Celebrity CEO Meg Whitman grabbed the headlines at last week’s HP Global Partner Summit, but the key moment was presided over by Jim Zafarana, head of workstations. We ask him about the company’s rebirth.

Lowe Bull is rebranding as Lowe + Partners South Africa after the international parent company acquired a majority share in the local agency. Its two offices become Lowe Johannesburg and Lowe Cape Town.

During a round-table interview with a group of South African journalists, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop dropped strong hints about the company’s entry into the tablet market.

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.

Omar Sosa co-founded the magazine Apartamento, which bills itself as “an everyday life interiors magazine” but which the New York Times’ T Magazine called “The burgeoning indie design movement’s official international look book”, with business partner Nacho Alegre.

by Herman Manson Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide has announced the rollout of Social@Ogilvy (@SocialOgilvy), a unit that promises to deliver social media solutions to Ogilvy clients, and which will operate across numerous marketing disciplines such as advertising, direct marketing and public relations. The new unit promises to offer brands a broader and more strategically integrated [...]

At a conference in Amsterdam and a launch in South Africa last week, BlackBerry and Nokia respectively revealed that they would remain a formidable force in Africa.

Still using a custom phone number that lets callers key in a word instead of a number? Well, your number is obsolete, along with several other innovations you thought were cutting edge.

Adrian Hewlett, CEO and founder of the Habari Group, has combined his group’s significant through-the-line, below-the-line, research, digital and social businesses to launch a major new independent advertising agency called Machine.

Although Jamie Meyer’s background is predominantly digital, he has always had a love of illustration and drawn all his life.

Toffie Pop’s event poster doubles up as a street art kit. The shapes on the posters can be cut out and the best street art submission wins two tickets to Toffie Pop worth R1500 in total. Entries should be submitted by posting it on the Toffie Pop Facebook Page wall (www.facebook.com/toffiefestival). Posters can be collected from Church Giftshop at 12 Spin St in the Cape Town CBD.

View some of the entries received so far!

Alistair King, group creative director of the King James Group, doesn’t bother to hide his enthusiasm for the latest, possibly bravest, move within his agency to further define its offering in a competitive market, where budgets are shifting from above-the-line to integrated campaigns and what was traditionally considered below-the-line work.

Twitter can now censor tweets by country. National borders, drawn on paper and defended with razor wire and guns in the physical world, now have a presence on the internet as well. You won’t find politicians complaining — but maybe the rest of us should.

London-based media company PHD Worldwide, a part of the Omnicom Media Group, recently stepped up its investment in the South African market with its purchase of a 70% shareholding in strategic media planning company page three.

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 MediaSlutZA.

Tomas Roope has been doing multimedia since 1991. That was before most of the rest of us even realised it existed. So listen closely.

A small Cape Town agency has just taken the Spur account and brought on board the former executive creative director of Draftfcb – Francois de Villiers. Haas Collective is a creative collective run by Mike Orrey, one of the founders of Orrey, Rightford & Drysdale Advertising (ORD Advertising) and Glynn Venter, a former ECD of the Draftfcb through-the-line studio.

Microsoft has launched The Microsoft Advertising Story Awards (MSAs), which invites marketers from 30 countries across the world to submit a campaign idea for a brand or nonprofit of their choice using Microsoft Advertising’s storytelling platforms (including MSN, Mobile, Windows Live, Xbox, Messenger, etc.).

Y&R’s Land Rover Defender ‘Jumper’ print ad made the front cover of the latest issue of Lürzer’s ARCHIVE – “200 Best Automotive Ads 2000-2010 worldwide”. Lürzer’s ARCHIVE is a leading ad industry collection. The ad was originated and shot in Cape Town, but was scheduled for publication in the UK.

Loerie and Pendoring Awards join forces during Creative Week

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 MediaSlutZA.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) Monday announced that it was replacing its co-CEOs with Thorsten Heins, ostensibly paving the way for a new phase in product evolution, but possibly also preparing it for sale.

The new poster released by the Democratic Alliance Student Organisation (DASO) yesterday has, to put it mildly, caused a stir. Many commentators have quoted race, sex, and countless other reasons as to why this is a good or a bad advert. I’m going to try and stay away from the obvious ‘traditional’ South African tensions and dissect this from a brand and advertising point of view.

Martin MacGregor, the former MD at Nota Bene MEC Cape Town, has joined M&C Saatchi Abel as managing partner: connection (we’ll get to that in a moment).

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.

Eva Csernyanszky explains how publishers may make the leap into digital publishing

A new book explores the culture of self-publishing expressed in the zine

by Arthur Goldstuck One of the highlights of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week was the dramatic strides made in TV technology.

Everything you need to know about Facebook’s IPO (infographic)

Forget the Mayans. The real apocalypse in 2012 will come via Facebook, and Naspers will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Tony Maddox, the executive vice president and MD of CNN International, is responsible for CNN’s international news and information portfolio. Maddox, who is based at CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, is responsible for five CNN services in English; CNN en Español; CNN-IBN, CNN Turk and CNN Chile.

The rush by media owners to embrace tablets borders on the unseemly. And who can blame them given the continued decline of print revenue and resistance by folk to pay for content on the internet. Tablets, we are told, are much closer to print magazines than to the free-for-all interwebs.

So you want to start a magazine. How far do you think R1500 will take you? Quite far, it seems, as Sean O’Toole brings you a true story about the impossible.

Apple fans make many excuses for the iPhone 4S, mainly insisting that it is indeed a significant step up from the 4, and Apple never promised a 5, and there’s nothing wrong with incremental improvements, and millions are lining up to buy the 4S.

The Problem With Patents (Infographic)