In ”Downtown” restaurant, P.R.A. employees, their associates and former employees, which today manage other PR agencies in the region, business associates, editors and journalists, gathered to celebrate 17 years of P.R.A. founding, first Serbian PR agency.
Many respectable people from media, business and politics attended the birthday celebration, among them were marketing gurus: Dragan Sakan, Vladimir Čeh, Žozef Lončar and others, who collaborate with P.R.A. since the very beginning, including the first agency’s clients: directors of ”Metalservis”, ”Vojvođanska banka”, ”Hemofarm”, ”Bel Pagette”.
P.R.A. agency is forerunner of today’s PR development in Serbia. Today there are over 50 PR agencies, and most of them developed from P.R.A.
P.R.A. agency’s president and founder, prof. dr Predrag Vujović, said that when he was leaving the counselor position of federal government’s president, Ante Marković, he had the offer from the biggest PR agency ”Hill and Knowlton” to be their director for Eastern Europe, offer from Croatia and Bosna and Herzegovina governemnt to be their Minister of information, offer from ”Financial Times” to become their Balkan correspondent. But he chose to be the pioneer in introducting PR in this region. Agency’s management from the early beginning includes, besides dr Vujović, prof. dr Sergije Lukač, prof. dr Tijana Mandić, dr Srbobran Branković and Milorad Jović.
First bigger project were PR activities for representing Yugoslavia on ”Expo Sevilla” in 1992, and few months later agency started working for ”Bel Pagette” and ”Vojvođanska banka”, which later became an examples for others on how to communicate with public. ”Hemofarm” was then the only pharmaceutical company, but its’ director, Miša Babić, recognized quality of P.R.A. and became our longtime client.
Public Relations Business School was founded a year later, in 1993. For a whole decade it was the only educational instituion of this kind in the region and during its’ existence it created a large number of respectable experts in this field. More than 1600 School’s attendees work today in biggest domestic and foreign companies, and also among politicians there are former School’s attendees as well: Bojan Pajtić, Gordana Čomić… Almost all influential individuals in domestic PR, which many of them manage PR agencies, like McCann Erickson, Olaf & AcAteer, Ogilvy & Mather, Pragma, Lobi and others, gathered their knowledge in Public Relations Business School. Today there isn’t a PR agency, ministery, notable company or bank, whose PR managers didn’t go through education in Public Relations Business School.
In almost all leading companies in Serbia and Montenegro, P.R.A. agency incorporated PR function. Agency’s clients are also ”Allianz SE”, ”Deutsche Telekom”, ”Zepter International”, ”Si&Si company”, ”Elektroprivreda Srbije”, ”Naftna industrija Srbije” (NIS), ”Termoelektro”, JKP ”Parking servis”, USAID, EPIC, ”Nikšićka pivara”, ”ICN Pharmaceuticals”. On nine international World Bank tenders in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosna and Herzegovina, P.R.A. won seven. P.R.A. agency works successfully for Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, Macedonia governements, Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia, Ministry of Justice of Serbia, Ministry of Mining and Energy of Serbia, EXIT festival, European championship in basketball in 2005, Belgrade marathon…
P.R.A. won the biggest worldwide recognition in PR field, Golden World Award for Excellence. IPRA presented P.R.A. agency two Golden World Awards for public relations for 2002 for PR campaign of Mass voucher privatization for Montenegro government.
Today, educational PR campaign Mass voucher privatization is studied on more than ten universities and serves as an example in the field of government communication with public. Quality of P.R.A. agency’s work is best described by Michael Morley, jury president of IPRA:
– Experts’ work in P.R.A. agency is a new quality in the world of PR. It is especially important since this agency works on the market where conscience about PR is on the beginning of its’ development. P.R.A. has showed through its’ work what is quality, not on worldwide level, but on a new worldwide level.