POOLSIDE Stage | Friday | 1 PM
You know what, we have to give agencies a lot of credit. The pressure is pouring from all sides, all the time. Clients want more. Talent wants more. Investors want more. Leadership is supposed to keep the business sharp, the culture healthy, the work exciting and the margins alive, all while the ground keeps moving under everyone’s feet. And to top it all off, the whole business has to be “future-ready” — despite many days just trying to survive the present.
We know, nobody has it easy, but the agencies can’t pretend anymore that there’s one clean answer. We’re looking at their business from the top, from the inside and from the outside: leadership, talent, investors, local realities, global signals, the whole beautiful mess. Sanja Petek Mujačić (Managing Director and Partner, Spring+shift, Member of HURA and IAB Croatia) from Croatia, Anđelko Trpković (CEO, Publicis Groupe Adriatic) from Serbia, Janez Rakušček (Regional creative director Adriatic region, Luna\TBWA) from Slovenia and Manuela Šola (General Manager, Founder, Komunikacijski laboratorij, Member of HURA and IAB Croatia) from Croatia are ready to discuss questions like: How will the future look like? What is next? Will only the top 1% survive? What needs to change? What still matters? What are agencies still doing out of habit, nostalgia or pure denial? And how to build something that might still make sense a few years from now? A useful conversation for anyone who works in agencies, runs one or keeps wondering whether the model is ever-evolving or simply surviving and learning how to sound more future-facing while keeping the same old cracks in place.