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10 Questions

with Martin Charvát
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May 14th, 2008 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST

Konektor's Charvát says that television is losing its dominance over the ad market. enlarge

THE CHARVÁT FILE

Job title: Creative director, Konektor
Age: 45
Nationality: Czech
Previous position: Creative
director, Mark BBDO

As more aspects of our lives move online, companies have had to follow the same shift in the way they advertise their products and services. The subsequent fracturing of the advertising market has prompted the creation of Konektor, an ad agency that will rely on project-by-project contractors for its campaigns, rather than full-time employees. One of the firm’s founders, Martin Charvát, formerly the creative director of Mark BBDO, talks to The Prague Post about the ethics of guerilla marketing and the resistance of Czechs to advertising.

? What was it about the advertising market that led you to create Konektor?

There are few main trends that are influencing where the industry is heading.

The first one is that big clients are leaving the model of exclusive cooperation with one ad agency and are instead cooperating with more agencies project by project. For the classic ad agency with a lot of employees, it is hard to work on a project-by-project basis.

The second is that, unlike in the past, the Czech advertising market is fully developed and there are a lot of experienced people with great skills and know-how. There is fantastic potential for ideas and solutions.

The third factor is the development of communication technologies, which make it easy to work from any place at any time. There’s no need to sit in one building.

The fourth is the direction of advertising as an industry. There is less work for classical media, less “mass advertising” and more specific projects for target groups. There are more channels for commercial information and there are more experts for all the different areas of communication. No agency can employ all the experts for all the areas — they’ll have to outsource anyway. For us it’s easy, as that’s how we already work.

? So, is the studio style of ad agencies bound for extinction?

The classic ad agencies will have enough to do. There are a lot of clients who are adapting their advertising from other markets or who prefer cooperation with one agency. On the other hand, there is that space for cooperation on a project-to-project basis. We’ll fulfill that role. And, by the way, this is not a new style of ad work. The first ad agencies back in the beginning of the 20th century worked the same way as we do. We’re going back to the roots, in a way.

? Why would people want to work with your agency as contractors rather than holding secure, full-time positions at another house?

These people are freelancing or building their own studios and agencies. It is their way of working. And they are all successful in this. It says a lot about them as well. They don’t want to sit somewhere in an office 12 hours a day. They prefer to work on their own and risk their own heads.

? How will you coordinate freelance teams like this?

Well, we all have mobile phones and e-mail. I just pick up the phone and call all the needed people. If somebody is busy or doesn’t like the project, I call another person. We have enough people, with all the important specializations double or triple covered.

? There was a recent outcry over the Kamikaze ads featuring a dozing Foreign Affairs Minister Karel Schwarzenberg. Did these cross an ethical line?

It didn’t just cross an ethical line — it crossed the laws of the Czech Republic. You can’t use a picture of a person without his or her agreement. The intention of the client or ad agency was probably to generate some buzz. So they didn’t care about the ethical codex and the laws. And they succeeded. What was great was the reaction of Mr. Schwarzenberg. He just didn’t care.

? Another campaign that drew some attention was the police’s “Action Praha” blitz. Was that campaign’s humor intentional and, in general, is humor difficult to do well in advertising?

Humor, in advertising, is as important as anything else dealing with emotions. You want to involve people, so you have to make them smile, cry or feel scared or loved. With humor you have to tread carefully because the joke could kill the information. People have to remember what the ad is about, not the joke.

As for the Action Praha campaign, its humor may have been unintentional.

? How susceptible is the Czech audience to advertising?

The Czech audience is very hard to reach but for different reasons than in the United States or Western Europe. The Czechs are very skeptical for historical reasons. If the government and the party tell you for 40 years that you live in the best place in the world and you see that this isn’t true, it doesn’t help make you credulous. It is very hard to encourage and inspire them. Society is more fragmented and we have to find a way to speak to every target group in a credible way.

? Guerrilla marketing is currently in vogue in the ad industry. How far can such advertising go without disclosing its true nature?

The best guerilla marketing is done when you don’t know it is advertising, but even that should be done within legal and ethical limits. There’s a lot of good guerilla stuff around the Czech Republic but usually they are regional or smaller projects. A great example was a campaign by Poštovní spořitelna. They put people in front of other banks’ branches after those banks had closed for the day. The signs had a simple message: If you need any financial services, there is bank that’s still open. It was legal, ethical and presented the right information at the right time and place.

? What’s the fastest-growing advertising segment?

It’s the Internet. Last year, investments in Czech Internet advertising grew about 70 percent. But there are still many agencies that are not able to work with the Internet correctly. Internet agencies are often too technically oriented — they know how, but they don’t know what. The classical agencies have the opposite problem. It is all changing quite quickly now.

In the long term, television is losing its influence but it is still the most powerful medium here. But even with our distorted, “duopoly” TV market, people are watching TV less and less. There are more possibilities around us and people are more active, so they prefer to go somewhere with friends or families than to be at home and watch TV. But this ongoing shift will last for years. For example, in the area of fast-moving consumer goods, you can’t advertise without TV.

? What ad campaign has been the most important to you?

The charity campaigns for the Bone Marrow Transplantation Fund and Avon Against Breast Cancer. When you help to build someone’s business, that’s a great feeling, of course. But if you work on a campaign that can really save some lives, it is something different.

Want your manager to answer our 10 Questions? Contact Paul Voosen at pvoosen@praguepost.com

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