Tamara Todevska Made North Macedonia Proud--'The Right Person With The Right Message Of Equality' - DMT NEWS

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Tamara Todevska Made North Macedonia Proud--'The Right Person With The Right Message Of Equality'

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Tamara Todevska of North Macedonia performs the song "Proud" during the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest grand final in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, May 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

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The Eurovision Song Contest grand final took place on Saturday, May 18 in Tel Aviv, Israel - where 26 performers competed for the win in front of nearly 200 million viewers audience across the world. The extravagant contest is the longest-running annual TV show in the world. In 2015, the Eurovision Song Contest celebrated its 60th anniversary.

North Macedonia came eighth in Eurovision 2019, with a total of 295 points (the greatest success so far--Achievement Unlocked!). Tamara Todevska certainly made North Macedonia "PROUD" with her outstanding performance.

Composed by Darko Dimitrov, Lazar Cvetkoski and Robert Bilbilov with Kosta Petrov and Sanja Popovska working as lyricists, the song brings a strong message. Although the video puts girls and women in the spotlight and many view it as a feminist anthem, Tamara explains that "Proud" is a song for everyone that has been told to put their head down, to follow society’s rules that make no sense in the 21st century.

For Macedonians, watching the Eurovision Song Contest this year was truly an emotional rollercoaster. North Macedonia was leading for most of the time during the votings from the jury panels. The United Kingdom, Austria, Serbia, Albania, Denmark and Switzerland all gave their "12s" to Tamara. With its message of empowerment, the song clearly "hit the spot" and was the favourite of many--even Boy George's.

Now that Tamara made the small newly renamed country (now called North Macedonia) definitely more known to the world and came back home I talked to her about the things she learned from the whole experience.

"I have been waiting for this moment my entire life. I was six when Carola from Sweden won the Eurovision Song Contest in Italy and I remember telling my parents–one day I will be performing just like her. To be on that stage, to sing a song that means so much to me and to have the support that I had was truly something I will never forget. I guess the greatest lesson I learned is to surround myself with the right people. I would have never achieved this without the support of my incredible team. I also learned to believe more in myself. I have been performing since I was 6 and so many people have told me that I will never be good enough, that I am not going to be successful and that I will never make it in life and at one point in my life I believed them. Now I know that you have to believe in yourself first."

Macedonian Eurovision 2019 Team in Tel Aviv, Israel. From right to left: Robert Bilbilov, Tamara Todevska, Kosta Petrov, Lazar Cvetkoski, Darko Dimitrov.

Darko D.

"I am proud of myself. I am proud of my amazing family and everyone that believed in me, even in moments when I didn’t. I am proud to have so many amazing people around me and supporting me. But mostly, I am proud because I made my country proud and that means the world to me."

I also talked to Kosta Petrov, who was in charge of the PR and marketing part. He has 10+ years of experience in communications, marketing, social media and business development. His company, P World is a leading PR and events agency operating in 40 markets across Europe, Asia, Africa and North America.

"This was truly an incredible experience for all of us. We all believed in our project but even in our wildest dreams, we couldn’t have guessed that the outcome would be like this. For me, it was truly an unforgettable journey–first co-writing the song with my wife and then afterwards creating the whole strategy around the song’s promotion. Proud is written for my daughter and Tamara’s daughter but mostly it is a song about equality. It is about accepting yourself, loving yourself and celebrating your true self. It is about being proud of yourself. It celebrates womanhood and feminism but applies to immigrants, LGBT, it applies to everyone fighting for equality. Anyone who has been put down for who they are, this is a song for them.", tells Kosta Petrov

From a marketing point of view, North Macedonia definitely had the "right message, right person, right time". However, money is always an issue for small developing countries.

"Considering that we come from a small country, our budget is considerably smaller so we had to be very creative when it came to promotion and I think we did a wonderful job. At the beginning, no one really believed in our team but after the second semi-final everyone knew we are here to put a mark on Eurovision and everyone applauded us for our success. We were truly this year’s dark horse at Eurovision.", Kosta added.







via DMT.NEWS, Nina Angelovska, Contributor, Khareem Sudlow