IMC 2013 Conference preview

The annual Integrated Marketing Communication Conference (IMC Conference) takes place at the CTICC in Cape Town on June 10 & 11 (the Johannesburg conference runs in September).

The first IMC conference took place in Cape Town in 2010, followed by one in Johannesburg in 2011 before firmly establishing itself in both cities in 2012. It focuses on multi-platform, effective communication. According to conference director Jaco van Zyl his team picks topics and speakers based on feedback from the broader marketing industry through-out the year.

The conference combines speaker slots and workshops, and delegates can attend both, unlike some conferences where speaker and workshop tracks run concurrently. This year consists of ten workshops, with time for delegates to participate in eight over the two days, plus eight speaker slots.

Speakers this year includes mobile entrepreneur Nicholas Haralambous, who will discuss how mobile can be used effectively through all aspects of marketing, advertising and communication, ABSA Chief Marketing Officer, Africa, Sizakele Marutlulle, Abey Mokgwatsane, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather South Africa and Andy Gilder, Head of Group Digital Strategy at ad agency Machine, on day one.

MarkLives Best Read – April 2013

The ten best read stories on MarkLives during the month of April.
1. Media laughs on April Fools
2. DMMA board denies governance crisis
3. Smile 90.4fm aims to shake up Cape Town radio market
4. South African team behind the Mars One film
5. The biggest circulating consumer magazines in SA
6. Media24′s Afrikaans newspapers announce paywall, digital first strategy
7. Ad of the Week with Oresti Patricios – How’s it Hangin’?
8. Exclusive: Top ECD leaves Ford Europe, joins one year old South African agency
9. Mixed reviews for online launch of news brand eNCA
10 The Dissident Spin Doctor: Preparing for the booze marketing clamp down

Angelina Jolie has something to say

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.

Shelf Life: ‘Designed to Move’

Louise Marsland’s (@Louise_Marsland) pick of new product, packaging and design launches.

P&G hopes to clean up in the detergent market; Gucci gets Guilty; Brand Your Car hits the sweet spot; and Nike does it again…

Your obsession with pandering to 18-34 year-olds is decades out of date

by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian), San Francisco Bay One of the enduring absurdities of the marketing and advertising industries is the old wives’ tale that “people over 50 want to be like young people.”

Ask any brain-dead CMO of a car company why the people who inhabit his commercials are all young, when 18-24 year-olds buy 1% of all new cars, and you’ll get some version of that idiocy.

It’s what passes for “strategic thinking” in the Golden Age of Marketing Brilliance.

Yeah, I was having coffee with Jerry Seinfeld, Meryl Streep and Barack Obama the other day and they were telling me how much they aspire to be like the morons in Taco Bell and Coors Light commercials.

Newspaper circulation decline continues

The ABC has released circulation statistics for the period January 2013 – March 2013. Here are a couple of numbers that stood out in terms of newspaper circulations.

Daily newspapers

Beeld declined to 67,700 from 75,019 in the previous corresponding period. Pretoria News fell to 18,775 from 21,406. Sowetan held steady at 98,258 (compared to 98,128). The Star fell to 106,484 from 124,641.

The Cape Argus fell to 33,247 from 35,493, The Cape Times fell to 35,616 from 39,519. Die Burger (Eastern & Western Cape editions combined) rose sligtly to 62,237 from 61,980.

Daily News fell to 32,002 from 34,173. Isolezwe declined slightly to 116,186 from 117,266. The Witness fell to 19,001 from 20,222 and The Mercury fell to 31,025 from 32,098.

Business Day fell to 33,690 from 35,897. The Citizen fell to 63,854 from 68,632. The Times declined slightly to 142,117 from 142,111.

On the tabloid front the Daily Sun fell from 375,185 to 296,489 (it stood at 322,324 in Q4 2012). Son fell to 92,213 from 104,696

The biggest circulating consumer magazines in SA

The ABC has released circulation statistics for the period January 2013 to March 2013. Here are a couple of consumer magazine ABC numbers that popped out for us. We also updated our list of the biggest circulating consumer magazines in SA!

Note: We compare the current figures with the same figures for this time last year and not with the previous quarter!

Magazines not entertained

On the previous quarter we reported that the ABC figures for music magazine Tempo (from the Huisgenoot brand extension stable) dropped from 62,928 (Q4 2011) to 39,991 (Q4 2012). Well, in Q1 it managed to claim an ABC of exactly 39,991 once again. We smell BS.

Heat fell to 29,422 from 30,193 (but its up on Q4 2012 when it stood at 27,945). People fell to 82,464 from 87,179. TV Plus (Afrikaans) fell to 37,752 from 40,385 and twin title TV Plus (English) declined to 41,594 from 47,140.

Bona fell to 98,267 from 106,981, Drum fell to 121,768 from 138,007, Huisgenoot declined to 285,520 from 298,262 and YOU fell to 165,330 from 181,071 (up from 155,125 in Q4 2012). Reader’s Digest fell to 28,378 from 31,486 for the previous corresponding period. In Q4 2012 it had hit 40,269 – so it’s a bit of a shocker for a title than many have kicked to the curb already.

The Big Issue did very well for itself jumping to 15,074 from 10,651.

Rolling Stone was critised for not publishing its ABC figuires in the last two quarters. They are back in but shows a steady decline – down to 7,155 from 15,889 (total paid: 5,755). This can’t be a sustainable figure surely?

The Red Bulletin slashed circulation to 38,425 from 69,700 (total paid: 19).

Dentsu – not just big in Japan as group focuses on international markets, digital

Tokyo based communications group Dentsu Inc., which recently completed a deal to acquire Aegis Group, has released its 2012 financial report.

The group posted 1,941.2 Billion Yen in Consolidated Billings (Net Sales) (2.5% year-on-year increase), 58.4 Billion Yen in Operating Income (12.5% increase), 59.0 Billion Yen in Ordinary Income (6.1% decrease) and 36.3 Billion Yen in Net Income (22.9% increase). It recorded a gross profit of 345,940 million yen, an increase of 3.9%

Dentsu reports a gradual recovery in the Japanese advertising market following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, but continued uncertainty in Europe and a slow-down in China. Dentsu’s estimate for advertising expenditures in Japan for the 2012 calendar year was 5,891.3 billion yen, an increase of 3.2% compared with the 2011 calendar year – the first increase in five years.