Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
Prominent Slovenian designer and advertising expert, Meta Dobnikar, believes that the current situation in the advertising industry is radically different from that of the mid-eighties when she was taking her first professional steps.
Here’s what this difference looks like to her: “Today, when nothing is as it was, and we are again facing hard times, the media is full of wise advice. How to save a few euros, how to choose a school, how to cook more cheaply, how to be a good parent, how to find the best deal … Recently I was thinking about how all the good things that have happened in my life have come without thinking ahead. I enrolled in architecture because my best friend wanted to go there. I got married when I was head over heels, before my graduation, and within a year gave birth to a son. I got a job as a designer in Delo although I had never even thought about design before. I was swooped up by a young, ambitious team of associates. We were all absolute beginners – our work was often our home, our ambitions were sky high and advertising was the bomb.”
In her productive and impressive career, Meta has had many different jobs. First as a designer at Studio Delo, then at Studio Marketing as head of design. In 1980, the chief editor of Delo, Jak Koprivc, invited her onto the editorial board as the designer of all Delo editions. The catalyst was the change in techniques of prepress and printing of magazines and the design of journals and magazines. It was an interesting and arduous job, because it made her have to fight for her ideas and visions, “sometimes even in anger or barely restrained tears”, within an authoritarian and “completely male chauvinist board.” But Meta is not a person who gives up easily.
Soon afterwards, when Jure Apih became director of marketing at Delo, he came up with a new way to reach advertisers, agencies and the media in the vast and fragmented Yugoslav market – a professional advertising magazine. He offered her the position of editor of Media Marketing, which became the first Yugoslav magazine for marketing. In the beginning it was modest and small, but in 1985 it became a full monthly magazine that effectively linked the Yugoslav marketing profession until 1991. In 1992, when historic events forced its market to shrink to Slovenia only, it was renamed MM – Marketing Magazine. Meta remained editor in chief until the end of 2006.
That’s her CV in a nutshell, abridged for the purposes of this article. When Meta was just entering the advertising industry it was controlled by men, with rare exceptions which just served to prove the rule. Today, women dominate the profession. Our interviewee explains how this shift came about: “In Slovenia, modern propaganda, or advertising as it’s called now, came into existence on 1 of January 1973 with the founding of Studio Marketing, Delo’s studio for marketing and propaganda. There was ample money for advertising, especially from today’s perspective, and the market numbered 22 million inhabitants. The most powerful propaganda tools were film ads shown in cinemas and on television, billboards, large series of print ads in all of the ‘better magazines and journals’. Great ideas, attractive films, posters, design were all important. While advertising primarily sold dreams and promises, men, of course, ruled. We saw a similar situation in the American television series Mad Men. Women’s work was mostly on the periphery. Advertising has since changed dramatically: over the last ten years advertising festivals are losing their attractiveness, PR is gaining strength, as are direct marketing and the internet. And there is generally no glamor and glitz there, but a lot of hard and arduous work. And that is where women’s hands and heads are necessary.”
This assessment can be believed because of Meta’s years of training, decades of impressive projects, and her constant search for better solutions. When asked which her favorite project was, Meta responds by first analyzing the question itself: “It’s a tricky question, like ‘which of your seven children do you love the most’. My favorite? There are many. At Studio Marketing I loved campaigns that were really our own and original. For example, the ads and posters for Mixal with a great black and white photograph of a young couple with arms around each other with the slogan ‘The exciting freshness of freshly washed laundry – New Mixal’, then the one with a color photograph of the new packaging for Zlatorog’s detergent. Back then we won the Yugoslav award, the Oscar for Packaging, for it. Then there was Fructal orange juice – with an orange designed in a square container. Today that’s a piece of cake with Photoshop, but back then we had to convince the guy in the printing department to make a precise metal frame that was inserted into the packaging, in which we then packed the orange. And to even get an orange you usually had to go to Austria, because you couldn’t get them here. The sliced orange had to be really fresh and juicy. Fructal juice is the pure juice of freshly picked oranges. And then there was MM, every month, for 25 years. February 1991 – cover page for MM. Who will be first? Ivica Vidović, Dragan Sakan, Dušan Benko, Jernej Repovš, Mojca Randl, Daniel Levski, Mitja Milavec, the seven directors of the most successful Yugoslav agencies at the time, raced at the sports stadium in Ljubljana.”
Assessing the current situation in the regional advertising industry, Meta Dobnikar says that advertising is not l’art pour l’art. In her opinion it is an important part of the marketing mix, and often a decisive tool in understanding, valuing, buying a particular brand or product. “It is like the child of a company or an organization who relies on its strength, knowledge and money. Things don’t bode well for that child today, because the parents are not doing so well. We’re witnessing the collapse of domestic brands and the current huge financial appetites of their alienated owners, who don’t care about anything except their money. That’s why advertising is derailing. It’s becoming more and more just hard selling.”
Of course, some good examples can be found, but most of them are far below previous standards. “The situation in the agencies is the same, few of them see an imminent exit from the crisis. Until recently, big full service agencies reigned over advertising, often linked to international networks. Now these agencies are taking the brunt of the impact, and in order to survive they are forced to lay off employees and accept shamefully low budgets. Independent agencies are increasingly appearing in the wider region. They are mostly narrowly focused on a particular specialization, with few employees, and, when necessary, they resort to external associates.”
And this is the reason why comparisons are so often based on then and now. “When Europe recovered from the war, when things were improving every day, when new trinkets were constantly becoming available, it was a time of positive expectations. Advertising sold dreams and promises. Ads were among the most popular media content. We needed great stories and spectacular parades. That beautiful era of advertising that once existed will never happen again. There will be a different kind of advertising, some new children will be successful, consumers will be happy with them, and even clients. And we will continue to dream of the good old days.”
The world as we knew it yesterday has changed. The media faltered before the onslaught of the social networks that have crept into all aspects of our lives. Meta answers the question of how she sees the future of advertising: “The growth of social media and networks is unstoppable. More than 80 percent of young people under 24, and 70 percent of those between 25 and 34 use social networks, and even a good quarter of those above 35 and a fifth of those over 65 years of age use them. Personal contacts are becoming less common, particularly among young people who have yet to establish them. The social environment has a major impact on advertising and consumer behavior, and the advertising industry will have to adapt to these trends. The most significant activity of the advertising industry will be focused on finding, informing and persuading individuals and groups towards products and services. And this will be taken care of by agencies. Information about habits, lifestyles and purchases will be more valuable and will probably be paid for. The fear that information will reach and penetrate too deeply into the life of an individual seems real to me. With an increasingly lower readership, and even viewership and listenership of the traditional media, there is the possibility that the media will become either more expensive, designed for the elites, or cheaper, and maybe even free, modeled on airlines and other low price enterprises. Still, I think and believe that a mix of the new and the good old media will be the right solution for a long time to come.”
These social, psychological, cultural and economic changes strongly influence the individual and their privacy. Meta is aware that the family is the last pillar of defense, if it falls, personal privacy falls as well. Asked if she has enough free time, she said: “I have enough. Two sons, two daughters in law, two granddaughters, one grandson and me. Eight individuals who function wonderfully in the plural – together. I’m rediscovering my love of books. I would love to read many of them once more, but with so many new ones that won’t happen. Then there is Delo every day, and Mladina every week. I watch a lot of movies, preferably in the cinema rather than on TV or on the computer. As well as all this I go to a few concerts, especially classical music. In terms of theater and sports I’m more modest.”
These are the thoughts of one of the most important women of the regional advertising industry. Because of her vast experience, Meta is able to realistically analyze bygone times but also, in the same professionally convincing way, to summarize what is happening today. Here’s what Jure Apih, Meta’s longtime colleague, says about her: “Meta doesn’t like public appearances, doesn’t like to stand out. She is rather like the thumb of a hand, enabling the fingers to be in charge, enabling the hand to do its work. She is like a helmsman, without whom you wouldn’t dare brave the unpredictable open seas. You would rather change the ship than a helmsman on whom you can rely. But does anyone know the name of the helmsman who took Columbus across the ocean? Meta was the art director of Studio Marketing Delo when that agency was the foremost in the former Yugoslavia. She was the art director of Delo when we created the new concept and form of its publications. As editor of Media Marketing and, later, of Marketing Magazine, she masterfully led the magazine when I was occupied with my other duties. As vice president of Golden Drum it is due to her that the project didn’t remain an idea only.”
Is it any wonder then that today women like Meta predominate in a complex, demanding industry that is going through tough, but also challenging and exciting times?