For a Handful of Change
In recent years, it’s become a rule that at least one Cannes Lion statue gets to travel to the Balkans. Make your pick: Romania, Macedonia, Serbia, Krakozia … (ok, maybe not the last one. That’s where “The Terminal” was set).
The campaigns that get to take the Lion home are bold, charming, and just a little bit exotic. Just like a wonderful safari ride. You never know when the monkey’s going to make a cameo and steal your lunch.
The sceptics may attribute this democratisation of creativity to a whim of judges or to the ever-growing political correctness of advertising. Something along the lines of the gender-equal juries (ha), fair competition and “one world, one heart” policy.
Here’s another thought: maybe the best and the brightest in advertising have grown tired, predictable and rigid. Some would even say that the soul, that indescribable thing, is missing.
All the while, it seems that there’s a ton of soul brewing in the Balkans, among those god-forgotten, second-world, no-one-thinks-about-them-ever and no-one-mentions-them countries. It just happens that exactly there, in between Ceaușescu boulevards, cobblestone streets of Sarajevo and the provincial air of Ljubljana, is where the action is. Just because they have so little to lose, both in terms of reputation and next year’s marketing budgets, creatives from the Balkans have become the bold and the beautiful of advertising.
This isn’t a matter of global economic crisis, budget downsizing and never-ceasing questioning of the agencies’ strategic and creative outputs. It’s a matter of risk management.
High risk and great uncertainty sometime leads to great and groundbreaking innovations (think military strategy). Often, it leads to paralysis and a “let’s not rock the boat” attitude. It leads to the culture of fear, conformism and aversion to doing anything new and different. It’s the culture of change-phobia.
Fear, risk aversion, and conformism breed complacency and mediocrity. Complacency and mediocrity are the ultimate enemies of creativity (along with those gnarly account managers).
Big, global clients, with big, global markets don’t help here. They are under this same economic pressure, and they seek solutions that will help them stay in the same excel spreadsheet column as the last year. Status quo is more desirable than doing worse.
We are witnessing a big money shift in advertising. It’s very unlikely that the budgets would go back to the level of the legendary Pepsi commercials with Britney and Michael Jackson before her. The industry will just need to adapt.
But what happens to the long tail of this industry, which never had the budget for Britney Spears? This long tail has been for years working in markets so tiny that they needed to be bundled under the name of ‘Eastern Europe’ in order to make sense, profit-wise. The advertising professionals in this long tail know that their audience is so poor that only every fifth person will be able to afford the products they are advertising, shrinking their market even further.
Yet, they don’t give up. They push and stretch their minuscule budgets, keep their brands on life support but alive, endlessly translate global brands into local copy, they are fast and nimble and stubbornly persistent. In recent years, they’ve done more than that.
They started winning. Constraints are the best friend of creativity. The can-do attitude is alive and well in the Balkans.
So, what’s there to learn from the creatives working in Romania, Serbia, Croatia?
Think of a small budget as a blessing and an opportunity to stretch your creative muscle. If you have a big budget, ask: what would I do with the budget half this size? Then reduce it to half again, and see what you come up with. For example, McCann Belgrade promoted the Suicide Prevention Center’s SOS line by projecting the message “You are not alone” onto the shimmering surface of the river Sava, which runs through Belgrade. This is an ultimate “moment of truth” advertising: the SOS number ended up right in front of the eyes of those who needed it. The campaign won a Bronze Lion in 2011.
Think of your team as a small, guerrilla force in the big jungle. Find your team’s unique creative voice (a warrior chant) and start fighting against complacency. But never head-on. That’s why you are guerrilla. Guerrilla’s are sneaky: they find the holes, the hide behind the bushes, and they jump out to surprise everyone. Be a positive surprise factor in your agency, even if you often feel discouraged. For example, Y&R in Skopje organised a joint prayer of Muslims and Christians in the same room to promote tolerance amongst nations in Macedonia, a country where national and religious issues are of such high importance that this seemed almost impossible. Until it was made possible, in modest production value, by Y&R Skopje and awarded with Titanium Lion in 2013.
Always dare. Dare yourself first, then dare others. What’s the worst thing that can happen? The client can decide that it’s too risky. Find another client. You won’t starve, daring work never goes unnoticed. But daring is best tested on smaller clients. Try that first. For example, think of a prank that McCann Romania won a Grand Prix for in 2012, where they put an American flag on the most popular chocolate bar in Romania. “Americanising” the iconic national brand for a short period of time was made possible with a limited budget, unlimited trust between an agency and a client and the creative urge to make something extraordinary out of an ordinary tactical brief.
If this sounds too optimistic, that’s because it is. If there’s one thing to learn from us creatives in the Balkans, it’s our relentless optimism. If we can bet against all odds, so can you.
We are also hungry. Unlike global well-awarded and well-known creatives, their Balkan colleagues are hungry for attention, for recognition, for being seen and heard. That’s why we work harder (just like Avis). Maybe because we appeared so late on the global scene, we still have this great desire to prove ourselves to the world, and the entrepreneurial spirit to match. Just like any creative, we are mesmerized by the very act of creation. We strive to tell good stories, come up with great ideas to drive positive change, and yes, to win some more awards.
The difference between you and us is that we’re desperate to be heard and seen. And you know what they say of desperate men and women … they’d perform miracles for a handful of change.
This essay was written by Jana Savic Rastovac, Creative Director at McCann Belgrade, and first appeared in the Advertising section in our latest book, Hacker, Maker, Teacher, Thief: Advertising’s Next Generation, which you can still buy from Amazon here.
