weCAN, the network of independent advertising agencies of Central and Eastern Europe held its 7th Annual Meeting yesterday in Piran, Slovenia. Member agencies discussed developments of their local markets and presented their most innovative solutions and campaigns from the past year. The keynote speaker of the event was Stojan Pelko, Golden Drum Vice-President and Competition Director.
His presentation Golden Drum from A to Ž, or from Apih to Žižek was a mosaic of topics, ranging from the approach of this year’s Golden Drum award on the upcoming elections in Slovenia, to iconic figures and institutions of the Slovenian cultural-scientific landscape such as philosopher Slavoj Žižek and the Herman Potočnik Noordung Space Center.
In the afternoon session, member agencies presented their most innovative campaigns and services from the past year. Two of the agencies founded recently their own data driven companies: The Group from Romania created a data management platform called Quantum Data Science, while Branding, Slovakia, founded 01 Data House. Café Communications, Hungary created a new division called Stories that offers clients generation based content solutions.
WALK from Poland presented their campaign called The Invisibles that centers around a book written by three homeless men, printed with an ink that is visible only when temperature drops below zero. The campaign won gold at last year’s Golden Drum, Epica Awards and the Grand Prix of Golden Hammer, among others.
Direct Media, Slovenia launched the new season of “Štartaj, Slovenija!” (Start it Up, Slovenia!) in cooperation with Spar and local television channel POP TV to help young entrepreneurs to market their innovative products. The campaign won silver at Warc Innovation Award.
Comtech CAN helped local NGO called People in Need to raise founds using an unexpected tool: menstrual pads. In the Real Gift campaign, they drew attention to the fact that many girls in Nepal drop out from school because do not have resources to buy sanitary pads and thus have to stay at home during their period. A sanitary pad was inserted in a local magazine before Christmas to raise awareness and encourage people to donate “real gifts” instead of buying useless presents. The campaign raised 621,000 Euro.
