Avon Beauty Blog Day 2014 Croatia Hrvatska

The Avon Beauty Blog Day 2014 Croatia Hrvatska is organized by Ana Popovic-Kisur and her team from Ogledalo beauty portal, Ines, Melita and Mirela. The general sponsor of the event was Avon and other sponsors were Vichy, Biobaza, Kérastase Paris, L’Oréal Paris, Nivea, Essie, L’Oréal Professionnel, i Vogue Eyewear ,Press Clipping, Ivan Alduk, NaturHouse, Häagen-Dazs, SORTIS Komunikacije, Hewlett-Packard, Manifest Design Intelligence, Clippin Press, HP Hrvatska, while Femina.hr, Budi.In and Netokracija were the main media representatives that were covering the event.

This is the second year that this event is held and the number of beauty bloggers in Croatia has almost doubled, check out my last years Beauty Blog Day 2013 coverage. The reason I like to attend this beauty blog day is because I know many of the blogger personally, but I also like to meet new bloggers and listen to what advice PR and marketing experts can advise how to improve your blog and your content. I usually learn one or two new things since I try to be up to date with what is new in the blogger world. I find that content really is king but also hard work will get you far!

Ok so let me sum it up for you, I wish I did this report on the Avon Beauty Blog Day 2014 Croatia Hrvatska a bit different but oh well. I first of course was late because I kept forgetting things when I left the house; note to self the importance of a checklist. Then I wasn’t able to find parking so I was driving around for 30 minutes; note to self-make sure to leave an hour before the event starts. I’m not a morning person and in the morning I just like to do stuff automatically if it’s not a robotic action I might forget stuff or get confused. I mean I wake up around 6 or 7 every morning but need 1 hour to wake up, a slow breakfast and coffee. So when I got to the event the event was already in process, people before hand during the check in period had a welcome breakfast, I took some coffee and went to sit close to the front.

The event was started by a greeting (I assume) and introduction to the members that would be speaking. In short you had Martina Lovric and Mia Biberovic presenting ideas and suggestions on what every beauty blogger needs to become a more successful blogger. I can say that some of the information was repetitive from last year but there was more new information, which I mainly knew, and about 20% that I didn’t know. I find that I learn something new and very useful each year. I will be writing a summary of the blogger advice this week so make sure to check back soon.

After those two lovely ladies held their presentation Avon’s representative spoke to use about their success and collaboration for 2013. She even showed us a chart that showed that most companies invest a shocking 85% of money in TV commercials and only 1% online. One of the biggest collaborations that Avon did with a local beauty blogger was their campaign Femme EdP fragrance with Zora Bjelousov. Zora is the founder and owner of Beauty By Dawn.

Towards the end of all these presentations, Avon’s Lucija Josipovic & Vichy’s Petra Mlakar representative and beauty blogger Beauty Blogette had an open table discussion “beauty brands VS beauty bloggers. During this discussion we were able to ask questions and get a gist of idea on what to expect and how to behave in a more professional level when working with beauty brands.

Avon Beauty Blog Day 2014 Croatia Hrvatska

Also at the end of the event the Beauty Blogger of 2013 was announced along side of a yummy cake from Mak na konac, champagne and Häagen-Dazs ice cream. The Best Croatian Beauty Blogger of 2013 was blogger Dear Skin. She was voted out by other bloggers to be the most popular and most influential for 2013. I do read her blog from time to time and can confirm that she does deserve the title. Her blog is really well written and always has interesting topics.

In between all that we had lunch and had time to get to meet and consult with other brands that were there to represent their brands. I have to mention that on Facebook there is a private group that contains all the Croatian beauty bloggers and one blogger asked an interesting question. Did you get to meet the brands during the event; did you maybe set up a future meeting for a future collaboration? That was a good question and I personally came to the conclusion, no! All I got were additional samples based on the information, which I gave. I didn’t even try to do any business during this event. Why? Well I didn’t get a business feeling. I felt that each beauty stand I came up to all the host that were working there was just required to hand out samples and that is it. I didn’t feel that brand representatives were there, I might be wrong. I felt that last year the brands were more interactive at the stands than this year.

I wanted to say that one stand particularly where I felt that they were least professional were the Kérastase Paris, I came up to their stand a few times and asked questions about their products and they were not very informative and very reserved. I found that their representatives did a very poor job to present their products. I have no idea what they were trying to show case and why they were flat ironing some people’s hair. They left me clueless and I just walked away from their stand after being rejected twice. So I really have nothing special to say about them since I got no information from them whatsoever.

Avon had the most interesting stand, besides a video with the makeup collaborations that they did, they also featured some of their new products and were communicative.

Vichy also had a very informative stand and had this cool face chart for skin care. I didn’t get any additional goodies from those two stands. Every Time I came to the stand they already had many bloggers lined up and waiting for some consultations. Was a busy stand.

Biobaza, Nivea and L’oreal had the best and most communicative hosts. I had fun their and got some additional goodies and a lot of information and was able to sample some new products. I did take a picture of myself with the L’oreal frame and funny hand mask (like those wedding photo booth things) but I didn’t get my picture printed out by the HP station I took the picture with my camera. I did later on notice certain people did get their picture taken (with the picture frame and the funny hand mask) by some photographer and then that same picture printed out by the HP station that was confusing and didn’t see the point in only a few getting those pictures.

Biobaza besides having a very informative stand, has product you weren’t able to test on the spot (or I wasn’t offered them to be testested. They had this amazing ans ver interesting men line they were advertising but no additional samples so I can test them at home on my husband. However, I was able to get samples for pregnant women and some good body creams and of course we got some goodies in the goodie bag.

Nivea has this skin test machine, which helped me figure out the skin type, which I already know I have, but I still taught it was a cool test. I got a Q10 cream but I do not use Q10 products but since the sample is very small I will test it a few times, I also passed it on to a friend to test it for me. There was also an Essie nail polish stand but no samples or testing for the polish was available.

L’oreal even had a makeup artist on set to do makeup on others and that you can see on an iPad how the new L’oreal Miss Manga mascara looks like on before and after application. The makeup artist was such a lovely person just like the fun anime inspired hosts. They were so communicative, informative and fun! I was able to test also a new lip product from L’oreal Colour Caresse Wet Shine Stain that I have been seeing online and on TV and loved it. The lovely host recommended a color that was perfection! I will be buying this product! Besides that we did get a goodie bag with additional products from the main sponsors, check out my video for more details on what I got and possibly first impressions.

This basically sums up the good, the bad and the awesome during this year Beauty Blog Day Croatia 2014. I hope that you got an idea of what it’s like and I do recommend that if you are a Croatian beauty blogger sign up next year, when the time comes, to attend this event. This event I do believe will become bigger each year and will get more sponsors with each year!

Enjoy the pictures.

p.s. check back next week for direct tips from PR and marketing tips on how to improve your beauty blog, based on what we were told on the BBday2014