POLET | Exhibition POLET - POLET Economic propaganda ......POLET Economic propaganda in Yugoslavia...

POLETEconomic propaganda in Yugoslavia from 1968 to 1980

Partner of the exhibition - Cultural Centre of Belgrade

Cultural Centre of Belgrade,Knez Mihajlova 6, Art Gallery and the Podroom Gallery

Project supported by NIS

From 27th March to 13th April

Selected newspaper ads published in the Economic Policy weekly

On the right-hand side: Railway Transport Enterprise Belgrade, newspaper ad, Economic Policy 11th January 1971

Page 2: TAM, newspaper ad,Economic Policy 15th February 1971

Economic propaganda inYugoslavia from 1969 to 1980

From 27th March till 13th AprilThe Cultural Centre of Belgrade

Art Gallery and the Podroom Gallery

Polet

Partners of the Exhibition

Project supported by

Polet / Economic Propaganda in Yugoslavia from 1969 to 1980 Polet / Economic Propaganda in Yugoslavia from 1969 to 19804 5

Mijat LakićevićeCoNoMIC ReFoRM IN 1965 AS A PReCoNDItIoN FoR tHe DeVeloPMeNt oF eCoNoMIC PRoPAGANDA

The rapid development of eco-nomic propaganda in the 1970s, initiated in the late 1960s, was very closely related to the changes in the position of companies and banks, with the crucial contribution being that of the 1965 economic reform. Inherent logic is more or less simple: the state’s withdrawal from the eco-nomic life and intensified activities of the market had put the companies in a significantly altered position. The businessmen, above all, had to radically change their attitude towards customers, or clients, and also towards their business partners, “suppliers” and the like. At the same time, they started paying attention to their reputation, or image as it would be called nowadays, both in the business circles and generally. In the world of socialist economy this had a truly revolutionary significance.

But how and why did the econom-ic reform occur in the first place? Was it a whim of someone eager to perform social experiments or was it a result of economic and political needs, even inevitability? In order to reach a comprehensive answer to this question it is important to exam-ine the international context in which this great change occurred.

First of all, the 1960s were the time when the conflict between the two Blocs, i.e. two systems – the Eastern, socialist and the Western, capital-ist, mainly manifested in the rivalry

between two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States – intensified on all fronts: on land, at sea and in the air. In April 1961 the Soviets sent the first man (Yuri Gagarin, if someone by any chance forgot) to space; a few months after that, in August, they started building the Berlin Wall; the following year, October 1962 to be exact, marks the start of the Cuban Crisis, when the Cold War came real close to turning into a hot, nuclear one; hardly a year went by and the president of the USA, John Kennedy, was shot in Dallas (November 1963); after a cou-ple of “quiet” years marked by the seismic birth of pop/rock culture and the hippie movement, the dramatic 1968 arrived, marked by two epochal events: the student demonstrations in the West (in June) and the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in the East (in August). At the same time the third world awoke and rebelled–in 1961 the First Conference of the Non-Aligned Countries was held in Belgrade, followed by the Second one three years later.

Globally, the 1960s were the years of great turmoil, with the countries attempting to improve their economic and political performance for the ruthless global match. The same went for Yugoslavia. Our problem – for it was our country (as well) and all that happened very much concerns us today –was that an extensive, central-ist model of economic development

Special edition, 200 LargestEconomic Policy 2.10.1978.

had exhausted its potentials and a new one had to be discovered. More specifically, the key aspect was that there was a change in the regime in Yugoslavia which received money from abroad. Namely, it went from receiving donations to taking loans. In the 1950s, Yugoslavia received significant gifts from the West, primarily from the USA, in money and goods (food, weapons, equipment). Now that there were no more dona-tions and loans had to be taken, the need arose for a new system that would provide efficient use of re-sources. The question of economic efficiency emerged. For, if the loans had to be repaid – as they had – the demand appeared for their rational utilisation, i.e. they had to be used for developing some kind of production. The production would, consequently, have to provide export ready goods in order to obtain the dollars neces-sary for repaying the loans.

The question arose as to what kind of mechanism can provide that. The answer was – the market. Of course, there was the other possibility, centrally planned economy and the return to the Soviet model, but this was not acceptable, mainly because of the break with the Socialist Bloc in 1948. Of course, the above men-tioned answer gave birth to many new questions: how to connect the market with self-management, public ownership, single-party political system, as well as many

other questions that Yugoslavia was trying to answer, practically through to its final days. For instance, one of the main problems of the self-man-agement companies founded on the principles of public ownership was investments. Self-managing workers often showed a lot more enthusiasm in turning everything they earned to wages and dividing it among themselves, than in saving, accumulating and investing. For that reason the state had to stipulate a depreciation rate, i.e. the percentage of earnings a company was obliged

to leave aside in order to purchase new equipment.

This is related to the greatest contro-versy of those years – the dispute between the “wagers” and the “profi-teers”. The difference between them was in comprehending the compa-nies’ motivation. The “wagers” were shunning the very idea of profit; for them the motive of a self-managing public enterprise was to maximize incomes. And income was com-prised of work expenses, or wages and the profit in the classical sense (which was called “residual income”).

Polet / Economic Propaganda in Yugoslavia from 1969 to 19806

The Profiteers, on the other hand, promoted acknowledging profit as the motive, but then the question was how to prevent wages from eating up the profit.

Essentially, all of the problems came from the “Non-Proprietary character of public ownership”, as it was called, for it was not clear who takes the business risk. In reality it looked like this: the employees of a successful company would take all the benefits that came from the success for themselves (high wages, flats, company’s holiday resorts…); nevertheless, if a company was op-erating inefficiently the losses would be transferred to the whole society (since the property was public).

However, those problems and many others that came with the transition into market economy were not the cause that terminated the reform after several years. Namely, rivalry and competition separate success-ful companies, as well as individuals, from the unsuccessful ones. The re-form, therefore, led to a rise in unem-ployment, as well as to an increase in social differences. And that was not consistent with the concept of socialist egalitarian statism. The stu-dent demonstrations of June 1968 in Belgrade, even though they had a certain democratic charge to them, were not liberal; the students and their professors demanded more socialism, more equality, more social justice, greater state influence…

Since then, the pendulum of reform started swinging back. In the following years, under the influence of the dogmatists and conserva-tives in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and on a broader level, within the society, the liberal (communist) leadership in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia were replaced. The Constitution of 1974 and the

Law on Associated Labour, which was adopted in 1975, introduced the system of “economy by agreement”. By the way, the term was coined, and for the first time used in Economic Policy, by Dragan Veselinov, at the time a young assistant lecturer at the Faculty of Political Science, and later the Minister of Agriculture in the government led by Zoran Đinđić. The essence of economy by agreement was in the realization that there should not be competition between self-managed companies (for that was a capitalist “invention”), but that they should communicate and make agreements among themselves and thus solve their problems. The mechanism of market economy was to be replaced by the mechanisms of “self-management agreements” and “social arrangements”. It was truly both sad and funny to watch general managers who had to sign some sorts of mindless self-man-agement agreements in order to realize the simplest of business arrangements; on the other hand, when they clashed at the market no agreement or arrangement would be of any use.

However, the economic setback following 1968 was not immediately palpable. Its consequences were camouflaged by an abundance of cheap loans which we received in the 1970s from abroad. The loans had to be repaid ten years later. Namely, at the end of 1979 there was a stunning increase in the price of petroleum (from 10 – 12 to 35 dol-lars per barrel) on the one hand, and the drop in the value of the dollar on the other, which led Paul Volcker, the then president of the Central Bank of the USA, to practically flee the IMF assembly which was held in Bel-grade. Volcker then simply tightened the monetary tap and the dollar went up, and so did the interests. All that caused the loans to gain value dras-

tically, which brought Yugoslavia (and many other countries) practically to their knees. The time of the shortage of foreign goods followed, whereby the Yugoslavs were mostly affected by the shortage in coffee and petrol, which is why the even-odd number system was introduced (the people with license plates ending in an even number could drive one day, and those with plates ending in an odd number the other day, and so on)… But, those were already the 1980s.

This truly remarkable upswing which happened in the early 1970s in the “creative industry” of Serbia and Yugoslavia was best reflected in the journal which served as a sort of basis for this exhibition, the Eco-nomic Policy. Namely, modelled on famous international magazines, the EP decides to start an edition which would present the greatest compa-nies of Yugoslavia. For the first time this publication, entitled “The 100 Largest”, was released in 1969, but only as a “simple” ranking list, without any special treatment or processing, on mere 2 pages of the journal. The following year the publication was is-sued on nearly 200 pages (expanded with the advertising inserts of com-panies, which meant that it became commercial) and it was comprised of three lists: 60 of the largest manufacturing companies, 50 of the largest trading companies and 25 banks. The swift development of this business idea is evident in the fact that in 1971 the publication features “The 200 Largest” and it consisted of five ranking lists (manufacture, trade, transport, insurance and banks) on over 300 pages of quality art print paper in colour!

On the right-hand side: RMK Zenica, newspaper ad, Economic Policy, 9/11/1971


eCoNoMIC PolICy Weekly Liberal avant-garde

The first issue on the Economic Policy (EP) was published on 4th April 1952. The paper was found-ed following the proposal of Boris Kidrič, a high state and party official at the time, in accordance with the attempts to find new solutions for the current economic problems. Economic Policy was a kind of a public forum where, on the one hand, the issues of development would be tackled, and on the other, the ideas and solutions of capitalist economies would be tested and pro-moted. Ever since, EP acted as the avant-garde for the reforms and ar-dent advocates of market economy. They acquired high reputation both locally and internationally, especially in the west. The paper proved the earnestness of their editorial policies with personal example – they were the first to relinquish the right to receive state funding and to support themselves in the free market context.

The Economic Policy weekly was not sold on newsstands, nor was it issued in large circulation, since it was not intended for the general reader. Its readership consisted of people from high business and intel-lectual circles throughout the former Yugoslavia. The editorial staff of EP included politicians (mostly those considered “avant-garde” in relation to the current policy, i.e. those who promoted views discordant with the official policy), economists, bankers,

and people from business associa-tions; in brief, all those attempting to advance their businesses and their responsibilities, willing to break the habitual and step out of the comfort zone, to be creative and take risks. Economic Policy featured texts on political issues, important economic subjects, as well as on culture, new books, and exhibitions, local and international social trends.

The quality of the Economic Policy was an accumulative consequence of a special kind of energy, knowl-edge and abilities of the people who created it, its editors, reporters, as well as numerous regular and external contributors. They were the ones who had given the paper its special tone, that is, the very features which set it apart from other papers in the same genre. Economic Policy earned the reputation of a liberal paper. Dušan Petričić claims that it was always a well-informed journal in which, contrary to other media, the boundaries of free speech were expanded. From Economic Policy the readers had the opportunity to form a clear picture of what was really happening in the economy, not to wallow in illusions that had nothing to do with reality. Its pages held highly professional debates, different opinions were confronted, points were made and disputed (always politely, professionally and with a sense of proportion), all of which un-doubtedly raised the level of general

economic literacy and strengthened the position and reputation of the profession and professionalism. This affected the choice of themes, the new appearance of the paper and the modern design inspired by the need to sell advertising space, as well as the controversial and critical editorials which discussed vital social topics.

In the late 1960s Economic Policy undergoes a great transformation: in January 1969, as one of the pioneers in SFRY, EP switches to magazine format and colour printing (the covers and the ads). EP was recognized for its yellow-framed cover featuring on its lower side a saying that tackled the main topic of the issue. The artistic and technical editorial staff consisted of Dušan Petričić, Tomislav Peternek, Predrag Koraksić Corax, Bora Kolarević, Branko Turin, Milan Janković, Vojislav Perović, Ranko Grubač, Jelena Jova-nović, Nenad Krstić.

In the late 1990s, due to disputes with the regime, the greatest part of the editorial staff was laid-off. This was practically the end of Economic Policy which was quietly shut down at the beginning of the 2000’s.

The cover of Economic Policy 31/8/1970

Polet / Economic Propaganda in Yugoslavia from 1969 to 1980 11

Branislav DimitrijevićeMbARRASSMeNt DoeS Not botHeR Me AS MuCH AS tHe MARket!

„Every company in Yugoslavia is involved in an aggressive struggle with its opponents over prices and quality and this kind of rivalry distorts what social-ist spirit in all probability should be. Daydreams about achieving socialism by means of the blunted tools inherited from capitalism (goods as the cell of the economy, individual material interests, etc.), can only lead to a dead-end. And that is where you end up after having travelled long distances and crossed numerous crossroads, suddenly realizing that it is difficult to determine where exactly you took the wrong turn.”

This is how the Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara described the situation in Yugoslavia after his only visit to the country and meeting with Tito in the Brijuni Islands in 1959. The year of the visit was simultane-ously the year of the first noteworthy improvement in the living standard of citizens, which marked signifi-cant economic growth in socialist Yugoslavia in the second half of the 1950s. The year before introduced a significant turn towards economic liberalization through the adoption of a new Programme at the VII Con-gress of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, which saw the change in the Party rhetoric, by announcing “better furnishing of consumers with goods” and advocating “everyday needs, leisure and entertainment”. For example, 40,000 refrigerators were bought in Yugoslavia in 1959, as opposed to the 15,000 bought the year before.

The following year, the feature film Love and Fashion was made which, apart from inaugurating the first Yugoslav film starlet, Beba Lončar,

introducing a series of famous evergreens, as well as presenting Belgrade (in colour!) as sort of a “swinging city“, introduced a subject which, at first sight, had nothing to do with communist ideology: the “plot” of the film (if any) is based on the competitiveness between two socialist companies, Yugochic and Yugofashion. The two fashion companies become symbols of the new “market match” in which all things declared as “socialist mo-rality” in doing business yielded to the logic characteristic of capitalist systems. “Embarrassment does not bother me as much as the market!”, exclaims the commercial manager of Yugochic at a point in the film when it seems that their “market war“ with Yugofashion was not going the right way and when they had to come up with a strategy that would ensure their business success at any cost. If self-management was the alpha of the economic system of SFRY, dur-ing the 1960s the market became its omega. However, between the alpha and the omega there was a vastness of huge discrepancies.

Standard, newspaper adEconomic policy 24.11.1969.


The inevitable consequence of competition is the accumulation of capital in a small number of hands, Karl Marx wrote, and it was exactly the nonexistence of the “soulless” and solidarity deprived character of competition that marked some of the basic maxims of socialist econo-my and the promoted equality. Love and Fashion was made at a time of the discussion concerning the ways in which the free market can be intro-duced as a road towards economic prosperity in terms of liberal econo-my, while simultaneously maintaining the basics of socialist morality which would restrain the uncontrolled spreading of such beliefs and prevent “accumulation of capital in a small number of hands”. The leading economic magazine, Economic Pol-icy, inclined towards economic and market reforms, at literally the same time as the film Love and Fashion was being made, published an article with an indicative title “Competition at all costs”. When asked the ques-tion: “Is there a place for competition in our socialist society?” the author of the text decidedly answers at the beginning: “There certainly is not”. He still describes capitalist competi-tion as “vile, corrupt and relentless”; however, this “firm” opening stand is somewhat modified and the article literally claims: “Our people must establish a twofold treatment of competition: the first one when they do business with their fellow citizens and the other when they go outside and come in contact with people and societies which do not acknowledge the socialist norms”. 1

It is this exact stand that embodies the central paradox of the concept

of market economy in socialism: the socialist market should be led by a specific moral and a sense of solidarity which needs not be ap-plied when in contact with capitalist markets, and the socialist market is primarily treated as a “national market”, as was in the basis of “state socialism” in the countries of the Soviet Bloc. In other words, while certain moral scruples and a sense of solidarity should characterize the „national market“, these rules need not necessarily apply when working with “societies which do not acknowledge the socialist norms”. It was not just about “economic patri-otism”, which was also characteristic of state capitalism practiced in many countries, especially before the WW2, as a means of defence from the “laissez faire” economy, it was identifying the Yugoslav community with socialism, in other words, creat-ing the identity of a typical Yugoslav citizen, one who is not devoted to being a member of a “Yugoslav nation” so much as belonging to

socialism, and thus the concept of „socialist Yugoslavism“ was formed.2

Therefore, for the author of the article in Economic Policy an example of “ill-perceived competition” is the one in which “our people utilize the concept of competition in their mutual relations, when working with each other, as they step out into the foreign market one against another and compete without any hesitation.” 3 The comical effects of this kind of competition are the subject of Radičević’s film and it thus becomes the manifest point of this central ideological-economic dilemma. The article in Economic Policy gives the impression of retelling the main plot of Love and Fashion: “One of our for-eign trade enterprises had made and signed a deal with a foreign company for a shipment of a certain amount of merchandise at a certain price. This fact was well known to another of our foreign trade enterprises, which offered the same merchandise to the same foreign company at a lower price.”4

1 N. Kordun, “Competition at all costs”, Economic Policy, no 440, 2/9/1960, pg 827-8.

2 This concept is elaborated on by Dejan Jović, in order to show the clear political will of the SFRY not to lead towards creating a new Yugoslav nation based on belonging to a mutual ethnic group (which was attempted in the previous Yugoslavia, ruled by the Karađorđević dynasty) but exclusively towards creating the identity of the socialist community as a cohesive identitarian character of Yugoslavia. This was an important aspect of the “Doctrine of Kardelj” and Jović quotes his speech from 1962: “The federation of Yugoslav republics is not a framework for creating a new Yugoslav nation, nor is it a framework for implementing the type of national integration which in the past was the dream of various protagonists of hegemony and denationalization by means of terror. It is a community of free, equal and independent nations and working people, united by their common interests and progressive socio-economic, political, cultural and other aspirations and tendencies of working people in the epoch of socialism” (quoted in Dejan Jović, Jugoslavija – Država koja je odumrla(Yugoslavia – The Country that died out), Prometej, Zagreb, 2003, pg 137-8).

Yugochic and Yugofashion are the forerunners of the new type of socialist companies which do business with foreign partners and thus face the capitalist market relations, attempting to implement the differences in treating the term competition at home and abroad. Advertising, or what was in the bureaucratic terminology of the time dubbed as “economic propaganda”, was the necessary link in this new marketing system. In socialism, according to the primary under-standing of the term, advertising was seen as strictly in function of informing and rationally warning the consumer about the characteristics of the product and its use. However, ever since the Lucky Strike cigarette campaign orchestrated by the father of economic propaganda, Edward Bernays, in 1929, advertising was transformed into “lifestyle marketing” which became not only a new type of product promotion but also a model of constructing life patterns on the basis of the character of consumption, its aestheticism and culturalisation, and implementing “consumer styles” through which new identities within the consumer society were created. In that way the transition from the “culture of needs” to the “culture of wants” was marked on a practical level and consumer culture as we know it was created.

In socialism, the wished-for life styles could not be ideologically controlled and by rule were charac-terized as lifestyles in connection to the “western-capitalist” consumer imaginarium and culturalisation of market economy. The process which was initiated in Yugoslavia in 1958

continued with market reforms in 1965, and the second part of 1960s and the 1970s mark the time of the greatest political and economic contradictions, a time when the processes of disintegration com-mence, masked by the improvement in the standard of living and the appearance of the new economic elite which took advantage of these paradoxes in the system. At the time of the 1968 uprising, when students lashed out at the consequences of economic reforms (and at the class stratification which came as a direct consequence of the reforms and was inexcusable in socialism) the first official manual for “econom-ic propaganda” appears in print, promoting its “social and economic significance”, writing about “mar-ket research as a precondition for successful economic propaganda”, and “studying marketing as a means of increasing export”, as well as “the influence of economic propaganda on women’s psyche” .5 However, economic propaganda in SFRY was never just about promoting a certain product, it was more in service of the idea from “up above” about stimulat-ing production and consumption as part of the plan of building socialist society with the purpose of entering a new stage of development which was gradually supposed to lead towards a classless society and dying out of the state. The paradox is most evident in the position of the chief economic theoretician and, after removal of first Đilas and then Ranković, certainly the second man of the Yugoslav federation, Edvard Kardelj. Kardelj was simultaneously a strong advocate of economic reforms guided by the idea of liberal

ideas about “personal wellbeing as motivation for further development”, and an avid believer in the idea that SFRY had reached the level of economic and political development when it can step into the new stage of transition towards communism. This stage was inaugurated by the Law on Associated labour in 1976, which had created the impossible amalgam of market economy and political-bureaucratic control, the so-called “economy by agreement”.

It is in this context exactly that we can watch and read the advertise-ments from the Economic Policy weekly selected and “repacked” by the Metaklinika studio for the need of their exhibition. These ads speak from an impossible position, leading towards an impossible goal. However, the paradox of the social framework in which they were created from today’s perspective has the value of a specific kind of curiosity, for we can observe them from a distance not only as mostly persuasive graphic solutions, but

3 N. Kordun, “Competition at all costs”

4 Ibid.

5 Economic propaganda and the eco-nomic reform in SFRY, Yugoslav exhibition of economic propaganda and publicity, Belgrade-Sarajevo, 1968. This collection (which in its appearance and content was certainly closer to anti-propaganda of the economic production and trade) featured the three exhibitions of “economic propaganda and publicity” which were organized in Belgrade in 1964 and 1967 and also in Sarajevo in 1965.


also in relation to the contemporary economic collapse of the neo-liberal order. Nevertheless, the role of the designer is in the centre of attention, as well as the question whether he/she is only complying with a certain requirement or is his/her work autonomous? Our current fascina-tion with these graphic solutions is mostly a fascination with the swan song of the 1970s modernism – not necessarily just a nostalgic look back at Yugoslavia, but a reflexive analysis of modernity and its visual vocabulary. Among the chosen ads

are some which seriously amaze us with their graphic autonomy, their modernist functionality and efficient design in representation of both the visuals and the texts; however there are also those whose semiotic bungling or nebulous interpretations of desired life styles make us laugh. In either case, the designer seems autonomous from today’s point of view whether he imposes the so-phisticated modernist formalization to the client or, on the other hand, plays with their wishes in a way that leaves us unsure if the grotesque

solution is the consequence of the client’s demands or the designer’s subversion of those demands.

Nevertheless, in both cases remain the unsolved tension between the domestic and the foreign, between those that are reminiscent of the consumerism of western capitalism and those representing our own do-mestic production capacities. Is the slivovitz ad ordered by the Takovo company also an ad for the German airline company Lufthansa (and were they aware of this gratuitous promotion?) or is the plane in front of which the stewardess is carrying the cardboard box containing this drink above all a hallmark of the west-ern-capitalist imaginarium which is the sole framework for consumer wishes? During the 1970s, Yugosla-via grew weary of ideological wan-derings and contradictions, just like the lady advertising Rubin’s brandy, who seems to have already slipped down the table, but is trying to get up and, despite the heavy bags under her eyes, is still attempting to stimu-late us to buy the product and share her condition. And when we look at the list of companies and products that were advertised in Economic Policy in the 1970s, Rubin’s brandy is one of the rare that have survived the transition. Embarrassment or the market? Probably both. Cheers!

On the left-hand side: Takovo, newspaper ad Economic Policy 7/4/1969

On the right-hand side: Rubin, newspaper ad Economic Policy 10/3/1969


Vladimir ČehI’M FlyING to loNDoN, HoW About you?

In the last century, wars in this region have interrupted the continuity of work for agencies and the media three times; however, they haven’t interrupted advertising. Old agencies disappeared and new ones were es-tablished, old media were shut down and new ones arrived, often not just because of technological progress. That is why many young people think that open space advertising in Bel-grade appeared with the appearance of Alma Quatro… that media planning and media space purchasing are fabrications of the 1990s… that all of the “marketing” agencies in this region have spawn in the last twenty years out of the nest of the Belgrade department of the former Ljublja-na based Studio Marketing (called Saatchi & Saatchi)…

Well – it isn’t so. And the proof is in your hands.

A quick reminder: the first special-ized advertising agencies appeared after the Second World War, in 1945. In Zagreb: Ozeha in 1945 and Interpublic in 1946. The year 1948 in this region was remembered for the Law prohibiting the keeping of goats in urban areas, as well as for the Informbiro period and – the establishment of the first post war advertising agency in Serbia. It was called FORUM.

The advertisements were published in printed media and as posters as early as the 1940s. At the beginning of the 1950s, Radio Belgrade was the first to (again) broadcast adver-tisements, and just a little after that the celebrated show At half past four (U pola pet) was the only one in the ether to broadcast only advertise-ments and (exclusively) foreign pop music. To secure good ratings! At the turn of the decade, the new medium presented the first TV commercials!

At the beginning of the 1960s we were still writing letters, waiting for the mailman to ring twice, PR meant “poste restante” (general delivery), we used paid phone booths in post offices to call someone “long-dis-tance”, and when somebody would use the word “net” they were refer-ring to a fishing or a football net. Or the one for catching insects.

And then it all started: on 26th De-cember 1960 the founding assembly of the Economic Propagandists Association of Serbia was held – the EPA was established. Later on Serbia was reduced to a single letter and we got EPAS (UEPS).

In 1962, the propagandists of Serbia issued EPAS mimeographed notes “Language culture 62”. They are a valuable read up to this day!

The first Yugoslav exhibition of eco-nomic propaganda and publicity was held from 21st to 28th December 1964, in the hall and parking lot of the Home of the Unions of Yugosla-via (Dom Sindikata Jugoslavije).

The first All-Yugoslav contest for the best advertisement was held in 1968.

The first International Symposium “5+1” was held in Herceg Novi, Mon-tenegro, and had 1258 contestants from Yugoslavia and eleven Europe-an countries.

The first national festival of propa-ganda film was held in Bled, Slovenia, in November 1969, as a part of the second “5+1” Symposium.

During that time, the Loyalty Code for economic propaganda was adopted (in Budva, Montenegro in 1970).

During the 1960s and 1970s, profes-sional magazines started appearing: Economic Propaganda in Serbia (34 issues), Idea in Croatia (14 issues), Bulletin in Slovenia (19 issues) and in Bosnia Bulletin as well (4 issues). In February 1969 the bimonthly named Economic Propaganda was pub-lished in Belgrade, and it lasted until the 1970s. A total of 26 issues of the magazine were published.

The economic reform was the Red Bull for the profession: it gave wings to advertising.

Besides the classical media (news-papers, radio, and television) a new form of open space advertising appeared: people went from posters to “billboards”. The first “billboards” were mounted in Autokomanda, next to the motorway.

During those 1970s, Đorđe Nenadović would ask every day in his show Večernja revija želja

(Evening revue of wishes) on Radio Belgrade: “I’m flying to London, how about you?” – and so the Yugotours was created, the “black bull” deter-gent would wait for you behind every corner, and radio reporters would knock on your door to ask whether you’ve got Bohor . One year, during the 1st May holidays (International Labour Day) one could not escape the initial promotion of gala-ga-la-Galaks petrol.

And then, in 1974, we prohibited ad-vertising tobacco and alcohol by law.

JAT, newspaper adEconomic policy 18/5/1970


The biggest clients have suddenly disappeared. One could only adver-tise alcohol and tobacco once, when a new product was being launched or when a product received a reward or an accolade. “Directed” ads were being made, videos were filmed. Models had “lead roles”. Actors did not appear yet. Somehow, it was a bit embarrassing to do that sort of work. During the 1960s and the early 1970s, only Momo Kapor was not ashamed of his work in Yugoslavia Public. But, he was primarily painter and a writer, rather than propagan-

dist, and the job seemed more of a sinecure than a profession. The other “texters”, directors even, were doing “commercials” anonymously, craving the fees, but not the negative publicity. It wasn’t until the 1980s, af-ter the establishment of the Portorož Propaganda Festival, that it became really “trendy” to work in advertising.

In Belgrade in the 1970s, there were still no “real agencies”. Yugoslavia Public were organizing and realizing the performances of our economy abroad, at trade shows… The most

active of the agencies were those “within the media”: Politika, Borba, the Belgrade Radio Television with their EPP (economic propaganda programme), an editorial staff for the radio, and another for television, Vijesnik from Zagreb… All of them, of course, placed advertising messag-es from their clients chiefly in their own editions.

A more serious “performance on the market” came from certain local, and more often Slovenian or Croatian cli-ents. In these republics the activities of the agencies which represented the interests of the advertisers were more developed. This is evident in the ads from Economic Policy as well.

Who were the advertisers?

The automobile industry, electronics industry, civil engineering industry, chemical industry, fashion industry, banks, energy sector, metallurgy sector, furniture manufacturers, transportation companies, tourist organizations, food industry… There were Datsun, TAM (from Maribor), Tomos Citroen (Koper), Goodyear, Tigar (Zastava), Zastava (from Kragu-jevac)… Oriolik furniture (Oriovac), Meblo (Nova Gorica), Sloveniales (Ljubljana), Brest Cerknica, Vuteks (Vukovar), Beogradska Udružena Banka (The Union Bank of Belgrade), the Bank of Ljubljana, Yugoslavian Investment Bank. Fashion was often the subject: Peko (Tržič), Beko, Triko-taža Beograd (Belgrade), Ateks (Bel-

Zastava, newspaper ad, Economic Policy 11/8/1975

Ei, newspaper ad,Economic Policy 27/1/1969

grade), Toper Celje… And there were those that seem inconceivable from today’s stand: Filter Aromil Tobacco Industries from Vranje, Makedonija Tabak from Skopje, Rubin Brandy (Kruševac), Prepečenica Takovo (from Gornji Milanovac), as well as the BIP beer and non-alcoholic bev-erages, Rubin red vine, Franck coffee from Zagreb…

Who made these arrangements and created all those ads in the late 1960s and the 1970s?

The media buzz was organized and put to motion by the media them-selves. Each of the media sold their advertising space, had their authors’ teams (copywriters, designers) and their “sales network”, consisting of permanently employed staff, as well as the freelance “producers” (adver-tising agents). This was the period of the “20%”.

Belgrade did not yet have a promi-nent “independent” agency. There were some in Croatia and Slovenia. Most of them were in Zagreb: Ozeha, Interpublik, Jadran Film, Vjesnik, Agema… Apel was Podravka’s agency which, in financial parame-ters, was the third largest agency in Ex-Yugoslavia and as significant as a creative force. The leading Ljubljana based agency was Studio Marketing

Delo. Later, in the second half of the 1980s, Delo opened its Belgrade studio with the same name. Although belonging to a newspaper compa-ny, SM Delo was independent: the newspaper editions of Delo were carried out by another internal ser-vice, STIK. In Croatia and Slovenia, apart from the “marketing” agencies the first PR services started appear-ing in large companies: Podravka, Saponija, Gorenje… In Sarajevo Oze-bih was functioning. There were still no active agencies in Montenegro and Macedonia.

At the time the terms “advertise-ment” and “representation” meant the same in bookkeeping context. The story went around that in Slove-nia they would ask for 5 per cent for representation, and 95 percent for advertising, while it was the opposite in Macedonia. Croatia had the priori-ty in advertising, Serbia took the lead for a while, and then it was Slovenia’s turn… and then the 1980s arrived.

A lot has changed since.


1965.• Economic reform in Yugoslavia• Assassination of Malcolm X • The first mini skirt appears• Nicolae Ceausescu becomes the

president of Romania• The USA send their troops to

Vietnam

1968.• The student demonstrations broke

out, essentially against market economy and the economic reform

• Martin Luther King Junior was assassinated

• The Prague Spring and the military intervention by the USSR

• Robert F. Kennedy assassinated

1969.• Economic Policy transfers to

magazine format and colour print (ads and the cover)

• ARPANET is created, the forerunner of the Internet

• Neal Armstrong, the first man on the Moon

• The Woodstock festival is held

1974.• The new constitution of the SFRY• Mikhail Baryshnikov emigrates

1966. • Aleksandar Ranković looses office,

which significantly changes the importance and role of the police in the social system

• The TV series Star Trek is broadcast for the first time

1967. • The films I Even Met Happy Gypsies by

the director Aleksandar Saša Petrović and The Rats Woke Up by Živojin Pavlović are made

• In SFRY the Law on Private Investments was made, first of its kind in Eastern Europe

• Ernesto Che Guevara was assassinated

• The first heart transplantation • The Arab-Israeli Six-Day War was

fought in the Middle East

1971. • The liberal leadership in Croatia

falls from office• The First video recorder appears

1970. • The Third Conference of the Non-

Aligned Countries is held in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia

• The Beatles break up• The first floppy disc is created

1976.• Milton Friedman, the world’s most

celebrated liberal economist, receives the Nobel prize

• The Law on Associated Labour dubbed the little or the working man’s constitution is adopted (introducing the so-called “economy by agreement”)

1977. • The birth of Euro-communism,

communist parties from Western European countries accept the multi-party system in socialism

• Elvis Presley found dead• The premiere of the Star Wars film

1978. • The 11th Congress of the League

of Communists of Yugoslavia was held, the last to be attended by Josip Broz Tito

• The first concert of Zdravko Čolić in Marakana stadium, attended by 100.000 fans

• The first test-tube baby is born• John Paul II becomes the Pope

1979.• The second petroleum shock, the

price of petroleum reaches 38 dollars per barrel (1 barrel = 159litres)

• Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Islamic Revolution in Iran

• Margaret Thatcher becomes first woman prime minister of Great Britain

• Sony presents the Walkman

1980. • The Bank of Belgrade opens office

in New York; the general manager of the bank Slobodan Milošević meets Rockefeller

• Josip Broz Tito dies• John Lennon is murdered• The Packman video game is

presented• Ted Turner establishes the CNN

1972.• Liberals in Serbia and Slovenia lose

office• The first hand-held calculator

appears• A terrorist attack breaks out at the

Munich Olympics• The Watergate scandal

1973. • The first petroleum shock occurs

(the price of petroleum rises from 3 to 12 dollars within a year)

• The USA withdraws troops from Vietnam

• The chief editorial staff of Economic Policy is replaced for supporting the liberals

tIMelINe

1975. • The TV series Grlom u jagode is

broadcast• Microsoft is founded


MetaklinikaHoW Polet CAMe to be

We discovered the Economic Policy ads quite by chance. This rare material was brought to us by Mijat Lakićević for the purpose of pho-tographing it for his book ISPRED VREMENA 1963–1973. – Sudbonos-na decenija, uspon i pad srpskih liberala, uzroci i posledice, od tada do naših dana, kroz prizmu „Ekon-omske politike“, novina kakvih više nema (BEFORE ITS TIME 1963-1973 – The crucial decade, the rise and fall of Serbian liberals, causes and effects up till now through the prism of “Economic Policy”, the magazine of the kind which exists no more). We spent days going through old issues of Economic Policy and gradually the newspaper ads became more and more intriguing to us. We started noticing the unique visual potential of the ads, their modernist approach, their clean visuals… We decided to organize an exhibition of the material, with the idea to use the exhibition as an inspiration for creating an extensive web archive of the ads of

the time, which would serve as ma-terial for analysis and a wider social reading.

During the year and a half that we spent working on this project a great number of people have invest-ed their enthusiasm and effort into bringing POLET to life.

We would like to thank Mijat Lakićević, Svetlana Gavrilović, Branislav Dimitrijević, Vladimir Čeh, Mia David and the people from the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, Borut Vild, Vanda Kučera, Marko Radenković, Aleksandra Sekulić, and Tomislav Peternek for their invalua-ble assistance.

We thank the companies and authors whose ads are presented in this exhibition. We owe special thanks to the NIS a.d. company for recognizing the significance and potential of the project and for supporting its realization.

On the right-hand side: General Civil Engineering Company, Ljig, newspaper ad, Economic Policy, 3/8/1970

tHe PRoJeCt PRoDuCtIoN

Produced byMetaklinika

the team of authors Metaklinika, Mijat Lakićević, Petokraka

Artistic direction by Nenad Trifunović, Lazar Bodroža

Project coordinatorVišnja Milošević

Design of the exhibition byNenad Trifunović, Aleksa Bijelović, Milica Maksimović

IMPRINt

Publishers and editorsMetaklinika

language editorSonja Šoć

Design byMetaklinika

Printed atAlta Nova, Zemun

Circulatione1000

In Belgrade, 2013

Systematization and archivingVišnja Milošević, Ana Makragić

Project contributorsMarko Matović, Milan Maksimović, Vladimir Radović, Aleksandra Stojanović, Ivan Kostić, Dušan Jurić

Public relations Bojana Ljubišić

Project supported by NIS a.d. Novi Sad

Partners of the exhibitionCultural Centre of Belgrade, the Interna-tional Conference (Graphic) Designer: Author or Universal Soldier

On the left-hand side: Investment Bank of Yugoslavia, newspaper ad, Economic Policy, 7/4/1969

www.poletproject.net

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