Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ilija Brajković
At the beginning of a new year everyone does an analysis of the previous year and tries to envision the new one. Maybe it’s a bit too late for such an analysis now (my colleagues already did it very effectively) and therefore at the agency Action we are doing a lot of thinking about what will happen in a few years and where we will be then. Since early September, when we moved the agency from Split to Zagreb, I must admit that a whole new world has opened for us. We hired four new experts in digital, and now everything is better and easier. But we are still restless. We’re talking with other people. We’re talking to ourselves. And then again with others – with people who have been in the communications industry for years, who were creating communication while we were still in elementary school. We read them and keep track of things that, let’s say, Davor Bruketa has to say. And again we think and talk …
I’ve already admitted that we digitals got smug. We thought we would by now have crushed the classic agencies, that all is digital, that TV and other advertising would perish … we could not have been further from the truth. We were too obsessed with looking at digital as a separate story in something called MARKETING, where DIGITAL is just one channel of communication – a very important channel, but still just a channel. And then what Bruketa writes about began to happen. “Big” clients simply added to their pitches, along with everything else, the part in which they demand implementation of the communication in digital media as well.
Does this mean that all “classic” agencies need to have their digital divisions or partner “digital” agencies? Yes, definitely. Does this mean that the independent “digital” agencies will fail? No way. They will continue to exist because there will always be a need for the specialized knowledge that can be generated within specialized agencies. But will we sit at the table with “classics” more and more in the future? Yes. We have a lot to learn from them, as well as they from us.
Native advertising, mobile, programmatic bidding, social media, Google, Facebook, virtual reality… things change all the time, and let’s be realistic, no one has a clue what the next big thing will be. Ten years ago no one even imagined that social networks would be part of our lives, or that Google search could make such a breakthrough in the way customers seek a product or service. Bill Gates said that we always overestimate things that might happen in a year, but underestimate the things that can happen in ten years. What will there be ten years from now? What and how will we work? Will there be some new Facebook or new technology? Talking with a lot of smart people (from university professors to directors of successful marketing and PR agencies), my conclusion is: what will remain is communication. Which channels and in which way – those will change. I bet that in ten years the biggest hype will be around a technology that isn’t even conceived of yet.
Interesting too in this regard, is the thinking of Tomislav Krajačić from the agency Kofein, a “classical” agency that has grown to 30 employees in its 3-4 years of existence. A creative at heart, a storyteller, and an advocate of transmitting emotions in marketing, he is a strong advocate of Instagram and the things that Instagram has brought. It’s not about Instagram for Instagram’s sake, but the fact that Instagram is yet another communication channel, which can be utilized very well. I had the pleasure of having several coffees with Tomislav lately, and of hearing how someone with years of experience in marketing and communications looks at the future of agencies and the industry.
And where do the wild hogs go? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m off to Podgorica, then Mostar, Sarajevo and finally Banja Luka – 4 cities in 4 days and 4 seminars on digital marketing and communication in social networks. If someone organizes Belgrade, count me in. I was told there are some rafts there… I’m going to teach people about communication. I’ll spend far less time on that subject saying “click here, then go over here in the top right…” I’ll talk strategy. I want to present to people the current state of things and the changes that have occurred. I’m going to be a bit rude to offline media, but I will also be considerate because I understand that it’s all communication. I hope that my colleagues in these media will not hold it against me. I am, you know, just a Herzegovinian, and a digital at that.
We can only guess where all of us are going. “The only thing that’s constant in this world is change”, wrote Petar Preradović, and, as we can see, we are in for changes far greater than we can plan for or imagine. And that’s fine, I’m sure it will be fun. Will any of this now remain forever? In addition to Hajduk, communication will endure.
Or maybe not. Or maybe they’re in the woods.