions of the Competition Program Council, so our concern in production sense is focused on this segment of the event. This year’s theme of the festival, The Human Factor in Advertising, was determined by the president of the 26th SOF, Mija Gačnik Krpič, director of business development at the agency Futura DDB, and we are responsible for all other aspects of the festival.
Media Marketing: Slogan of this year’s SOF is “More ads”. What are you communicating with this slogan and what is the message you want to send?
Mojca Briščik: As Mojca (Majhen) already noted, the red thread of content each year is defined by the president of SOF. This year the president is Mija Gačnik Krpič from Futura, and as a starting point she has chosen the human factor in advertising, and with that title she clearly said that “Any good idea can topple at countless points, if we are not aware how important the human factor is in the multi-layered advertising process.” The theme touches on issues faced by all parties involved in the communication process – agencies, advertisers, and media. On the other hand, we are all aware that we are daily exposed to a large amount of commercial messages through various media channels, and not all of them meet the current standards and the expected level of communication. In Slovene territory we would use for them a word with bad overtones and would call the adverts. And while we were sitting at the same table together, Mija Gačnik Krpič, Mojca Majhen and Pristop people Matija Kocbek and Meta Mežnar, debated on how to express these ideas in the visuals of the festival. They came up with the slogan “Less adverts, more ads”. Matija played with different proposals and ultimately they unanimously selected this one, because it essentially creates a conflict. As Aljoša Bagola said: “It’s a complex issue of advertising, business and media ecosystem that deserves a quality treatment and a dose of self-examination.” So we put that exact challenge as the common denominator of this year’s SOF.
Media Marketing: You have already announced some participants in the program, while you are still keeping some of them a secret – gradually building up suspense. Still, could you tell us who will be the stars of this year’s SOF?
Mojca Majhen: The congress program is already largely defined, and we are building suspense by gradually announcing speakers.
A significant part of the program are activities through which agencies present themselves, and I can tell you that this year, that part of the program will be particularly striking. On the main stage, among others, we expected Future Technology Officer Gregory Roekens, who is living his motto at Grey Europe: “Experience tomorrow today.” Gregory is engaged in the development of technologies that enhance the human experience, especially with the breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence and helps in understanding, implementation and inclusion of new technologies to European leaders and their companies. In his innovative XLAB laboratory, he focuses on the unique customer experience that arise in the cross-section with emerging technologies. Visitors to SOF will also be able to listen to the presentation of one of the projects that most resonated in Slovenia, and which Media Marketing named the best project in 2016 in the Adriatic region – Start it Up Slovenia. This partnership project, which gave tremendeous opportunity to 12 young Slovenian entrepreneurs, was done together by Formitas BBDO, their partner agency Direct Media Komunikacije, retail chain Spar Slovenia and broadcaster Pro Plus.
The exceptional feeling for clients’ wishes and good cooperation has brought designer Tomato Košir the Red Dot award. This award winning and recognized versatile designer of visual communications will provide SOF attendees with an insight into his work for Dvenikov Objektiv. Every year we try to make the program content interesting and diverse for the participants of SOF (which is what they expect).
Media Marketing: Will there be any novelties in this year’s competition program, and are you perhaps expecting a record number of entries given that the industry has recuperated and that the production is growing?
Mojca Briščik: It’s a thankless task to predict specific numbers, although our goal, of course, is a steady increase in the number of entries. This year the Competition Program Council, led by Tanja Mezga, which oversees the development of competitive program in accordance with trends both in Slovenia and abroad, has prepared refreshments and additions to the competition program that we believe will be of interest to applicants. The jury that will evaluate the submitted works will be announced this week. In addition to successful Slovenian creative directors who work in the country and abroad, the Council has also invited experts in marketing and media representatives, and the roster will be rounded-up with representatives of international creativity. This will give us a broader and deeper insight into the local production, at the same time not neglecting the fact that members of the jury understand the local environment and its cultural and other, equally important particularities. Traditionally, in assessing the shortlisted campaigns the festival jury will be joined by representatives of the clients, ie. advertisers.
Mojca Majhen: Last year, the Slovenian market was more interesting than in the past years in the production sense. As a partner in the organization of the festival, we certainly wish that the number of entries begins to grow and approaches the number of five and more years ago. In choosing the right path, we rely on the well informed people from the industry who make up the Competition Program Council.
Media Marketing: And what about the Young Lions, will you have the competition for young creative again this year?
Mojca Briščik: Absolutely! The Young Creatives award is the regular annual award, awarded by the Slovenian Advertising Chamber within the SOF. The entire process of creating solutions will again take place on site and at the time of the festival. All registered participants will also have only 24 hours to come up with the concept or solution for a digital campaign, in response to a brief of a non-profit, non-governmental organization. The shortlisted solutions will be presented by their authors on stage in front of the jury and participants of the Festival.
Competitors will be judged by a special jury. The number of places in the competition, due to the approach to its realization, will again be limited. In this way, we wanted as much as possible to come closer to the Young Lions competition of the Cannes Lions festival, because “our” winners will also compete for awards at the Cannes Lions 2017, where they will compete with more than 400 participants from all over the world in the Cyber category. This rich and prestigious award carries a considerable amount of responsibility with it.
We should also mention that at this year’s SOF we will also award two very valuable annual awards of the SOZ: Advertiser of the Year 2016 and Advertising Person of the Year.
Media Marketing: Hotel Kempinski last year proved that it’s an excellent host. Is it becoming the new home of the SOF as of this year?
Mojca Majhen: Hotel Kempinski Palace last year proved to be a perfect location for the festival campus and socializing. I must say that the hotel is not designed for larger congress activities and therefore we will, as last year, build an outdoor hall. From the business point of view, the construction of the hall for so many participants that come to the SOF is a great investment that we believe will pay off both in the short and long term.
Media Marketing: The B-Report was announced a couple of days ago. The main goal of this interesting project by the Slovenian Marketing Magazine is to motivate agencies to send more works and people to the festivals. You are making efforts towards the same goal as festival organizers. We and the Marketing Magazine are making efforts as media houses. What else needs to be done so that agencies would understand that their people need international knowledge and that festival awards are useful to them in winning new jobs, although agencies will rarely admit that?
Mojca Briščik: Every agency has (or it should have) in its annual plan a budget for festivals. National festivals have a more prominent character because they mirror the industry, creatives and their clients in the local market. And, since I’m mentioning clients, they need to monitor and prove the efficiency and effectiveness of communication. An example is the Effie award that assesses communication campaigns on the basis of their ability to prove that they met or exceeded the set goals. Great creativity, which properly persuades the target group and yields results, is of course an integral part of the overall excellence, both in sense of communications and wider business. I would agree here with the words of Sir Martin Sorell (WPP), that ideally you should be at the top of creative awards, as well as at the top of efficiency awards, because that’s the winning combination for the agency and the client. This is evident from many analyses, most notably the research work and analyses by Peter Field and Les Binet, in cooperation with the Gunn Report and IPA awards.
Festival awards of course are not the first thing that clients look at when choosing their agency, but they certainly are that extra motivation to invite them to pitch and conclude whether there is chemistry between them. I believe that today there is no business without them, and even less successful cooperation in the long run. And it is also one of the topics which will be addressed at this year’s SOF. The awards certainly make the agency’s reputation, and among young people they create the desire to become part of that circle.