Golden Drum festival prepares for take off
On October 5th the Golden Drum Advertising festival will take place in its usual location of Portoroz, Slovenia. Now in its 16th year a mix of seminars, showcases, parties and awards will once again await the festival visitors. It all kicks off with a Media brainstorming day about the outlook for traditional media:
The Golden Drum traditionally kicks off with a Media Meeting – a conference and competition dealing with the current state of the media industry, its content and relevance to communication business. On this year’s first day, Monday, October 5th, we are going to speak about the outlook for traditional – mass media, which nowadays embraces everything non digital. According to Bob Garfield’s brand new book The Chaos Scenario traditional media is an absolute loser that has no future; but then there are other respected people with less apocalyptic views saying paper is eternal.
Statements spelling doom for mass media, audience fragmentation and chaos scenario for communications business have become old news, or maybe even less than that. We are bombed with reportedly break-through technological advances in e-paper and integrated communication devices on a daily level, while there are ever more frequent reports about problems of both old and new media business models.
Yet from an European stand-point, and even more so from a perspective of non-English speaking markets, big news from American or the so called global market may seem very distant in both time and space. After all, we still have non-incorporated media, large segments of newspaper readers or simple TV watchers, there are successful media businesses which operate in regional markets, etc.
Though we experience basically the same trends as the US West Coast, we believe that we are still moving on at our own pace, and we will not change our lifestyle overnight. Culture and language are still shaping our behavior, not just technology advances and mega business interests. Or is it just our wishful thinking that we are going to have time for adaptation?
In any case, every local or regional agency, advertiser, media or other business and customer needs to find an answer to the following question: “What does global restructuring mean for my business and my future?”
It’s exactly like global warming that will affect everybody in a specific, local and regional way. So, let’s think and talk about what can we do to fight media chaos in our markets, how can we use tech-wonders for our own benefit and thus preserve our quality of life and our local and national cultures.
High-profile speakers on the Golden Drum 2009 Day 1 will be:
Mike Haas, Media consultant, senior partner The BCI Group GmbH & Co. KG, Germany
Franz Prenner, CEO, Mediaprint publishing company, Vienna, Austria
Mariusz Jan Demner, Managing Partner, Demner, Merlicek & Bergmann, Vienna, Austria
Anna Lubowska, CEO, CEE & Chief Executive Officer, Mediaedge:cia, Poland
Rupert Slade, Head of PHD International, Hungary
Demet Ikiler, Chief Executive Officer, Mindshare, Turkey
Second day of Media Meeting, Tuesday, October 6th, will be interesting as well, as we will gather at the round table, where discussions about different views and plans about strengthening “traditional” market communications with digital tools, which are usually used for communication with consumers, will be one of the hot topics.