MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
Category archives: Media
New generic top level domains hold dangers for brands, democratisation of Internet
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body responsible for the Internet’s naming system, is working its way through nearly two thousand applications for New Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) names.
Magazine covers we love (wait – is that fingerpaint?)
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
MarkLives refused media accreditation to The Loerie Award shows (again)
by Herman Manson (@marklives) MarkLives (or to be more precise, me) have been refused media accreditation to the award shows at the 2012 Loerie Awards.
Lebogang Mohaule, Media Assistant at The Loerie Awards, confirmed that no accreditation to the two main award events would be forthcoming. Mohaule offered a single seminar pass for the rather grandiosely named International Seminar of Creativity taking place on Friday 21 September at Cape Town’s City Hall instead. I would also have access to “online press kits & official image gallery.”
Mohaule claims the Loeries “are following the same accreditation process used by the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity” in which accreditation “is not based on the type of media you represent, rather [on] the planned media coverage.”
“Because we now receive more applications that we have availability, we have to determine the most suitable accreditation for each application,” wrote Mohaule. “If a media plan is not deemed of sufficient value, we do not provide accreditation.”
IOL deal helped transform Primedia Online as turnover jumps 38%
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Primedia Online is evolving from an online publisher with a sales capacity into a major online sales house following its partnership with Independent Newspapers to take over the sales function of its online properties held in IOL at the start of the year.
The company absorbed the online sales team of IOL and its impact on revenues and the company has been significant says Primedia Online CEO Tanja Lategan.
Lategan has been spending the past year consolidating the business after taking over from Nikki Cockcroft. Sales and traffic staff have been moved into a single space – Lategan says although they have traditionally been seen as two teams their goals are closely aligned in terms of delivering returns to clients. Incentives have been aligned for both teams as has work schedules (same incentive means same overtime when required). Turnover has jumped 38%.
Yo-Landi Vi$$er we love
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
BBC interview with father of Chad le Clos and why it is a loss for the free Internet
by Herman Manson (@marklives) In a stunning victory South African swimmer Chad le Clos took gold in the 200m butterfly at London 2012. Le Clos’s father, Bert, was being interviewed by the BBC shortly after Le Clos received his medal. His father, emotional and excited at once, gave an interview pundits in the States have referred to as the “media moment of the games so far.”
South Africans accessing the BBC website wanting to watch the interview with the farther of their newly minted national hero will receive nothing but the le clos father bbc interviewfollowing message “Cannot play media. Sorry, this media is not available in your territory.”
For the International Olympics Committee the free Internet is not a place to cross borders or a showcase of international co-operation. It is a stumbling block in coining it (more than usual).
Magazine covers we love (Olympic style)
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
Kate Wilson of Women’s Health: “I’m not building a magazine brand”
by Herman Manson (@marklives) While her rivals are seeing circulation declines Kate Wilson, editor of Women’s Health SA, just saw the title’s total paid circulation rise 8.4% year-on-year to reach 78 791. Women’s Health has now overtaken both Cosmopolitan and Glamour’s total paid circulation figures.
But Wilson isn’t building a magazine brand, she says, instead she is building a multi-platform content brand. In fact the Women’s Health SA launched a website in the country before the physical magazine arrived and has built various digital content modules into the Women’s Health brand strategy. Extensions like DVD and booklet cover mounts often draw from other aspects of the business (so a booklet might contain extracts from a book you get to order from the publisher). Next year will see events drawn into the mix.
Of course the brand could also draw on the visibility of sibling Men’s Health which Wilson says helps double the facings of for her magazine.
But ultimately it is the service journalism in the health and wellness field particularly that has near universal appeal. Wilson says she won’t apologise for the ‘layer of superficiality’ in women (or anybody else) wanting to look their best. For Wilson looking your best translates into feeling your best and health, nutrition and weight-loss are all issues we have some control over in a time of great economic uncertainty.
Women’s Health also encourages its resident experts and columnists to maintain media visibility and this network keeps reinforcing the Women’s Health brand where-ever they go.
Smartphones surge by 40,9% at Vodacom
Vodacom issued a trading statement yesterday morning that shows smartphones active on the network surging by 40,9% in South Africa in the last quarter, even as local revenue growth remains flat, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee)..
Smartphones active on the Vodacom network in South Africa surged by 40,9% in the quarter ended 30 June 2012, according to a trading vodacom pontestatement issued by the Group yesterday morning.
Highlights of the Vodacom Group Limited trading statement for the quarter ended 30 June 2012 included:
– Group service revenue growth up 8.7% (5.7%*)