Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović, ekrem@www.media-marketing.com
When I organize my trips I plan meetings from dawn till dusk, and then I have no time to write the diary during my trip, although the most interesting things happen when you travel, through meetings with numerous people. It was the same story this time. Tuesday evening I somehow managed to write the Diary, but after that, no chance.
Wednesday, Ljubljana
The day started with a meeting with Valerija Prevolšek (Media Pool), director of Sempl. Every year we are the media sponsors of this very important conference. Apart from strong media support we provide, Media Pool also rents our advertising space (banners), so we are very happy with this cooperation. Wednesday morning we discussed how to introduce some new elements in our communication and increase the number of agencies involved in the competition for the Sempler awards. Last year only five agencies outside Slovenia entered. That’s too little, way too little.
I promised Valerija that I would send some of our suggestions on how to improve communication of Sempl on our website and that, as some kind of an ambassador of Sempl, I would get engaged with my friends in the agencies in the region to encourage them to sign up for the Sempler. In the second half of the year, I will also be strongly engaged for the BalCannes, the Golden Drum and the Sempler, because it’s very important that as many agencies as possible send their works to these festivals.
After Valerija, I rushed to a meeting with Žare Kerin, creative director of Futura DDB, who is tackling the design of the book The Best of CDs. I’ve already written that Žare is the greatest master of beautiful books in the region. He seriously tackled this task and from what he has shown me, we will have a great book. I asked him to see with Futura’s suppliers in Ljubljana about the possibility of two types of packaging for the books, so we could provide the creative directors who will be presented in it the possibility to have a luxury packaging if they want to send the books as gifts to someone. Žare promised me a layout of characteristic pages by the end of June, and in August he would take the time to look at the complete layout of the book which we will do by then.
All my meetings on Wednesday were important, but the one I had at 12 hours with Mitja Petrovič was one of those I awaited with great excitement. All my life I’ve been running for sponsors for my projects, now it was the first time that I was going as the main sponsor to get the final product. When Mitja informed me earlier this year that he was preparing a major project with the 27 most successful young Slovenian pianists, and that he is in the process of preparing a bid for sponsors, I told him to send us an offer, because we wanted to be the main sponsor with the Art&Business portal. Mitja’s whole project fit well with the mission of Art&Business. The price of sponsorship was quite high, but I accepted because I didn’t want to miss this opportunity. Now I was going to meet Mitja, who would deliver the first set of CDs. I must tell you that it’s really great to be a sponsor. The sponsored one shows you all the nice things, praises their product and tells you how they treated you as a sponsor even better than promised, and you then ask some stupid questions, just for the sake of asking. All joking aside. I am very happy that we were part of this project and that everything turned out so great. With Mitja I elaborated a strategy on how to proceed with this project, and how we can best use all of this for Art&Business.
After Mitja I went to the Pen Club for lunch with two Mojcas – Mojca Briščik, director of the Slovenian Advertising Chamber and Mojca Majhen, director of the agency Paideia, which signed an exclusive contract with SOZ on the organization of the Golden Drum. We spent the entire time talking about the Golden Drum. I am a member of the working group formed by the SOZ and am trying to give my full support to the ‘return’ of Golden Drum to the region.
Some things that Mojca Briščik and I couldn’t fully agree on were left for Belgrade, where we would meet two days later at the meeting of the national associations of the advertising industry.
After lunch, Vedrana and I went to Bologomanija on Pohorje. Through an incredible rain that doesn’t happen so often in life, we made our way to Maribor with the support of young Slovenian pianists who we listened to on CDs.
Dinner with Kristina Ercegović, followed by a well-deserved rest.
Thursday
We spent the entire day on Blogomanija. Less in lectures, and more in socializing with friends, acquaintances and people I’d just met. I was particularly happy with the encounter with Marina Čulić Fischer. We continued our favorite subject – PR. Marina, as always, maintains that the situation is not the best, but it’s not as bad as I imagine it to be, and I stand by my guns, claiming it’s even worse. I greatly respect Marina, but I stick to my view that PR, as it is, does more harm to the industry than it helps.
It was also interesting to meet with Bojan Bernik from Zagreb’s digital agency Morgan Grey. Bojan and I have long been communicating by email, but only now we had the opportunity to meet. We quickly agree that Morgan Grey would make an analysis of our website based on data from Google Analytics and suggest us the necessary improvements given that we want to constantly improve.
Too much communication had me very tired. I kindly refused several invitations to dinner, and together with Vedrana I retired to a village near Maribor for a family dinner with Tatjana Novak and Danijel Koletić. Complete relaxation in the company of friends revived me. How pleasant it was is best illustrated by the fact that we remained there pretty late into the night.
Friday
Early in the morning we descend down the Pohorje and go to Zagreb and Belgrade. We should arrive in Belgrade by 14 hours where in the Writers’ Club I had an arranged lunch with the presidents and directors of the national associations of the advertising industry from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia. At this meeting I played a role of an artefact, a cultural-historical monument of the regional advertising industry.
The meeting was held at the initiative of Viktor Nikolić, President of UEPS. You can read more about the meeting in the news section, and in more detail over the coming days when the associations verify the notes which were kept so meticulously during the meeting by Stana Šehalić, Secretary General of UEPS.
Stana writes about the formal stuff. I’ll cover the informal. So, all started with a lunch at the Writers’ Club, where I was probably feeling a little more comfortable than the others. Everything reminded me of the golden age of advertising when it was a gentleman’s job, and when we almost daily spent time on lunches and dinners with clients. We (the media and agencies) and clients were friends in the true sense of the word, we loved to hang out, talking about ideas, projects and campaigns. The society in which I was sitting had not experienced this time, because they are mostly younger people than me, but the atmosphere and energy of the place reminded me of those times gone by. It even evoked the memories of many meetings in the same restaurant at the time when we were the official marketing agency of the Yugoslav government led by Ante Marković, or of the dinners with clients at the time when we were the marketing agency of the Yugoslav Olympic Committee, the Football and the Basketball Association of Yugoslavia.
After lunch we cross the road to UEPS, for the meeting. We left the meeting only for a short refreshment in the hotel, and to have dinner in the garden of restaurant Grafičar. I mostly hung out and talked over dinner with Vanda Kučera, a member of the Board of UEPS, who is also in charge of corporate affairs at I&F McCann Group.
At midnight, the birthday cake arrived for Mojca Briščik, who at that moment turned 42 years. She was surprised and delighted. Viktor Nikolić staged it all fantastically. I told Mojca: “This can only be experienced in Belgrade.” The next day at breakfast she asked what I meant when I said that. “Mojca, the restaurant’s opening hours are until eleven o’clock. Didn’t you notice that after that we were the only ones who stayed at the restaurant? The live music band waited for an hour, for midnight, so that they could play a couple of songs for your birthday, the entire staff in the restaurant was waiting for an hour longer to serve us.” She just looked at me and said: “Yes, that’s something I wouldn’t have experienced even in Ljubljana.”
Saturday
I write this short and fast, as it’s already late Sunday evening. The band and the waiters waited for Mojca’s birthday. Waiting for me now are Adnan (to translate this) and Amir (to upload the texts).
On Saturday we had an informal working meeting at the hotel. After that we moved to the town for a coffee, where Ana Ivandić (SOZ) suggested that her digital publishing house does a digital edition of The Best of CDs for us. That sounds quite interesting.
All ends with the UEPS lunch at Dva jelena (Two stags) restaurant at Skadarlija.
Around 17 pm, I started the car and we left Belgrade full of impressions and thankful to Viktor and Stana on the unforgettable 24 hours.
