When I was a student at "Reklamna Akademiya", no one told me that…

Reklamna Akademiya is organized jointly by NBU, Bulgarian Association of Advertisers (BAR) and Bulgarian Association of Communication Agencies (BACA). The format takes place over the course of one week – from February 16 to 20, 2026.

 

Boris Stoyanov has been in the advertising field for over 5 years, 4 of which are at Publicis or more specifically Digitas – the digital agency of the group. He started as a junior account, and now he is Workflow and Delivery Lead – a position with an interesting application. His daily work is to help his colleagues in the team to work smoothly, sometimes with easy and quick solutions, sometimes with complex systems that involve other teams. His other major focus is developing the agency through new products, new clients, and new people in the team. Some of the clients he directly assists are Visa, The Walt Disney Company, P&G, Mondelez, and others. After 4 participations in the academy, he is now returning for a second year as a mentor because he doesn’t want to detach from the format.

When you look back at your participation in the Academy, what was the moment that helped you the most professionally?

This was definitely the very first academy. The academy started with a question to choose one of two workshop-s: Insight or Brief. At that moment, I didn’t even know the meaning of those words, let alone how they are written and created. Three days later, we had a ready campaign with all the necessary components. And yes, it wasn’t a good campaign, but that’s not what the format is about. The knowledge you can gain in such a short time is invaluable and there’s nowhere else to experience it.

What mistakes that you yourself made as a participant would you like to help this year’s students avoid?

There are many mistakes, but one stands out the most for me – that participants don’t give themselves time to rest. The format is very intense and you constantly have the feeling that you are falling behind the perfect plan you made with your mentor in the first hour together. The work during these days doesn’t stop, it continues even at night, and even while dreaming about the project (I know I’m not the only one like this). But at the moment of the greatest stress, when everything is falling behind, a walk would help much more than continuing to sit in the room and being unable to come up with anything. Time never seems to be enough, it is a resource and should be used properly, including for rest.

In the first hours of working on a case, there is often confusion and tension. What would you advise the teams to do right at the beginning to give themselves a better chance of success?

The most important thing to understand – every beginning is chaotic, so this is normal. Still, it’s better to start with a well-structured plan. The cases from the mentors have a good starting point for structure, so based on that, you make a plan for what you want to have ready by when. Don’t overthink your ideas and especially the insight. Yes, this is the most important part of a campaign, but sometimes thinking of a “better” insight only wastes time, which if spent on the creative idea, the project would be super.

How will you recognize that an idea has potential and how will you help the students to develop it, instead of falling in love too early with the first thought?

It may sound clichéd, but good ideas are simple. If the team can tell me the idea and I can understand it within a few sentences, then it’s a good idea. Within the format, it can be explained in detail about the idea and how and why it’s made, but the reality is different. The real user should be able to grasp this whole idea from one video or sometimes even from one vision. Therefore, if I can understand the idea in 3 minutes and it’s logical, then it’s a good idea.

What do you think is the biggest difference between the academic environment and real business, that students will feel the most strongly?

The most obvious - deadlines. Comprehensive campaigns are not sought in 3 days (even if that has happened). Campaigns of such size and strategies happen over the course of weeks, or even months. And in an agency, you get more sleep than at the academy, so keep your chin up.

If you had to finish the sentence “When I was a student at Reklamna Akademiya, no one told me that…”, how would you finish it today?

… the new knowledge you gain goes far beyond how to make a good campaign and its components. Along with them, you learn how to work in a team, how to work under pressure, how to be patient, how to lose, how to win, and how to have fun while not having slept.