July the 3rd, 2021 - Croatia's Manjgura is in the final for as many as four prestigious public relations awards covering a wide range, from the fight against cancer to navigating entry into the country amid the coronavirus crisis.

As Dubrovacki Vjesnik writes, the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) has ranked two of Manjgura's successful projects in the finals of the IPRA Golden World Awards.

The project "Rakoborci - Hrvatska protiv raka" (Cancer fighters - Croatia against cancer) is in the finals of the category of agency campaigns for non-governmental organisations, while the project "Total Croatia Travel Info" is in the finals of as many as three agency categories - for crisis communication; for a project at the country, city or region level; and in the travel and tourism category.

"Rakoborci - Hrvatska protiv raka" is a project implemented by Manjgura for the Coalition of Health Associations and the Association SVE za NJU (ALL for HER) back at the end of 2020, with the aim of urgently adopting a national strategy against cancer. As the only EU member without such a strategic document, Croatia has been threatened with losing access to dedicated EU funds to fight cancer. Thanks to the activities initiated through this national campaign and the Croatia Against Cancer platform, the National Strategic Framework against Cancer was adopted in less than two months, and hrvatskaprotivraka.hr continues to raise citizens' awareness of its role in the fight against cancer.

After the international HUOJ Grand Prix and three Polaris for crisis communication, the Total Croatia Travel Info Viber community project was recognised by international experts who placed it in the finals of as many as three categories for the IPRA Golden World Awards.

With the support of Mediacor, the Total Croatia Travel INFO Viber community was established, through which users received daily updates on epidemiological measures in force and ways to come to Croatia, and community members also had a chatbot - a virtual assistant, programmed to answer frequently asked questions. However, the efficiency, accuracy and self-sustainability of the project are mostly due to the hard-working volunteers on the project, who throughout the summer, several times a day, updated the most important data and answered questions from users within the TCTI Viber community.

The world's leading association of PR professionals, IPRA, has been rewarding the outstanding achievements of communication professionals from all over the world for more than 30 years. In the last round, a jury of experienced communication experts will evaluate the originality, relevance, set goals, as well as the creative strategies used and concretely visible results achieved. The winners are expected to be announced at the end of July.

Check out the Total Croatia INFO Viber community here.

May 4, 2021 - The Total Croatia tourism portal has officially launched in 15 languages! 

The Total Croatia tourism portal (which you can visit HERE) was presented on Monday in Dubrovnik, with more than 130 subpages that bring together key information about Croatian destinations in 15 languages, including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Japanese, Chinese but also Croatian. Eminent tourist companies in the country have already recognized its value.

The portal was presented as a new web platform with various information about Croatia at a hybrid press conference (live and online) by its founder Paul Bradbury, a Briton who has lived in Croatia and has promoted Croatia for years, and communication experts Krešimir Macan and Nikolina Vicelić, who also called the portal a "national tourist portal."

According to Bradbury, the portal is part of the Total Croatia News (TCN) family, within which it has been publishing articles, news, and all things about Croatia for about 18 years. He pointed out that many want to visit Croatia, for which they need accurate and quality information.

Thanks to Total Croatia, everyone planning a holiday in Croatia will be able to easily and in one place find all the necessary and useful information - in their own language - on this new Croatian tourist portal which, together with the award-winning Viber community Total Croatia Travel Info, represents a kind of virtual reception of Croatia, said Paul Bradbury.

According to Bradbury, journalists and writers such as Marc Rowlands, a former journalist of the English Guardian and Time Out Croatia, Morana Zibar, stars of the HTV quiz Potjera and gastro blogger, Nikola Pezić, anthropologist, translator, and founder of Eat Istria and many others write for the portal. This unique project has already been recognized by eminent companies such as Sunčani Hvar, Hilton Hotels in Zagreb, Falkensteiner Hotels and Residences, Punta Skala, Savills Real Estate from Dubrovnik, Adriatic Weddings Croatia, Algebra, and talks are currently underway with other interested tourism companies and small businesses in some destinations.

The goal of the new portal is that by properly planning keywords and using other Google tools, information published on Total Croatia becomes the first choice for visitors planning a vacation in Croatia, as it is the best-ranked website about Croatian tourism on Google in foreign languages.

At Monday's press conference, Bradbury pointed out that the portal offers the best and timely tourist information about Croatia and answers questions that visitors coming to Croatia want to know more about in their own language.

"We create exciting content about Croatia that we observe through the eyes of visitors, using local knowledge and advice," Bradbury said.

"Many have wanted to come to Croatia for a long time as digital nomads and as tourists, and during a pandemic, but they lack real information in their languages. Now it is offered on a new portal in which we were guided by innovation and communication. The most important thing is to give tourists what they want. Among other things, it is certainly destination information in their languages, which we prepare in collaboration with the local population," Bradbury said.

Bradbury mentioned Romanian tourists, adding that he "does not know if the Croatian National Tourist Board has ever had information for them in Romanian." He also referred to the weak public-private cooperation in tourism in Croatia and mentioned some exceptions of good practice, such as those in Dubrovnik and Zagreb, where he encountered cooperation with tourist boards and city administrations.

He added that they do not need anything from the Croatian Tourist Board and cooperate with many hoteliers and destinations, noting that a "new wave of tourism" is expected in Croatia.

Krešimir Macan, the communication expert of Manjgura and Mediacor and this year's HUOJ International Grand Prix Crisis Communication Award winner, stressed the importance of using new digital communication tools in the tourism industry, especially during the current coronavirus crisis.

"Last year, the whole world faced the challenges of COVID-19 for the first time, but, regardless of the pandemic, the world did not stop, and all tourists who wanted to visit Croatia found a way to come. The Viber community Total Croatia Travel Info was an invaluable source of data for all guests who received all the necessary and accurate information and answers to questions in their own language and in real-time, regardless of whether they came from New York, Toronto, or Budapest. With exceptional experience working with the Viber community, Total Croatia is an additional step forward. We will meet everyone who is thinking of coming to Croatia using modern digital communication tools. Paul is creating the platform that 21st-century tourism needs!" Macan said.

Total Croatia offers a different view of Croatian beauties viewed from someone that loves Croatia, Paul Bradbury, who 18 years ago replaced cold Manchester with sunny Hvar. He has won numerous tourist awards such as the Marco Polo Fiet Award for International Promotion of Croatia for 2014, Marco Polo FIJET Award for the promotion of Advent in Zagreb in 2017, Medical Travel Media Awards for the best online article in Kuala Lumpur in 2019, and the International Medical Travel Journalist of the Year award from the Medical Travel Media Awards in Kuala Lumpur in 2020.

Bradbury also wrote two tourist guides, Hvar: An Insider’s Guide and Split: An Insider’s Guide. Paul often writes or is quoted in numerous English media and is an occasional columnist for the Index.hr portal. He founded the news portal www.total-croatia-news.com, which is often the starting point for many international media that have visited Croatia, such as The New York Times, Sunday Times, Travel & Leisure, and many others. Last year, the invaluable promotion of Croatia and Dubrovnik was brought by the American television channel ABC, whose reports on Croatia, as the only EU country to receive American tourists in the summer of 2020, were watched by millions of Americans. The first contact for the ABC team regarding their visit to Dubrovnik immediately after the first wave of the pandemic was the Viber community Total Croatia Travel Info. 

Source: Index.hr

For more on travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

June 22, 2020 - The Croatian general election is less than two weeks away. Leading political commentator Kresimir Macan offers his thoughts in this pre-election preview.  

More questions than answers expected after July 5^th, polling date in Croatia

Two weeks ahead of July 5^th, the date set for the Croatian general election, everything seems more blurred than ever. Add to that the recent corona outbreak, and what looked like a clean reelection for Prime Minister Andrej Plenković could turn to a nightmare. His HDZ (Hrvatska demokratska zajednice) right party lags somewhat behind the broad left Restart coalition formed by SDP (Socijaldemokratska partija) and led by Davor Bernardić. Both parties will still need coalition partners to form a ruling majority and this is making things even more complex - or simpler - depending on the final outcome.

The State Electoral Commission (DIP) ( you can follow them on izbori.hr where the election results are to be expected too on July 5^th after 19:00 when polling stations close) received 190 slates and 17 minority candidacies for the July 5 parliamentary election. More slates were submitted than four years ago but less candidacies for Constituency 12, where ethnic minorities elect their MPs. In 2016, 177 slates and 29 minority candidacies were submitted. A record 313 slates were submitted for the 2011 parliamentary election.

They published them on June 18^th, which marked the beginning of the official election campaign period that will end on midnight of July 3^rd, followed by a day of election silence.

At first glance, HDZ has a somewhat larger potential for a post-election coalition. Two other relevant political players are coming from the right spectrum. Miroslav Škoro, a former presidential candidate who came third in December’s presidential elections, leads the Homeland Movement (DP), while Božo Petrov leads MOST. They are both now in the conservative or far-right spectrum, while HDZ is trying to position itself from the center to the right, so forming coalition with any of them would mean some compromises. Škoro is already wanting to be Prime Minister, which was rejected immediately by Plenkovic, while both previous coalitions between MOST and HDZ ended in an ugly divorce, so nobody is ready for a third failure.

Miroslav Škoro and his conservative entourage also do not have an especially positive opinion about Plenković. They believe that Plenković is not authentic enough to serve either the interest of HDZ or of Croatia; rather they see him as a Brussels-oriented politician who is only at the disposition of his friends from the European Union. HDZ, on the other hand, are clearly pointing fingers at Škoro who they hold responsible for the loss of the presidential election when he invited his voters to cross their ballots and not vote for either Grabar Kitarović or Milanović.

SDP have formed a broad pre-election coalition called Restart with center-left parties and their leader, Davor Bernardić, publicly announced that he does not want to enter a post-election coalition with Škoro or MOST. Their strategy is clear – to secure as many seats in parliament - 65 preferably + 8 MP from minorities would bring them just 3 seats short of a 76 majority. Voters will elect 151 MPs, 140 in ten constituencies in Croatia, three will be elected by Croats residing abroad, and eight by ethnic minorities, thus making 76 MPs ruling majority.

We’ll see whether this is possible because two new blocks have emerged on the left and could take some planed seats from Restart, although is very likely that they could from a coalition together after the elections. MOŽEMO movement is formed around City of Zagreb MPs lead by Tomislav Tomašević and made a quick and effective campaign around the them of post-earthquake Zagreb and seem to be gaining some support recently. The other block are the center and liberal Pametno and Focus who joined forces with StrIP (Stranka s imenom i prezimenoom – Party with a name and surname) who gathered some strong names to lead their lists in Zagreb and Split and could also win several seats.

The leadership capabilities of both of the main leaders is a topic which is causing plenty of comment, with most leaning in favor of Plenkovic compared to Bernardic, so everybody is eagerly awaiting the personal TV debates in the last week before the elections. 

Pre-campaign polls (Crobarometar i Crodemoskop) suggest that Restart could win around 32%, while Možemo and the block around Pametno Focus and Strip, both are at 4%, close to the census of 5%. Other lists on the left are not likely to win any MPs, but could influence the final results by taking votes from these three blocks.

On the right HDZ could win around 31%, DP around 14% and Most is dancing on the edge of census of 5%.

If you model this to MP seats – it is very likely a win for Restart in Croatia ranging from 56:55 to 61:59 compared to HDZ. HDZ could win 2 extra MPs among Croats residing abroad, taking the lead eventually. They would depend on DP’s 15-20 mandate to from a ruling majority, while Restart should look for 3 to 5 mandates of Možemo and Pametno Focus Strip blocks. Most is expected to win 3-4 mandates. More on Macan's election analysis here.

Croatia is divided into 10 electoral units, each giving 14 MPs and it is very hard to model it without precise polls by electoral units that we can expect in the following days.

As far as themes of the campaign are considered HDZ is trying to get credit for the economic growth in the last four years, as well as management of crises from Agrokor to Covid-19 and the earthquake in Zagreb claiming that they are the guarantee of Safe Croatia (Sigurna Hrvatska). Restart on the other hand claim that this HDZ government was corrupt since so many ministers left it, claims that Croatia needs a new, fresh start and calls on voters to Come out and Change things (Izađi i promijeni). All this was shadowed with Miroslav Skoro's statements on abortion and woman rights, which triggered strong reactions from women. The only thing stronger than this could be rthe eturn of coronavirus in recent days. With only two weeks ahead it is very obvious that as of July 5, we could have more questions than answers.

For more election coverage, follow the TCN politics section. 

The Croatian Public Relations Association (HUOJ) has presented its awards for best communication projects. Krešimir Macan, the founder and owner of Manjgura, one of the oldest Croatian public relations agencies, was awarded the Grand PRix for his overall work in the field of public relations and an exceptional contribution to the development of the profession, reports prglas.com on March 14, 2019.

“As for Krešimir Macan, we can say that he is for the PR profession in Croatia what Digitron is among calculators, so one of the first associations when discussing public relations in our country. In what we can call political PR, he is surely at the top of the list of relevant Croatian experts whose services, expertise and competencies are equally appreciated and sought after by all political options in Croatia, as well as many in the wider region. He is among those responsible for the fact that in late 2017, after five years and a series of unsuccessful attempts, the harmful ban on the cooperation of state bodies and state-owned companies with public relations agencies was abolished, which certainly deserves recognition and respect,” said HUOJ president Ana Tkalac Verčić.

“After more than 20 years of work, this recognition of my colleagues and the profession means a lot to me. When I started in public relations, few even understood what I was actually doing, and today high-quality communication is the foundation of every successful business and project. Looking at what we have accomplished in the last two decades, I think we can be proud and motivated to continue working even better,” Macan said, receiving the most prestigious professional acknowledgement in the field of public relations.

Macan was first introduced to the public relations field as a teenager, when he worked as a tour guide, although he probably was not aware that he would dedicate his professional career to this field. It is less known that Krešimir Macan has a university degree in electrical engineering. However, his path was determined by the Homeland War, when he held the office of the secretary of the Ministry of Information and later the head of the Information Section of the Foreign Ministry. He has since built a successful professional career with a focus on crisis communication, media relations and strategic communication in politics.

He is happy to share his knowledge and experience with students and colleagues, thereby actively contributing to the development of the profession through his activities with the HUOJ and by participating in numerous conferences and expert panels. He is a member of the renowned International (IAPC) and European Association of Political Communicators (EAPCs) and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR). After 20 years of successfully heading Manjgura, last year Macan handed over the agency management to director Katarina Leko.

Translated from prglas.com.

More news about Krešimir Macan can be found in the Business section.

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