DK festival in Rovinj brings Dora Pekeč, one of the key communication experts behind Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York, who has become a global example of how political messages can be turned into content that conquers the internet.
The big festival of market communications, creativity and media DK2026, which will be held from 7 to 10 May in Rovinj, again this year brings together international experts who shape the way messages, campaigns and public debates are created today. Among them is Dora Pekeč, spokeswoman for the New York City Mayor’s Office and spokeswoman for the Zohran for NYC campaign, one of the most followed and commented political campaigns in recent American politics.
If marketing shapes perception, political communication shapes reality and always comes with real consequences for society. It is at this intersection of messaging, strategy and public influence that Dora Pekeč’s career has developed. At just 25 years old, she became the spokesperson for Zohrana Mamdani’s campaign for mayor of New York, participating in the campaign’s communications strategy that managed to transform complex political issues such as housing, public transportation and the cost of living into messages that mobilized voters in one of the most dynamic and demanding political environments in the world.
Raised between the United States and Croatia and educated at Duke University, Dora Pekeč entered the world of American political campaigns at an early age. She has participated in national communications strategies in the US, working on congressional races, the Illinois gubernatorial reelection campaign and the winning campaign for Chicago City Council, as well as on a number of political projects within the Democratic Party. In other words – when the stakes are high, media cycles are fast and messages have to hit the mark, Dora Pekeč is often part of the team that shapes them.
The New York mayoral campaign, in which she played a key communications role, quickly became a global example of political communication spreading at the speed of the internet. Her messages, visuals and communication tactics were analyzed by journalists, brand strategists, designers and communication experts around the world, trying to understand how the campaign managed to turn political topics into content that dominates online discussions. At DK2026, Dora Pekeč will bring a rare insight behind the scenes of a campaign that conquered the internet – how political messages are shaped, how the narrative is controlled and how statements that end up on the front pages are created in an era when every sentence can go viral.
On the main stage, Pekeč joins Jürgen Schmidhuber, an unconventional professor and the father of modern artificial intelligence, Julie Supan, an elite brand strategist who laid the foundations of YouTube, Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit and Discord, Mark Pollard, one of the most influential global strategists today, Chris Do, a creative mentor known for redefining the way creatives position and charge for their work, Steve Keller, an expert for sonic branding, Alex Cattoni, founder of The Copy Posse platform that brings together a community of more than half a million marketers, Mike Follette, pioneer of the attention economy and measurement, and Neil Patel, expert in digital marketing and growth, further confirming the position of DK festival as a meeting place for ideas that shape the industry in the long term.
DK2026 will this year again, bring global perspectives and concrete knowledge to Rovinj – at the meeting point of an industry that seeks more than inspiration. More information is available at www.danikomunikacija.com
