Louise Marsland (@Louise_Marsland)’s weekly pick of recent product, packaging and design launches: Native makes an Absolut statement; get the skinny on McCain’s new fries; and Bain’s Cape Mountain Whisky expands marketing strategy.
Category archives: Marketing
Dissident Spin Doctor: Dear brands, (please stop) the dumb things you do
by Emma King (@EmmainSA) It’s interesting to look at what our partners — the brands we work with — should not do, or should stop doing. Here are some of the things that bug me the most.
Shelf Life: Smeg Professional launches in SA
Louise Marsland (@Louise_Marsland)’s weekly pick of recent product, packaging and design launches: new vodka inspires Absolut Elyx luxury lounge; Elizabeth Arden makeup range launches through Salon Media; and Smeg goes professional in South Africa via Munaaz.
The Real McCoy: When service delivery becomes a ‘vomit word’
by Sean McCoy (@TheRealMcCoyTRM) This is not intended to be a political article but rather a brutal assault on the notion of internal branding and the alignment of institutional capacity in the delivery of the expressed promise to market — in this case, the government to the general public.
Brand Politics: The rules of branding ayisafani
by Alistair Mackay (@almackay) One good thing to have come out of this #ayisafani debacle, I hope, is that it has taught white South Africans a bit about conjugation in isiZulu! The phrase, which translates as “it is no longer the same”, has been expertly used by the Democratic Alliance in a recent campaign across TV and social media.
Africa Style: Social and the lost art of conversation
by Masingita Mazibuko. How does a brand get noticed in a world where people are swamped by stimuli or, in another, where they have opted not to engage with devices and the media that they deliver?
The Ad Contrarian: The power of precision guessing
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) We know that consumer behaviour is often irrational. We also know that consumers tend to be pragmatic and don’t like to throw their money around on junk. So how do we reconcile these two seeming contradictions?
Green Sky Thinking: What millennials want
by Colwyn Elder (@colwynelder) In order to attract this generation’s future leaders, thinkers and consumers, business needs to emphasise innovation and positive societal impacts. This is according to Deloitte’s Global Millennial Survey 2013.
The Real McCoy: The broken value chain of air travel
by Sean McCoy (@TheRealMcCoyTRM) How complete is our value chain, really, and to what extent are we looking at the service experience across the whole of it? Do we take accountability for the full user journey, or do we pass the buck when service delivery gets tough and problematic, blaming our inefficiencies on a whole host of factors, other than that we’ve never really addressed it internally or possibly just neglect it?
The Dissident Spin Doctor: Business mistakes that hold us back from being great
by Emma King (@EmmainSA) One of the key things Jim Collin discovered is that “…great companies did not focus principally on what to do to become great; they focused equally on what not to do and what to stop doing”. So what are we, as PR and communications agencies, doing that perhaps we shouldn’t?