Empowering brands

Starting a business is always a risky undertaking. Every day is a struggle of sorts, but for Jelena – a welcome one. She runs her agency with the fundamentals of flexibility, innovation, and hard work. She proclaims, “We have a set of standard services that we offer, but we are small, adaptable, and interested in everything new.  We want to stay small, so we do not aim at ever serving huge corporations. We help newcomers enter the market, start-ups, small companies that cannot break into bigger business, and larger ones that need a new point of view in a certain area. We do everything as a partner of our clients, not as a service provider.” Jelena deeply believes that every great idea, or even average idea with an innovative approach, has the power to become a great brand and a vessel of change – by creating a community around it. “My personal belief is that people make all the difference,” adds Jelena. “It requires hard work, great strategy and people working consistently to make it happen because they believe in it.” Thus, Libra’s purpose is to help grow such pioneering brands by assisting them to write their stories and share them with those who need to hear them. In the past three years, they have worked on developing communication strategies and concepts for clients such as the Aleksić Winery, PoštaSrbije, Viceroy, DekaInženjering, and handled projects such as the British Council New Technologies and more. 

Although a successful woman in the creative industry, Jelena is well acquainted with the glass ceiling. Her way of dealing with it: ignoring it. She explains, “Even today, I tend to sit in meetings with mostly men, and somehow the expectation is that you will not have anything to contribute, except being there. But I have always known that I know the business, so I never paid too much attention to this, and that has proven to be the best remedy. You do what you do, show what you know, and things fall into place.” Jelena measures her success through the success of the people she has mentored and the growth of her clients. For her, there are no secrets to it. One should simply be genuine, hard-working, honest and generous.