Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
Photo: Klaus Schwab, president of the World Economic Forum Davos
The first month of the year – which in any organization represents the beginning of the implementation of the annual plan, and Media Marketing is no exception – always takes me back to an earlier age when great and important things happened to me in the month of January.
On 5 January 1990, Sarajevo agency OSSA and IMS/STUDIO 6 in Lausanne (Switzerland), whose president was Goran Takač, signed the agreement on establishment of Yugoslav-Swiss marketing agency IMS/Studio 6 Yugoslavia. The head office was in Sarajevo, and I was appointed as director. Until then, I worked at the agency OSSA as a team leader for sports marketing. I ran the whole process of creating the new agency. In fact, Goran wanted the two of us to be the founders, but I managed to convince him it would be better if OSSA, which operated within the news outlet Oslobodjenje, be a partner on the Yugoslav side. Somehow I felt greater security that way.
Very soon after the agency was founded, I formed a powerful team. Creative Director was Vladimir Čeh from Belgrade, and Art Directors were Nino Kovačević and Rajka Milović from Ljubljana, at the time certainly the strongest creative duo in Yugoslavia. As its part of the founding capital OSSA entered the contract with the Organizing Committee of the European Athletics Championship in Split in 1990, contract with the Football Association of Yugoslavia (we led the marketing for the appearance of Yugoslav national team in the World Cup Italy ’90), then the contracts for the exclusive rights to sell commercial time in broadcasts of Wimbledon and Roland Garros, as well as sponsorship agreement with Monica Seles, who had already been the top female racket in the world. Goran had paid his share in Swiss francs.
The first pitch we participated in, three months after the formation of the agency, was a competition for the selection of the Yugoslav government’s official marketing agency. The then Prime Minister Ante Marković was very popular with the public and this was the most important project for a marketing agency in the country. They invited three agencies to pitch: Studio Marketing Belgrade, which was then led by Dragan Sakan and Ivan Stanković, agency Borba, led by Zoran Čadež, and us. Ten days and nights I was preparing that presentation. We won smoothly. Although it was said in the competition that the government would announce the results after 15 days, on the same day we were informed that we got the job, and were invited to sign the contract the next day. And we were outsiders, invited only to fill the quota of three agencies. The competition was conducted by the Ministry of Information, which was led by Minister Darko Marin, a Slovene who certainly wanted such an important and financially extremely valuable project to go to Studio Marketing Belgrade, because that agency was a branch of Studio Marketing Ljubljana. On the other hand, the government had an interest in Borba winning the pitch, which operated within the namesake newspaper company, back then the strongest newspaper company in Yugoslavia. The government had already bought Borba because Marković, aware he was entering a multi-party system, wanted to have a strong media company by his side (later they would change it to Yutel, as “their” television, led by Goran Milić). Tough luck. We were better. The year 1990 was fantastic. We were working for the government, we took our football team together with Ivica Osim to the World Cup, we organized an exhibition match in Sarajevo between the two leading tennis players of the world at that time, Monica Seles and Mary Joe Fernandez (Monika wanted to celebrate her birthday in Sarajevo, and to thank us for all that we did for her on her way to becoming the top female tennis player in the world), we did an outstanding job as the marketing agency of the European championship in athletics, for which we were commended by President of Croatia Franjo Tuđman. We closed the year with the selection of Businessman of the Year in Belgrade’s Hyatt Hotel. That was indeed a gala event.
At the time, Yugoslavia was already falling apart. In the middle of next year Slovenia would leave the common state. Wars followed – first in Slovenia, then in Croatia and, in the end, the hell came down to Bosnia and Herzegovina. We withdrew with all our activities to Sarajevo, and the Belgrade office became independent. We were considering what to do in the cramped Bosnia.
Being aware that we don’t have a market for a strong agency, we had only two options. Either to descend to the level of the market, or to try to improve and develop the market. For the latter, we needed a tool for education of managers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I decided to launch the Business Magazine. An entire book could be written on how it came to be, how it temporarily shut down during the war, and it’s re-launch at day 1000 of the siege of Sarajevo.
Anyway, back to January. On 9 January 1992, we promoted the first issue of Business Magazine. It was a very important date for the economic future of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Probably that’s why Republika Srpska celebrates it as its day. I’m kidding of course. On that 9th of January, two diametrically opposite events were happening in the same hotel in Sarajevo (Holiday Inn), at the same time (at noon), at a distance of only thirty meters. In the Congress Hall, Republika Srpska was declaring its para-state and was announcing the war. On the other side, in restaurant Bosnia, more than 200 managers from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina attended the promotion of the first issue of Business Magazine, with talks of a prosperous and profitable future for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tough luck. We were weaker.
These days I was following the events on the World Economic Forum in Davos, and remembered the January of 1996, when, two months after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina was a major theme at Davos. I was there. At that time I was temporarily living with my family in Ljubljana, where in early 1995, after 1,000 days of the siege of Sarajevo, I re-launched the Business Magazine. In January 1996, before going to Davos, I had a cunning plan. Through our correspondent in Geneva, I was able to get an exclusive interview with Klaus Schwab, the Geneva lawyer who founded the World Economic Forum in Davos, and has been managing it through all these years, to date. Business Magazine issue with his interview and photograph on the front page was printed in Ljubljana printing house Delo, about ten days before Davos. I did a match print of the front-page, made a hand-written dedication, framed it, and sent it via DHL to Mustafa Bijedić, the head of our mission to the UN in Geneva, along with the request that he delivers it to Schwab. Mustafa told me Schwab was delighted, and that he had hung the cover immediately on the wall of his law office.
When I arrived at the opening of the Forum, and when our reporter Mariela from Geneva introduced us to Schwab, he left the guests to his wife, and took Vedrana and me to the bar for a drink. There he introduced us to Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu from Istanbul, the then Director General of IRCICA (Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture), later Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), and Erdogan’s challenger in the last presidential election. We became great friends. One year he even invited Vedrana and me to be his guests in Istanbul, in the first week of the month of Ramadan, which is a great honor that rejected.
I will remember Davos for many things, but here I will mention only two more.
Immediately after the opening ceremony, separate receptions of several states were held at the same time. We decided to go to the Slovenian reception. Before I write a few sentences about what happened at that reception, I should mention that the day before our departure to Davos Vedrana and I bought two CDs of Vlado Kreslin, because we loved his music. The entire day-long drive from Ljubljana to Davos we were listening to Kreslin and his Beltinška Banda. When we arrived in the evening at the hall in which the Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Drnovšek was hosting the reception, at the bar in front of the hall we saw Vlado Kreslin and his band. “I’m listening to you all day long. I’m fed up with you, and you’re the first person I meet when I got here,” I blurted out. “And who are you?” Vlado asked me. When we introduced ourselves, he asked us which song we liked the most. We said Spominčica (Violet). “Fantje, greva notr” (Guys, let’s go inside) Vlado said to the musicians. They climbed on the stage and Vlado said: “Gentlemen, we already played Spominčica tonight, but for our friends from Sarajevo we will play it again.” Everyone turned to us and applauded. There were a lot of people we knew. Franc Premk, General Manager of Petrol, Cvetka Selšek, Director General of the SKB bank in whose building we had offices … That evening a great friendship was born, that continues to this day. We are family friends with Kreslin. We get together whenever we are in Ljubljana. Last summer they detoured to Sarajevo on their return trip from the sea, and they stayed in Sarajevo for two days. We spent the entire time together.
The second meeting was with Hungarian President Arpad Göncz. I already said that Bosnia was the main theme at Davos that year. An all-day conference on BiH was held, chaired by Richard Holbrooke, the creator of the Dayton Peace Agreement. The conference was closed to the press and around the hall, in which the conference was taking place, there were two layers of strong security so that no one could get in uninvited. But I had privileged treatment. The cover page of the Business Magazine was a miracle. Schwab personally took me to the hall, and I attended the entire conference. There was no smoking in the hall, but a separate room was reserved for those purposes. When I went out for a smoke, and walked into the room, I saw there the Hungarian President Arpad Goncz. I excused myself and left, but he came out and called me inside. When I introduced myself, who I was and where I was from, a torrent of questions about Sarajevo ensued. In the end, he gave me his business card and hand wrote a phone number saying: “Whenever you are in Budapest, please contact this phone and we’ll have a coffee. My secretary will immediately connect you because only special people have this phone number.” Two years after Davos, while sorting out business cards, I found Goncz’s. I thought if he really gave me a phone number by which he could be reached directly. I decided to try it. I dialed the number. A kind female voice on the other side. I asked to speak to President Goncz. “Mr. President is here, I will connect you right now …” the phone immediately dropped from my hand. I hung up as a real schmuck.
What January means to me? A lot!
23 January 2016.