The new campaign by Zagrebačka pivovara for Ožujsko pivo starts from a simple but deeply rooted insight: a phrase almost everyone recognizes, “I’d do it better”. What is often just a side comment in everyday life is reinterpreted by the campaign as a mindset that doesn’t stop at criticism, but drives action.
At the center of the story is the well-known Žuja trio – Goran Navojec, Goran Bogdan and Rene Bitorajac – who, through a series of scenes, embody both historical figures and everyday “experts”, building a parallel between big ideas and small, everyday situations in which this mindset can be recognized. The campaign thus moves from reinterpretations of historical moments, such as the character of Nikola Tesla or Count Gustav Pongratz, to everyday scenes like barbecue masters who always know how something can be done “even better”. It is precisely in this combination that its core idea lies: the same sentence can be both a critique and a driver, depending on what we do with it.
As Ana Štebih Pinjuh, Marketing Director of Zagrebačka pivovara, explains, the campaign emerged from the desire to translate this ambiguity into positive energy: “The new campaign was born from a phrase we all know, which at its core carries the desire to always do more and better. We wanted to show in a humorous way that this phrase is not just a comment, but also a driver – from small life situations to big ideas. It is precisely in this spirit that Žuja was created.”
From a production standpoint, this is a project that goes beyond the framework of a classic TV commercial. Filming lasted three days, a total of 43.5 hours, across eight locations, with 150 extras involved. In order to authentically reconstruct Zagreb at the end of the 19th century, costumes from the Barrandov studio in Prague, one of the largest European film archives, were used.
The cast was given space to further interpret the campaign idea through their roles. Rene Bitorajac, who portrays Count Gustav Pongratz, the founder of Zagrebačka pivovara, highlights the complexity of the filming process: “Filming Žuja commercials is as serious as real film production, and often even more demanding. Numerous extras, various effects and details, and especially the limitation of seconds in which the message must be delivered in the form of a commercial, require frequent and numerous repetitions to make everything perfect.”
He adds that the mindset from the campaign is close to his professional approach as well, although he admits that everyone sometimes practices it from the safety of a viewer’s position.
A similar perspective is shared by Goran Bogdan, who takes on the role of Nikola Tesla in the campaign, emphasizing that “I’d do it better” does not necessarily have to be criticism, but an internal impulse for progress: “That ‘I’d do it better’ mindset is actually very close to me. Not in the sense of criticizing others, but as an inner drive, a feeling that there is always one more step, one more idea, one more attempt that can be better.”
The creative concept is signed by BBDO, the brand’s long-time partner, and according to creative director Almir Okanović, the goal was to provoke exactly the reaction that defines the campaign itself: “If after watching this spot our people don’t think: ‘I’d do this better’, then we’ve done it for nothing.”
The new Žuja campaign has already begun distribution across various channels, with the ambition to turn a familiar phrase from everyday speech into something more than a comment – into a mindset that drives action.
