Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović, ekrem@www.media-marketing.com
Yesterday I received a lot of comments on the Diary of a Methuselah – all positive and encouraging. I embarked on an adventure which I don’t know how long will last, nor what kind of temptations await me. But so it goes. Ivan Tasovac says: “If you want to solve a problem, create an even bigger one.” And so I try to solve my daily dearth of time by starting to do something that will take me at least two hours each day. It’s difficult to fit three into two, but if you have the will, it can be done.
Lala (Branislav Lalević), my friend from Sarajevo and Belgrade, prompts me to push forward, and says it’s an easy read and a nice thing. Jovo Jovanović, one of my best friends in life, writes from Barcelona that he read the first text and is already looking forward for the next one. Slavica Bosnić from Trieste doesn’t agree with me ranking myself as a Methuselah. Stana Šehalić sends an email from Belgrade, explaining her train of thought which drew a smile to her face after one formulation from my text …
There were also comments that I was faking when I wrote that I have learned little about the job during these 46 years of work in advertising. But it’s true. Because of the constant jumping from one flower to the next (just like a bee), I almost never brought anything to an end. Fuad Strik, who knows me well, says that I haven’t been as consistent with anything in my life as I am with the editing of the Media Marketing portal. I agree with Fuad, although I don’t know why this is so. When I started the portal five years ago, I had no idea what I was signing up for. A portal is a bottomless pit. It all started with an hour or two of fun a day, and it grew into full-time work, and since I don’t work only on the portal, my working day has extended to 12 hours. And something is constantly changing. Something is always starting and ending – or not ending. These changes carry the biggest charm. Sveto Janevski, owner of Tikveš, says that, when you wake up in the morning, if you don’t have an idea of what you’re going to change that day, there’s no reason to get up. Stay in bed all day.
I launched the print edition of Media Marketing 13 years ago. After the first few issues, I agreed with my co-workers that once a month we would organize a Media Marketing Creative Breakfast. The idea was to create an event to which we would invite people who had made a mark on the advertising industry in the Adriatic region and Europe over the previous month, so they could say something about creativity. We organized the Creative Breakfasts in the conference hall of the hotel Holiday Inn. The registration fee was 90 BAM (€45). Breakfast cost a fifth of that amount, the rest of the money we invested in airline tickets and hotel costs. We didn’t pay our guests. They didn’t even ask. The invitation alone to one such event in Sarajevo seemed exotic and attractive enough. I can’t remember all the guests right now, but I know that the director of the D&AD Awards came to us from London, two days after the D&AD awards ceremony, to present the winners to us. We had two Cannes winners, who were with us at the breakfast three days after the Festival. When Vital Verlič from Ljubljana’s Futura launched a website for creative people and clients from around the world, he held his first presentation in Sarajevo. We moved the time of the Breakfast, adjusting it to the festivals, in order to be up-to-date, and it worked. The Agency of the Year at the Golden Drum was with us in Sarajevo 48 hours after the end of the festival, at one Breakfast our guest was Dragan Sakan. It all worked. At least as far as we were concerned. After a few months, we got tired of persuading local agencies and clients to come to the event. It was like: they don’t have the time; they are so busy that they can’t set aside three hours per month to hear something smart, and mingle with colleagues from the industry. I think we lasted seven months, and then we gave up the grind. Had I known how to capitalize on it, (and maybe I wasn’t interested), I would not have given up so easily. Today there is a global franchise CreativeMornings. Our concept was better, but we didn’t last.
How it works best can be seen in the example of the Business Cafe, a franchise designed by Kristina Ercegović. On 1 May it will be exactly one year since I met Kristina at Kopaonik, at the conference organized during the holidays by Robert Čoban and Zoran Torbica. I was invited to participate in a panel on creativity in advertising, which was led by Kristina Ercegović. I hadn’t known her until then. The day before the panel Kristina brought together all the participants to meet and agree on how we would do it. From the conversations, I had concluded that this was a very enterprising woman, who had already had a successful company and sold it, and now she was doing an event which she dubbed the Business Café, and was selling the franchise in the region and beyond. I didn’t quite understand what it was immediately, but something inside me told me that Kristina could help me with advice on how to get rid of some of my key problems in the organization and financial performance of the jobs that I do. The next day we met for a coffee that lasted three hours. I told her everything. I even told her that with the projects I was working on, only a fool like me could be penniless. She told me something similar on her part as we were concluding our marathon meeting.
We had agreed that she would soon come to Sarajevo for two to three days. And she came the very next month. In the agenda that she sent me before her arrival she had asked me if she could first meet with my associates without me, and then the two of us would go somewhere where we could talk quietly. She also instructed me that when choosing the place I should take into account that it should be somewhere near water. And so it was. After her meeting with my people, the two of us went to Vrelo Bosne (the source of the Bosnia river). Beautiful nature, peace, a rippling river, everything as she had wanted. I brought with me my Moleskine which is always with me (she had also told me that I had to bring some paper on which to write). And instead of some revolutionary ideas that would fundamentally change my work and allow me to make money, Kristina first told me to write the names of all the people who I have ever been grateful to in my life. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Well, you are grateful to your parents because you exist, and you are grateful to Vedrana for giving birth to your two children, and you are grateful to…” And so on, up to the present day. I wanted to get up and leave, but I restrained myself. After I had made quite a long list, Kristina told me that now I should make a list of the people who should be grateful to me for some reason.
I wrote a couple of names and said: “It’s time to have lunch.” During lunch, I politely explained to her that I had specific problems that I would like to solve, but that it would not go this way, and she told me that I was the cause of all my difficulties, that I had to calm my spirit, relax, etc. And she said she doesn’t hold a magic wand, that she could only help me to get to know myself, to learn how to share gratitude, love … all those things that Ivan Stanković wrote about a few days ago in his column on our portal. To understand it, Ivan had to go to the Himalayas, to climb to over six thousand meters, to freeze, to lose sleep for days because of fear and thin air. I didn’t have to go to the Himalayas. The peaks of the Himalayas came to me at Vrelo Bosne, but I didn’t recognize it. Or understand it. However, I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t terrified. Ivan said that out of overwhelming fear during the long nights he got to know parts of himself he hadn’t known existed until then. Anyway, while we had lunch, I told Kristina that I thought that what she was offering was not a solution for me, and that it would be a shame if she continued to waste her time with me. In the evening we went out to dinner with Vedrana, and the next morning Kristina departed from Sarajevo.
I understood nothing. Not even the things she told me about the Business Café. Today I know that this is one of the best and most useful projects that someone has started in the region in recent years. Once a month, in all the major cities of the countries of the Adriatic region – and in Croatia even in some regional centers – Business Café is held. A gathering of small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. At these events, Kristina provides them with the most important thing they need – the knowledge and experience of her guests, successful entrepreneurs, and the opportunity to meet, network, exchange experiences and establish cooperation. The value of business struck through the contacts made at the Business Café events exceeds ten million euros. I was her guest in Zagreb a month ago and I saw it all on the spot. It works flawlessly. Apart from having a good idea, Kristina also had a good plan. She developed the project step by step. She contracted a franchise for each country. And it works. That’s how it’s done. But one has to know how to do that. It’s not enough just to have a good idea. If I have learned one thing from Kristina, then I learned that I should think about every project in the long term, that I should clean up a little bit around myself and push only those things that really have a chance to go through. I haven’t gone through her whole seminar, but things with me have changed fundamentally over the last year. Many problems no longer exist, even the hardest ones.
It snowed yesterday in Sarajevo. I hope it’s not because I started to write a diary.
Igor Kern, director of ABC Croatia sent me an email in which he wrote that they will now offer audit to all print media in the region, and that I don’t have to be a Silencetologist about it – that I can publish the news immediately. Great news. Now I’ll have to buy him a shovel in Breza, like the one used by the labor hero Alija Sirotanović (Ex-Yugoslav reference. Alija Sirotanović was a famous miner, hero of socialist labor, who for his accomplishments asked for only one thing from the Yugoslav leader Tito, a bigger shovel). It’s been a year now that every now and then he sends me an e-mail and asks: “Where’s the shovel!?” As soon as the snow melts, I’m off to Breza to buy it.
Davor Bruketa also called me. We talked about BalCannes which will, in all likelihood, have a different concept this year, which is very good. We set quite high goals in terms of the number of entries and I have already started making a list of agencies whose works we want to see among them. I really love this project.
Unex will order a campaign on the portal for one of their clients. It’s the second agency that has included us in the media plan for one of their clients. Thank you Unex.