Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
Last night, I received information that stunned me: only three agencies from the region have entered their works so far for this year’s Golden Drum – Señor, Idea Plus Communications and Scholz&Friends. Only three! I know for a fact that the agencies from the I&F McCann Group will send their works, and that’s all. It’s an understatement to say that this is shameful of the entire industry. It really is.
Golden Drum has this year introduced the Golden Drum Adriatic Award, practically a regional advertising festival. All works that are entered in GD from any country of the Adriatic region automatically enter the competition for the regional award without paying additional registration fee. OK, maybe the organizers could have done this a little better. For example in addition to this option of works going through GD being automatically entered into the competition for the regional award, they could have given the possibility for those agencies for which the GD is out of their reach to enter their works directly for the Adriatic Award. Or they could have made a serious regional festival within the GD which would present its awards on the first night of GD, as a prelude to the awards that are ranked even by the Gunn Report. Oh well, this year GD has a completely new, young team that lacks experience and better knowledge of the regional industry, which is not very enthusiastic to accept even the best of ideas, served on a plate.
However, people who had led the GD over the last ten years did a lot of things to drive the region away from the festival, or did nothing to attract it. Lebanon was closer to them than Serbia. Now it will take time for the region to come back. But it should. GD now has a young but ambitious team led by Mojca Briščik, director of SOZ. You don’t know Mojca? You’ll meet her soon enough, and it’s worth it, trust me. You should also meet Mojca Majhen, director of the agency Paideia, which took over the organization of Golden Drum.
Anyway, there are only three days left before the closing of entries, and the entire regional book is down to three letters. Congratulations Señor, Idea Plus Communications and Scholz&Friends! No, you aren’t wrong for being in the minority, nor is the majority that failed to respond is smarter than you, quite the opposite.
I’m not paid to work for the Golden Drum. I’m a friend of the GD. Same as I am a friend of BalCannes, of Days of Communication, of SOF, of Sample and of the festival organized by UEPS. But we do have an interest in it. If the industry doesn’t develop (and festivals serve exactly that purpose), if there are no festivals, winners and losers, it reduces the amount of information for us, and we then continue playing dentists, extracting healthy teeth without injections when we ask an agency to send us some news.
Two years ago I hosted the first meeting of the presidents and directors of national associations from across the region, held in Belgrade. Although everyone talked about how important it is to work together to bring order into industry, I could see that nothing would come of this cooperation – and nothing there was. In May (or was it June) this year, Viktor Nikolić, president of the UEPS, organized a meeting to which he invited the presidents and directors of the associations from the region. There were nice discussions, and even better socializing. Informal talks over lunch or dinner are sometimes more important than the official ones. UEPS organized two great lunches and a fantastic dinner. I was at that meeting. When I left Belgrade I left with some hope that the ice has started moving, but now I realize that this hope was more my desire that it would really happen. Unfortunately, it did not happen. And it will not happen. It was clear the moment I suggested at the meeting that the presidents and directors, at least initially until things get a move-on, meet once in three months. Everyone gawked it was impossible (and unnecessary), that they don’t have the time for that and that it’s enough to meet once a year. In fact, they all came to Belgrade just to see what they can get for their national festivals, on the lines of: “You come to our festival, but for us it’s enough what we have in our country, we don’t need your festivals.” Oh, sorry. They actually did agree something. They agreed that after a month, they would exchange 10 percent discounts on festival fees among each other for the association members. Ten percent! Imagine that. Actually let’s imagine: someone doesn’t plan to go to Days of Communication in Rovinj, because there is no money or they are not interested. Then they hear that as a member of UEPS they have a 10 percent discount, which amounts to cca 30 euros. Wasting not a second, they immediately write the application and pull out of their pocket a thousand euros for the travel costs, hotel in the city, food and partying. It pays to spend one thousand to save thirty. That’s the logic here?
The problem is not in the pockets, it’s in the heads. If someone doesn’t want something, they won’t want it even if you give them for free, or even pay them. If there is no need in the mind, all is in vain. Ten percent discount? My God! Just like when some agencies bought a banner ad with us for a month, for 500 euros, thinking that I would immediately run to the bank to pick up the money from the account and run off to buy myself a new BMW.
Associations should get firmly linked and they should popularize the business that we do. They should popularize creativity and festivals, to convince their members in the importance of exchange of experience and continuous learning. Once this is achieved, you won’t need ten percent. We need to promote the profession and we all need to work on its development.
Is the I&F McCann Group, led by Srđan Šaper, the most honest in all of this?
Five years ago I was invited to a lunch organized by the McCann Sarajevo on the occasion of a visit from a director of McCann for South Eastern Europe. I find out why I was the only person outside McCann who was present there only a month later did. The gentleman from London asked me a couple of questions, just so I wouldn’t think he was neglecting me, and I was OK with that, I preferred to talk with Zdenka Milanović and Marija Vičić whom I met at that time. Before that I tried unsuccessfully several times to get in touch with Zdenka. When lunch was over, Zdenka invited me to come to a meeting in Belgrade – and it wasn’t an “if you come passing by…” kind of invite, but to purposefully come to Belgrade to meet with McCann. And so it was. We had scheduled a meeting in fifteen days. When the meeting began, Zdenka told me: “Ekrem, what you’re doing contributes directly to the development of the advertising industry. We want to be the strongest group in the region and we want the industry to develop. We are prepared to financially support your projects.”
Then she put me in touch with Marija Vičić, New Business Director who said that she would like that McCann and Media Marketing be strategic partners in the development of the advertising industry in the Adriatic region. “Offer us everything you’ve got and we will make some agreement. For this, we will not interfere in your editorial policy, you remain completely independent, we only buy what you commercially offer to provide you with a more stable business.” In the next 15 days, we signed a strategic partnership agreement and the agreement on advertising and subscription – the largest contract to date. Today, five years later, McCann is our largest advertiser and sponsor of our projects, but never, I swear never did they leverage it to put any kind of pressure on us, nor would we allow it. McCann is something like our client, and we are, for example, something like their agency. Today, clients treat their agencies as slave owners. The relationship between us and McCann is not so. Whenever I meet with Marija, Vlatko, Vanda, even Srđan, we always meet cordially and go for a mandatory lunch together in a very friendly atmosphere. If we had a few more partners like this in the region, we would be as Advertising Week or Advertising Age.
Later I saw McCann ads in all the other media in the region that are covering the advertising industry. So they support everyone, which is fantastic! The only agencies whose people you will meet in all the national festivals in the region are agencies of the I&F McCann Group. A few hours after writing this diary, I will get the final information on how many agencies reported for BalCannes, but I’m almost certain that the agencies of I&F McCann Group will report the most works. I remember the first year of BalCannes, when none of us who initiated it had no idea how it would turn out. In Rovinj, I met Zdenka Milanović. I knew they reported a large number of works, but I was really pleased when I was told that all their creatives from the region came to Rovinj for BalCannes. McCann was the first and so far the only agency in the Adriatic region that was proclaimed Agency of the Year at BalCannes. Zdenka Milanović will this year be a member of the jury, although no longer in McCann. Now she’s the marketing director in Skopje brewery, and the BalCannes jury this year consists of advertisers.
And it’s not all about the money. Another currency that for us, and other media like us, is very important are the news. And even here McCann is miles ahead of the other agencies. They send us a lot of news, because without news we are dead.
14 September 2016.