Dani komunikacija 2026: AI Reality Check Meets Regional Marketing Strategy

The closing day of Dani komunikacija 2026 in Rovinj deliberately avoided the usual technology spectacle. Instead of chasing AI trends or making grand predictions, the festival's final session connected artificial intelligence development with the psychology of communication systems and long-term brand positioning. The common thread became clear: the focus shifted from fascination with technology to how audiences actually react when communication reaches the right moment, context, and channel.

Media Marketing's coverage of the event captured the core tension defining the communications industry today. The greatest attention went to Jürgen Schmidhuber, one of the key figures behind modern artificial intelligence whose work has been embedded into systems shaping how information is created, distributed, and interpreted for decades.

In his lecture "Modern AI and the Future of the Universe," Schmidhuber did not speak about AI as a trend. He focused on the difference between what artificial intelligence actually is versus what people project onto it. Instead of simplified predictions and market hype, he addressed the long-term development of learning systems, their real limitations, and the direction research takes once short-term market expectations are removed. Such an approach shifts the AI discussion away from spectacle and back into understanding what technology actually does.

If Schmidhuber's portion opened the question of how systems function, the continuation showed how people use those systems when making decisions with long-term consequences. Julie Supan, the brand strategist behind early positioning of YouTube and someone who helped shape brands like Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit, and Discord during their formative moments, took the stage.

Her lecture was not motivational but deeply structural. She spoke about what it looks like when a brand has a clearly defined role, what it means to make decisions that still make sense when market conditions change, and why most communication problems stem from a lack of clarity rather than a lack of ideas. Through concrete examples, she demonstrated how meaning is built to survive growth, competition, and channel shifts without constantly re-explaining what a brand stands for.

One of the most striking regional examples came through "The Wedding That Beat Titanic: 2 Million Reasons to Talk About Svadba," presented by Igor Šeregi, director of the film Svadba, and Goran Turković, designer at Šesnić&Turković and member of HURA and IAB Croatia. Through the development of the idea, creative risks, and key production and communication decisions, they showed how content created from a local context can outgrow its own boundaries and reach millions across the region. It was precisely this combination of local emotion and audience-driven sharing that transformed the film into a phenomenon audiences did not simply watch but actively spread further.

The topic of trust in systems most users do not truly understand opened in the panel "The Psychology of AI," where Boris Šurija, CEO of Lexi and member of IAB Croatia, together with Andrijana Mušura Gabor, psychologist and behavioural scientist, discussed psychological patterns increasingly appearing in AI-generated content. Through practical examples, they showed how anchoring, confirmation bias, and the need for "safe" answers directly influence how AI generates content, but also why so much generated material today sounds predictable and generic. Particular emphasis was placed on the fact that output quality often depends far more on the person using the tool than on the tool itself (which should come as no surprise to anyone who has tried to get useful results from a chatbot).

While much of the festival programme focused on technology, algorithms, and shifts in audience behaviour, the closing part returned attention to one of the oldest media formats. As part of the discussion "Did Video Really Kill the Radio Star?", organised by Radio Grupa and Radio Istra, participants included Boris Jokić, scientist and host of the programme Glazbeni kurikulum on Yammat FM, and Korado Korlević, educator, astronomer, and long-time voice of the programme Znanstveni leksikon – Pod zvijezdama on Radio Istra, moderated by journalist and radio host Damir Jurjević. The conversation opened the question of why radio, despite the dominance of visual platforms, still remains deeply rooted in people's daily routines, local communities, and habits that other channels struggle to replace.

The festival's press briefing revealed additional context about the industry's current state. Dunja Ivana Ballon, festival and program director, emphasized the importance of creating a space where the industry can gather and openly discuss changes affecting the entire communications landscape. "This year's program is not linear or one-dimensional – it has overlaps, contrasts and layers, just like the industry it reflects," she stated.

Jelena Fiškuš, President of the Management Board of HURA and member of the Organizing Committee, told Media Marketing that the regional context remains essential for understanding both the market and the communications industry. "I always think it's important to look at the regional market because these are the things happening right here around us, and we are not that different," she explained. "It's great to observe experiences from global markets and learn from them, but what is happening in our own market is what should really concern us."

During the briefing, Dora Pekeč discussed how political and public communication functions today in an environment where audiences no longer simply react to campaigns but actively influence their interpretation and distribution. She explained why successful campaigns are too often reduced solely to social media and virality: "A lot of people talk about the Mamdani campaign as a social media campaign. They called him 'the social media candidate,' but I think people misunderstand that we didn't win because of social media. Social media was a way to amplify the message, but everything was in the message and the content."

Chris Do, founder of The Futur and an Emmy Award-winning designer, spoke during the briefing about what truly creates differentiation in today's market. "You have to stay curious and ask a lot of questions. A tremendous amount of power lies exactly in that," he said. According to him, at a time when AI and technology increasingly provide answers, the critical skill becomes the ability to ask the right questions because "we are the ones who need to know what to ask and how to ask it."

Mark Pollard, one of the world's best-known strategists and author of the book "Strategy Is Your Words," spoke during the briefing about how superficially the term "strategy" is often used today. "Everyone talks about strategy, but almost nobody actually uses it," he noted. For Media Marketing, he also discussed the differences between more developed and smaller markets, explaining that the dynamics of work and communication change significantly depending on the structure of the industry itself and the openness of audiences.

The final day of Dani komunikacija did not close the questions currently defining the communications industry, but it clearly showed the difference between communication that only appears convincing and communication that truly changes audience behaviour. The festival's official website danikomunikacija.com positions the event as a world-level conference for a small population in a sensational location, with testimonials from industry leaders like Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy calling it superior to Cannes.

Whether the regional market can sustain this level of discourse or whether it remains an annual outlier remains to be seen. The technology will keep advancing regardless of whether marketers understand it. The real question is whether brands will invest in clarity and context or continue chasing the next algorithmic trick.

Artūras Malašauskas is an AI Systems Integrator with 20+ years of production-grade web engineering experience. He has designed, shipped, and scaled enterprise Python/PHP systems for logistics, SaaS, and public-sector clients. For the past year, he has focused exclusively on AI integrations: deploying open-source LLMs, building generative media pipelines (image, audio, video), and engineering multi-agent workflows for real production environments. His standard: reproducibility, security, cost-efficient inference—no vaporware. He documents and evaluates emerging AI tooling, separating verified capabilities from marketing noise. Technical editor at: muza-ai.eu, ai-verslas.lt, ai-naujinos.lt Connect on LinkedIn