MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them. By media blogger MediaSlut.
Monthly archives: May 2013
Shelf Life: Cameraland unveils new picture, new look for Hungry Lion
by Louise Marsland. Design Partnership roars; a new creative hub in the Mother city; Nike gets technical with soccer; and an update on the latest tobacco legislation.
Native Advertising: Traditional Advertising Online
Mashable recently asked the question, “Is Native Advertising Just Another Term For Good Advertising?” The answer is no, not quite.
From what I can tell, native advertising is a horrible and misleading term that is being used to describe something that may actually turn out to be a good idea — the application of traditional advertising principles to online advertising. Let me explain.
Online advertising was supposed to be interactive. It was supposed to rescue us from having to force people into looking at our ads. Consumers were going to want to interact with us, they were going to want to have conversations with marketers, they were going to want to have relationships with brands.
It was all fantasies and delusions based on naive interpretations of consumer behavior by people who had a whole lot of ideological commitment to the web, and very little experience with real world marketing.
Now we’ve learned that, for the most part, consumers want no part of interacting with online advertising. What we are calling “native advertising” is a recent reaction to this realization and to the very disappointing history of online advertising, particularly banner advertising.
Nobody seems quite sure what they mean by native advertising. But I think I know what they mean. They don’t know it yet, but they mean using traditional advertising strategy on the web.
Africa Annual – our Influential, Must Follow Twitter List
Ornico and MarkLives have teamed up to present our first ‘The Africa Annual‘, a compilation of some of Africa’s remarkable stories and resources for businesses; and media, marketing and branding enthusiasts. This is our list of influential, must follow individuals for perspective on and insight into the continent.
Ad of the Week with Oresti Patricios – Savanna, now more can-venient.
Cans, we are told, are more ‘can-venient’, because you can enjoy your Savanna anywhere.
Design Annotator: New Creative Spaces and Illustration Work
Design Annotator with Uno de Waal is a new column featuring the top design work from South Africa’s biggest online creative showcase, Between 10 and 5, curated by Publisher Uno de Waal @Unodewaal.
Some great new creative work spaces and places to chill out have popped up. It’s inspiring to know that not everyone subscribes to boring, grey office spaces. We look at Durban based illustrator Wesley van Eeden in contrast his work with that of Andrés Pallavicini. Finally, be sure to check out more info from Portfolio Night – something that I hope will definitely become a fixture on the creative calendar.
Green Sky Thinking: Sustainability myths to live by
by Colwyn Elder (@colwynelder) Navigating the ‘green’ or ‘ethical’ aisle in any supermarket is no mean feat. Ongoing research means new and often conflicting information that makes trying to ‘do the right thing’ is confusing at best, and just plain off-putting at worst.
Surve’s Sunday twissyfit: the start of a feud with Peter Bruce and Times Media?
by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) The great thing about Twitter is that you get a direct insight into the minds of powerful people usually only accessible through an army of communications specialists or at least a very firm personal assistant – if they will let you in, that is.
In case you were chilling yesterday, you might have missed an extraordinary twissyfit from Iqbal Surve, the proprietor-in-waiting at Independent Newspapers, who instead of grumbling over his Sunday lunch took to Twitter to voice his extreme annoyance over a column written by Business Times editor Rob Rose.
The Africa Annual 2013, brought to you by Ornico and MarkLives
The story of economic growth in Africa has been topical globally, with some of the most disappointing reports coming from leading publications. However for us Africans, the glass is definitely half full, with inspiring stories coming from the most ordinary of people. Ornico and MarkLives have teamed up to present our first ‘The Africa Annual’, a compilation of some of Africa’s remarkable stories and resources for businesses; and media, marketing and branding enthusiasts.
Hermaneutics: Jobs For Monkeys In Adland
Young and want to land a job in advertising? Join a circus. That is the gist of reader feedback on an Adland.tv story featuring a recruitment campaign by DDB Brussels in which prospective employees need to submit a 6-second Vine gif (hashtag #ddbexpress) in place of a CV.
Ten ‘new’ creatives will make the shortlist and be put together on a train to Cannes. En-route they will need to solve numerous creative briefs, on which they will be judged, and eight will be sent home (dropped off at the various stations en-route – apparently). The two that make it to Cannes will be ‘rewarded by an invitation to join the creative department of DDB.’ That’s not exactly an explicit job offer, hence some of the commentary on the original story referring to internships.
The campaign has been described as a rather demeaning process to land a job. Critics also point out that to enter you need Vine, which only runs on iPhones, and so excludes a fairly large group of potential candidates, including many for whom an iPhone would be out of reach.
Says the Facebook site created for the campaign “Creative Directors are very busy people, and new creatives need to be agile. Combine those two and you get our brand new way of hiring: 6″ recruitment. You have exactly six seconds to convince our Creative Director, Peter Ampe.”
Not too busy to make the train ride and make some kids jump through hoops, or to make the awards festival for that matter, just too busy to look down and at your portfolio. The agency seems to be snorting Cannes, really, counting the award shows they can enter with this ‘creatively lead’ take on recruitment.