Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
The year 2017 is slowly gaining momentum. I spent last week three days in Zagreb and Belgrade and talked to a lot of people in the agencies. All were satisfied with last year and are optimistic about 2017. The industry is getting out of the crisis, clients are enhancing their communication activities, budgets are growing, new channels of communication are opening…
The working week began with a meeting in printing house Printera. I was left without a single book The Best of Adriatic Creative Directors – I didn’t even have a single copy for myself. I was hoping that I would find some at Printera, but I did not. All books were shipped out. We talked about producing another 2000 copies. Most of these books (1500) we will give to college students in the region who are studying to work in the advertising and communications industry. Young people increasingly shy from working in advertising, so a couple of creative directors initiated an action aimed to provide books to students, so we could motivate them with examples of the best creative directors to change their attitude. We are now engaged in finding sponsors, and according to the current results of the negotiations, we’ll soon round up the financial structure. The remaining 500 books will be offered in the market. The interest is there. Printera is ready. So I hope that by the end of February / March all will be done.
On the way back from Sv. Nedelja to Zagreb, I talked on the phone with Žiga Gliha from Futura Ljubljana. They had a few books left that were intended for the Slovenian market. I thought that tomorrow morning, at dawn, I could go to Ljubljana to fetch the books and be back in Zagreb on time for the press conference of the Days of Communication at 11.00h. I really hated that I would have to do it.
At Imago I had a meeting with Damir Ciglar. For Imago, last year was very significant. First there was the contract and merger with Ogilvy, and then the first Cannes Lion for Croatia. Business wise, it was a pretty good year, which means that they will be entering this year with bigger ambitions. Imago’s business in Dubai is developing well, with plans to expand business in this part of the world – especially in packaging design, in which Imago is very successful.
From Imago I rush to Agrokor, to a working lunch with Iva Balent. It was a special occasion. Iva is the president of the Woman.Comm Conference which we intend to organize in Zagreb on 25 and 26 of May. I presented Iva with the first draft of the program. We also talked about other projects within our Woman.Comm brand. I got a couple of very interesting and useful suggestions that will definitely be included in the projects. Lunch in the lounge on the 16th floor of Agrokor’s tower was fantastic. I wouldn’t go into all that was served and what we ate – I’m afraid I would only make problems for you if I told you. At one point, Iva proposed a new meeting for tomorrow morning. I said that I would have to go early to Ljubljana to get the books, and she just smiled and said: “Well you do not have to go for the books to Ljubljana, the books will come to you in Zagreb.” It only took a single message for the assistant to organize everything. Happy for not having to go to Ljubljana, I continued to enjoy the food and conversation with Iva Balent, who is in many ways a truly unique woman in the communications universe of the Adriatic region. I’m very happy to know her.
In the evening Vedrana and I went to the Business Café with which Kristina Ercegović opened this year’s season of the increasingly important project for the entire entrepreneurial community of the Adriatic region. There were 120 participants from four countries. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Three years ago when Krsitina was telling me about her plans for the Business Café, I openly told her that I don’t believe in that, and suggested her to tackle a more specific work. I was sadly wrong. Kristina has turned this event into a movement of very loyal entrepreneurs, thousands of whom come during the year to events in all major cities of the region to learn, socialize and network. Business Café is a great concept, but that’s not enough for success. You need so much energy and resilience, so much passion – which Kristina has and with which she leads this project. Fascinating! So far I’ve been to two Business Cafés and both times I witnessed how people are grateful to her. Almost no one misses out the opportunity to personally thank her before leaving. It’s also something to endure. And Kristina just smiles all the time. Only God knows where she gets so much energy from.
On Tuesday morning I first had a speed-coffee with Marina Bolanča about the Woman.Comm Conference. She’s pleased that we’re finally starting with this project. That day she had meetings with clients from Hungary, so we only touched on some of the most important things.
After that coffee, another one with Iva Balent. She wanted to have a coffee with Vedrana. Complete relaxation.
At 11:00h, at Bruketa&Žinić agency, the press conference of this year’s Days of Communication. Davor, Jan, Dunja and Andrea presented the basics of the competition and the program part of the Days of Communication. Apparently, many thrills await us from 30 March to 2 April at the Hotel Lone in Rovinj. We wrote already about all that is known so far, so I will not repeat it here. After the press conference, a short talk to Davor and Nikola. They are very pleased with the increase in workload.
Then another coffee, this time with Dunja Ballon. We discussed communication plan for Days of Communication.
I remained in the same building at a meeting with Jelena Mihelčić. We went through the projects of Media Marketing and Woman.Comm this year, and we agreed on collaboration. Bruketa&Žinić for several years now is a serious advertiser on our portals, and this year we may even arrange sponsorship for Woman.Comm.
Vedrana and I left for a quick lunch and then headed off for Belgrade. As I was settling impressions from Zagreb, I barely even noticed the fog and bad conditions for driving. Everything went well.
In the morning, after the breakfast as I went to put our things in the car, I almost broke my back on the ice. Freezing rain fell just before dawn. Everything was frozen. Car windows were covered with such hard ice that it was impossible to scrape it off. I remembered Duško Radović, Belgrade’s famed poet who every morning on the radio had his “Good morning Belgrade” show. Whenever I was in Belgrade, I was sure to listen to him. I loved his voice. One morning he said: “Belgrade dawned this morning gloomy, cold and rainy. Belgraders, poor are the jobs to which you are going in this weather.” Duško said these words forty years ago.
That was the case last Wednesday. Traffic jam. I got caught in the morning rush hour. I barely broke through to the center and parked in the garage. I went to McCann for a meeting with Marija Vićić (I had to skip the first planned coffee with Vlatko Dimovski). With Marija I signed the strategic partnership agreement for this year. We go through our projects for which McCann is interested. This year marks 20 years since Srđan Šaper opened the first McCann agency in Belgrade. Today, I&F McCann Grupa has agencies in 12 countries, including Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. I discussed with Marija the communication strategy that is tied to the anniversary. It was nice, interesting and useful – as always at McCann.
I left McCann for a meeting with Veran Matić, president of the Board of Directors of B92 and President of the Foundation B92. Publishing house Samizdat from the composition of B92 recently published a book by Milena Garfield, Small Tips for a Better Future. Milena had just arrived from Washington to promote her book, at the Cultural Center of Belgrade on Friday, 3 February. Milena invited me to speak at the promotion, so now Veran and I are arranging the details. Along the way we also talk about the possibility that Samizdat publishes my book Hotel Yugoslavia, which should come out in late March. I’d like to promote it at the Days of Communication in Rovinj, immediately followed by SOF in Portorož, and PRO.PR conference in Krapinske Toplice. During the meeting Milena arrived. She would come to Veran at 13:30, so I promise I’ll be back then. But since time was fleeting for me since the early morning, I just could not make it. I will see Milena on the promotion on Friday.
Then the Mixer House. Agreed meeting with Lazar Džamić and Vladimir Čeh at noon sharp. Lazar and I exchange books and tributes. He gave me his new book Advertising PAGE, and I gave him The Best of Adriatic Creative Directors. Because of the dedication note for Lazar and Čeh, that morning I was touring Belgrade bookstores looking for gold felt-tip pen because of the black first few pages of the book. And as I was waiting for Lazar’s comment on The Best of … he asked me when will the book Hotel Yugoslavia come out, for which he wrote the introduction three years ago. So much time had passed since then, and already then more than 80% of the content was written, but the book has not yet emerged. I told Lazar that I definitely promised to Zvezdana Žujo that the book would come out in March, and that there would be no more excuses. As we talked about the book, Čeh suggested that the book Hotel Yugoslavia be published by the Institute for the History of Advertising which he founded two years ago. I promised to send him a text as soon as I get back to Sarajevo, so he could have a look at it. Lazar left us after half an hour because he had a meeting with the Dean of the Faculty where he teaches, and Čeh and I stayed one more hour, chatting and remembering some important events from our previous life, thirty, forty or more years ago.
The dot on the “i” of my three-day journey across the region came in the form of a meeting with Milica Marković in Direct Media. The theme was again our strategic collaboration this year. Milica told me that they had a lot of good comments on the series of 15 articles that we published for as many Mondays in a row, as the lessons they have learned in 15 years of Direct Media Group. I’m always glad when I hear something like that, because it means that people are reading us, and that they respect what we publish. We discussed various modalities of our cooperation but also that Direct Media agencies in the region start including us in the media plans for their clients. We concluded that I will send a final proposal on Monday morning (as soon as I finish this diary entry I will write that), so we could sign a contract on Friday when I will come to Belgrade for the promotion of Milena’s book. Nice end of a successful trip.
Sarajevo, 22 January 2017