Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović, ekrem@www.media-marketing.com
Yesterday was exciting to follow the responses to statistics.
It somehow seems natural that Valicon’s text about the Top 10 brands in each of the countries of the region and the Top 25 in the region was by far the most widely read in May. Valicon’s list of brands is something like the Gunn Report in advertising. When Donald Gunn publishes a book with a list of agencies, advertisers, media, best ads across all communication channels and much, much more – the prices of shares on the stock exchange shift. Every international festival, which is the focus of the Gunn Report, receive half of their entries in the competitive part just because the awards at those festivals are included in ratings for the Gunn Report. For years I’ve been following Valicon’s list of brands, and it really seems to me as the most relevant indicator of brands, the companies that run them, the managements of the companies, shareholders and even ministers and prime ministers who are interested in the economic prosperity of their countries and of all their citizens. Still, there are those for whom it doesn’t mean a thing. For example, regardless of how Bosnian and Herzegovinian brands stand in Valicon’s research, it would absolutely not interest our politicians. They do not even know what brands are and how big is their importance for the economy of a country. And the citizens are uninterested as well. I admire the Croats who are protesting en mass to protect education. Forty thousand people in Zagreb. Congratulations people of Zagreb. For us, that’s impossible. We had protests over the personal identification numbers when babies were dying because they couldn’t get a passport to go abroad for treatment, because they didn’t have the personal ID number, and even then less than two thousand people turned up, and even they came for the rock concert which was played as part of the protest. We don’t know other than that.
OK, I said that this with Valicon was normal, but that column by Milena Garfield would take the second place in just two days, that’s something we never had before. We didn’t boost that column on Facebook, we didn’t give it any injections or narcotics. There is one explanation: Milena wrote a great article. I’ll tell you our little secret. I persuaded her to start writing two years ago. She sends us great columns for Art & Business because the topic nearest to her is management in culture and art, but over the last month she gave us two columns for the Media Marketing, of which the latter one about Millennials broke all records in rapid ascension. And if you ask Bane Brkljač, our most successful columnist in the last two years, how he decided to write, he will tell you that I was the one who convinced him. Now I’m trying to convince him to write a book that would be a bigger hit than the Kosmodisks on which Bane built an empire.
Every day I correspond with Milena who lives in Washington. I told her to show the statistics to Bob. Bob Garfield, Milena’s husband, is the most famous columnist for Advertising Age. Milena replied: “No way, Bob can’t be reached now. Since he started to write against Donald Trump he is a big star in America.” I believe that, because Bob Garfield is the best analyst of advertising campaigns in the world. The Cannes Festival of Creativity uses his consulting services. If he began to dissect Trump’s campaign, then Trump is in serious trouble.
Hey, I just realized, AdAge has Bob Gafrield, Media Marketing has Milena Garfield. We’re not too shabby ourselves. J
Today I will spend the whole day at the Branding Conference. I love this event. Not because it is the only one in our industry that happens during the year in Sarajevo, but because Vesna Beganović with her associates makes every effort to make this event pleasant both to the eye (set design, visuals, nice people) and the ear (excellent lectures). They carefully draw up a program, carefully select speakers, the conference has excellent dynamics, lectures and panels just roll, and the day passes quickly.
At noon I will leave the conference for a couple of hours because I have lunch with Aleksandra Kregar Brus, director of the Central Marketing at Atlantic Group, and Ivana Timotijević who is in charge of media at the Atlantic.
In the evening I will “snatch” Špela Oblak and Vlatko Dimovski from Vesna. I’m taking them out to dinner. I have to agree with Vlatko that there will be not one word about anything related to work. Two days ago Špela left Luna after 14 years as director of Luna in Slovenia, and CEO the whole network in the Adriatic region. We agreed this dinner ten days ago. Two days ago when I got a private message from Špela early in the morning, telling me that she is leaving Luna, the first thing that came to my mind was that I would drill for all the answers during the dinner: why is she leaving, where is she going, what will she remember from the years at Luna, when was the hardest for her… I planned to use the dinner to do a story for Monday, so the portal could have an exclusive. Then I slapped myself. I will say nothing. Not a word about it. Together with Vlatko I’ll try to create such an atmosphere that Špela hasn’t have for a long time, because all the dinners were either business or there was at least talk of business, because this is a job that you live and talk about the entire day. Actually, 24 hours, if we measure it by Saki who dreamed creativity, and came to one of his ingenious theories that great ideas are born in dreams.
I also dreamed the other night. I dreamed ‘breaking news’, news that we would publish as soon as we get them. We feed the portal with news exclusively in the morning and at 08.00 we send the newsletter to over 6000 addresses of marketing professionals throughout the Adriatic region. Recently I began to think about the news that sometimes appear, and are exclusive. They should be released immediately. Now we have found a model: Breaking News. Amir has designed the special newsletter, Adnan is always ready to immediately translate the news into English. So three days ago we reacted immediately to the news of the partnership between Imago and Ogilvy. During that morning we even managed to make an exclusive interview with Damir Ciglar who was at the time on a business trip in Doha (Qatar). That also had great readership. That day was one of those days when we watched every hour as we approach the record readership. Although we thought it would take days until the next opportunity arises, we got it the next day.
At 07.00 am I received a message from Špela Oblak, that she would be leaving Luna that day after 14 years. She thanked me for all the positive energy that I was giving in the course of our cooperation and expressed hope that we will stay together in the team for the best Golden Drum, as she agreed with Luna that she would stay in the Slovenian advertising chamber as Luna delegate until the end of her mandate, while I was included in the working group for drafting the development strategies of Golden Drum. Špela asked me not to publish anything yet and to wait for an official announcement. I informed Adnan and Amir to be ready, that we would be getting another breaking news. As soon as we got it, it took me 15 minutes to translate it from Slovenian and send it to Adnan who then translated it into English, and Amir packed it all nicely into two newsletters (in local and English language) and sent it into the world. Even the Slovenes received such exclusive news for their advertising industry from us, a few hours before their portals announced it.
We will keep this option only for exclusive and extraordinary news. Since we have already received several inquiries how much would it cost to publish native advertising short texts in the form of breaking news and newsletter, I want to say immediately that there’s no money that would pay it. For five years we’ve been gaining your trust, for five years we look at Google analytics every hour, monitoring Facebook and other social networks, and we are trying to grasp what you are interested in so we could serve it to you. I suppose we would have three chances to “dupe” you with breaking news, and then lose you forever. Is it worth any big money? No!
I wish you a nice weekend.
Sarajevo, 2 June 2016.