DIANA'S GOLDEN DRUM DIARY
Our New Europe Representative, Diana Dragomir, on her Golden Drum experience - from being in the same room as the Slovenian president to seeing a campaign produced for Lürzer’s Archive win an award! Plus a look at some of the Grand Prix winners.
This year’s Golden Drum Festival would be the sixth time I visited the beautiful town of Portorož so when I set off from my home country, Romania, I thought I was in for a pleasant experience - but nothing new. How wrong I was.
Getting to the festival was quite an adventure. As we travelled to Treviso Airport, we were welcomed by an Italian public transport strike. Our story is quite boring in comparison to that of some of the creatives, for whom it took around 12 hours to travel just 40 kilometres!
The creatives
McCann Erickson, Romania’s Adrian Botan took the stage for the opening speech. He emphasised on heritage and also mentioned that for a campaign to be successful in this region, we need to adopt a "strong accent". This fit in well with this year’s festival motto: New Europe, New Thinking.
Our Great Ads Seminar followed with speakers Ali Bati (Lowe, Istanbul), Marco Cremona (Y&R, Moscow), Marco Antonio do Nascimento (Y&R, Prague) and Jean-Paul Lefebvre (ECD at Abracadabra, Belgium), who all shared stories behind their most awarded ads. (Remember, you can still contribute to the “Great Ads” campaign with a chance of being published in the magazine by downloading the app.)
We mingled with creatives old and new for the following couple of days (and nights)- both at our festival booth and at the parties. Ah, the parties! I missed the crazy ones back in 2007 and 2008, with so many countries competing to host the best shindig back then. Perhaps the role of ambassadors is not as prominent as it used to be.
Single Gala Awards
These were held on Thursday night. It felt awesome to be in a room and see us win a prize! Our “Great Ads” campaign won the Silver Drum for Print, so a massive thanks to Luis Tauffer and BBDO, Moscow for their brilliant work for us.
Golden Drum culminates with a Closing Gala Ceremony which is always special, and this year was even more so as the Drummers had the honour of welcoming the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Dr Danilo Türk. He presented the Golden Net, Golden Rose and Tartini awards.
Winners
DDB, Warsaw took the Direct Grand Prix for their McDonald’s “Hamburger Timetable” work, Leo Burnett, Beirut took the Press Relations Grand Prix for “A Bet for a National Consciousness” and Memac Ogilvy, Beirut took the Press Grand Prix for their series of print ads featuring world leaders for Reporters Without Borders.
But it was Look At Media who seemed to steal the show, winning Grand Prix awards in the Innovative, Digital and Mobile categories for their “Parking Douche” app for online city guide, The Village. The Moscow-based shop was also crowned agency of the year with the Golden Rose and independent agency of the year with the Tartini Award. The Village took the Brand of the Year Grand Prix, with chocolate brand, ROM, as runner up. It was great seeing Look At Media’s simple and low budget idea be so awarded.
Thank you Golden Drum for so many memories. This year was special indeed.
View the full list of Golden Drum 2012 winners.
Video: The Village “Parking Douche” app by Look At Media, Moscow
Video: Baumann Ber Rivnay Sattchi & Saatchi, Israel, took the Online Film Grand Prix for their “Blood Relations” spot for The Peres Center for Peace.
Video: ROM “Romanians are Smart” by McCann Erickson, Bucharest, took a Digital Grand Prix.
