Digital Is Still On The Throne

From a three-person team strictly focused on PR in IT, they had grown into a full-service marketing agency, a member of the GlobalComm PR network, which, apart from Communication, has Event organization, Trade Show booth building, BTL and Design as its main pillars

Last year you have marked a 15 years jubilee and opened a new office in Dubai. What are your impressions and could you tell us more regarding the future plans and activities?

The year we left behind marked a great jubilee. For the last 15 years, we have continuously been growing and developing the agency and continue to do so with the same passion that we had at the very beginning. From a three-person team strictly focused on PR in IT, we have grown into a full-service marketing agency, a member of the GlobalComm PR network, which, apart from communication, has event organization, Trade Show booth building, BTL and design as its main pillars. And what better way to celebrate such an important jubilee than with a „smart vision“ and expanding outside the borders of our region. For that reason, last year we opened an office in Dubai, covering the Middle East, where plan to convey our experience, energy and passion towards work throughout a new meridian, ready to take on new challenges.

In business, you see not only clients and requests, but partners and ideas. Does this mean that instead of the “you give us the brief, we give you the project” model, you choose to search together with clients for the best solutions that push the boundaries?

Successful communication projects are not always backed by big budgets, but by grat creative thinkers and professional individuals of technologies and modern communication channels.

Despite all that, as someone who has spent 20 years in communication, I have to give my personal and professional opinion – great, successful communication projects are not always backed by big budgets, but by big creative thinkers and professional individuals. No one said this job is easy!

Is there another turbulent year ahead of us? Will digital continue to occupy the throne? What is the fate of social networks, video formats and influence marketing? What will virtual reality and artificial intelligence bring us? Bojana Stanković reveals all.

Instead of listing everything you do, or boasting about successful projects and important clients, people from Smart Vision agency would rather talk about what sets you apart from the rest. Why is that? We don’t like to talk about the what, but rather want to explain the how! About the way we approach projects and clients, the energy we put into the process of creating a strategy and coming up with ideas, or the energy with which we „carry“ the communication and the emotion which comes after the results. All of that depicts the work of an excellent team I am extremely proud of. It is a compact, creative team with a lot of talent, led by people who have been at Smart Vision from the very beginning.

The fact that among our clients we mostly have companies that we have been working with for a long number of years, some of them from the very beginning, allows us to do so. We have grown together, and throughout the years have worked on building mutual trust, as well as our friendship. We understand each other’s needs, but also possibilities, so we can easily and quickly react to every opportunity and demand of the market, in communication but also all other spheres of marketing.

Many of your colleagues point out that the biggest enemies of market communications are lack of ideas, lack of time and lack of money. How do you at Smart Vision deal with these challenges?

I can’t agree with the lack of ideas. The ideas are here, following the development

Sadly, there is never enough time. The creative process needs time, and the main challenges we face are usually short deadlines. Fortunately, one of the main virtue of our team is speed, and so far we have successfully managed to win the race against time. It is very important to create a good balance and know when to draw the line. And when it comes to lack of money, we have all faced that challenge at some point. It is a well-known fact that marketing is usually first on the chopping block when it comes to cuts during a big crisis. But, a long time ago wise men from our industry made a nice comparison between advertising and the flight of a plane. When the engines go off it won’t start to fall immediately, but will start to descend at some point. Given that PR today is mostly a commercial item, one can say that in our case the same will happen if investments stop coming in. We who live and bread communication know that fact well and we are here to educate the public as well as our clients.

Digital holds the first place in the presentation of content, whether it is about sales or influence profiles. Will it be the same in 2023? Can we expect some new trends in the sphere of modern communications? Another turbulent year is ahead of us. Digital will continue to hold the throne, but there will be some changes. Social networks are facing some challenges, from the legal ones which are limiting their planned growth, like Tik-Tok is facing, or the fall in interest Instagram is facing, to some new players coming onto the scene, like BeReal. The short form will remain dominant. The budgets for influencer marketing will continue to grow but will be more focused on long-term cooperation with more credibility. Virtual reality and AI will continue to affect the marketing landscape and even the communication of digital channels in 2023. Web 3 is here and we must not leave it out. It will bring big changes and shape further communication whether we are ready for it or not.

All in all, the trends in communications, shaped by technological progress, have led us far from the traditional press releases from which it all started.