“Companies who don’t understand the value they create for customers are flying blind on pricing.” — Marketing Week
by Mark Eardley (@mdeardley) That’s the hard-nosed opinion of Mark Bergen, a pricing expert and professor of marketing at Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.
For B2B marketers, it’s an opinion that warrants serious consideration. Flying blind on pricing always has two ugly consequences: sales are lost to fractionally cheaper competitors or deals get done at miniscule margins. That’s what happens when B2B companies don’t understand how they create value for customers.
If you don’t understand value, you can’t qualify and quantify it — you can’t measure it. Which means you can’t manage it and improve it. The result? Constant haggling over price in a plummet to be the cheapest.
Understanding value: define it, measure it, deliver it
My views on Value — with a capital V — go back almost 25 years to a 1994 book, “Touchstones: Ten New Ideas Revolutionizing Business”, by US management consultant, William A. Band. In particular, I became interested in value-based buying motivators — the reasons driving the decisions that create every B2B vendors’ sales and margins.
Band’s book got me thinking about my previous decade’s experience as a B2B marketer (yep, I’ve now been in that game for over 30 years…) and I realised that one could create a mechanism — a structured, analytical methodology — that would enable any B2B firm to define and measure how their products and services create value for everyone who influences buying decisions. So, by ’98, that’s what I’d created, an analytical process based on what I called ‘the five factors of Value’ — response, service, quality, time and price. Read here about how that process works and why these factors are B2B’s ‘big five’ buying motivators.
Much more recently, one of the really big guns in management consulting began sharing its latest thinking on value, its constituents and the dominant role it plays in motivating B2B buying decisions. As you might perhaps expect from an A-List, top-billing consultancy, it’s massively complex in comparison to my keep-it-simple approach to defining, measuring and delivering Value.
Bain & Company: value from a big gun’s perspective
In March 2018, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) ran an article headlined, The B2B Elements of Value, written by three Bain consultants, Eric Almquist, Jamie Cleghorn and Lori Sherer. Naturally, I was more than somewhat interested in a topic that’s been a strategic focal-point of my B2B approach for 20 years.
My interest’s supercharger kicked in when I read how Bain had identified these elements of value. It had been done by an analysis of: “quantitative and qualitative customer studies that our firm had conducted for clients over three decades, examining what mattered most to buyers. From this research, we identified 40 fundamental ‘elements of value’.”
Forty fundamental elements of value. Ranged against my boiled-down core of just five, Bain’s perspective initially appeared to be far more sophisticatedly complex. However… All of Bain’s 40 elements may be accurately categorised either as response, service, quality, time or price. All of them. Complexity simplified.
Heavyweight credibility
Although there might be nothing essentially novel in Bain’s perspective, it certainly adds heavyweight credibility to the reasons that it’s so important to develop an accurate understanding of Value and its all-powerful influence on B2B buying decisions. I recommend you read its HBR article, as well as the related, superbly presented content on Bain’s site.
It may be gratifying to have my thinking backed by Bain, but what’s much more significant is this: anything that highlights the merits of ‘working with Value’ is seriously worthwhile. It’s vital that marketers are strongly encouraged to develop accurate, detailed insights into what customers value and the reasons why. After all, those insights are a critical component in any B2B marketer’s drive towards a calibre of centricity that attracts and retains profitable customers.
Without such insights, Prof Bergen says B2B firms “are at a tremendous disadvantage to competitors who bring their marketers and customers into the centre of their pricing processes and capability development.” That tremendous disadvantage becomes apparent as sales get lost on price or margins are squeezed almost to zero because marketers haven’t defined and demonstrated the Value delivered by their offering.
Mark Eardley (@mdeardley) advises B2B companies on how to govern their marketing to attract and retain profitable customers; several of his clients have grown to become market leaders. He and Charlie Stewart have written Business-to-Business Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide (Penguin Random House), which offers practical, actionable advice on how to make marketing make money. His monthly “Back2Basics” column covers how B2B companies and their agencies should manage their marketing.
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.
by Herman Manson (@marklives) TBWA\Hunt Lascaris has been awarded the Multichoice Africa account, following a competitive pitch process. The business was previously held by Ogilvy Joburg.
MultiChoice would not confirm the name of the winning agency, even though it’s widely known in the broader industry. MarkLives confirmed the account move independently. “We can confirm a new creative team has been selected but decline to comment further as this is not a significant shift in our business,” according to Caroline Creasy, MultiChoice head of corporate affairs.
The company is undergoing significant structural change as a result of increased competition from streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and (MultiChoice-owned) Showmax.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.
Davenport launched Ireland/Davenport with Philip Ireland in 2006. At its peak, the agency worked accross a range of blue-chip brands, including BMW, Investec, Vodacom and South African Tourism. Ireland left the business in 2016 after the agency suffered a string of account losses in 2015 and 2016; he joined local creative technology company, BNRY, in mid-2017.
Remarkable comeback
Since rebranding as Collective ID in October 2017, the agency has staged a remarkable comeback. It upped its black ownership from 21.5% to 52.6% in April 2017 to become both majority-black-owned and -managed. Clients includes Standard Bank, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Avis Budget Group; Isuzu; and MAQ.
L-R: Qingqile Wingwing Mdlulwa, Sharon Bergmann, Brenda Khumalo and John Davenport, the executives of Collective ID.
According to Davenport, he feels that now is appropriate to leave the business; it’s on the up, the vibe is happy, it’s getting onto pitch lists, it’s producing good work and it’s climbed back from a low of 10 people to more than 30. Now, he says, is a good time to take a break and to seek out his next challenge. He intends to stay in advertising, and on the creative side of the business; for the moment, though, he will focus on some art projects, writing and fishing.
Asked what advice he would give new agency entrepreneurs, he says he would tell them to absolutely go for it: “It will be tougher than you think, but it will also be more exciting and rewarding. Don’t listen to people who says it can’t be done. You can do great things.”
Top echelons
Davenport says Ireland/Davenport launched with three people, one laptop and a pot plant stolen from Net#work. The agency would eventually catapult into the top echelons of the South African ad industry.
On the decline of Ireland/Davenport and its rebirth as Collective ID, he says this was the most-exciting part of his advertising journey, following some “freakishly hard times”. In today’s market, agencies need to be both excellent and relevant, he says, pointing to Collective ID as having achieved that.
“My time at Ireland/Davenport has has been an amazing, crazy, brilliant, stupid journey. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of it. The people we have worked with and the people we have worked for. Agencies are all about people. They don’t own factories or fields. Thanks to all the people who have been a part of it,” says Davenport.
“I’d like ro say a huge thank you to all the clients who have trusted me with their brands and business. And especially the client who cried when I told her I’m leaving. She knows who she is! Nothing is possible without great clients. They pay our salaries and they’re the ones who turn ideas and scribbles into something exciting the world sees. Without them ideas just remain ideas. And their job is much more difficult than it often looks,” he concludes.*
by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) It’s been a challenging couple of years for The Jupiter Drawing Room (Cape Town), to say the least, but the ad agency has landed firmly on its feet after a series of setbacks in 2017.
Back on track
Just a week after the closure of The Jupiter Drawing Room (Johannesburg) last September, the Cape Town agency announced major rescaling and retrenchments that saw it halve its staff count, restructure and move into shared premises. What with the loss of major long-term clients, Hyundai and Windhoek Beer, where Jupiter Cape Town would be by September 2018 was a question mark. But its recent Beares win, together with its work on other brands such as INspire and Webafrica (which recently took a Loeries Campaign Bronze), shows that the agency is back on track to reestablishing itself.
The Beares account, which was previously with Saatchi & Saatchi Brandsrock, was awarded to Jupiter Cape Town in March 2018, following a closed pitch against three other agencies. Michelle Beh, managing and strategy director, says that the agency’s work on the June launch of the INspire homeware brand, also part of the Lewis Group, was instrumental in it being invited to participate in the pitch, and testament to the value her team can offer.
Jupiter has been tasked with “refreshing and updating” the Beares brand in order to better differentiate it from Lewis and reach new, higher income, segments of the furniture retail market, expanding the customer base. The challenge, says Beh, is to retain the brand’s long heritage (Beares has been around since 1930) and large pool of existing customers while targeting fresh groups. The shift will thus have to be a gradual one: “It will take time; it’s a journey that we need to go on with the client, and we need to be patient in terms of everyone wanting to see the result,” she says.
Lean model
The INspire and Beares work has allowed the agency to add two new members to its staff complement; strategist Tafadzwa Muzuwa has been brought onboard to support Beh and Akona Golimpi has joined in the capacity of art director, bringing the total number of employees to 17. The idea is to stick to a lean model, says Beh, tapping into partners — in the form of freelancers or other agencies — where necessary to help the team deliver.
Michelle Beh
Part of last year’s restructuring saw the agency replace account service staff with pairings of creative directors and strategists to manage client relationships, with the backing of a project manager — a change that has been well-received by clients, according to Beh. Keeping things slim and streamlined is the answer to how the agency can deliver on what it’s best at, which is strategic thinking and creativity, or creative concepts, she says. “We’ve realised that we can’t be precious over ideas. The value that we create is in understanding the business, developing strategy and developing the overall idea, and we need to be willing to work with the best people in their specialisations, to execute those ideas in the best way.”
It’s not just partnering on projects that is beneficial, she explains; being exposed to a range of experts and ideas in day-to-day work life helps keep the agency’s creative cogs turning. Jupiter Cape Town calls part of the newly revamped Speakers Corner building in the city centre home — a collective workspace within which the agency has its own offices. Following the global coworking trend among startups, the building provides shared meeting, lobby and library facilities, allowing cross-pollination among its business inhabitants. The agency further encourages its partners to drop by and work out of its offices from time to time. “I think that, in today’s world, we need to open up and create connections, because ideas can come from anywhere,” she says.
Collective modus operandi
Within the team, too, there seems to have been a shift towards a more shared, collective modus operandi; employees don multiple hats on any given day, taking care of tasks as diverse as client negotiations, strategy documents, and even the dishes and office grocery shopping. “I think because we’re a small team, having so many roles to juggle is easier, because we’re able to see who needs help, and jump in,” she says. Together with agency co-pilot ECD, Lucas van Vuuren, Beh is trying to foster a culture of integrated responsibility in the team. “We want to make sure that everyone has clear goals, and is accountable for their output but will also step in when someone else needs help,” she says.
The changes have rippled into the agency’s costing model, with Jupiter moving from discussions about hours to discussions about output. “We talk about what the client wants and what the value is to them, which has a positive business impact for the agency,” she explains. She’s also started applying the thought processes she uses when working with clients to the way she runs the office, asking “many of the same tough questions” internally to better understand the agency and what needs to be done.
Over the next 12–24 months, Jupiter Cape Town will be mapping out its three- and five-year plans. “The first six months of this year were very much about stabilising the agency and, now that we’ve achieved that, we’re in the process of looking at what next,” she says. While the business goals are still being defined, she advises “watching this space” for details.
“Startup mentality”
“We have the legacy, the heritage and the strength of the Jupiter brand, but with legacy (sometimes) comes baggage,” Beh admits. “I think that the brand has taken a knock in the last year or two, and that’s something we’re trying to rebuild. We are taking a startup mentality, with a brand that everyone knows. We were in a very difficult situation at the end of last year but we have turned the business around in terms of numbers, and I really feel positive about the changes we have put in place at the agency.”
Jupiter Cape Town’s performance this year has her excited about the future, and she believes the challenges the agency faced may just prove to be the key to its success over the next 5–10 years: “While we may not be in the limelight now, we are working towards a new Jupiter that will be in the limelight in a few years’ time.”
Playlist: MarkLives • The Jupiter Drawing Room (Cape Town)
Key clients: SASKO, Webafrica, Burger King SA, KWV Roodeberg, INspire, Beares, Moirs/Maizena
Services: ATL, design, public relations, BTL, strategy, branding
Carey Finn (@carey_finn) is a writer and editor with a decade and a half of industry experience, having covered everything from ethical sushi in Japan to the technicalities of roofing, agriculture, medical stuff and more. She’s also taught English and journalism, and dabbled in various other communications ventures along the way, including risk reporting. As a contributing writer to MarkLives.com, her new column “#AgencyFocus” is an ongoing weekly series updating the market on agency performance, including business performance, innovation, initiatives, the work, awards and people.
by DK Badenhorst (@BrandCultureSA) It’s argued that comparative advertising is an ineffective way of building brands, and this isn’t without merit. But sometimes it does work.
The idea of brand-building is to create a cultural entity that resonates with people which, in turn, can serve as an anchor for everything, ranging from communication to product innovation. It’s the abstract component of a business or a product that allows us to build relationships with it.
Identity
As these relationships evolve and the symbolism become part of the landscape, brands create symbols that allow us to cobble together an identity and communicate that identity to others. Being an adidas person is very different to being a Nike person, and yet both are concerned with excellence and expression in the world of physical activity. Tribes form around them, which inevitably means you are one thing and not another. In the world we live in today, there’s definitely a battle for identity and belonging going on. When it comes to identity politics (currently the dominant style of debating), being one thing and not the other can become deeply polarising. This is dangerous cultural territory as, more often than not, a healthy society is one that allows for the flourishing of many values without necessarily pitting them against each other.
But sometimes comparative advertising can work. There is an old and well-known example that I like: most South Africans of around my age will remember the famous Mercedes-Benz Chapman’s Peak commercial.
https://youtu.be/VgsBNjEhgRY
It was a simple concept that hammered home the safety of Mercedes-Benz by simply retelling the true story of Christopher White, who plummeted around 100m off Chapman’s Peak and survived. The TVC contributes his survival to two simple facts: he was wearing a safety belt and he was driving a Merc. The video quality shows the age of the ad but that doesn’t take away from it. The moment the bonnet with the three-pointed star veers off the road into nothing still sends chills down my spine. That it was real and that it reinforced a key feature of the product made it a relevant and memorable piece. But this wasn’t the comparative commercial.
Not long after, Mercedes-Benz’s biggest rival responded with the famous “Beat the bends” ad.
It was a tongue-in-cheek piece that shows a 5 Series BMW along the same stretch of road but, instead of plummeting and surviving, it simply navigated the road successfully, closing with the line, “Doesn’t it make sense to drive a luxury sedan that beats the bends?” I can’t imagine anyone not seeing the word play making a clear reference to a particular competitor and a very particular commercial.
But why is this a good example of comparative advertising? First, it’s important to understand the claim of the TVC. Now, we can get lost in the fantastic play on words and that, in technical terms, a BMW is known to be slightly better around the corners than a Merc. This little technical detail (true for the two models in question) will only add to the wit. But the real claim is that it just makes sense to drive the better car, the BMW.
Category rivalry
I love this— not because it’s one brand against another but because it was made by these brands in this category. The rivalry between BMW and Mercedes-Benz is known by ordinary people and car fans alike. If you’re unaware of this, you’re probably not familiar with the entire category of luxury saloons. It’s a rivalry that dates decades back. They developed products around this rivalry. The M3 itself is a response to the Mercedes Benz 190E (the 2.3-16, in particular) which, at the time, dominated race tracks. Their past is riddled with responses to each other in a not-so-cold war race to be the better saloon.
This isn’t just the two brands — it’s the category. Cars are about competition and, while many sub-brands own economy sections aimed at transportation, the mother brand will only be considered a serious brand if it has racing credentials. Audi is now considered one of the big three German automakers but could only get there through dominating rally tracks around the world, most notably the now-banned Group B rally. And, in a later Audi RS3 commercial, it tapped into its history through the approval of legendary race driver Michèle Mouton.
Mouton herself is a living example of the competitive nature of motorsports and, ultimately, the automotive category. Her response to Bobby Unser’s sour grapes after she took his Pike Peak Hill Climb record sums it up: “If you’ve really got balls, race me back down again.” If you want to be relevant, be faster.
Almost the point
The “Beats the bends” as is therefore not only a brand commercial; it’s a car commercial. The piece is rooted in the category, the history of the brands involved and the attitudes of the people who buy these cars. In a category born in racing, a comparative positioning is almost the point.
Is this always true? Can we always celebrate the comparative positioning? I think not. I recently came across the series of Ingenius ads for the new Galaxy S9. They play on all the old tropes of the Apple stereotypes: a too-cool store clerk, all knowing but without any pragmatic answers — all brand, no product. The seven videos touch on seven features of the S9 that trumps the new iPhone X. They are all things we know about: removable SD card, 3.5mm plug and, to the real experts, download speed. Someone walks in, asks the clerk the question and, in some shape or form, he’s left either without words or with an irrelevant reply.
https://youtu.be/7trMPJNBV20
To those who remember the ‘I’m a Mac’ ads, this might be their own doing. But I would argue that the world has changed enough for this not to be the case. In the days of Mac vs PC, you had two competing sets of consumers. There’s more to it but, for simplicity’s sake, I’ll call it creatives vs geeks. Those who loved the sleek design and priority that Apple gave to a machine’s aesthetic, and the tinker crowd who liked the idea that you could open a PC, slot a new part in and fire it up again. The former loved a machine that was created for them and the latter preferred a machine that they built for themselves. Much like the automotive example earlier, the “I’m a Mac” work played on an existing phenomenon in culture and amplified it through their work.
Ubiquitous
The S9 ad isn’t doing the same, first because of the brand involved and, secondly, because of the nature of the category. Unlike the luxury saloon category (or computers in the noughties), cellphones are a relatively ubiquitous item. A few years ago, you could hardly attend a technology conference and not hear about the staggering rate at which mobile phones are making inroads in all markets. Today this is no longer news; relatively powerful phones are available from under R500.
Mobile phones as a category is not polarising; having one doesn’t make you part of any group (refer back to computers a few years back and luxury automobiles). Mobile phones, instead, are equalisers. And, much like internet connectivity is coming close to being a basic need, so are cellphones becoming devices without which people can’t function above a certain point in a complex, modern society.
This, however, isn’t to say the brands can’t have different takes on the market. I would argue that, with such a vast piece of real estate, the brands stand to really mean something unique to a great variety of different people in the market. But offsetting against a competitor in terms of branding doesn’t have to be direct and shouldn’t be a product comparison.
Why our product exists
I believe that our first step should always be to understand why our product exists in the first place. Where is the category from? In the case of the automobile, it’s rooted in exclusivity (remember that Henry Ford only democratised cars in the 1920s) and before that we had chariots and horses — all drenched in meaning around power, success and conquering. Note here that we’re not talking transport industry as this has a very different history. The mobile phone will have its roots in the slow progress of communication technology, starting with smoke signals and storytelling through to the printing press, telecommunications and, today, the mobile phone. The reason for the category is different and I believe that category players should embrace that.
The iPhone 5 launched with a significantly better camera — something worth talking about. The ad, however, didn’t mention a Galaxy or Samsung at all. Probably because cultural references like the iStore and the cult-like following have never been created on the other side. Instead, the commercial was about pictures.
It’s an ad that dated a little bit and echoes the old Sony Bravia ad from years before. But it still captures the magic of personal photography — the ability to catch and keep precious moments that may sometimes be small and fleeting. The ad shows us a device that can improve life and isn’t ‘just be better than the other one’. In it, the iPhone talks to me and not about the Galaxy.
Cut-throat
In a world of cut-throat business, where short-term sales can easily take priority over long-term brand-building, we should take care not to make our brands about the products — especially when those ads become comparative. The result is, far too often, a well-packaged sales pitch with the artillery facing directly towards the competitor and where the people in the marketplace become collateral in a battle between companies.
This is particularly regrettable these days where mass communication devices and the platforms they connect to have been used to manipulate our behaviour and warp our perceptions. There’s a twist of irony that the mud-slinging through short messages without context (the Ingenius commercials) beautifully mirrors the behaviour it empowers on social-media platforms that allows us to weaponise social communication and polarise our societies.
Our technology brands, with the fingers deep in our everyday lives, can take a leaf out of the automotive book. We have isms today for as many things as we have any significant differentiation among people. Where luxury cars work to define what it means to be successful (and they do), our technology brands could better define what it means to be connected and create ideas that bring us closer together and think better of each other.
DK Badenhorst (@BrandCultureSA) brings cultural context and long-term trend insights to brand communication through cultural insight and semiotics. He is back to contributing the monthly “Brand Culture” column, exploring the value and meaning interaction between brands and society, to MarkLives.com.
by MarkLives (@marklives) The Clio Awards has announced its winners list for 2018, and South Africa cracked eight nods and Egypt one. Grand, Specialty and “Of the Year” awards will be announced during the awards ceremony on 3 October 2018 in New York City.
0307 Films (Bronze), TBWA\Hunt Lascaris (Gold, Silver and Bronze), Net#work BBDO (shortlist) and Ogilvy Cape Town (shortlisted x 3) won for work done for Nedbank CIB (Bird’s Eye View), Joburg Ballet (Breaking Ballet), Mercedes-Benz (Return to Chapman’s Peak) and Carling Black Label (Soccer Song for Change). Egypt’s FP7/CAI (shortlist) was awarded for Orange (Now or Never).
MarkLives is running five extracts from Joe Public United founding partner Pepe Marais‘s first book, “Growing Greatness — A Journey Towards Personal and Business Mastery”, over the next few weeks. Here’s the third, “Nothing creates change more than an idea.”
by Pepe Marais (@pepemarais) It was January 1998 and I was down in Cape Town with Noel Cottrell. He had just introduced me to a young account manager from The Jupiter Drawing Room in Cape Town, a prospective business partner for our soon-to-be-created advertising agency.
We had not even agreed on a name for our business, and already I was looking into the eyes of a surfer dude across a little round table at a drinking hole called Bardelli in the Longkloof Studios. Could this be my future partner? Surfer dude shoved his hand towards me, “Howzit, I’m Gareth.”’ We shook hands and, within moments of initial chit-chat, I learned that Gareth was actually a very good surfer who was well-connected to some of the big names in Cape Town surfing. I was not sure if I wanted to ruin our new friendship so soon but, as it had become a habit by then for me to step into situations, I shared that I too loved the sea with all my heart and that we had something incredible in common. I surfed too, albeit while sitting on my arse as a paddle skier.
A smirk appeared on Gareth’s face as he almost spat out his beer in laughter. “What! You’re a ‘boatman’?” To this day, there remains an inbred hatred of paddle skiers among most surfers. My confession reminded Gareth of an ‘idiot boatman’ (the surfing slang for paddle skier) who had surfed into the harbour wall at Thermopylae a few years earlier. With some sick sense of humour, Gareth continued to tell me how this ‘idiot boatman’ wiped out on a massive wave and washed into the dolosse. He then shared how he told his friend Greg Bertish, who was in the water with him, that someone should help the poor bugger because the ‘boatman’ was surely going to drown. In his amazing story, Gareth continued to tell me how he proceeded to swim into the impact zone where the waves were pelting the ‘boatman’ into the dolosse and how he found the dude unconscious, trapped under the water. His incredible life-saving story reached a climactic ending: he pulled the unconscious ‘idiot’ out, risking his own life, and somehow managed to find a circle of red rubber pipes onto which he dragged the halfdead ‘boatman’. He explained that the guy’s face was lacerated and covered with blood and that he pushed him to calmer, deeper water, away from the breaking waves and then swam out with his own last ounce of strength to call the NSRI and an ambulance.
I was looking at Gareth in disbelief. He must have thought that I did not believe a word he was saying when, in truth, I was hanging on every word in awe. An act of God was staring me in the face. In front of me, almost three years later to the day, sat the person who had saved my life in April 1995.
When I told him so, we were not only both dumbfounded, but we instinctively knew that something far greater was at play and that we were destined to start our agency, OUR agency, together. It was a done deal. A boatman and a surfer would be partners in the stormy ocean called advertising. It was the last little push we would need to take the jump into the ice-cold abyss.
Pepe Marais (@pepemarais), founding partner of Joe Public United, officially launched his first book, “Growing Greatness — A Journey Towards Personal and Business Mastery”, on 27 August 2018 in Cape Town and on 29 August in Johannesburg. Filled with scribbles from the mind of an adman, the book inspires innovation, creativity and showcases the entrepreneurial spirit. Through his growing awareness of what purpose means in both business and personal terms, Pepe points the way to growing your own greatness. Published by Tracey McDonald Publishers, “Growing Greatness” is available in print and electronic format from leading bookstores.
“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.
Shane de Lange (@shanenilfunct)’s weekly analysis of media design — both past and present, print and online — from South Africa and around the world:
Independent print: AIGA Eye On Designpresents and blends stories in a way that revolts against orthodox design practices while pushing the limits of ‘good taste at the same time
Commercial print: Cosmopolitan UK questions the term ‘supermodel’, admonishing all haters and rebuking any bigots out there
Online: Sojournal is a cultural resource packaged in the form of a sensibly designed website, filled with succinct content about fresh and original interiors
Iconic: 391 was a non-conformist, unorthodox periodical that promoted the unaesthetic, borderline verbose, and extremely difficult to rationalise within the realms of art and design
Questioning the term ‘supermodel’ and admonishing all haters and rebuking any bigots out there, the latest issue of Cosmopolitan UK calls out many fashion designers, film producers, advertising agencies and the like who would still rather forget that women aren’t objects. Relegating most women to the sidelines of society and slating them for their bodies, such constructs — idealised and invented images of femininity — are far from empowering and differ greatly from the lived experience of women.
Giving new meaning to a thought shared by many women when viewing Cosmopolitan covers — “if only I could look like her” — UK plus-size model, Tess Holliday, confidently graces the cover of the October 2018 issue of Cosmopolitan UK, making a powerful statement about women who exist outside the dated constructs still dictated to us by the media. Holliday’s performance — with her emerald-green silk lingerie, auburn hair and eclectic collection of quality tattoos — deconstructs traditional notions of the cover model. The positive impact of Holliday’s unapologetic cover effectively competes against any negative, ignorant sentiments that support the idea that Cosmopolitan is promoting obesity.
Sporting a visual language that seamlessly complements its name, the second issue of AIGA Eye on Design (AEOD) is not only an ode to the mind-bending illusions of op-art, recalling the work of Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley, but it is also a superior example of publication design and magazine-craft. Themed “Psych”, this issue dissects the juncture that connects contemporary design with psychedelic experience, performed in an off-beat and unorthodox manner that works so well, it would catch Aldous Huxley’s eye.
Designed by multidisciplinary graphic designer and art director, Shira Inbar, this issue of AEOD constructs a visual and literary narrative that redefines the boundaries of design journalism, presenting and blending stories in a way that revolts against orthodox design practices while pushing the limits of ‘good taste’ at the same time. The reportage, interviews, and visual essays in this issue includes stories about the anonymous women responsible for some of the best psychedelic designs during the ’60s, recreational and vocational drug usage among contemporary designers today, and a record of acid-induced psychedelic design. Printed using copious amounts of DayGlo ink, this issue of AEOD also contains a tear-out poster designed by Slovenian Graphic Designer, Nejc Prah, accompanied by contributions from The Rodina, Alexis Beauclair, Leta Sobierajski, and Jesse Reed, to name a few. Seriously cool and bound to be a collectable.
Looking for an answer that lies beyond the mainstream and commercial design trends, Berlin-based Sojournal is an online interiors magazine focused on bespoke living spaces and curated built-environments. Cosmopolitan and connected, Sojournal is a cultural resource packaged in the form of a sensibly designed website, filled with succinct content about fresh and original interiors.
The design of the site is clean, almost minimalist, embracing the virtue of white space. Textbook typographic pairings complement the layout of the site with a tasteful awareness of proximity, placement and composition, executed artfully. Subtle fade-ins and minor animated elements serve to accent everything beautifully, fulfilling an effective interactive experience. The right-aligned, vertical sidebar is the pièce de résistance, containing intuitive navigational elements that function well as doorways to the rest of the site and its considered contents. All this is proven by the nomination and honorable mention that Sojournal got from Awwwards.
Iconic
391 (Barcelona, Spain, and New York, US) 1917–1924
Nestled between the year 1916 — when Hugo Ball seeded the birth of dadaism with his “Cabaret Voltaire” (featured in this column in July this year), and the year 1918, when Tristan Tzara started his review called “Dada” — was an anti-art periodical called “391”. Both Cabaret Voltaire and Dada were based in Zurich, the birthplace of dadaism, but the latter had evolved quickly and developed in other geographies, such as New York and Barcelona where 391 was initially based.
New York was a refuge for many European creatives escaping from the effects of WWI. The metropolis created opportunities for prolific proto-conceptual artists, such as Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Man Ray, who met in 1915 and became key organisers of anti-art, dada happenings within the city. Although these exponents never really referred to themselves as dadaists, they nonetheless kept with the true spirit of dada, subverting cultural institutions in New York. The radical creative output of these creatives, which had become an international movement, allowed Picabia to publish his periodical, 391. The publication’s content was mostly literary and provocative in approach and tone, with submissions from Ray and Duchamp, among many other artists related to dadaism. Picabia envisioned 391 to be non-conformist, against all orthodox rules or systems, and promoted art to be unaesthetic, borderline verbose, and extremely difficult to rationalise.
First published in Barcelona in 1917, 391 was in many ways a European analogue to the New York-based avant-garde magazine, “291”, which was published by the infamous photographer and gallerist, Alfred Stieglitz (his spouse was the equally infamous artist, Georgia O’Keefe). Picabia published his first mechanical drawings in 391, featured on the cover of the very first issue, accompanied by the text, “Novia, au premier occupant”, meaning “girlfriend, or bride, the first, or primary, occupant” in Spanish. It’s no coincidence that these drawings are reminiscent of a number of Duchamp’s works, notably “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même)”, also known as the large glass. Four issues of 391 were published in Barcelona before Picabia relocated production to New York, aided by Duchamp from #5 to #7. Issue 8 was published in Zurich, after which the publication moved to Paris where it remained until #19, which would prove to be the final issue printed in 1924.
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.
Cheryl Hunter (research at marklives.com)’s weekly wrap of the latest market and consumer research:
Market research trends
Controlling crises
Parenteral packaging
Disrupting market research
In a new white paper released this week, global market research company, Euromonitor International, has identified four key trends that should impact market research through 2030, making it more complex, requiring new technologies for streamlining data collection and analysis, and freeing up time for higher-level problem-solving and storytelling.
“Four Global Trends Disrupting Market Research” identifies automation and do-it-yourself (DIY) tools; big data; transparency and trust; and redefining the partnership role as the major trends disrupting market research execution and delivery. Says Zandi Brehmer, Euromonitor International head of client innovation, “New tools, inputs and best practices will blur with increased use of market research to speed decision-making and stay competitive.”
Automation and DIY tools will help deliver on-demand insights, eliminating manual work for researchers and allowing clients to explore data independently. Big data integration will shift the market-research process from capturing the “what” to determining the “why”. Increased access to new data sources means transparency in data collection and methodology is imperative to become a trusted partner where researchers educate clients and work toward actions beyond solely insights.
A new report from global research and advisor company, Forrester, reveals that “Brands Forget The Rules Of Modern Marketing When Crisis Hits”, talking to B2C marketers who should be asking themselves not if their brand is at risk of a brand crisis, but when.
With more than half of the global Fortune 100 brands landing in hot water over the past three years, and 80% of the total market value of companies in the S&P 500 made up of intangibles such as brand value, a crisis can quickly undercut shareholder value.
Talking to trends that include polarised consumers, the convergence of mobile, social, and review technologies, and consumers reacting faster than brands can respond, the report deals with response mechanisms in detail.
The global market for parenteral packaging is set to witness significant growth in the next 10 years, exceeding US$16bn by the end of 2028, as estimated in a study by market research firm, Future Market Insights.
Sustainability is the buzzword here, with manufacturers steadfast in their focus on addressing environmental concerns; this probably explains the near-death of plastic as a preferred material for parenteral (injection or infusion) packaging, owing to environmental issues associated with the disposal of plastic parenteral packaging products.
Manufacturers of this type of product are slowly eliminating plastic from their ecosystem and shifting towards prefilled and ready-to-use containers, with glass as the most preferred packaging material, and this is expected to augment the usability of parenteral products in self-medication.
Technology is once again driving change, with advanced automation focusing on deploying high-quality, contamination-free processes. A strategic shift from manual to automatic packing lines is bringing in enhanced process efficiency and reducing dependency on manual labour, thereby creating pathways for cost-effectiveness in the long run.
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.
Mark Eardley (@mdeardley) advises B2B companies on how to govern their marketing to attract and retain profitable customers; several of his clients have grown to become market leaders. He and Charlie Stewart have written Business-to-Business Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide (Penguin Random House), which offers practical, actionable advice on how to make marketing make money. His monthly “Back2Basics” column covers how B2B companies and their agencies should manage their marketing.
