April 23, 2021 - The Total Croatia Travel INFO (TCTI) Viber community, in partnership with Manjgura and Mediacor, has won the 2021 HUOJ International Grand PRix Award for Crisis Communication.
It was a project with no money, an unbelievable amount of work, and no official recognition, interest or thanks.
Blood, sweat and tears, with a total investment of just 2,000 kuna (US$320) that generated more than 10 million euro of tourism spend for the Croatian economy in 2020.
And that is without counting the free PR for Croatia, including a visit organised for ABC News, which led to 6 features on Dubrovnik, including one by Good Morning America - watched by 12.5 million people.
It was one of the biggest and more significant learning experiences of my digital life, and a key factor in my thinking to create my own national tourism portal in 10 languages that launches in Dubrovnik on May 1 (you can get a sneak preview here).
I have already written the story of how the Total Croatia Travel INFO Viber community came to be, after Manjgura and Mediacor were shortlisted as one of three finalists for the presitigious PR award in the category of Crisis Management. You can read the whole story here.
The postscript to that article is that last night, the winners were announced, and TCTI won the category for the best project in the category of crisis communication, beating the official Koronavirus.hr project (with a price tag of 1.1 million kuna).
Although the award is associated with TCN, it actually goes to the partners with whom I worked, Croatia's oldest and (in my opinion anyway) best PR agency, Manjgura, and Mediacor. You can check out Manjgura services here, and Mediacor here.
The project was conceived by Manjgura founder, Kreso Macan, who had the vision to see the need, and the determination and drive to pull off the project. It was a masterclass of how to achieve the goal.
Macan brought others into the team to expand the functions, and Aleksandra Djermanovic from Mediacor and chatbot queen Jelena Sipusic Jurcic from 4app.hr were beyond magnificent.
A huge thank you to Marina Mandic and the team from the Croatian Border Police. Their efforts to assist were truly outstanding, and I have never seen a public institution which works as effectively as MUP.
Massive thanks to the Manjgura and TCN interns, the legendica that is Iva Tatic, and also special thanks to Ivica Mrkoci from MUP, who is volunteering his time to answer questions - superb effort, and we are very grateful.
And a big thanks too to all members of the community, whose feedback and participation allowed us to provide the very best information to people at a time when there really was none.
You can join the TCTI Viber community here (you will need to download the Viber app)
