Live Broadcast on National TV

Well, living in Kosovo certainly affords opportunities that would never happen if I were living and working in the states. For example my professorship at the leading international University. Or attending receptions and cocktail functions with the Prime Minister and American Ambassador. Or being interviewed live on national TV for a half-hour to discuss the details of a Packaging Design Competition that I created with a local consulting firm. Aside from my typical fast speaking stumping the translator a bit, I was told it went off quite well. Pranvera was receiving a stream of text messages from friends and family saying I was on TV and she replied she was behind the camera's. Her nieces loved seeing their new brother in-law live:-)

Since one of my responsibilities is to try and improve the marketing capacity and professionalism here in Kosovo, I came up with the idea to have a contest that would encourage local companies to improve their packaging by having the leading advertising agencies compete against one another for a grand prize of being paid to produce the winning label for the company. With no budget and nothing like this ever being done here before, I was able to clarify the concept, sell it into my boss and project, USAID, 3 Advertising Agencies, a local consulting company to provide me manpower assistance to run it and produce it in the future, and finally a national TV station to provided the necessary media coverage and exposure to encourage everyone to participate in the event.

Well, it worked. We are now waiting for the international packaging design expert panel of 5 judges I recruited from around the word to issue their scores on a total of 30 labels created by 6 design firms for 5 local products. So the station agreed to host 3 different live interview sessions promoting the activity and the final Award Ceremony where we will announce the winners during an 'Oscar' type show. This too will be televised! One of the judges is even flying in to deliver the awards and consult with the winning agencies (for free). It has been a great challenge but very rewarding to see it all coming together so the local businesses will hopefully be the ultimate winners and improve their branding and packaging to increase the sales of their products.