Region’s largest digital conference, Digital Takeover, organized by 24sata media house, once again brought together 1,300 visitors from Croatia and the region: from digital experts and decision makers to startups and the most influential companies from across the region. Digital Takeover has this once again confirmed the status of a unique project in the region, and in a rich 11-hour program, five lecture halls, a range of panel discussion and presentations of leading Croatian and world experts were held.
The conference was opened by Boris Trupčević, Director of Styria for Croatia. In the introductory presentation, he announced the conference program that leads the participants to the future. „Billboards today are not a major thing in advertising. Targeting, algorithms, content marketing, online video … These are terms that redefine how we talk to consumers, and here we see a brutal global growth. The world of marketing today is much more complex than the big glossy billboard,“ said Trupčević. He underlined the importance of the top management in companies in the digital transformation process, which must guide by example, but equally important is every person working in your company, as the transformation falls or passes on people.
Nenad Filipović, a digital transformation specialist and director of corporate education programs at IEDC – Bled Business School, said that “culture is a big problem and barrier, because one of the first reasons why there is no digital transformation is that people at the top have no clear picture that change is needed and where it could bring them. They do not know that because they do not know their market.”
The next lecture, on “The Future Business and Communication Landscape”, was held by Johan Ronnestam, leading Swedish branding specialist, the Cannes Lions winner, innovator and futurist. For the beginning, he brought the audience back to the 1971, when ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, came into being. Large companies declined to advertise online already in the first part of the century, but with the launch of YouTube in 2005, everything changed, and later others followed. Today we are witnessing the digitization of society, and unprecedented connectivity. “How can we make people notice us? That’s the wrong question. What we do need to ask is: How can we make people want to notice us. We have all the information in the world in the palm of our hand. If you share with people interesting information on your platforms, they will visit you. Only then can you think about placing products and services and profits,” says Ronnestam.
On the digital metrics panel, speaking of investment in advertising, Boris Trupcevic pointed out that global trends show there will be a large outflow of budgets from television, because digital will surely grow in investments at the expense of television. Another topic was programmatic advertising. Zoran Turkovic pointed out that market education is the main obstacle for digital advertising, while Igor Žeželj from the Wireless Media added that programmatic is certainly coming.
Speaking about influencer marketing, Trupčević stressed that this is a serious phenomenon that can be seen in Croatia as well. Influencers are becoming relevant in every segment of the audience lives. He mentioned the example of JoomBoos, which sees huge growth in video advertising. “I think we live in the golden age of the video,” said Vedad Mulalic, and pointed out that video is present across users’ devices.
Jesper Laursen, founder of the Native Advertising Institute and leading Danish content marketing specialist, also held a lecture in which he emphasized that the most important thing for native advertising is that the content is similar to the editorial content of the media on which it is published. The reason why this kind of advertising works is that online audiences do not want you to interrupt them for no reason, but to approach them with quality and valuable content. He added there are expectations that by 2020, investment in native advertising will increase by 19% compared to 2015, when it was 10% of the total advertising budget.
The last lecture was given by Dr. Kjell A. Nordstrom, author of bestseller “Funky Business” and one of the most influential thinkers in the world. “Today we see what technology provides us and what are its advantages, and what are its disadvantages” said Nordstrom. He wondered what technology really was. “iPhone is just human knowledge trapped in a small box,” said the professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. He also added that we are all trapped in the Matrix that controls us.
Photo: Jurica Galoic/PIXSELL
The interesting lecture continued with the assertion that technology is advancing ten times faster than during the industrialization of Europe, and that the knowledge of mankind is exponentially growing. And yet, every day, when we wake up, we are more stupid than the day before. He emphasizes that anything that can be digitized no longer matters. Also, he believes that the originals are rare today, and all that remains are copies. “Almost all hotels and all cars are the same, we copy each other and inspire each other, and then we fall together off the cliff. There is only one conclusion – it is necessary to regain the originality that we once had, which made us successful back then,” said one of the most influential thinkers in the world at the Digital Takeover.
Before the last lecture at the Digital Takeover Conference, the Business Leaders Awards were presented. The award for the largest investment in the development of the gigabit network was awarded to Hrvatski Telekom, while Hrvatska pošta received recognition for contributing to the development of employees as the fundamental driver of digital transformation.
Photo: Luka Stanzl/PIXSELL
The award for progress in the use of digital services for users was awarded to Zagrebacka banka, and the recognition for innovators in the field of virtual reality was given to the Orca FPV startup from Osijek. Acknowledgment for the socially responsible project was given to OmoLab and Locastic, for the development of the OmoReader app that helps children with dyslexia.
