Golden Drum and LBB Roar for Central & Eastern European Creativity

Little Black Book and Golden Drum have joined forces with a partnership that shines a spotlight on Central and Eastern European creativity. LBB will be supporting Golden Drum as a global media partner – and every Grand Prix winner at this year’s Golden Drum will be entered directly into LBB’s Immortal Awards.

For over 28 years, Golden Drum has stood at the crossroads of New Europe, showcasing head-turning creativity from one of the most dynamic and innovative regions in the world. It’s a show that prides itself on being the friendliest festival and its annual events on the stunning Slovenian Riviera has become a mainstay. This year the festival will take place online, a free event around the theme of ‘Re:start the Future’. 

According to Mojca Briščik, president of the Golden Drum festival, the partnership marks an opportunity to give back to the creative community and to amplify the CEE region’s talent and brilliance. “Golden Drum has grown tremendously throughout these past 28 years - won the WFA (World Federation of Advertisers) President’s Award, was positioned among eight regional festivals on WARC Creative ranking, has help launch careers of many outstanding and today very successful creative leaders, and is now proudly announcing that the CEE region’s creative brilliance will be celebrated and supported also by Little Black Book, one of the fastest growing marketing communications platforms worldwide, as our global media partner,” says Mojca. 

Mojca is also keen that the festival can support and industry that has supported it over the years. This year’s theme and online event reflects the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic and builds a platform for the industry to lead the region’s economies, coming back stronger with a renewed optimism.

“Each year, Golden Drum festival celebrates and rewards creative excellence in creative communications, advertising and related fields. It is known to be the friendliest festival that attracts Europe's creative community and rising young professionals. Needless to say, this year's Golden Drum’s three-day event will be online and more importantly free of charge. This way we would like to give back to the community; agencies, clients, ambassadors, members of the Hall of Fame and our friends for all the support they have shown us throughout the years.”

Little Black Book founder and CEO Matt Cooper describes the partnership as a meeting of minds and enthuses about a shared ambition to champion the thinking, innovation and craft of Central and Eastern Europe.

“We think that The Golden Drum and LBB have very similar ambitions. We both want to celebrate great creativity. Supporting the Golden Drum means that firstly we can help amplify what they. Also we can put their winners into our global finals and get much closer to a market we really want to report on and celebrate. CEE is growing in strength as a creative region and it is LBB’s role to show the work to the world,” says Matt. 

The partnership also reflects a desire at LBB to ensure that groundbreaking campaigns that really work within specific local cultural, social and economic contexts don’t get lost at a global level. “We also really want to support other local and regional awards that do great work that perhaps doesn’t always get seen on a global stage. We believe our Immortal Awards can work with these regional and local events instead of against them, after all we have the same pure aim. We totally support what they do and love it. The Immortal Awards will this year be a very different event again, growing on what we did last year this year will become like a world cup of advertising.”

As part of Little Black Book’s global media partnership with The Golden Drum 2021, the global marketing communications platform will be hosting a roundtable as part of this year’s programme. Focusing on ‘The Rise of Independent Agencies in 2021’, a panel of game-changing independent agencies will discuss why they believe this new trend of agency leaders creating new companies is happening - and what they may offer the current market. 

The panellists for ‘The Rise of Independent Agencies in 2021’ will represent a wide range of global independents who are keen to discuss the model, what it means, and why it could potentially help the industry as a whole. Hosted by LBB’s CEO Matt Cooper, the line-up is set to be announced shortly.

This year’s Golden Drum will take place online between October 13 to 15. The deadline for entries is August 13.