by Herman Manson (@marklives) How does a small mobile marketing agency morph into a R65m digital and mobile publishing and ad-sales business you’ve probably never heard of? For starters, you get ahead in the game — in this instance, the mobile game.
Launched in 2009 by Desere Orrill and Tim Legg as MobiMedia, the duo quietly built a customer base for their strategy-lead mobile marketing agency. Legg had worked for a wireless application service provider, while Orrill had worked on marketing in the hospitality industry. Both realised mobile was a marketer’s game that went beyond bulk messaging.
Merged expertise
Merging their expertise, they worked with media houses and brands and, by 2011, had a 12-person-strong agency.
One of their publishing clients was TEAMtalk Media, then owned by UK broadcaster Sky Broadcasting. They invested in the company in 2012 and lead a management buyout. Suddenly, they were a marketing agency that owned a publishing business and added 60 members to their staff.
Orrill and Legg set about changing the focus and culture of the media business. They set up content-syndication deals for the various sport media properties they now owned, including football411.com, planetrugby.com, planetf1.com, planetsport.com, cricket365.com, golf365.com and extreme365.com, to brands and other publishers.
Syndication
Today, the group’s sports content, and more recently news and entertainment content, is syndicated to brands such as Sky Sports, SuperSport, Primedia, Times Media, Orange, Virgin, MTN, Vodacom, MSN, and Yahoo. TEAMTalk is the exclusive data licence holder for the English Premier League in Africa and provides the official match-data-gathering service to the PSL. TEAMtalk Media is also the official sales house for Sky.com, skysports.com and News.Sky.com in Africa.
In addition, it set about building a real-time online ad buying/bidding company, called AddSwitch (since writing, it has been clarified that the company Addswitch rebranded to AddSuite end of last month, and this company has the rights to the tool “Switch”), which is also available to other publishers (current clients include IOL, Bidorbuy and Gumtree) to place unsold inventory, and which is already profitable. AddSuite now offers as many as 50-billion impressions a month in inventory to brands.
Currently, the business manages ad inventory for client sites, including Manchester United. Apart from the ad-bidding tool for unsold inventory, Ole Media also sells premium inventory directly to brands.
With an offering that stretches from marketing to publishing and ad sales business, Ole! Media Group officially emerged in 2013.
Digital as pollinator
Through the mobile agency, Ole Media has also expended to establish a digital agency called HoneyKome. Orrill sees digital as a pollinator for all media, hence the name.
The agency is strategically lead by Dylan Kruger, the former head of strategy at HelloComputer Cape Town. The idea of cross-pollination works throughout the group, as the mobile and digital agencies, the ad sales platform and the content house can all be rolled out to offer client solutions.
Sticking to staying one step ahead in the game, Orrill says the group has just acquired* an online production house called LoveDigital. Digital is visual, argues Orrill and, right now, visual is video. The unit will produce content for TEAMTalk Media and clients.
Independent operations
Each of the Ole Media Group companies operate independently, with its own manager and business targets. According to Orrill, if one does particularly well, everybody feels proud, and if one stumbles, the rest are there to back you up. Around 80% of Ole Media Group revenue comes from publishing, while the rest is generated by the agency businesses. Orrill says the current structure allows units to remain small and flexible.
Ole Media Group has offices in London, from where it services some of its UK clients and manages the relationship with Sky, and more recently in Kenya. The Johannesburg office is sales-driven, while production takes place in Cape Town.
*A previous version of this story had that LoveDigital had been launched.
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