Milan Martos, Riko Riznar and Matjaz Vracko of Mladinska Kniga with Michael Leander

Mladinska Kniga was totally unknown to me (Michael Leander) until very recently. But I am very thankful to my good collaboration partner in Slovenia - Mr. Bostjan Zrimsek of Dimacenter - for introducing me to this outstanding company. It is always a pleasure to get a chance to cooperate with a first class company. And - unintentionally - Mladinska Kniga Group opened my eyes to a few things.

This successful publishing company rightfully deserves the honorable title “a true multi-channel direct marketing company”. While following the preferences of the target groups they are serving, they are as media neutral as a company can get. And their track-record in direct marketing is -I am sure - on par with the best in the world. In fact, they are an innovative direct marketer taking the old DM virtues and mixing new DM techniques in there, but playing the game while utilizing a full orchestration of instruments in their efforts to serve their target groups effectively.

The CEO, Mr. Milan Martos (second from left in the picture), innovated the publishing industry in Slovenia and in turn took the company from a revenue of 5 million Euro when he became the CEO 17 years ago. to it’s present revenue of nearly 170 million Euro.

The workshop - a speakers diary
Based on my performance at the Slovenian ProMarket conference in February (go there next year, if you have the chance), I was hired to conduct an internal workshop about internet marketing and email marketing in particular.

If you ever heard me speak, you will know that my jokes are lame, my content more often than not on the easy side (I’m a consultant too) - and my presentations skills a roller-coaster ride for those brave enough to listen to me speak.  But you will probably also know that I care about delivering value more than anything else.

At the workshop in Ljubljana, I was unusually nervous. In fact, up until 5 minutes before start, I constantly asked myself the important questions; “what can I possible teach them?”, “how can I possible inspire them” and “what can I do to deliver value to each and every person in the room?”.  For me, it is a result of being “over educated” about the competencies of an audience. (Professional speakers tell me it’s bad to know too much about your audience. I absolutely do not agree, but that is a different story. )

But I must say - in spite of my performance - it was indeed a great pleasure to conduct an internal workshop for around 40-50 of their employees from several of their “business units” on May 20th in Ljubljana, Slovenia. I say that because - at my age at least - it is seldom that I come across companies such as Mladinska Kniga Group. To my knowledge not one single company in Denmark are utilizing direct and interactive marketing to the multi-channel extent that they are.

And it was indeed interesting to talk to Milan Martos (I’d like to pick his brain for a couple of hours , to Riko Riznar who is heading up their Readers Digest activities in many countries and - of course - Matjaz Vracko. Mr. Riznar and Mr. Vracko are seen on the front seats in the picture above.

Mr. Vracko was kind enough to take me out for a late lunch the day before the workshop. He showed me some of their direct mail pieces, their catalogues and other goodies. And I was blown away by it. No, seriously - unknowingly Mr. Vracko took me back 20+ years in time. Back to the time where I had the wish, but not the talent, to create highly effective direct mail pieces for the clients I worked for back then.

Interestingly, Mr. Vracko also pointed out, that my “subscribe to my newsletter coupons” that were distributed at the workshop, were confusing. People didn’t know how to fill them out. Had I been a mouse I would have crawled right back into my hole. Embarrasing, but true. I have once again done the mistake of not taking my own medicine. (For crying out loud.).

I did get some 40 subscribers to my newsletters and a few people do want me to contact them, however that is no excuse for not doing things right. So here I am on a Sunday night thinking how much I can learn from Mladinska Kniga, and whether they can learn anything from me. At all.

Hopefully some day, I can introduce you to case studies from Mladinska Kniga. Either here on the blog, in a seminar/conference or a web seminar. I think you will find their work just as interesting as I do.

Finally, I think that Mladinska Kninga are well positioned to deliver the next FEDMA European Direct Marketer of the Year. And perhaps even this years FEDMA Holmen Paper Direct Marketing Apprentice of the Year.

I write articles like these more as a reminder to myself than for your reading pleasure. If what you just read was boring and irrelevant, I apologize. But I use this property 95% of the time to provide you with free knowledge, hints, tips and so on. 5% of the contents I reserve for my own side-projects. And this was one of them.