Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Žozef Ivan Lončar
UEPS award ceremony is a tradition that was introduced all the way back in 1985, and it’s a rare event in its own respect. It’s a professional event that marks the Day of Propagandists of Serbia, on the day of the founding of the Association of Economic Propagandists of the People’s Republic of Serbia (UEPS) on December 26, 1960. About ten years ago, it was renamed into the Association of Market Communications of Serbia.
But it is not marked with celebration, food and drinks, but with review of the previous year on the creative plan – by evaluating the works done by the marketing services in Serbia. One could even say it is the review of creativity of our people, working in different jobs in marketing: client-side, in specialized agencies for market communications, marketing and social research, graphic design and total design (unfortunately, not for the industrial design, for which there is no adequate demand), for public relations development, for planning and organizing media space for commercial, sometimes even for social advertising, for outdoor advertising, for digital marketing (with increasing intensity), for organizing performances at fairs and specialized events, for sales promotion and the like.
According to some quite trustworthy data, this branch of business services in Serbia today employs over 5,000 staff, mostly with university education (and registering steady growth) with above average net wages (close to the notion of adequacy in terms of expertise and responsibility), and which, in the gross domestic product, participates with over 3% and, quite interesting, in net exporters as well, serving the world’s largest companies from all over the world.
In the competition that stems from this market, at the end of December this year, we will find out who will be the winners of acknowledgments, both collective and individual, who especially stood out between the two UEPS events (given the dates, one could say during this year).
What does the official UEPS site say…
In 1960, a group of enthusiasts and lovers of profession founded the UEPS (Association of Economic Propagandists of Serbia) to affirm their profession. We can imagine how difficult it must have been…
… and what the reality was like
The founding of UEPS was preceded by the organization of the First Yugoslav Summit of the Propagandists of Yugoslavia, on February 26, 1960, in Zagreb, with participation of more than 150 delegates from all over Yugoslavia and about 50 guests (representatives of authorities, political organizations and chamber mechanism without whom it was unimaginable to organize something of this kind).
Three burning issues were discussed: (1) Economic propaganda in our economy and the role of the association, (2) Propagandists and their workplace problems, and (3) Professional growth of economic propagandists.
Before that, in 1958, the Association of Propagandists of Croatia was founded (an earlier attempt made in 1957 ended unsuccessfully due to procedural reasons).
Decree of the Government of the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia
In an attempt to deal with the history of development of economic propaganda into marketing (the act of JUME establishment – the Yugoslav Marketing Association in Opatija in August 1968, at the 21st ESOMAR Congress), I came across a very important document that carried a seal of confidentiality (State secret – 1953) – a GOVERNMENTAL DECREE requiring certain companies to establish: (a) departments for economic propaganda and publicity, (b) departments for economic research, and (c) departments for planning and organizing performances at fairs and specialized trade shows abroad.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the list that this decree relates to.
It is well-known that certain companies, especially from 1955 to 1960, established these services: Galenika, Zmaj, JAT, Pobeda (Novi Sad), Industrija kablova Svetozarevo, Krušik, Energoinvest Sarajevo, Iskra Kranj, TAM Maribor, Litostroj Ljubljana, Rade Končar Zagreb, Pliva, Ingra and many others, all the way to the Tobacco Factory Niš.
I talked to a well-known and distinguished scientist, Professor Dr. Oskar Kovac. The main motive for this conversation was that this FNRJ Government Decree was in contravention of the official state policy of a central-planning economy, which again resulted from the ideological views of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, which excluded any notion of market activities and its potential influence on economic flows. Bearing in mind his scientific and pedagogical authority, as he was, at certain times, also in federal authorities and a national delegate, I considered that Professor Dr. Oskar Kovač might be the best person to discussing this topic with. So, is there any acceptable reasoning about this, about the opposing attitudes and a visible break with the state’s official ideology?
I never wrote about this earlier, because Dr. Kovac was caught off guard with the question. He asked me to let him think about it and he would come to me when he comes up with an acceptable answer.
And that’s how it went. A new meeting was arranged after a few weeks. “I couldn’t find anything about it. The beginning of our studies was tied to the professional literature that came from Moscow, and was just translated here. In these books, obviously, there was not a single word about the market and its mechanisms …. Teaching staff from the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Belgrade, among the first in Yugoslavia, started to use the Fulbright and other scholarships with senior students at leading American universities and distinguished institutes. It was normal to submit detailed reports of ones stay there, describing new knowledge and acquired insights. And besides knowing that these reports, as a rule, nobody read, and obviously no one studied, it is possible that someone, with the necessary authority in the system, read those and gave certain recommendations at the right places about advertising as a market discipline. Even in the US, the term ‘marketing’ was just starting to break through in the field of economy.”
It is clear that I couldn’t use this conversation as an adequate explanation, due to absence of evidence.
I continued to search – especially through conversations with distinguished economists of the older generation. This area was Terra Incognita for them as well.
The last conversation I had was crucial for my accepting it. It was a meeting with a prominent professor, Dr. Ljubomir Mađar, a member of the Academy of Economic Sciences. I repeated everything that was previously said by prof. Kovač, including his thoughts on the topic.
“Žozef, if Oskar told you that, then that’s how it happened. We all knew that our colleague, Oskar Kovač, with a strong analytical spirit, is very responsible for uttered thoughts, and we, as a rule, believed in his attitudes and conclusions.”
Since there were no other persons I could ask about this, especially as it carries a certain ideological point of view, one can assume that there were certain reserves among the Yugoslav leaders – political, economic and ideological – towards a market-oriented economy and that, as with a lot of other things, they said one thing, and silently did another.
This could probably explain the decision of the President of the Republic of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz, to be the sponsor of the XXI ESOMAR Congress in May 1968 in Opatija, and the fact that there was no interference in the preparation and organization of the First International Symposium of Economic Propagandists of Yugoslavia in November 1968 in Herceg Novi.
That year, there were 48 agencies (institutes, companies) registered in Yugoslavia for economic propaganda and publicity in all parts of the country – not just in the capitals of the republics. From 1960 until the fall of the Berlin Wall, in all other socialist countries there was only one agency. Even in the great USSR.
The same year there were sixteen fair-towns in Yugoslavia!
Now you can better understand one anecdote. It happened that in Moscow, at some council of communist states, at one point Tito was scorned for negating the ideological definition of the “central-plenary economy as the cornerstone of the development of socialist societies.” Asked to answer what it meant to him to be the sponsor of ESOMAR and what exactly does the term Marketing mean, Tito answered: “I, comrades, am not quite sure what this foreign word means, but I have some (damn) good feeling that it’s something sweet and good!!!!”
Upon returning to Belgrade, he ordered the Government of the then SFRY to financially support JUMU and all its activities and congresses (ten of them, with the last being held on the eve of the country’s break-up).
Perhaps there lies the answer why there were no problems in the organization of five 5+1 events, the Day of Yugoslav Propagandists three times, which discussed very serious topics and which included many representatives of the Government, the Chamber of Commerce of Yugoslavia and other organs (but never in organizational and other bodies).
Today, in Serbia, besides UEPS, the Association of Market Communications of Serbia, serious and notable activities are done by the DSOJ, Serbian Public Relations Society; UPŽ, Women’s Business Association of Serbia, and SAM, Serbian Association of Managers.