ESMIG’s Marketing and Events Working Group has recently welcomed a new Chair, Milan Milosevic from Meter&Control. As a long-standing member of the working group, this is the perfect opportunity to get to know him better, hear what he has in store for the group, and important trends he sees in the industry.
What is your current role and background?
Although I have a formal education in humanistic sciences, my entire career has been in marketing and PR. I have worked for small and major advertising agencies, and have also been on the client side, in categories ranging from banking, fashion and luxury, to FMCG, telecom, healthcare and fintech. You need to learn how marketing works from all sides to be able to work well in this profession. I witnessed the emergence of many new media and technologies and was adopting them for clients and for myself. I was even there when the scholarly definition of marketing changed. There were also some ups and downs along the way, which I consider a profoundly formative experience.
In 2017, I joined Meter&Control as marketing consultant, just at the right time, as they were starting to pave their way to export markets. We have done an enormous work since and have accomplished many important milestones together. When I look back at the beginnings, Meter&Control is entirely new company today and I am glad that I have been here all this time. In marketing, it is particularly gratifying to see your work grow and bring measurable results over time. I can only wish that it continues like this for many more years with the fabulous Meter&Control team.
Joining ESMIG was an important part of that journey, as the membership in the Association greatly helped Meter&Control to establish contacts and to gain exposure in the industry and towards customers. We are also proud of the fact that our voice in the Association helps to shape the smart energy industry.
What inspired you to take up the role of Chair of the Marketing and Events Working Group?
Meter&Control has been a steady member of the Association since 2018 and I have been with the Marketing and Events Working Group ever since, probably notorious among fellow members for being vocal and coming forward at meetings and in discussions. ESMIG is a great industry organisation, which has always inspired me professionally: what more can be done, how can we differentiate and innovate, and where would I like to see the Association in the future – along with Meter&Control and other member companies, where our common interests synergistically align. Add to this my entrepreneurial initiative and there you had my decision to step up. With support from Meter&Control, my candidacy was positively received and approved by fellow members, and I am very thankful to everyone for their trust.
After seven years, I am no stranger to the Association staff, the Executive Committee, the General Assembly and working groups, so expect to hear and read from me more often.
What will be your main areas focus and big goals?
As a working group, we have enormous collective expertise. Think about this: members of the group are responsible for the marketing of member companies that have a combined turnover of 12 billion euro. This is huge. Our collaborative mind consists of both global market leaders, and smaller but very agile companies. We have many eyes and ears out there in the market, we see things from different perspectives and together we are both a think tank and an idea pool. No challenges can go unchallenged here.
As much as industry groups are conventional forms, they need to adopt new ways of doing things. For ESMIG, this means intensifying activities in the digital domain: we have digital channels in place and working very well, however, we need to revisit, rethink, restructure and expand them and extract their maximum potential. This will also take a lot of inspiration and new creative ideas, but I already know that inside MEG we never suffer from the lack of ideas. Keeping an eye on similar and competing organisations will bring us insights into how and why companies choose one association over another and will help us stay on top of companies’ choices in the energy industry.
We are getting to what my big goal is, which hopefully fellow members share, too: to foster the collaborative process and individual contributions of members to advance the Association strategically and in day-to-day activities, more than before. This does not apply only to what and how we communicate, but also to being active proponents of innovation throughout the association. ESMIG provides benefits and services to member companies. However, it is up to members to shape ESMIG in the way which best suits their interests, and I am convinced that all members are aligned as far as common interests go. So, I would like to see the innovations starting from our working group.
If you could achieve one key thing in 2025, what would it be?
With the help from Marketing and Events Working Group, I would like to see ESMIG as a reference industry group and first choice for every solution provider seeking prominence in the industry, establishing ties with other players in the field and taking an active role in shaping regulatory and other frameworks for technology. This may sound like a long-term mission statement, but I believe we are close to that goal.
What essential role do you think communications and marketing professionals play when it comes to the energy industry?
They break down innovations across the energy industry. Energy systems are the most inert structures that exist today. This is partly due to their size, but also because any change to critical infrastructures could disrupt the continuity, resilience and security of services which the end consumers depend on. So, we, as solution providers, have had to do a lot of communications, explaining and demoing towards energy providers and distributors to enable the adoption of new technologies and initiate quantum leaps in the sector. And this is a very specific audience we talk to: rather than marketing slogans and user convenience, they want to see business logic and an optimal fit into a very complex technical, regulatory and financial equation. So, you will first want to lay out the architecture and the logic of your product very carefully. And, of course, with the emergence of new technologies almost every day, this cycle never stops. I think that sometimes we can all feel that we are indeed working in the most complex of industries out there.
I believe that we should focus our communications much more on the end consumer, whom, somehow, the whole energy transition has left behind in a position of passive acceptance. Think about this: electricity is an essential commodity, just like water. Then, one day, you begin to hear about the digitalisation of water, artificial intelligence and whatnot – of water. The transformation of electricity from sheer commodity to something interactive and bidirectional, the responsibility shift, data and privacy aspects, was a real brain cracker for an average citizen. And I am even not sure that people are yet fully at terms with the Green Energy Transition, except that it all costs them more than before. You know, you can just walk away from a lousy dinner in an overhyped restaurant, but, failed promises or incentives for utility services are a shock to the household and people tend to remember them. Think about Spain, where the Government at one point ran out of subsidies for prosumers already in loans for renewables; or a recent tariff reform in Slovenia which failed following massive consumer complaints about high electricity bills. The story doesn’t end with solution providers delivering what we promised; we need to educate and motivate end consumers, and associations like ESMIG could play a role in this.
Do you see any new trends in industry that should be top of the agenda for communications professionals?
The whole energy paradigm is shifting away from traditional demand/supply sides systems towards decentralized energy resources (DERs) and prosumers joined in virtual power plants and energy communities. Even Nikola Tesla’s inventions (AC current) are set to become obsolete, and we will eventually, at least in these smaller energy communities, revert back to Edison (DC current). Interesting times, aren’t they? Like it or not, we will all have to be a part of this. These new systems demand new solutions. Things are speeding up and this new market is expanding very rapidly. There are numerous startups, ideas, fast thinking and fast-moving companies emerging every day, because once you are in the market for end consumers, things are much easier to do. These are the trends and emerging categories to closely keep an eye on.
I can see a new trend that we, as manufacturers in ESMIG, can set: more wholesome and positive communication of DSOs with end consumers, particularly with residential ones. We already have consumer apps in place and data sets exchange, but, the potential is much higher than flipping through consumption graphs, bills history and real-time data. If the Green Energy Transition has turned consumers’ role in the energy chain from passive to active, then our task can be to empower end consumers to be proactive players in the energy market.
Check out ESMIG’s Working Groups and Task Forces here.