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ABC Analysis Q4 2012: Content marketers see mixed ABC results for custom print titles

The ABC still talks about custom magazines, magazines published on behalf of brands or organisations, even as the companies producing these magazines now prefer to talk about content marketing, and refer to themselves as content marketers rather than publishers.

For the ABC period October 2012 to December 2012, the custom magazine category saw a significant decline as the total number of magazines circulated (per issue) falling to 12,704,431 from 13,416,345. This was primarily because two of the cellular giants pulled the plug on their custom titles. Vodacom discontinued Vodacom Now! (circ 866,090) as did Cell C with its namesake title (circ 126,446). Click sheared nearly 200 000 copies from its club magazine. Dish Commercial (160,424) also closed).

Shelf Life: Design Indaba special edition

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

It’s all about Design Indaba this week and what we learnt about beautiful things, product design and innovation.

Our current obsession with “engagement” is misguided

by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian), San Francisco Bay Back in high school there were people who were “heavy users” of sex. Remember them?

They often had one characteristic in common — they were promiscuous. They didn’t just have lots of sex with one person. As we used to say, they “got around.”

The world of commerce is like that, too. Heavy users in a category tend to be promiscuous. They tend to try lots of different brands in the category. They get around.

Design Indaba 2013: God, war and the future at Design Indaba

by Louise Marsland’s (@Louise_Marsland) I’ve been attending Design Indaba conferences for eight years and while the speakers and the disciplines differ every year, there are always a couple of speakers that completely blow you away, either in their wonderful delivery, content or total inspiration.

The one thing I always take away with me is hope for the future. For my children, for our industry, for our planet and our very humanity.

The speakers at Design Indaba are carefully chosen to challenge conventional thinking, to push boundaries, to inspire.

I always tell people going for their first Indaba not to judge too quickly, to listen to speakers in fields that are not their own, to keep an open mind, not to make too many meetings at or outside the Indaba, but to immerse themselves in the experience. It will change the way you think about your own business and industry.

These are my best Design Indaba moments of 2013, the speakers who challenged me and inspired me…

The Switch: Try marriage vows

by Alistair Mokoena (@AlistairMokoena) The client-agency relationship is often referred to as a marriage. Even though this feels like a colloquial use of the term, it is not a misnomer. In fact, there are many elements of the client–agency relationship that bear similarity to a marriage.

Africa Style: Social context and your brand

by Masingita Mazibuko. Given the prevailing megatrends of Tech Life and Social Cohesion, the increasingly important role of Tech Life in enabling social cohesion is becoming clearer.

TEDActive 2013: Mankind’s Greatest Invention Coming To A Species Near You

by James Yeats Smith, filed from TEDActive 2013, Palm Springs. Thursday, 28 February. The day started with serious speed and intent.

Building metrics to ensure effectiveness in ad campaigns

by Odette van der Haar (@odette_roper), CEO, Association for Communication and Advertising What does effective mean? In the business of advertising and communications, we define it as ‘delivering a measurable business result.’ With the squeeze on budgets and the general malaise in the economy, the ability to prove effectiveness of any communications campaign has become more critical than ever.

The APEX awards have long been established as the standard by which effectiveness can be judged. However, the principles that govern APEX are not applicable only to award entries – there is in fact a leading agency that runs a mini-APEX process for every single campaign that it executes because effectiveness is paramount and ingrained in the culture and business practise of the agency. This discipline intended to ensure that campaigns are not only creative and deliver brand resonance but that they also deliver business results in a tangible and measurable manner that is meaningful to the client. The success of the agency is a testament to exactly this.

It is important for marketers to understand the interplay between creativity and effectiveness, allowing the agency to deliver holistic creative solutions whilst also working with the agency to build-in the kind of metrics that will allow for the effectiveness of the campaign to be measured.

Design Indaba 2013: Daan Roosegaarde – hacking technology to personalise our environments

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Well before Daan Roosegaarde ever set foot in this country South Africans were already lining up to see if there might be opportunities to collaborate with the Dutch born artist and innovator.

Roosegaarde is known for exploring the relationships between technology, architecture and people, as with his Smart Highway project, which aims to create interactive and sustainable roads as part of our future landscapes.

Vehicles generating light through wind technology, dynamic lanes, using photoluminescent paint (that charges with sunlight) to create glow in the dark traffic lanes without the need for street lighting, induction priority lanes that charges electric cars as they drive. Roosegaarde wants roads to be more interactive and poetic as they form an essential aspect of our physical environment but has seen little innovation in the past century.

Design Indaba 2013: John Maeda on the dissipating disconnect between art and technology

by Herman Manson (@marklives) John Maeda (@johnmaeda) describes himself as a “humanist technologist.” Through his love for art and technology, and his belief that together they can advance technology that acknowledges our humanity, Maeda has emerged as an important thinker in our approach to both.

Currently president of Rhode Island School of Design, Maeda is a leading proponent for expanding our focus from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) to STEAM (by adding Art).

Formerly a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he has published five books including The Laws of Simplicity (2006) and is an acknowledged artist and graphic designer. Maeda also sits on the board of ad agency Wieden+Kennedy amongst others.

Maeda is visiting South Africa as a speaker at the annual Design Indaba conference taking place Feb 27 – March 1. MarkLives spoke to him prior to his arrival in South Africa.