Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
As is already globally known, Croats have finally won a Lion in Cannes. This honor went to the agency Imago and its client Agrokor for the water brand Jana. We wrote about it a lot these days.
Today, we’d like to tell you the story of how the campaign, Jana, water with a message of love was made. I asked Iva Balent, executive director for marketing at Agrokor, Igor Mladinović, Creative Director and Darko Bosnar, Art & Innovation Director of the agency Imago Ogilvy, who, along with project leader Sara Prevedan, – the three key people from the whole story about the storks Malena and Klepetan – to write their part of the story, so I could then merge it into one. Either I’m not acquainted with beautiful writing, or their stories are so emotional and carry a personal touch of each of them, so much so that I didn’t know how to write the fourth, complete story, so I just their parts as they are. You can read all of them here. I had a big dilemma: should the short story of Iva Balent go at the beginning or at the end? At the beginning, because the client is the beginning of each campaign and the first jury for each creative idea. Had this crazy idea of Darko Bosnar didn’t find its way to Iva Balent, it would never have found its way to the Cannes jury, and Croats would still be without a Cannes lion. It could also go in the end, because the client is always the one that puts the dot on the “i”. They are the beginning and the end of everything. As the story of Iva Balent somehow continues Darko’s and Igor’s, I put it in the end. You know the famous saying: last, but not least …
Darko Bosnar: Very important thing in this campaign was the attitude of Jana as a brand
Jana’s campaign with the story of expecting the arrival of Klepetan is definitely the most beautiful and the most positive campaign that I’ve ever worked on. First of all, instead of a video with imaginary, ideal ad people, we took a nice and sincere story and brought it closer to the people in a different way. In a way more honest, more alive and, most importantly, a way in which what we talk about – love – will really be felt by consumers.
What looks like a simple live stream of a nest is actually a huge and completely unpredictable campaign, backed by several months of preparation and more than 30 people constantly involved in the project. Among the many permits, technical demands of a 24/7 live stream from a small village, unpredictable situations such as bad weather, to the all-night efforts to make it all work 100%. We had to make it possible that the adventures from a small roof on which the waiting for Klepetan went on can be followed simultaneously by thousands of people in different places.
I’m very happy that the client recognized the potential of this story at the very beginning and the presentation of the idea. Some would say that for such a campaign you have to be brave, and I think the only thing you need is to really believe in #justlove (#samoljubav).
Perhaps the key thing for the success of this project was that we didn’t “work” on this project – we “lived” it. We lived it day and night … and on weekends, and on holidays – non-stop connected on relation Imago-Jamnica-Agrokor-Brodski Varoš.
All sorts of adventures happened … I remember a call from Ante Đorđević from Jamnica on Easter evening, when a stork from the neighborhood landed on Malena’s nest and thereby lifted entire Croatia to its feet, thinking that this was Klepetan: “Darko, I’m kind of worried now about this false Klepetan … could you tell me … how to put this … have Malena and ‘the neighbor’ now had some sexy time or do they just play like that?”
I told him: “Ante, I really don’t know. I’m not an expert on stork sexy time, and today for Easter everyone’s shagging, so who knows” :-)
Although, if I’m honest, as the neighbor stork continued to visit Malena every day, by the end of the week I was very familiar with the topic of stork sexy-time. So now I know, that wasn’t sexy-time … they were just playing.
Very important thing in this campaign was the attitude of Jana as a brand. All brands tell their own story, but very few of them really live that story, and show it by their own example. Jana presents itself as “water with a message”. Water with a message which over a decade now inspires people to beautiful and positive things. When we were devising a new campaign for the edition “Water with a message of love” we wanted to show people how the brand really sincerely believes in love which they talk about, and how they honestly live that love.
Truth be told, we were well aware that if Klepetan doesn’t return, and the story ends tragically, it would be very difficult for the brand to launch bottles which tell the inspirational messages of love. But it is precisely with this that Jana demonstrated how much they truly believe, and how much they live those messages that they send to the clients.
Anyone who talks about love to others has to believe in love. To believe in love that is unpredictable, real and living. It’s sometimes beautiful and good, and sometimes it’s cruel. If you want to make consumers believe you, then you have to show them that you believe in, and live that what you are talking about. This is exactly what Jana did with this campaign. Regardless of the outcome, believing in love, we started a crazy adventure of waiting for a stork that has to fly over 14000 km, and we had to believe that Croatia’s most beautiful love story would again have a happy ending.
The campaign itself was extremely well received.
The other day a teacher from a primary school told me how during the campaign, for three weeks every day during the break, she would play the students 15 minutes of live stream on a computer, and this kept them quiet for the entire break. Not to mention the drawings, essays and school boards that they decorated on the theme of Malena and Klepetan. When I hear things like that, I become truly proud of what we managed to achieve with this campaign.
What I’ve learned throughout the years is that you can’t fake people’s emotions. You can’t make someone to emotionally open to you, if they didn’t really feel it. And you especially can’t do that on social networks. You can’t buy tens of thousands of comments with something that doesn’t reall encourage people to give a like, a comment, and open their feelings … to open their feelings for a brand!!! When you read literally hundreds of comments on Facebook, in which people thank you for the wonderful experience … when they write that they shed tears of joy because of the moment that you enabled them to experience live … when you see a whole group of people launched a petition on the internet to return the live stream because they just want to continue to follow the story that you brought closer to them … and then they realize that in fact, instead of watching the images on the screen, they really want to spend their time helping in any way Mr. Vokić who cares about the birds … so they form a group in which they make plans whether to buy an aquarium for fresh fish for Malena and Klepetan when they get the little storks, or buy cut wood so Malena could be kept warm during winter … how best to send money to Mr. Vokić … then you realize that you really have the power to change the world for the better and to inspire people to change. The campaign is not some nice spot, a print ad and a cool website. A campaign is a means by which you inspire emotions in people, give them a reason to feel good that day – to start something and make a contribution to the community in which they live.
This kind of campaigns I want to do in the future, because they clearly prove one thing: My job was not in vain, and I certainly have the opportunity to change something. To enable people to feel better, to get engaged in some action and do something good and positive. I’m glad that with me I have a team of people who support me at work as well as a team that supports me at home. Both are important for the “lion’s share” of the battle. Thanks to all of them.
I dreamed of Cannes Lion for a very long time. It was beautiful to wake up one morning and find out that I have finally succeeded. After this campaign, I’m one hundred percent confident dreams are indeed possible to achieve and that #onlylove (#samoljubav) has no limits.
Photo: Igor Mladinović, Sarah Prevedan, Stjepan Vokić and Darko Bosnar
CREDITS:
IMAGO OGILVY, Zagreb
Igor Mladinovic / Chief Creative Officer
Darko Bosnar / (author of the idea) Art and Innovation Director
Sarah Prevedan / Account Manager
Dina Dretvic / Senior Strategic Planner
Srećka Gmaz / Designer Senior
Željko Glavor, Hrvoje Hrvatin, Predrag Kezić / 1&0
Support:
ANTI TALENT Production Company
UNEX – Media
JEDINICA I NULA , DRAP – Digital
streaming.hr – Live stream
PRIREDBA STUDIO
Igor Mladinović: Instead of changing the plan, we changed the vendor
I’ve been in Cannes enough times to learn one rule about winning the lions, and that is that there are no rules. There are those who follow the previous years, dissect award-winning works, and then create the magic matrixes through which they hope to win a prize, but then someone appears, completely different, and snatches the Lion in front of them. Just because they were different and unpredictable. That is the only meaning of Cannes – that it always brings something new, never before seen and different.
This year we had a work like that. Although, in our opinion, we had three of them, but it’s a custom of Cannes not to ask you for your opinion.
The storks were a different project from the very beginning, from when Iva Balent told us that Jana’s next edition of products is called Love, “but not just romantic love between two people, but love much broader than that.”
I don’t know if by “much broader” she thought of a love triangle between two storks and Mr. Vokić, but since Darko mentioned this idea, it was the only one acceptable for us. But much more important to this story is that the feeling was shared by Iva Balent after our presentation.
We were delighted, but we knew that we were venturing into something unpredictable, and that every day we would need to do something brave to come to the finish line. And what’s worse, even if we did everything perfect, the goal was still uncertain. Because when your campaign depends on one forty-year-old stork, flying 14,000 kilometers from the very tip of Africa, crossing deserts, mountains, wars and storms, then you simply don’t have a script for such a scenario.
And Darko being the biggest perfectionist in the history of Imago didn’t really help, or the fact that with Sara everything has to be by the book, all in order and perfectly arranged – and I’m also not completely opposite to those two. But it turned out that we perfectly complemented each other at all times. Except in those when we wanted to strangle each other.
Anyway, the idea was simple – let people really feel the love that Jana promotes through the story about Malena and Klepetan, instead of talking about it through advertising platitudes. This year we wanted to share that suspense of waiting which only love can give with the whole world. And from a small roof in Brodski Varoš, a story about unconditional love came to the roof of the main square in Zagreb, and under the millions of roofs around the world. All we needed was a 24 hour live stream of the nest where Malena waits for Klepetan, a display on the Square, and the help of all the gods.
Had we even wanted to think about how this ‘simple idea’ is essentially complicated, I think we would have given up already after two days and ten failed phone calls to reach the number of Mr. Vokić. And we would have definitely given up already half way of our first trip to Slavonski Brod, when a supplier informed us that it is technically impossible to enable people to write messages of support to Malena over the image in real time. Rather than change our plan, we changed our vendor (I would advise this to everyone who want to win a Lion). And we moved on.
And we learned that luck favors the fools when we came to the problem of recording video for web and TV because in one sunny day you had to film several months of Mr Vokić’s, Malena’s and Klepetan’s life together. It turned out quite by accident that the production company Antitalent, which we called for cooperation on the project, for three years had been making a documentary about Malena and Klepetan, and that they have hours and hours of material that they are willing to give us. Director Nebojša Slijepčević then masterfully incorporated it into our story and created magic.
As Darko says, we didn’t work on this project, we lived it. And this is where the greatest secret lies. I remember the day when Sarah and I went to sign the contract with Mr. Vokić and director of the school on which the nest rests. We were prepared to spend the night in the nest, just to make them put their signature on that piece of paper so we can continue.
After these signatures, nothing could stop us. Not even the flood in Slavonia, when our camera literally ended in the water at 01:00 in the morning, nor the inability of media agencies to provide us a billboard facing the sky, on the border with Serbia, so we could welcome Klepetan, nor Klepetan’s several days of delay from his usual date of arrival, or the ‘intruder’ stork who came to the nest for several days…
The three of us knew that we were doing an excellent campaign, we knew it was good for the brand, but none of us could have predicted that this campaign would move the entire region so much, That people would make friends in our live chat, that they would set up a group to help Mr. Vokić in caring about Malena, that many international media houses would get involved in covering the campaign, that the viewership of the live stream would be counted in millions of minutes … that this love would really do much good.
But I believe that all this happened precisely because we didn’t know it would, planned for it. As a result of a massive candor that we have invested in this campaign. And people feel that, and the jury at Cannes felt it as well.
Iva Balent: In one month, Jana came to the No.1 spot of brands in Croatia, and won a Cannes Lion
Photo: Iva Balent and Stjepan Vokić
After we presented the edition Jana, only love, Imago came up with the idea that it would be compatible with the story of Malena and Klepetan, through sponsoring. My team from Jamnica said it wasn’t planned and that there is no budget, although they liked the idea very much. I wouldn’t have it. I decided to turn everything we planned upside down, and invest in the story of Klepetan and Malena. Ideas began to open, and in the end, from the initial idea of sponsoring, the campaign ended up as an ATL campaign throughout the region, with heavy emphasis on online.
Although all initially seemed a bit unrealistic, I believed that we could do it. And look, we have created a sensation. The entire region was waiting for Klepetan. Five million minutes was spent on our channel, in waiting for his return.
When Damir sent me an email that we had been shortlisted, I told him: I believe in love!
Agrokor has over 150 brands, but those who work with me know that Jana is my special love, and when within a single month Jana climbs to the spot of No. 1 brand in Croatia, and wins the Cannes Lion … honestly, I trembled with joy when Andrea Šumanovac sent me the message.
We also have excellent results on the market. The platform Jana, water with a message has entered its third year. From when we started, every year in every market we have double-digit sales growth.
I would like to thank my colleagues who are part of the success of this campaign:
Agrokor: Ivona Janjic, Lea Badurina, Jasna Mikačić.
Jamnica: Latica Ivanišević Krasnić, Maja Vukorep, Jelena Slade Šilović, Ante Đorđević, Marija Jelić, Martina Hajtud, Kristina Hustić.