McCann Podgorica at BalCannes for the Second Time!

Leka Dedivanović, our Business Development Director, and Sandra Vujović, our Copywriter, spoke for the Marketing Network about the campaigns with which our agency will present itself at this year’s BalCannes.

McCann Podgorica applied with two campaigns for BalCannes event at this year’s Weekend Media Festival. This is the second time that McCann Podgorica is taking part in BalCannes. Last year, the agency’s campaign “Do not be late” had great success, entering the top 25 campaigns as a project of a Montenegrin agency.

Both campaigns nominated by McCann Podgorica were implemented for Komercijalna Banka Budva bank. McCann Podgorica has a long-standing successful cooperation with this bank. The first campaign, “Let’s grow together” was implemented on the occasion of 20 years of successful operations of Komercijalna Banka Budva in Montenegro. When designing this campaign, the agency’s creative team faced several problems. First of all, on the one hand, most people still have stereotypes when it comes to banks. On the other hand, it was necessary to create a campaign that was different from the campaigns of other banks. It was therefore necessary to create a campaign that was completely different and beyond the stereotypes, doing so in such a way to primarily highlighted the success of the bank.

”We have realized that we need to overcome the stereotypes and be totally different to properly mark the anniversary”, said Leka Dedivanović, Business Development Director, adding: “Our task was to tell the story of two decades of success. We did it through a story about growth, development, partnership, timeless values ​​and a common achievement. We wanted to show the bank from a completely different angle. This is one of the campaigns through which we have shown our quality and potential and we wanted to present it to the professional public in Rovinj”.

To implement the campaign, we have used all the traditional media, but also atypical ways of advertising, such as branding the largest fountain in Podgorica. The anniversary – 20 years of existence and successful operations of Komercijalna Banka Budva was celebrated with a big birthday party at which the foundation “Let’s grow together” awarded the most talented pupils of Montenegrin primary schools.

The second campaign done for Komercijalna Banka Budva was called “For a life without financial phobia”. It presented Maestro and Master payment cards to consumers as a bank’s new product on the Montenegrin market. Bearing in mind that competing banks already offered this service to their clients, it was necessary to create a campaign that would attract the attention of consumers. The creative team of McCann Podgorica started from the premise that running out of money was one of our biggest fears.

“People are often faced with various fears, whether rational or irrational. We immediately knew that we had to do something extraordinary to attract the attention of the target public”, says Sandra Vujović, a copywriter at McCann Podgorica, adding: “Irrational fears or phobias have, with their variety and strangeness, immediately attracted our attention and gave us an idea: with payment cards we could overcome all the types of cash phobia. We decided to take advantage of all these observations in the campaign, but in a unique way, linking them to local stereotypes and humour”.

In a short time, the campaign has attracted great public attention. An advertisement that played with different phobias became a hit on social networks and the search for different types of phobias grew on the internet.