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Media Redefined: The death of clutter

by Martin MacGregor (@MartMacG) Nobody looks for advertising.

It seems like an obvious statement but many conversations, when developing a campaign, may start with a premise that this is just what the consumer has been waiting for. Except they haven’t been. And they never have. And they never will. And when advertising finds you, the reaction may be anything on the scale from irritation to ambivalence to love.

Nobody chooses

This uncertainty is very disconcerting when so much time has been put into planning and executing (hopefully) a brilliant creative product and media plan. What is absolutely clear is that if consumers have the choice of not being interrupted by advertising, they will take it. Nobody chooses to be distracted. Two recent developments driven by the ever more powerful Netflix have reinforced this point

Networks in the US are now having to relook how much advertising they allow in their programming as they realise that, if they want to compete, they’re going to need to cut back on interruptive ad breaks.

Starting this autumn in the northern hemisphere (when the new TV ‘season’ starts), there’ll be substantial shrinkage across key time channels and programmes. Eg, Fox will be reducing advertising time on Sundays nights by 40%, with ad breaks no longer more than a minute and having only two 30s ads. It is calling them “JAZ” pods — Just A and Z. Nothing in between.

NBC is planning to cut the number of ads in close to 50 prime time shows by about 20%, and trying not to have more than three ads per ad break.

Spot cost

How will they make up the revenue shortfall? By increasing the spot cost, of course. They will be selling hard the concept of more effectiveness because of less clutter — and the resultant less likelihood that a viewer will switch channels. I can only imagine how heated negotiations on these debatable points must be.

Locally, we’re long way from this. DStv seems intent on trying to place as much advertising as possible across as much of its very large inventory, doing this through packages which reduce the cost of most spots to the bare minimum. Clients are happy, but I don’t think viewers are.

SABC is in too much financial trouble to even consider this. E.tv would probably argue that, as its viewers don’t pay for the channel, they must take what they get.

Opt in

The second development is something which Netflix itself has started to talk about doing which moves it in the opposite direction, yet with an important twist. It has mooted introducing limited advertising but will offer those customers who are happy with that a reduced monthly premium. If not, things will carry on as normal, paying the same rate and no advertising.

This feels like a very healthy scenario which allows for choice, and the potential compromise is well understood. I think opt-in is the future of advertising.

Both scenarios highlight the fundamental shift that has finally started to land. Shovelling unwanted ads relentlessly down people’s throats may have been the accepted way historically. Viewers, listeners and readers are no longer tolerant of this. What this means is that every brands fear of getting lost in the clutter will finally go away. Brands or consumers will have to pay, but at least the advertising has more chance of working.

Martin MacGregor (@MartMacG) is managing director of Connect, an M&C Saatchi Company, with offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Martin has spent 18 years in the industry, and has previously worked at Ogilvy and was MD of MEC Nota Bene in Cape Town. He contributes the monthly “Media Redefined” column, in which he challenges norms in the media space, to MarkLives.com.

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SA TV Ratings: SABC 1 — primetime top 20 for Aug 2018

South African TV Ratings Top 20 shows 2018

by MarkLives (@marklives) The hottest primetime shows on SABC 1 in South Africa revealed: TV ratings for August 2018.

SABC 1 August 2018

BRCSA TV Ratings August 2018 primetime SABC 1 — Click to enlarge to view clearly.

Source: BRCSA August 2018

In 2016, the Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (BRCSA) changed its policy about giving away TAMS and now only monthly reports, highlighting the top 20 or 30 primetime shows on several popular channels, are available.

The Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (the BRC) is a non-profit, industry body that was incorporated in 2015 to cater to the audience research needs of the radio and television industry in South Africa.

#AgencyFocus: Chasing big brands with big ideas & the art of narrative

by Sabrina Forbes. Apricot jam-filled sugar-coated doughnuts, a super-silent dishwasher that uses only 6.5l per cycle, the country’s most-trusted children’s school shoe, and denim inspired by a century-long story — these are just some of the products that Johannesburg-based ad agency, Decimal, gets to work with every day.

Made up of a team of 27 creative souls, and led by founder and managing director, Raffaele McCreadie, this full-service, agile agency is chasing big brands with big ideas while using the art of narrative to do so. Recent client wins such as Ster-Kinekor, Bata South Africa, and The Ellies Group show that this strategy is indeed working.

Dedication to great service

According to McCreadie, what sets the agency up to not only attain but retain clients is its unequivocal dedication to great service. For his team and him, it’s more than an obligation and part of their culture. He explains that they won the entire Bata South Africa account, not because they beat out other agencies through a big pitch process but because of the commitment to service they showed when they just had Tomy Takkies as a client. Bata HQ is in Durban and the account management team flies down every single week for a status meeting.

All Decimal clients get a well-prepared-for weekly status meeting, in person, at their offices. The agency currently has six account managers with the backing and support of the account director, whose job it is to make sure they have everything they need to give their clients the service that Decimal wants to be best known for.

All 27 team members believe that the journey from supplier to partner to friend is the holy grail for any successful agency. It’s the team’s role to get clients to the point of friends and McCreadie’s main focus to ensure they stay there.

Spotting opportunities

Anyone who’s started their own agency soon learns that business won’t simply land up on your doorstep; you have to go out and grab it for yourself before anyone else does. This is especially true when you’re smaller and less immediately recognised than the competition. Decimal won the Ster-Kinekor social media content creation and management account in September 2018; remaining hungry and continuously spotting opportunities is a powerful way to get noticed. When McCreadie cold-called the Ster-Kinekor marketing team to discuss a potential cross-brand campaign with Toughees, he never expected to be the wild card in a three-way agency pitch between Net#work BBDO and Ogilvy.

The agency is dead set against recreating presentations and passing them off as original work, and takes this mindset into all work it does.

People matter

“Make sure you have a good job and a good mattress, because you spend most of your life in them,” says McCreadie.

He believes that keeping staff happy is going to have knock-on effects, eg with their ever-important job of keeping clients happy. Everyone in this industry has been in a team or job that has slowly eaten away at their happiness and it’s because of this that he’s created an agency culture focused on mind, body, and soul. Apart from a pool table, bar and shower facilities in the offices, the agency offers yoga and guitar to those interested in the mind-and-soul part. Those who prefer to work on their bodies can leave at 4pm on a Monday if they’re going to exercise. But “Decimal is not a passenger machine; you cannot hide here,” he says. Good work is appreciated and noticed, and bad work the opposite — almost immediately.

Getting hired at Decimal is done through a three-step process that ensures all staff members are involved, the third interview being ‘the boiler room’ where everyone tries to ‘out-question’ their colleagues. You get through this and you’re in. This avoids a bad-egg hire from being blamed on McCreadie and his managerial staff, and seems to work.

Innovation snowballs

Decimal is the second agency McCreadie has started. His first, Straight Twisted, he opened almost 11 years ago but dissolved his shares to launch Decimal. Back then, it was pitching mobisites and now Decimal is creating IGTV reels for its clients. As tech continues to progress, he urges everyone to ask if their job is going to be relevant in 10/20 years’ time. Innovation snowballs and, while less than two decades ago, he remembers getting annoyed when someone didn’t rewind the VHS before returning it to the DVD store, he now has the world at his fingertips with his smart-TV. Today, you can learn anything you want with just a click and, according to him, ‘we’re certainly more weaponised with technology today’.

With an HQ in Johannesburg, a virtual office in Australia armed to expand its opportunity reach while still doing the work here in South Africa, and opportunities coming in from London and Dubai, McCreadie is incredibly proud of his team. His ultimate goal is to evolve Decimal into a global ad agency.

decimalagency.com

Office locations: Johannesburg & Brisbane
Revenue band: R20m–R30m
Staff count: 27
Key clients: B | S | H |, Bata Group, The Ellies Group, Ster Kinekor, Krispy Kreme
Services: TTL 360-degree with strong digital skew

Sabrina Forbes (IG) is an experienced and published writer covering the food, health, lifestyle, beverage, marketing and media industries. She runs her own full-stack web/app development and digital-first content creation company. For more, go to moonwrench.com. She is a contributing writer to MarkLives.com.

“#AgencyFocus” is an ongoing weekly series updating the market on ad agency performance, including business performance, innovation, initiatives, the work, awards and people.

The Martini Shot: Cooperation vital for commercial-service sector success

clapper-board-film-movie-152088 courtesy of Pixabay

by Bobby Amm. “Industry sustainability” has become the buzz word in the commercial service sector in Cape Town over the last few months, as the industry grapples with several challenges which now pose a threat to its 25-year success story.

Concerned members of the Commercial Producers Association (CPA) in August 2018 met with all sectors of the industry to discuss and workshop ways in which to revive the industry, which has become one of the Western Cape’s biggest employers and put Cape Town on the map as arguably the world’s favorite film-production center. Even the City of Cape Town offered its support and played an instrumental role in bringing all the players together to chart the way forward.

Collection of factors

So, what happened to create the situation that Cape Town currently finds itself in? The answer isn’t a simple one but rather a collection of factors — some of which the industry has control over and others which are simply a sign of the times in an unpredictable world.

1. Production costs have escalated and are now too high

Because the commercial services sector in Cape Town is very seasonal and the demand is high in the summer months, costs are invariably driven up. The effects may not be evident over a short period but, over a 10- or 15-year span, it’s become all too clear that industry-related inflation is simply too high. Cape Town has become too expensive for international clients.

2. Our currency is volatile

Added to this, the cost of international production in South Africa is closely tied into the trials and tribulations of the rand. The industry benefits from a weak rand but, when the currency strengthens, it’s challenging to get suppliers to understand that prices need to come down in response. What’s very clear is that it’s unsustainable to base the success of an industry on an unpredictable currency.

3. There are a whole lot of new and hungry competitors

Where Cape Town was one of the original production locations when it opened its doors to foreigners in the early 1990s, there are now dozens of countries which’ve set themselves up as able competitors. Many of the first wave of challengers, such as Argentina, grew very quickly and soon priced themselves out of the market. Now we have countries such as Portugal, Thailand, Croatia and even Spain competing successfully against SA for business.

4. Long-time clients have “destination fatigue”

Many international clients have been producing their commercials in SA over many years and are very familiar with Cape Town and its various locations. As destination fatigue sets in, clients are now more inclined to try out many of the new countries they may not have previously visited or worked in.

5. Global uncertainty is a big issue

International clients are more reluctant to travel due to growing global uncertainty and the increased risk in terrorism. Some clients prefer to remain closer to home, which is why Spain has recently seen a resurgence in its popularity and Portugal is on the rise.

6. Red tape and the lack of government incentives remains off-putting to clients

The SA government and its provincial authorities offer no real production incentives to international clients shooting commercials, unlike many other destinations, including Mauritius. This is off-putting to many clients which are used to taking advantage of savings offered by way of incentive packages.

Although the visa and location situation has improved in recent years, red tape remains a deterrent to international clients which value a film-friendly environment.

7. Cape Town’s drought (and the PR put out about it) wasn’t at all helpful

The perception that “Day Zero” was imminent and that mayhem was sure to follow (as reported by many international publications) proved to be a deterrent to international clients in the last season. Although production companies pulled out all the stops to keep things moving, some clients perceive the risks as being too great and were also concerned about their personal comfort while working in SA.

~•~•~

The purpose of the CPA’s engagement with the industry’s supplier base was to bring these important issues to their attention and to show the impact that these seven factors have been currently having on our service industry. While there’s not a lot the industry can do about some of these issues, it’s been proposed that everyone involved cooperate to make SA more competitive and attractive to international clients.

Industry response

This means we need a greater understanding of the key challenges and an increased openness to being more flexible and negotiable in order to win work. The response of the industry will determine if we can turn the situation around or if the service industry is on borrowed time.

Bobby Amm is chief executive of the Commercial Producers Association of South Africa (CPA), the trade association of production companies that produce television, cinema and internet commercials for the local and international market. After a brief stint in journalism, she began her career in the industry at the Consultative Committee for the Entertainment Industry in the early 1990s. She first joined the CPA in 1997 but left three years later to join a production company. After finding that she missed the big-picture perspective of the CPA and the interesting issues which continuously perplex the production industry, Bobby returned to the CPA in 2003. She contributes “The Martini Shot” column monthly, covering developments, trends and insights into the commercial production and film services industries in South Africa, to MarkLives.

Media Design: Eros, Swiss in CSS, Varoom, VISI

MarkLives Media Design 28 September 2018

Shane de Lange (@shanenilfunct)’s weekly analysis of media design — both past and present, print and online — from South Africa and around the world:

Iconic: Eros contributed to the growth of counter-culture, specifically the sexual revolution, in America during the ’60s
Online: Swiss in CSS bring timeless pieces of Swiss graphic design to life, animated using CSS code
Independent print: Varoom exhibits how illustration can be a powerful tool against the corrupt powers that be around the world today
Commercial print: VISI becomes more iconic after receiving the A’Design Award for Best Design Media

Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us at @Marklives and @shanenilfunct.
Want to view all the covers at a glance? See our Pinterest board!

Print

VISI (South Africa), Spring issue, August/September 2018

The iconic VISI has just become even more so after receiving the A’Design Award for Best Design Media in Italy.

This is an incredible accolade for a South African magazine as recognition comes from nominations by international designers, artists, architects and the like, who are also past laureates of the A’Design Awards.

Awarded only once to each winning publication, this is a serious acknowledgement of VISI’s contribution to the global design community, and to the production and promotion of culture in South Africa.

VISI will publish its 100^th edition in 2019.

Varoom (US), issue 38, September 2018

More activism is obviously required when the world seems as if it’s about to fall off the rails — a world where the leader of one of the most-powerful countries on the planet is deemed so ludicrous that he’s laughed at by other powerful leaders from the rest of the globe in the UN general assembly. Illustration magazine, Varoom, riffs off of this sentiment with its latest issue, #38, themed activism. As mainstream magazines such as The New Yorker proves, illustration can powerfully influence social and political dissent against corrupt powers. Illustrators across the world have contributed to this issue to combat the current age of distorted truths, unsustainable over-consumption, and the degradation of culture, questioning and provoking through their craft.

Editor, Olivia Ahmad, pieced together a selection of activist-inspired perspectives, including a New Wave Middle Eastern comics collective, called Samanadal, who fight against state censorship and prosecution; a dialogue with Design Museum curator, Margaret Cubbage, about illustration as an anti-misinformation mechanism; and a report from Stuart Lang on how brands may be boosted through their association with social movements. The cover for this issue is by New York-based, Portuguese illustrator, Bráulio Amad, who avoids stereotypical depictions of activism while using a literal interpretation of the theme.

Online

Swiss in CSS (US), September 2018

The international style that is commonly associated with modernist typography and graphic design from Switzerland during the ’40s and ’50s still has a strong influence on contemporary design. Known for its formalism, objectivity, legibility, geometric sans-serif typography, juxtaposition of typography and photography, dynamic use of grids, and asymmetric layouts, important exponents of the Swiss style include Josef Müller-Brockmann, Armin Hofmann, Max Bill, and Jan Tschichold, to name a few.

The most-recognisable works from this period tend to be posters, something the website, Swiss in CSS, takes full advantage of. Using CSS (cascading style sheets) to animate iconic Swiss-style pieces, the site includes classics such as “Zürich-Tonhalle, Beethoven” (1955) and “Akari” (1958) both by Müller-Brockmann, and “Canadian Broadcasting Corp” by Burton Kramer (1974). A rad addition to the site is a link to Codepen for each timeless piece of design, allowing access to all the code used to make it all come to life. Interestingly, the site was designed by the director of digital experiences for AIGA Detroit, Jon Yablonski.

Iconic

Eros (US), 1962

Eros was a short-lived but influential quarterly succeeded by Fact magazine (mentioned in last week’s column). Published in 1962, Eros was the first important editorial effort from Ralph Ginzburg, working alongside iconic art director, Herb Lubalin. As its title suggests, the magazine was named after the ancient Greek god of attraction and desire (similar to the Roman god, Cupid). The magazine’s content included writing and visuals based on love and sex that often provoked authorities in the US, despite its tastefully presented contents, which included history, politics, art and literature about sexuality.

In keeping with the subject of activism, four subversive issues of Eros were printed, all published in protest of America’s obscenity laws at the time, which had been loosened to allow for greater freedom of expression. The title stretched the limits of censorship in the US, and unapologetically expressed the freedoms of love and sex. Eros was prolific during its short life, including contributions from Ray Bradbury in #1; #2 included Mark Twain‘s short story “1601”; #3 included the infamous nudes of Marilyn Monroe shot by Bert Stern (“The Last Sitting”); and #4 published a letter by beat writer, Allen Ginsberg.

In opposition to the contents, Lubalin’s design approach was unadulterated and clean, with an unconventional large, hardcover format printed on choice paper, which made Eros look more like a book than a magazine. Due to its subversive approach, the magazine was hounded by conservatives — racists, in particular — and arguably had to end print due to a sexually charged photograph that portrayed a mixed-race couple. Although only four issues were published, Eros is noteworthy because it contributed to the growth of counter-culture, specifically the sexual revolution, in America during the ’60s. A full online archive is available here.

References

Shane de Lange (@shanenilfunct) is a designer, writer, and educator currently based in Cape Town, South Africa, working in the fields of communication design and digital media. He works from Gilgamesh, a small design studio, and is a senior lecturer in graphic design at Vega School in Cape Town. Connect on Pinterest and Instagram.

Media Design, formerly Cover Stories and MagLove, is a regular slot deconstructing media cover design, both past and present.

FastForward: The future of belonging

by Marguerite Coetzee. As human beings, we all have the desire to belong to a community, to be recognised, to be appreciated. It’s built into our nature, this idea that, in order to survive, we need to belong to something bigger than ourselves — we can’t survive on our own. To belong is to be included in (a social system of support), associated with (shared beliefs, values and behaviours), and connected to (a relationship network). This need to belong is a human truth that resonates with anyone, anywhere, at any point in history.

Guess who

Belonging has always been closely tied up with identity. Today, we find ourselves moving towards a post-demographic world with fluid identities and blurring gender roles, as well as a significant improvement in the rights, freedom, protection, inclusion, status, and empowerment of particularly women and members of the LGBTQ community.

Traditional models of relationships and lifestyles are also changing; younger generations are growing up in an expanding world of choice and a higher exposure to difference, and so they are less inclined to follow a linear path from education, to employment, to marriage, to family formation (source: Kantar Consulting Futures practice area). They have more control in what they choose, defer or decline in their lifestyle paths. And so, the way people define themselves is changing.

The tribe has spoken

Aware of the social shifts taking place, Castle Lager has challenged itself to enhance its cultural role and purpose — to inspire South Africans to find belonging in more-expansive communities. In exploring the beliefs and tensions that are either enablers or barriers to belonging, Castle Lager is now better equipped to make a social impact. South Africa’s diverse population is creating cultural connections that go beyond traditional demographic markers. South Africans are creating communities built on shared lifestyles, values, beliefs, experiences, interests, and more.

Castle Lager faced the challenge of helping closed communities (those who value familiarity, exclusivity, sameness, and comfort) overcome their resistance to embracing others, while at the same time the beer brand was presented with the opportunity to celebrate and connect open communities (those who value diversity, inclusivity, open-mindedness, and curiosity).

https://youtu.be/C1p-HtNMWmA

In its recent #SmashTheLabel Twitter campaign, Castle Lager has shown its solidarity “with all South Africans who have been labelled” by removing the label from its beer bottle. It’s an action against stereotyping, and an encouragement of inclusivity.

What’s next

It’s in the embracing of difference that we can expand our world view and grow our own social purpose. It’s through acceptance and understanding that we’re able to support one another and make an impact in creating a better world. We need to move away from limiting or stereotypical markers of identity, and allow people to define themselves. This is how we create a space in which people feel a sense of belonging.

Marguerite Coetzee is an anthropologist at strategic marketing consultancy, Kantar Consulting. FastForward, the latest series in her regular column on MarkLives, takes an intellectual, scientific and artistic approach to the future – particularly the future of Africa.

Market Research Wrap: Where next for SA online retail?

MarkLives Market Research Wrap 27 September 2018

Cheryl Hunter (research at marklives.com)’s weekly wrap of the latest market and consumer research:

Retail research in SA
Launch of Fusion data
Sponsorship grows globally

Call to action for online retailers

Online Retail in South Africa 2018 sees World Wide Worx, Visa and Platinum Seed partner to deliver insights into South African digital shopping, and shoppers. Results of this study will be presented at the end of October 2018, and every retailer which participates will get a summary of the research with actionable insights that they may use to improve their business, an invitation to the presentation, and entered into the Online Retailer of the Year 2018 Awards.

Says Arthur Goldstuck, World Wide Worx MD, “Online retail reached 1% of overall retail during 2016, the last time we conducted this survey. At the time, retail was growing well, achieving a growth rate of above 20% a year. SA online shopping has grown consistently, at around this rate, since the turn of the century, initially off a very low base. By 2016, total online retail had reached just over R9bn, in comparison to total retail, which grew to just below R900bn.”

He points out that, since the last survey, some 50% of the online retailers surveyed had consolidated or had gone out of business: “It is a tough market, but a growing one. The recession, of course, will bring new challenges to online retailers.”

Early indications from the research are that numerous specialist and online niche shops are emerging. In order to track this growth, World Wide Worx, Visa and Platinum Seed are calling on all online retailers to participate in an online survey. Online retailers have until Wednesday, 3 October 2018, to complete the survey and the results will be presented in collaboration with Heavy Chef in Johannesburg on 31 October, and in Cape Town on 1 November.

The study is endorsed by the E-Commerce Forum Africa and includes an industry study of retailers, demographic data on consumers, and an overview of trends in global online retail and in payment technologies. World Wide Worx has collaborated with pan-African research house Ask Afrika in the collection of demographic data.

Complete the survey at surveymonkey.com/r/OnlineRetailSA.

PAMS/CPS Fusion data launched

Initiated and funded by the Publishers Research Council (PRC), with Consumer Panel Survey (CPS) data supplied by Nielsen, the first PAMS/CPS Fusion data has just launched and sees the fusion of the existing PRC PAMS 2017 data with real audited and scanned purchase data, based on 4 000 South African households.

This follows a vacuum in the local market in terms of brand data since the last release of AMPS in 2015. In the three years since, things have changed dramatically in the market, including the development of the new generation segmentation model, the SEMs. Despite this, media planners and clients have had no way of following the changing behaviour of the consumers buying their brands. Against this backdrop, the PAMS/CPS Fusion data is intended to greatly assist advertisers and agencies in their media planning.

One of the biggest strengths of fusing PAMS with the well-established Nielsen CPS panel is supposed to be that it’s based on audited/verified brand measurement, as opposed to the recall methodology used in other studies. CPS collects actual, scanned data from households, at least once a month, resulting in 48 000 household visits a year, and measuring over 200 000 shopping occasions. This results in coverage of more than 3 000 consumer goods brands and 190 product categories, which will be further enhanced by the fusion with PAMS that already includes motor, finance, retail and cellphone branded data.

For more, go to Nielsen and prc.za.com/fusion

Advertisers spend on sponsorship

Advertisers are expected to spend a combined US$66bn on sponsorship this year, mostly on sports properties, although fewer than one in five are confident that they can actually measure the ROI of the sponsorships they undertake.

The WARC Data Global Ad Trends September 2018 report focuses on sponsorship and shows it’s trending ahead of most paid media, growing faster than all channels excluding internet formats. North America makes up the greatest share of spend (36.8%), followed by Europe (26.7%), Asia-Pacific (25.2%), Latin America (7.0%), and then the Middle East & Africa (4.3%). Most of this money is going to sports properties; among these was the FIFA World Cup in Russia, which is thought to have attracted US$1.7bn in ad investment.

As media continues its fragmentation, sport offers large, engaged, multiscreen audiences: by volume of data, the 2018 FIFA World Cup was the most-streamed sporting event in history. TV is still king for live sporting events, with world cup matches reaching 44% of the global population via television.

Generating brand awareness is the most-important objective for sponsorship campaigns. This mirrors separate WARC research in this year’s WARC 100 that found 61% of successful campaigns counted brand awareness as a core objective.

Sponsors rely on intermediate metrics; true ROI remains a challenge

Only 19% of sponsorship professionals are confident that they can actually measure the business value return of the sponsorships they undertake. Further, only 37% of practitioners have a standardised process for measuring sponsorship. The top two tools used for evaluation are digital and social media metrics. However, the North American-based Association of National Advertisers (ANA) states that social media metrics often provide a “distracting noise” due to their weak relationship to sales. Social is considered the no. 1 activation channel for sponsorships by 83% of marketers, yet the prevailing sentiment is that authentic engagement of sponsorship, through digital and social activation, remains a challenge.

Summing up, James McDonald, WARC Data editor, says: “As brands continue to jostle for a finite amount of consumer attention, sports generate an engaged, mass audience that sponsors can reach, before amplifying their campaigns via social media and experiential events. Sponsorships facilitate the upper part of the sales funnel — driving brand awareness and consideration — in much the same way as TV. This can present challenges, however, such as the knowledge gap between brand impact and sales impact.”

Buy the report at WARC.

Updated at 1.22pm on 28 September 2018

Cheryl Hunter (@cherylhunter) has written for the South African media, marketing and advertising industries for more than 15 years. A former editor of M&M in Independent Newspapers and contributor to Bizcommunity, AdFocus, AdReview and the Ad Annual, she has also produced for various television networks and currently consults on communication strategy and media liaison. She now does the new weekly “Market Research Wrap” column for MarkLives.com.

Brands & Branding: Will technology kill brands?

Brands & Branding 2017 and Thomas Oosthuizen

by Dr Thomas Oosthuizen (@drthomasbrand) Yes, many. But it will also enable many. I believe today we are all clear that a few key brands have become centre-stage far more so than any brands did before — and far faster.

Google, Apple, Tesla, Uber, Airbnb, Amazon.com, Expedia, Facebook, Instagram and many others became iconic names associated with unique value propositions. If you start or lead an industry, your name becomes synonymous with that value proposition. This is no different from the way in which brands like Ford, Ivory (soap), General Electric, McDonald’s, Bank of America, Sony Walkman and many others defined their categories in their day.

Will technology change all that?

Of course, brand names like Google define new categories the way others have done before. They do so because they become the generics for the category; without them, the categories would not exist. Hence some even became verbs (“to Google”).
In other industries, some defined it better than others — in video formats, VHS vs Beta; in software, MS vs Apple; in search, Google vs Yahoo (and a few others). In some, more than one brand is strong, such as Amazon.com and Alibaba. But dominance works, that is, if your desire is to dominate. It did before and it does now.

Yet, in many categories, brands are declining in stature.

So how do you survive as a brand?

If your value proposition is not unique, it will not survive in the long term. In this uniqueness, it needs to offer consumers more. Airlines are under severe threat, many banks, many hotel chains, many fast-moving-consumer goods, many telcos, many retailers, many white goods manufacturers, many media companies, fuel companies and the like — even car brands.

They will be disintermediated, discounted and redefined by online retailers and others
Strong focused brands will undermine the weak ones

For the large brands that survive, low costs will drive them. Even the very way technology algorithms work is in their favour.

Unless their operating models enable them to be most effective in their industries, hence their still being able to make money despite low margins, they will not survive
Many will be disintermediated and no longer form part of the consumer repertoire. Hence the gap between the large and small will widen. Those caught in the middle will be in the weakest spot, but then that always applied in marketing

Consumer needs first, technology second; now, it’s mostly the other way around

At the moment, marketing is driven by technologists; either marketers have no idea what to do, believe little will change or are not interested. This is what occurred in the telco industry, which led to huge dissatisfaction with many brands and often very inflexible customer solutions. Brands adopted new technology without thinking, leaving consumers confused, unhappy and disloyal.
Marketers will need to step-up to create a 60:40 balance. Technology per se is not a solution; what is done with it is. Creativity in value proposition, the entire user journey, insights rather than data only, multidisciplinary teams — all are vital marketing ingredients.
Marketers will have to work at aligning the business model and all systems, people, and processes around the value proposition.
Weak brands will die faster with attribution that is better. That is good, as fewer resources will be wasted by companies trying to manage huge brand portfolios, with many of these brands having no future.

Innovation will become far more important

Consumers will only pay subscriptions to sites, applications, etc, for as long as they remain novel, fresh and add something new all the time.
This is hard to do, but consumers will not pay licensing or other fees for no incremental value or renewed interest
This means the brand obsession with meaningless and useless applications, will reduce

Vertical integration is key = consumer experiences must be seamless

Experience fragmentation with technology is inexcusable; yet, in most companies, this is the norm
What makes Uber, Trivago or Tesla different? The fact that these brands are conceived from the centre out around a given set of consumer needs. You access, engage, pay, evaluate, all at once. One integrated, seamless experience.
In a Tesla, the brand does not have to integrate a variety of software systems from a range of suppliers; it starts from one built around a given owner or driver
Retargeting for some brands has become equally sophisticated. Yet, retargeting for brands such as Amazon.com is so poor that it is the one thing that irritates me about them (they don’t have to be concerned about it because they are so large that, even if small percentages work, it is worth it). For most banks, retargeting is very poor. In a new era, this is inexcusable.
Similarly, experience breakdowns are unforgivable.

The real, as against virtual, brand experience is vital

In some instances, the retail experience is so unique, that at this point, technology can enhance — but not replicate it. In future it may, but not yet.
How do you replicate the Liberty retail store experience? Or fashion store Anthropologie? Or a Lego store? Or Hamleys? Or the underlying excitement of an Apple store? This means retailers will have to also spend more time thinking about real-world experience design. Packaging design. Merchandising. Impact. Tactile factors. Sensory factors. Auditory factors.

Country legislation & trade restrictions will enable some brands to survive

While this may not be sustainable in a totally open trade world, it will be for as long as trade barriers exist
Most countries have very strong local brands. The loyalty to some of these is high. Some exploit this well.

Clarity of positioning will be key

Be visually and in impact, unique
Be designed well
“Work” as described

Aim at a particular market only

Have a niche position that offers something the mainstream brands do not.

Four Seasons and Aman Resorts are unique. Hence, they will attract unique, discerning customers neither driven by price nor discounts.
Regular hotel chains? Will survive with great difficulty and may face a lot of brand rationalisation, unless culturally they offer consumers a familiar home-from-home experience (such as Americans traveling to China on business may prefer a hotel group they are familiar with to eliminate impracticalities).
White goods? With great difficulty. There are many others like this.

Can data kill brands? Yes and no

Yes: when brands are not unique, accurate targeting will be stronger than the weak brands in many categories. Hence, where price is more important than brand preference, brands will not survive unless they design their businesses to operate differently.
Yes: to establish a much-stronger relationship between consumer and brands, the ones that do it best will survive.
Yes: good attribution will cull weak brands fast.
Yes: to offer more-seamless brand experiences and fewer experience breakdowns will require a lot of work most brand owners will not succeed at.
Yes: where technology enables brand switching through geolocation, better available data, AI, etc.
Yes: where category management enables manufacturers to shift brand preference away from unprofitable brands.
Yes: when user journeys are purely generic as against unique. Once all are the same at the level of technology, differentiation will matter.
Yes: when companies cannot use their data well or do not understand how to adapt their organisations. Sadly, this applies widely today.
Yes: when companies acquire the wrong technology, become vendor-driven or remain fragmented.
No: where technology is implemented in a way that makes a given brand unique, not just in the generic way all other brands does it.
No: when brands are designed around consumers and the business model has adapted accordingly. When companies put the effort in to ‘live’ their differences.
No: when company cultures align with the new reality.
No: when marketing is still impactful and creative.
No: where brands are unique. Data can enable greater experiences through better targeting and insight.
No: where brand design (“look and feel”) supersedes everything else, as in watches, unique furniture, fashion, and accessories.
No: where the technology IQ of a brand is high. Brands that ‘work’ better will prevail in some categories and smaller segments of the market. They may become even more profitable exactly because they are unique.
No: where the brand relies upon tactile or other similar factors to express its uniqueness.

To conclude

The bottom line for me is that brand owners will need to think much harder about a post-technology future. To simply assume you ‘own’ a brand is not enough. The odds against you are greater than the odds for you. Over time, many brands owners will discover they never really owned a brand because it was never unique in any way. Circumstances made it possible for them to survive (as with some airlines dominating certain routes or tourists to foreign countries preferring their local chains). It will also force more-informed brand decisions, from designing the products or services or to marketing them.

Brands & Branding 2018 available shortly — 2018 edition available shortly!

Dr Thomas Oosthuizen (@drthomasbrand) is head of strategy at Draper Gain Investment in London, a marketing technology company that consults to major multinationals across five continents. He has a track record of major brand achievements and has worked on projects in 25 countries during his career. He published ‘The Brand Book: How to build a profitable brand — fast, effectively and efficiently’ in 2013. Over the years, he established himself as a thought leader within the brand space and more recently, in the debate about the impact of marketing technology upon consumer centricity, customer engagement, new business operating models and brands.

The article first appeared in the 2017 edition of Brands & Branding in South Africa, an annual review from Affinity Publishing of all aspects of brand marketing — consisting of case-studies, profiles, articles and research — which may also be accessed at Brands.MarkLives.com. Order your copy now!

African Echo: How freelancing could help Zambia’s ad industry

zambia-flag-national-symbol-green courtesy of Pixabay

by Joanna Hickey-Damalis (@joanna277) Zambia’s advertising industry is by no means insulated from entrepreneurial activities.

The Global Entrepreneurship & Development Index respectively ranks Zambia as the ninth and 102^nd most-entrepreneurial country in the region and world. In the recent past, entrepreneurship in Zambia has been driven by the lack of formal job opportunities for youth in the private and public labour markets, with youth unemployment levels estimated by the Central Statistical Office to be at 16.3% (September 2017). This, coupled with comparatively low entry-level salaries being offered (where available) and increasing living costs, encourages youth engagement in entrepreneurial activities.

Hallmark

Better-educated, more IT-savvy youth are self-training to become rudimentary designers offering quick cheap solutions to small- and middle-sized, often resident and cost-conscious, companies. On the face of it, such initiatives could be applauded as a hallmark of a free market capitalist economy and the upgrading of oneself. In reality, lack of access to capital for such entrepreneurs and low revenue levels from their target customers limit their ability to grow their businesses, create additional employment and finance a full-service provision to the client (strategy, media buy and expansion into other service offerings).

Concurrently, the companies that do use such services also suffer in the long run, as their advertising remains sub-par compared to their larger corporate competitors, which access their service provision though established agencies that have both the resources and know how to execute coordinated cross-service campaigns. The nett result is:

Freelance designers are removing themselves from the advertising labour market and are not realising their full skills or revenue potential; and
Small- and medium-sized companies, the backbone of any developing economy, fail to fully benefit from an effective long-term advertising campaign that truly develops their brands, eventually undermining their ability to thrive (and survive) in an increasingly competitive market.

Multifaceted solution

So how does one solve this problem? The solution is multifaceted and must address the needs and realities of both the entrepreneurial designer, and the small- or middle-sized company being serviced. Ultimately, the agency must also recreate itself to become a facilitator and caretaker to both.

For the designer, skills development and a secured income are important; this may be achieved by:

The establishment of design, marketing and branding schools, which could also act as an employment or freelance talent pool for the agencies themselves (think Vega of South Africa)
The establishment of on-demand talent collaborations between the agencies and freelance designers, where agencies will drive the strategy and direction through use of their knowhow, financial resources and networks. The freelance designers would undertake specific non-confidential deliverables subcontracted to them by the agency (a 2016 report by Accenture estimating that 43% of the US workforce is expected to be freelance by 2020)

For the small- to medium-sized company which often uses freelance designers, sensitisation on how best to run a successful advertising campaign and cost considerations are key; this may be achieved by:

Agencies stepping up to the plate through increased fact-based interaction with potential customers in the small- and middle-sized company segments, either through one-one meetings, training sessions and conferences (it’s about time we considered giving something for free!)
Reducing fixed agency overheads through the increased use of a liquid freelance workforce, would allow more-competitive agency pricing to cost-conscious customers and/or executing a cheaper brand strategy without necessarily cheapening the brand

This doesn’t mean that agencies in Zambia will, at least in the short term, have no permanent employees, something unlikely to sit well with larger corporate clients which demand quick turnaround times and confidentiality in their planning. What’s suggested here is a targeted, potentially profitable, freelance strategy designed to address the needs of a market often unserviced by formal agencies while simultaneously upgrading and bringing freelance designers into the agency fold.

Ultimately, the economy, and specifically the advertising industry, stands to benefit by improved service delivery.

Sources

https://thegedi.org/global-entrepreneurship-and-development-index/

accenture.com/us-en/insight-liquid-workforce-planning

Joanna Hickey-Damalis (@joanna277) is agency principal of Adlab in Zambia and has more than 12 years of experience in the advertising industry. Having worked for an international affiliate in a senior account-manager position, Jo went on to establish Adlab with the view of focusing on the client-agency relationship in order to garner the best agency performance and the best results. Initially focusing on growing an outstanding creative team, Joanna also personally managed some of the agency’s clients, such as Shoprite, for over six years. This has given her invaluable insight into the Zambian advertising and consumer landscape, culminating in an agency that works smarter and harder. African Echo seeks to unpack markets in Africa, highlight business opportunities and share insights into what works and what rebounds.

“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.

Masterclass Notes: Optimising marketing-vendor database costs

bee-wasp-superstar-balance-artists courtesy of Pixabay

by Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) A well-known former banking CEO once said to me, during my 12 months when I was head of marketing at a large South African bank some years ago, that the problem with marketing departments is that they tend to “grow like topsy”. This kept me on my toes during that period — and certainly helped us think carefully about whether we needed to hire new people! Marketing suppliers may also be said to increase in the same way.

I’m finding more and more examples of companies where the number of marketing suppliers has tended to grow and grow for a variety of different, and justifiable, reasons over a number of years. Procurement departments, which are starting to become more and more important and powerful within organisations, are often tasked with streamlining or sorting out the duplications in suppliers. This may be quite an onerous task vis-a-vis marketing, simply because those duplications are less obvious than, let’s say, might occur when procuring furniture or more-tangible services and products.

Deciding factors

While a tidying-up of a number of marketing suppliers might result in some economies, enabling marketers to negotiate better volume deals with a smaller number of suppliers for example, sustainability, geography and BEE will also be deciding factors in a vendor database clean-up. Then there are a number of highly specialised suppliers who might be the only people who are able to supply certain products and services. Cutting through all these suppliers needs to be a carefully planned and structured exercise in order to avoid losing those which might be vital to the success of a particular product or brand.

Among agencies, again, there are many which are fully integrated and able to supply almost all of the services that a marketing department may want and need, but increasingly, we’re seeing that almost 50% of CMOs (according to Agency Scope 2017/18) expect to have at least one or two specialist agencies within their typical mix of creative and media agency service providers. While many CMOs will admit that it would be ideal to find everything in one place, they know that it is almost impossible as there have to be pockets of specialisation in order to deliver high-level performance, especially across the digital spectrum of media and content, development and programming.

[Full disclosure: Scopen Global and Mazole Holdings (the company that owns IAS 100%) have formed a company in South Africa called Scopen Africa. Scopen Global holds the majority of the shares; Mazole is a minority shareholder. Johanna McDowell is a director of Scopen Africa, as is Cesar Vacchiano, global CEO of Scopen.]

Agency ecosystem

Within an agency ecosystem there may be some possible savings that might result in a redeployment of funds from one area to another, depending on the needs of the marketing strategy and its objectives. Fine tuning of fees, retainers and production costs might at first look a little alarming but may well result in a far more balanced optimisation of the marketing budget — and again will help the commercial aspects of the business when it comes to negotiating budgets and pricing in the future.

Managing the marketing-vendor database is not only about cutting out duplicate suppliers but also about optimising budgets among a range of service providers so that maximum ROI is achieved but not at risk of a degeneration of quality. It’s a fine balancing act, requiring skills and patience in understanding a lot of different terms and industry jargon — which can add to the confusion within the marketing spectrum.

Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) is managing director of the Independent Agency Search and Selection Company (IAS), which is partnered with the AAR Group in the UK. Johanna is one of the few experts driving this mediation and advisory service in SA and globally. Currently she is running the IAS Marketers Masterclass, a programme consisting of masterclasses held in Cape Town and in Johannesburg. Twice a year she attends AdForum Worldwide Summits.