August 2013 Archive • Page 5 of 5 •

The Switch: Pitching is like begging at an intersection

by Alistair Mokoena (@AlistairMokoena) Clients don’t enjoy advertising pitches any more than motorists enjoy stopping at a traffic light. We are all trying to leave a stranger with a lasting impression and we are all under huge time pressure.
There was a time not so long ago when all you saw at traffic lights were stories of poverty and strife and all you heard were heart-felt pleas for money and food. You still get a lot of that but in the main, begging has evolved, possibly in direct response to the impact of the global recession. The recession has increased the number of people begging and it has also left many would-be donors with little or no money to donate, resulting in a scramble for a smaller benevolent pie.

In their desperation to make ends meet, people begging have turned to … the power of branding. You can no longer paint them with the same brush. Their tools now range from a neutral plea for help to a bartering system where the donor receives a blessing, a clean windscreen, a garbage free car, gardening services, a joke, a trick, even a dance routine, in return for a small donation.

Africa Style: The art of ukushela — ‘courtship’

by Masingita Mazibuko. A fantastically intelligent friend of mine is ever at the mercy of eager men yearning for her attention. Some are suave, having mastered the art of ukushela, or courtship. Others, well, the art of courtship seems to elude them. In my opinion, courtship is no different to what we do when we seek to recruit consumers and build their relationships with our brands.

Waldimar Pelser: “Our rivals on Sunday aren’t other papers; it’s going on a picnic or lying in”

They started on the same day – June 1 this year – and that’s not the only similarity between Waldimar Pelser, the new editor of Rapport, and Bongani Siqoko, editor of the Daily Dispatch.

Both are young editors and are former news editors; both have studied in the UK (Pelser at the elite Oxford University). Both men are very much of their communities and have all sorts of interesting things up their sleeves.

Crucially, both must try grow circulation in this toughest of times in the newspaper industry.

For Pelser, who has been both a foreign correspondent covering Africa and the news editor of Beeld, that means achieving a balance between having stories that are of interest to readers and those that are in the public interest – and not forgetting about reputation and premium-quality journalism packages.

“Circulation is never the only thing one chases,” he told Grubstreet. “Of course, it pays our salaries and we constantly have to find and organically develop new markets. But if it were the only thing that mattered, you would put on the front page that which aims squarely at the lowest common denominator – and probably push up nudity and sex and alarmist politics. But none of these things, we believe, is really in the interest of our readers or journalism as a trade on even the future of democracy.

Getting grads into adland

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Ogilvy last year trialled a programme to get graduates in the fields of marketing and design interested in advertising and the agency. It met with considerable success, landed Ogilvy with four new staffers, upskilled a bunch of students and helped steer many more into a career in advertising.

The Ogilvy Graduate Programme (OGP) already targets students in ad schools and has a good intern programme in place, according to Lauren Woolf, Marketing Director at Ogilvy and Mather South Africa, but the agency also wanted to look beyond those already set on a career in advertising. Last year it teamed up with several tertiary institutions in the Western Cape and Gauteng and encouraged varsity students to enter the Graduate programme. They would not be competing for an internship but for a salaried, permanent position at the agency (after an initial six-month training programme).

Students were invited to conceptualise and publish a blog, which Woolf says already gave the agency insight into potential candidates a CV would not have (think topic selection, persistence, creativity etc.). They also received two challenges they had to complete, and members of the faculties where they studied helped with the final judging process, adding another layer of insight for the agency.

Dear Digital Grandad: LIKE-it or not – Facebook Page success can not just be attributed to LIKES

Dear DigitalGrandad…

How do I get 10 000 likes on our brand’s Facebook page? My MD told me it’s embarrassing when his kids ask him why only 98 people like our product. I manage an FMCG brand and we fired the PR agency that set it all up for us a while ago.

Brand Manager FMCG

Dear Un-popular

My grand-daughter got more likes on her 6th birthday party Facebook page in 1 day. So yes the MD’s kiddo has asked a valid question and just put the nail in your social media coffin! So you should be “embarrassed” or wake up and take this thing seriously like any other marketing activity.

So to be serious for a second, 98 fans depending on who you are as a business may not be that bad as a starting point. If you’re a small business selling cuddly toys from home – great start I would say!

But as you mentioned you are a FMCG brand, then it sounds like you have a problem and not thought this through!

MagLove: Men’s Health Italy skips the cookie cutter cover

by MediaSlut (@mediaslut) The best international and local magazine covers in MagLove this week: Variety (Power of Youth), ICON, COMPLEX, Men’s Health Italy, and Playboy South Africa.

Social media puts HR ethics under the spotlight

by Karen Sutherland, Monash University Social media has definitely changed the game for job-seekers and recruiters. Traditionally, HR recruiters placed an advertisement, sifted through the responses, and interviewed the shortlisted candidates before appointing the best interviewee with the best references. Those days are over.

The increase in social media adoption has provided recruiters with access to volumes of information about candidates that they were never before privy to. With this vast amount of candidate data at their fingertips, recruiters may struggle with the ethical implications regarding how much they let this information influence their decisions when appointing staff.

Limited research has been undertaken in Australia in relation to this issue. However, research from the Unites States suggests that HR recruiters are using social media in two ways: to find candidates and to screen them after receiving their applications.

The jury is still out on the effectiveness of social networking sites such as LinkedIn as recruitment tools, although, they have been described as a “shop window” for recruiters searching for suitable employees. A US study of 1000 recruiters found that 92% used or planned to use social media as part of their recruitment strategy and 93% chose LinkedIn as their most favoured tool for this process.

While the potential savings to time and costs may be enticing for recruiters using social media instead of traditional methods, this practice limits the field exclusively to social media users. If social media skills are not a key selection criterion, limiting the candidate pool to only those with a social media presence could be deemed as unethical and discriminatory. It is unfair for candidates to be excluded purely because they have not jumped on the social media bandwagon. Additionally, recruiters could be overlooking quality candidates by limiting the field.

Shelf Life: Kraft SA becomes Mondelez (just don’t say it in Russia)

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

A new purple logo for Kraft Foods SA and a name change; collaboration is the game for Lego and Cartoon Network; adidas runs an experiment and Tile Africa renovates its logo.

The Ad Contrarian: The five dumbest ideas about online advertising

by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) The phenomenal rise of the internet as a medium of communication, information, and entertainment has given rise to some equally phenomenal conceptual flops about advertising. Today, we take inventory of these dumb ideas. We have selected our five favorites and we present them to you in one neat little bundle, in no particular order, but numbered to keep you on track.