by Bongani Chinkanda (@bonchiachanza) The time has come for us to apply design thinking in solving our wicked problems and creating a better future for the generations to come.
Context
Our country has been blessed with beautiful beaches, wildlife, mountain ranges only a European may dream of — and that’s just on nature side. As I drive up on Rivonia Road past Morningside on my right and Daytona/Sandton Auto on my left through Sandhurst — what the first-world is made of— my drive takes me past Constitutional Hill, and suddenly I’m aware of how unsafe my surroundings have become.
Where did all these people come from? Why is that fool driving like that? Hey, watch it! I don’t have money, I say to the 14-year-old who looks like he last took a bath when he was 12. His eyes are bloodshot red and it’s not just from a lack of sleep. Oh, I’m in Joburg CBD.
I’ve just driven past Joburg Gen; I don’t like that hospital. I still remember dropping my aunt off early one winter morning, when she was in pain. When we arrived, the hospital didn’t have a stretcher for her. When we finally got one after a 30min wait, it was broken. That cold Jozi day, I will never forget. I had to rush back to my client meetings; when I called at 8pm, the doctor had still not attended to my aunt. She was in pain! Is this happening here and now in South Africa in 2015? No, I thought! My aunt’s story didn’t end well. But that’s not the point of this article.
Wicked problems
While we drive our children to a ‘Saint’ something in the north of Joburg in our German sedans, worried about the two-hour parties we have to attend on the weekend, the majority of our population are facing wicked problems. Lack of water, sanitation, basic health care and constant blackouts and no, it’s not loadshedding. As we complain about Pikitup missing one day of refuse removal, down the road in Diepsloot there is a family living next to a refuse dump. It’s become a joke on a popular morning show in Gauteng how every morning there is a service delivery protest. Really!!! Have the issues of the majority of the population become white noise that it doesn’t shock us anymore when we hear how a retired grandmother’s pension is stolen by her own grandchild to buy drugs?
This is a marketing and advertising publication; I know you are thinking, “Get to the point!” That thought is my exact point. In an industry where billions are spent on TVCs each year on those — what do we call them again when we present to client… “aspirational products”? — not marketing to kids can’t only be our stamp on being part of the communities we sell in. Having a warning sign of how addictive a product is isn’t enough. If my lastborn, who is five this year, faces the same challenges in 30 years’ time, then we’ve failed as a generation of creatives and marketers.
What is design thinking? It’s a term I like, because I find out-of-the-box thinking so ’90s.
Changing consumers’ lives
On a serious note, it’s is about using our available resources (intellect, finances, assets) in a innovate ways in solving consumer problems (no, it’s not about creating a need to use more airtime); it’s about how, as an airtime provider, you make the consumer spend that airtime more effectively to change his or her life.
But back to wicked problems. We’ve given out enough caps and T-shirts to last us a life time. Doesn’t it make sense for brands to now go into communities and give away solar panels to schools and clinics, as an example? Yes, we’d brand them.
I think the majority of our population wants to see the brands they love do good. And, no, I’m not talking about a CSI project. What makes it fine for a bank to have a green affinity card for its environmentally conscious carbon-footprint tracker, and not a medicine for my clinic card for its lower LSM customer? Do we think a DJ with sound and a stage is what these consumers want from a brand in 2016? I think not. Yes, entertainment has its place, but how many gig rigs will it take for us to see lasting legacies left by our favourite tinned-beans brand or cereal?
We can do better
We can do better than keyrings and lanyards or the billboards with German sedans parked outside a townhouse. It’s fine to believe that people have to dream. But when drugs, unemployment and a lack of sanitation are my daily reality, I’ll pass on the luxury car for today.
The next time we all sit on the table and we have R30m to spend on a product launch — of which R2m is going to keyrings and umbrellas — think of sparing R350k for buying a solar-powered computer lab. Trust me, this will have more impact, not only for this generation but for the next. And, yes, you can brand it, making it a permanent billboard.
The opportunities are there in the form of wicked problems; executional innovation is how we’ll engage our communities who have supported us for years, with the messaging that we care!
OPPORTUNITY+INNOVATION+MESSAGING.
Bongani Chinkanda (@bonchiachanza) is founder and MD of Dzuwa South (www.dzuwa.co.za), an ideas agency that is co-creating with brands to touch lives through the power of human truths. He is also business director at communications agency, Stretch.
“Motive” is a by-invitation-only column on MarkLives.com. Contributors are picked by the editors but generally don’t form part of our regular columnist lineup, unless the topic is off-column.
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