Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Robert Čoban, President, Color Press Grupe
Last Wednesday Delta Holding organized a charter flight from Belgrade to Ljubljana in order to bring about 150 representatives of the media and business partners to the opening of the hotel Intercontinental in the capital of Slovenia. This €50 million worth investment boasts 126 rooms and is also the tallest building in Ljubljana, and the only five star hotel in this city.
The friendly hosts organized transportation by buses from the airport. The groups were divided according to the names of Slovenian toponyms (Triglav, Pohorje …). Welcome drink was served in the café, in the new hotel’s lobby, but most of the guests, as was to be expected, ended up in fresh air, squeezing together on a small terrace which, unlike in Belgrade’s hotels, is the only place where smoking is allowed. This, of course, is also standard in most European Union countries.
An hour later – spent with cigarettes and plenty of alcohol – guests from Belgrade were invited to descend to the lower level which houses the hotel’s largest conference hall. A reception amid the gala opening was held there. About 150 guests from Serbia (plus several of them who didn’t want to be seen with us on the “flight of the damned” and were “accidentally” in Ljubljana that very day) mixed with the same number of guests from Slovenia.
On the stage, with the impressive wall-size led screen towering behind it, host of the program announced Angela Brav, CEO of the InterContinental Hotel Group for Europe. In her address, she pointed out that Delta is one of their best partners in the world. Most of the guests couldn’t hear her speech, because the cheerful guests from Serbia spoke out loud, during all the speeches.
Mrs. Brav’s speech was interrupted at one moment by the Mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković, himself originally from Serbia – asking (no, it was more of an order) the present to be silent! He added that he never experienced something like this in his life. When he repeated this sentence more loudly and in Serbian – the room went silent!
Everyone who goes to the receptions in Belgrade hotels and embassies knows that this is no exception. When the reception is a standing one – and especially when people stand with glasses filled with alcohol in their hands – people in Serbia simply talk among themselves and don’t listen to any speech. This is not the case in similar situations in Croatia and Slovenia. But in Serbia it is – and everyone involved in the organization of the event should know that.
So, if you want to organize a reception in Belgrade (or in Ljubljana, and half of your guests are from Belgrade):
- When people stand with glasses in their hands, speeches may last a maximum of three minutes. Combined.
- If you want your program to last more than 3 minutes (award ceremony, multiple speakers, and so on) the only possible setting is:
- Welcome Drink – 30 minutes at maximum.
- Guest then move to another room with the next setting, leaving their glasses at the entrance. There the program may last a maximum of 45 minutes, so they don’t get too bored.
- After that they again move to the room with the standing reception with food and drinks.
This is the only possible setting if you want the speeches, which hosts (or clients) wrote, be heard by someone. We, in the Color Press Group, apply such a principle to all events we organize, where it is foreseen that the talk lasts for more than three minutes – Hello! Awards, Brava Casa Design Awards – and it works.
Unfortunately, in 90% of cases of different receptions in Belgrade (diplomatic, company, state …), this doesn’t happen. Event agencies take big money from clients, and the painstakingly prepared speeches are eventually heard by virtually no one.
A month ago, at the White Palace, a big reception of the Foreign Investors Council (FIC) was held, with more than 200 invitees, a stage, LED screens, and a poor sound system that, combined with the guests who stand and talk, resulted in the fact that the speech of Minister Dušan Vujović wasn’t heard by absolutely anyone except for a few people from his team standing next to the stage. The ambassador of a country, standing next to me on the stairs of the Palace, commented: “This is really humiliating!”
Knowing that, the director of Telenor, at the recent celebration of the company’s birthday, began her speech like this: “I will make a deal with you: I’ll be short and you’ll be quiet!” Thus she avoided the experience that happens to most of the directors, ambassadors and ministers. A colleague in Ljubljana told me that people in Belgrade are talking on receptions – even when President Aleksandar Vučić is speaking.
That’s simply how things are. It’s endemic. It comes from the water and air, and maybe one day it will change, but by then, all those who deal with this business should take this fact into account in order for the event that they are organizing goes as the client expects it to.
There’s a famous story how Slovenian Samo Login sold his Talking Tom app (the talking cat app) to the Chinese company Zhejiang Jinke Entertainment Culture Co. for one billion dollars.
The one who invents the app that would be able to silence the Talking Serbs can count on even higher profits then.