by Herman Manson (@marklives) Once Springleap was famous for the funky but rather expensive T-shirts it produced through crowd-sourced design. Now the business has dropped clothing and embraced a new research-centric role under MD and head of commercialisation, Trevor Wolfe, through focusing upon its creative insights division, plus offering an alternative to conventional research panels.
Having launched the T-shirt business in 2009 — bringing threadless.com to South Africa, really — its founders soon realised that fashion retail was a tough game, especially in SA where the local clothing industry was well on its way to collapse [helped on by cheap imports from China].
New ways of leveraging
What with a database of some 17 000 designers, the company soon turned its attention to finding new ways of leveraging its powerful design community into a broader marketing play. Initially it did this by activating design competitions through its community of designers on behalf of sponsoring clients.
Now it’s ditched both with the help of US$1.1m in seed money from new investors and Wolfe, a native of New Mexico in the US, who previously served as director of marketing at New York-based Moveline, a moving app/website.
Wolfe was also senior marketing manager at Gerson Lehrman Group (a membership-based marketplace for business expertise) and marketing manager at WPP-owned Kantar Video. Today, he heads up Springleap in SA while founder Eran Eyal is raising finance in the US.
Nobody every called him back
Upon joining Springleap 15 months ago, Wolfe initially hired a sales team to sell its co-creation offering to clients; the company was crowd-sourcing design solutions for agencies and brands. He says meetings always went well but nobody ever called him back.
He then switched track from sales to customer development — Springleap still had a network of creatives; now he asked clients how they would like to access that talent base.
The answer turns out to be two-fold. First the company launched its insights division in January 2015; according to Wolfe, it allows Springleap to use creatives for their minds and not just their pens!
Monthly trend reports
Using its network of creatives to build up market intelligence, this is pulled into monthly trend reports. The first three market reports are already up and running, having launched in March 2015. Five more monthly reports on other key African markets will soon be rolled out.
For the SA report, the company worked with 50 creatives from around the country to gather on-the-ground intelligence on local brand activity and emerging trends; local media influencers, personalities and social media were also identified. Trends were also dissected by the creatives (they were paid for their services).
Reports are sold onto agencies and may be used in multiple departments (yes, most agencies still have multiple departments), including strategy and creative. Currently, the reports sell for R10 000 a month and may run to as much as 160 pages.
Panels of local creatives
The other part of the new offer is an innovative take on consumer panels by essentially replacing these with panels of local creatives.
Because Springleap knows its designers well, it is able to create panels with relevant category experience that can test marketing concepts or creative work. Panels also offer feedback on local market conditions, client products and brands, category competitors, etc. They may serve as an additional review process for agencies and brands looking to find local nuances, be that in Alex or Alexandria.
Springleap has creatives available throughout Africa and the Middle East, enabling concept testing across multiple markets (the service is called Sense Check). According to Wolfe, most of its current work tends to be pan-African.
Scaling as a global business
Wolfe says that Springleap intends scaling as a global business; its network of 22 000 creatives are currently spread over 30 African markets (and 60 markets globally). It is quickly expanding that base and, as more funding comes on board, will scale into the US. For now, key markets for the company include SA, the Middle East, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola.
Wolfe acknowledges that repositioning Springleap in the market as a creative research house is tough going, especially given its well-publicised T-shirt design legacy. SA agencies are also more focused upon improving excellence, rather than innovation, so getting them to take a leap of faith isn’t easy. Even so, the company turned its first-ever profitable month in January 2015, and the trend reports are at a stage where they are financing themselves.
Springleap is currently raising another US$1m to finance expansion into the US and possibly Asia, he adds.
‘Meta-consumers’
He believes creative minds add a different perspective and beat plain consumer testing by a wide margin. He calls his creatives ‘meta-consumers’: people entrenched in marketing and branding, and with a unique ability to review brands and products and articulate their insights.
Agency clients include OFyt, Ogilvy & Mather SA, Platinum Seed, Integer and Saatchi & Saatchi Brandsrock. Brand clients include Builders Warehouse, Clover and Nestle. Springleap employs 16 people at offices in Cape Town, Johannesburg and New York.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.
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