Bratislava - Juraj Miškov, the 37-year-old adman who founded his first company in 1992 only to make it the most successful advertising agency in Slovakia and a member of Saatchi & Saatchi, has served his first 100 days in office as Minister of Economy of the new Slovak government.
In 2009, Juraj - who has achieved everything he has ever wanted in advertising (his company received the Agency of the Year Award in 2009 and 2010, and since 2004 has been an affiliated member of the Saatchi & Saatchi network) - made the decision to enter the world of politics. When he and Richard Sulík, author of the 2004 Slovak tax reform, founded the liberal political party SaS (Freedom and Solidarity), they were determined to stop the leftist populism in Slovakia which they considered to be the cause of the country's irresponsible running into ever higher debt. The party's ambition was to get enough votes in the next elections to win mandates in parliament. But the young party exceeded their ambitious expectations and won over 12% of the popular vote in the June 2010 general elections. SaS became part of the new right-wing government coalition comprising four parties, and Juraj Miškov is one SaS's four ministers.
Juraj considers his new position a natural next step in his professional career. The priority in his job as the minister of economy is to make Slovakia more attractive for serious foreign investors. He likes to use the Singapore model as a benchmark of his vision in this area.
After the success in the June 2010 elections, Juraj said goodbye to MUW Saatchi & Saatchi for good and sold his share to his partners. The previous (and current) owners - creative directors Rasťo Uličný and Rasťo Michalik, as well as chief strategist Robert Weber - remain the agency's leaders. Together with executive director Ivan Hulík who took over the operational management of the company from Juraj, their plans for MUW Saatchi & Saatchi are highly ambitious.
And this is how Juraj views his two careers - both as ad man and politician: "I'm the indisputable evidence of the validity of Saatchi & Saatchi's philosophy Nothing is impossible!"