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How Not to Meet people and miss All the Parties at an Advertising Festival

An Introvert’s Gide to Golden Drum

22.10.2019

When the agency told us the two of us were going to Golden Drum, we were hyped because neither one of us has been at an advertising festival before. We couldn't wait!


We would introduce ourselves with proper picture here if one of us didn't feel it was too awkward to take a photo at the Festival’s photo booth. 

The first day had the sign “road trip” written all over it, so the lectures and talks had to take the back seat.  

Of course, philosophers cannot stay in the shadow, so famous Slavoj Žižek woke us up and left us thinking about Amazonian rainforests, Czechoslovakia, Titanic and the sings on the cigarette packs. Being him, Slavoj didn’t need a presentation, so we could have listened to his lecture with our eyes closed.


Jovan is calculating whether Jack and Rose could fit on the wooden board.

The second day! That was something special!

*Some will say that we “forgot” to mention the party that happened the night before because it was too wild.

In reality, we are a bunch of senior people who overslept their afternoon naps and missed it all. But when you think of it, is there a better party than getting your zzzzzz’s in clean sheets and waking up fresh early in the morning to watch Golden Drum entries in a dark room? Goosebumps allover!

We were more energized, curious and there was one more party not to attend to.

Lecture of Dawid and Ewelina from Polish VMLY&R agency amazed us, from the ways they presented everything, to the idea itself and the fact that they managed to convince three clients to buy a porn magazine in just one day. Not to mention one of those clients was a bank!

We imagined what would happen if we tried to convince a Serbian bank to buy a porn magazine.

Lecturers who knocked us off our feet weren’t plenty, but those who kept our attention and from whom we have learned something (aka when you have unlimited budget ideas are pouring from the sky) was a lot. Tiffany from R/GA was great, and so was LGBTQIA+ discussion with Lady Bunny, drag queen and DJ, who made us laugh and amazed us with her hairstyle.

In the end, we bravely chose one workshop and tried to infiltrate among the advertising extroverts. Sadly, as if the lecturer was making the workshop with us in mind, we weren’t forced an inch out of our comfort zones, as we only got to introduce ourselves and then he just kept talking for the rest of the “workshop”.

The only question for the audience was if we had any idea for a startup. Even if we did, we certainly wouldn’t say it in a room full of advertising people.

After all the lectures, it was time for a short visit to Piran (hey, Golden Drum, can you organize the festival there next year?) and the award ceremony.

As two persons who never went to any advertising festival, we were dumbstruck by the number of awards that were given. At one moment it felt like we were at Oprah's.

Everybody gets a prize! Except for B&R, you will get it next year.

And when the Slovenian metal resources got to an all-time low, the award ceremony was finished and everybody rushed to an open buffet at the final Golden Drum party. 

Maybe the title of this blog post is misleading, because we DID attend this party for the whole 10 minutes. And we have a picture to prove it!


Boy, giving all those awards made us hungry!

All in all, the score from the first festival:

Number of days: 1 and 2/3
Number of people we met: 1 (some dude who tried to sell us his book)
Number of parties: 1/2
Number of satisfied creative introverts: 2

And that would be it. We will leave for some other blog post the story of how we went to Trieste next.


Jovan is trying to memorize the map to Trieste.


Author: Aleksandra Kojić