Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
Tomorrow evening, amid the celebrations of the Day of Serbian Advertisers, this year’s UEPS Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented. Media Marketing presents to you Nadežda Milenković, last year’s winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the first woman who entered the club of winners of the highest award presented to the Serbian advertising profession.
Nadežda Milenković has left a deep mark on the creative communication profession in the last quarter of a century, she has also left a deep mark on literature for parents in the last 25 years, as well as a deep mark on education and criticism of the profession in which we work. While reading the reasons for awarding Nadežda Milenković a year ago, Vladimir Čeh said: “People say about her – and not without reason – that she looks silly, but clients no longer have headaches. Actually, that’s how she describes herself.”
When Nadežda was twelve she decided she would work in a correctional facility. She was so determined that she totally skipped the phase of ballerina, flight attendant, actress … a Special Education Faculty even had to be actually established just so that she would have a place to study. Her need to educate, and her self confident belief that she could do it, changed in format only, and she does this now through advertising, public appearances, books, lectures. She has promoted the profession wherever she has gone, for example through the cult column The Heavy Baggage of Marketing in the magazine Vreme. She has been teaching everything she knows for many years, and she particularly tries to transfer to new generations the “hots” for this business. Since last year she’s been doing this formally, at the Faculty of Media and Communications. She teaches students that the word can be more powerful than the image, as in her exhibition of words that cannot be illustrated. She worked at the former Saatchi, at McCann, at Communis. During her life she has received an enormous number of awards. Given that she was trained to work with delinquents and ended up in the advertising world, she is actually one of the few people who is really trained for the profession in which they are engaged.
MEDIA MARKETING: Did the lifetime achievement award come at the right time? UEPS gave its explanation, but what do you see as your biggest achievements in your career so far?
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: I must tell you that one of the first things I teach all my colleagues, who want to hear it, is: marketing is not about you talking about yourself, but about you talking about the person you are addressing. In other words, tell me about me, and I’ll think you’re smart and interesting; tell me about yourself and I’ll think you’re annoying and intrusive. And, unlike those commercials “I don’t have the wrinkles to prove it,” I do have the research to prove it. Namely, when the researchers only asked questions and silently agreed with the participants, the survey participants evaluated them as intelligent, educated, informed… So they attributed to them qualities that the researchers actually had no way of expressing during the survey. And vice versa – the researchers who asked the questions and also agreed with the answers, but then added some of their own thoughts, the respondents rated as less educated, less informed … which they also couldn’t see, but they were annoyed by the fact that researchers were taking away their five minutes under the spotlight.
It says a lot about focus groups, which we unduly worship as sacred cows.
So, with all due respect to the AdWoman concept, I’d rather talk about things that might be more interesting and more useful to those who will read this.
MEDIA MARKETING: What drew you to the advertising profession?
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: Formally, a set of circumstances, essentially, as Arsen Dedić would say: everything led me to you. Many idle childhood hours in which I perfected my imagination; later a lot of drawing and writing (a lot of reading goes without saying), and then my interest in psychology and pedagogy. Then there was Sakan’s invitation to join the then Saatchi & Saatchi. This – Saki’s talent to “get you hooked” on a profession – was indescribable and invaluable. And I’m most thankful to him for determining my diagnosis. “You’re a creative,” he said. Creatives are strange, not molded, not “normal”. I can’t explain how much it meant to me. Until that remark of his, I was just someone who couldn’t fit in, or belong anywhere, or be comfortable. I wasn’t part of any of the “target groups”. I never knew how to act, and certainly not how to act in the most accommodating way. Even if I tried, I neither liked it, nor had the impression that others liked me. And then that magical explanation. I am a creative! I’m not weird, I’m not clumsy, I’m not a social moron – I’m a creative!
MEDIA MARKETING: You are the first woman to enter the club of Lifetime Achievement Award winners. And yet, when we look at the advertising scene in Serbia, there are a lot of women in the most responsible positions in agencies and in advertising.
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: Perhaps it says more about our male colleagues than about the women. But these are prejudices that are a worldwide phenomenon, and not only in our profession. But our profession is perhaps most responsible for the promotion of these prejudices. Just look at how most advertising campaigns treat, not to say demean women. Isn’t it time for the industry – given that it knows much effort goes into influencing the adoption of new habits and attitudes – to try to contribute to removing this ‘glass ceiling’ that prevents women from being recognized?
MEDIA MARKETING: There’s a lot of talk that the advertising industry in the region today is ruled by the “women’s perspective on reality”, as opposed to the long dominance of the “male perspective”. Is there any significant difference between these two perspectives and does it affect the quality of the message?
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: I wouldn’t make a difference between a male and female view of reality, but between authentic and phony communication; no matter which gender stands behind the one or the other, and believe me, they both can.
The quality of the message, or how the message is received (because the most important thing is how your message will be received, right?), is most influenced by whether you’re authentic – whether you really think what you say, or you’re just saying what you think someone wants to hear, when in fact you’re not interested either in what you’re talking about or in whom you are talking to. Even worse – if you not only are not interested in, but also have a slight disdain towards the “consumer” out there.
And when you’re not authentically interested in the communication in which you engage, both in life and in marketing the outcome is the same: instead of being emotional, you are pathetic; instead of being informative, you are boring; and instead of being interesting, you are just pushy.
To make things worse, in the end a client can pull out the ultimate argument: that their wife, mother-in-law, son, or whoever, didn’t like it.
MEDIA MARKETING: You gave a lecture in cinema Zvezda this March in Belgrade, with the slogan “GOODVERTISING – how not to sell hot air nor your soul. Or at least how to redeem it”. Is that possible in today’s conditions, and if so, how?
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: In our profession, in the nature of things, the temptation to slightly misuse the knowledge and the power that you have is inevitable. Sometimes you want to do so at your own discretion, but more often your superiors or clients force you to it. To manipulate data, to manipulate the psychology, to falsely represent something. Put a pretty girl, add eroticism; put a child in the frame, put some kids’ song – that always works. Paint it red, to encourage. Say it’s the best on the market … The first step in the “preservation of the soul” is to avoid those cheap tricks or at least to have a very good excuse for resorting to them.
The second thing is that in every commercial campaign, try to weave in something that could be called “social values”, some goal a bit higher than just that “buy!” thing. Yes, for example, you promote in parallel the relationship towards the elderly, honorable behavior, gender equality, inter-ethnic relations, care of the environment … whatever. The important thing is to be aware that you are able to send an important message and that you are very privileged by the fact that someone will pay to have it broadcast.
And third, the ability to redeem the soul battered by all those jobs you had to do which you could not stand behind, is to participate in various social campaigns. You can, for example, offer one of your existing clients a project of corporate social responsibility, so-called CSR, so that both the client and you can benefit.
MEDIA MARKETING: How can brands attract people’s attention and affection and become successful in the long term in a very saturated market which is becoming even more saturated? What is it that sets apart that concept “either you are, or you aren’t…”? (Nadežda is the author of the slogan “either you are or you aren’t a lion” for Lav beer)
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: There’s no need for me to be clever. How to create a Love Mark is already an old story. The only problem is that you need to get lucky and get a client who will understand it. I got lucky with that initial strategy for Lav beer when we were able to convince the client that, with the flood of those “when you drink this, you will be like this” campaigns, they should go in the opposite direction and say “when you’re like this, then you drink this”. And it turned out to be a winning concept. The spot was very popular (it’s remembered to this day and the slogan has continued to live on its own), and the sales results broke all expectations, especially for a product that had been absent from the market for years. Unfortunately, the concept was later changed. I don’t know if it was at the request of the client or the agency itself began to wander, but they just dropped the slogan and Lav beer has faded out among all the others with similar positioning that compete with each other.
MEDIA MARKETING: How can the fear that dominates the advertising industry today be overcome? It seems as if everyone is scared. Agencies are scared they will lose clients, clients are scared they will lose their market, the media are scared they will lose advertisers…
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: All these fears come down to one thing, and that is the fear of losing large profits. So, not jobs, not even money, but huge profits. Because the assumption is that the agency could lose a client; a client could lose – in the worst case – only a small part of the market; and the media could lose one out of a bunch of advertisers. So, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. And on the other hand, it’s quite possible that the agency could gain in reputation if it shows integrity (their own but also of the profession) instead of sycophancy. That in turn would bring them new clients who are looking for an agency that does its job professionally and not condescendingly.
Second, when you operate out of fear, you don’t increase profits, you just stagnate. Because of fear you will not see a business opportunity. Because of fear you will not take that bold move that would bring success.
And third, perhaps the most important thing, you pay for this fear in your private life – with your health. You know what they say: the wise give way Yes, but their nerves deteriorate. Constant fear means stress, stress inevitably leads to sickness, so there’s a good chance that in the end, all that money, which started it all and which was the cause of all the fear, will have to be spent on therapists, hospital and spa treatments. So is it worth it? Or, as Meša Selimović nicely put it: Fear the ram, fear the turd… but when will I live?
“Just look at how most advertising campaigns treat – not to say demean – women. Isn’t it time for the industry – given that it knows how much effort goes into influencing the adoption of new habits and attitudes – to try to contribute to removing the ‘glass ceiling’ that prevents women from being recognized?”
MEDIA MARKETING: What characteristics of a project would make us call it a good example of content marketing?
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: Yes, it would be nice if there was a recipe, wouldn’t it? But things are not so simple. Even in cooking, let alone in our profession. You can follow the rules, but, as in art, the greatest works are made only when you break them. On the other hand, only a true artist will dare to break the rules, and only a true artist will know how and why it works. So I don’t know what the “characteristics” of good content marketing are. It’s good to know the rules, it helps if you apply them, but if you expect specific results, you’d better get a job in accounting. If you insist in marketing that 2 plus 2 equals 4, you’ll go from campaign to campaign explaining how many minerals there are in a type of mineral water, how the laundry on one side of the screen is better washed, and how you are good male company if you drink beer.
MEDIA MARKETING: How much do clients limit the creativity of advertising agencies?
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: They limit it a lot. Some don’t even hesitate to bring in some video that they like, as a model for what they want to get from the agency. But the most restrictive practice is leaning too heavily on target groups. The target groups at the beginning, and the focus groups at the end.
And that first sanctity – the target group – is usually set either too wide, i.e. “women of 25 to 55” (as if they all have everything in common) or too narrow, where similarities among different ages and places of residence are ignored. “The young, the urban” has become the little black dress of marketing.
In the end, they are limiting you with the focus groups that must approve your every solution, and for them to do that, you have to offer them three different solutions. And since there can’t be three different best solutions, you are forced to come up with two that are a bit worse, and you know in advance that one of those two will win, because that’s the quality that comes out of evaluation by focus groups. To make matters worse, in the end the client might pull out the ultimate argument: that their wife, mother-in-law, son, or whoever, didn’t like it
MEDIA MARKETING: In recent years, as the economic crisis has shaken the entire world economy including the advertising industry, there has been a lot of talk about how advertising is changing, and how everything is being adjusted to the ever more demanding consumer. Almost all together, singing in harmony, people are talking about the changes imposed by the new media and online social communities. How do you see the advertising of today and tomorrow, and the changes that are talked about so much?
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: The media are changing, technology is advancing, but ever since the cavemen told stories by the fire, the most important thing is: are you talking about something that interests me, and do I like the way you talk. And the only thing related to technology is whether I’m going to applaud or “like” and “share”. True, the public is now much more scattered, they don’t sit with you around the fire and, true, there are many, many storytellers, and there will be more and more of them, but the magic will always be the same. You will just have to be more creative and resourceful.
On the other hand, let’s not prematurely dismiss the “outdated” media. When you look at what people are tweeting, you realize how much they still watch television, even programs that annoy them. Also, as we are still going out of our houses, you can leave a message even on the sidewalk, and if it’s good, people will “share” it through all the channels for you.
MEDIA MARKETING: You once said that your motto is: Take life into your own hands or you will be no more. Is that your business style as well? How would you define it?
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: It’s not so much a motto as something that I said as a joke, in a story about my birth. Since my parents had refused for years to have me, calculating that one child was quite enough for them, “I” laid low for the first couple of months so, when they discovered me, there was no going back. The editors liked it so much that they framed it into that title quote that you mentioned. But now that I see that sentence again, maybe it really could be a motto. Anyone who wants can use it. I would just ask that in taking their life into their own hands, they don’t trod over someone else’s, because that’s a completely different story then, which I don’t condone.
MEDIA MARKETING: If we were to put all your knowledge and experience in marketing into just one sentence, what would it be?
NADEŽDA MILENKOVIĆ: Either you are, or you aren’t.
P.S. If you’re finethen never mind. (Nadežda’s slogan for “Peščanik”, author’s note)