Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović, ekrem@www.media-marketing.com
I arrived in Zagreb at 13.00 hours, just in time for the first meeting with Ksenija Renko at the Esplanade. Ksenija is my old friend, we collaborated earlier when she ran her own PR agency. Today she is mainly engaged in consulting activities. Soon we were joined by Božo Skoko with whom I made an appointment with the intention to talk about the project of branding of Bihać and the Una River. I also wanted to hear Božo’s impressions from the Creative Republic of Bihać where, at my invitation, he participated in a panel on branding of tourist destinations. His impressions from Bihac are fantastic. He was delighted with the warmth and hospitality of the organizers. As for the branding of Una and Bihać, he is very much interested to join the project. I told him that Media Marketing, as a medium, could bring together all those who are interested and can help to implement the project. Ksenija believes that there is also room for this in the EU funds for cross-border cooperation due to the proximity of Bihać to the Croatian border and the Plitvice Lakes. Božo introduced me to the project structure and gave me the basic inputs. God, I’m still learning.
After Ksenija and Božo came Marina Bolanča (Abeceda). Marina is our partner in the organization of the Art&Business Conference that we planned for 19 and 20 October, but now we have to change the date because the Golden Drum is being held in Ljubljana from 18 to 22 October. Because of my obligations to the Golden Drum, and in order to avoid overlapping with promotional activities, we ‘fled’ with our conference to November. Marina now has to coordinate the new dates with the Museum of Contemporary Art in which Art&Business Conference will be held. MSU was rather very happy to receive the conference under their roof, even offering partnership in the organization. Marina told me her creative ideas about the conference. She believes that the program of the conference on sponsorship in culture and art can’t go on as in all other conferences: two or three rows of lectures, then a coffee break, then again three lectures, then lunch etc. She proposed that the program be enriched with performances, to introduce art and artists in the program and thereby enrich the content. At each meeting Marina surprises me anew with her ideas. I promised her I’d talk to Aja Jung, director of the Belgrade Dance Festival to help us with this.
I also asked Marina and her agency to organize our promotion of the book The Best of Creative Directors which we intend to organize in Zagreb, on Wednesday 14 September.
I jumped into my car and on the way to the Slovenian border I drop by to Sveta Nedjelja, and the printing house Printera to sign a contract for printing of the book “The Best of CD’s”, and the book by Mitja Tuškej, “No Friends, No Brands”. It was the first time I walked into a printing agency like this one. My first impression was that I entered a very famous and rich art gallery. The walls of the corridors and all office spaces are filled with works of very famous painters. Although Printera is an excellent printing house in which every print looks like an original, all the paintings were actually originals and are part of the rich art collection of Printera’s owner. After getting acquainted with art, our hosts Mario Cvitković, chief operating director, and Mirko Koren, director of sales, took us through all the departments and all the phases of printing. What I’ve seen looks very impressive. My whole life I’ve been hanging out in printing houses, but I had never seen anything like this one. I’m glad that we’re printing our publications in Printera. We signed the contract, our hosts wanted to keep us for lunch, but I had some pressing commitments in Ljubljana. On parting, Mirko, who is actually from Sarajevo, asked me to say hi to Vlatko Dimovski from McCann, with whom he had excellent collaboration while he lead VIPnet in Macedonia. “I read yesterday in your diary that you had dinner together in Sarajevo. Five him my regards next time you talk with him.”
I’m good at calculating time it would take me to get from point A to point B, so I arrived in Ljubljana exactly on time, where at 20.00 hours I had a meeting with Mitja Tuškej. I finished the translation of his book No Friends No Brands, so now we’re arranging things regarding the book design and printing. Since we were planning that the book should come out of the press around the 10th of July. I suggested to Mitja that we use the slogan: “The book for this summer”. People usually choose a book that they bring on vacation. We suggest that this summer you bring Mitja’s book. It’s a great read for a vacation. My conversation with Mitja lasted about an hour and was very pleasant, just like every conversation with him because he is always in a good mood and good spirits. We talked about the presentation which tomorrow (today) he will give for Spaar – a Formitas client for 20 years, same as Citroen. I made a deal with Mitja that we would create a theme for the portal about how to work with a client for twenty years ago, what is the philosophy of a client which doesn’t announce a pitch from one campaign to another, and which addresses their problems with the same agency for 20 years. Citroen and Spaar certainly know what they’re doing. Question whether others know what they’re doing – the advertisers who announce a pitch for every single campaign, inviting a large number of agencies and then dragging them on for months with their decisions – that’s something you’d had to ask them.
