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ABC of Scale: What marketers can learn from Airbnb’s growth hacking

by Charlie Mathews (@CharlesLeeZA) It was 2007, the year the world got to meet the Tesla Roadster, Apple introduced the iPhone, and the US financial crisis took hold. Two designers, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky, were in a bind. Chesky had just moved into Gebbia’s San Francisco home but didn’t have a job and couldn’t afford the rent. To make ends meet, the duo decided to turn their loft into a revenue-producing space.

“We were always starting companies together. Always being a little rebellious, a little different to our parents,” Chesky said in an interview with NDTV. The Airbnb founder had quit his job and left home to go live with Gebbia, but only had US$1000 in the bank. His portion of the rent was US$1150.

Air beds

That very weekend, an international design conference was happening in San Francisco. The pair went to the conference website and noticed that all the hotels listed for the event were sold out. That’s the moment they came up with the idea to create a bed-and-breakfast for the design conference to make some quick cash. But they had no beds — just the loft floor. Luckily, Gebbia had some air beds from a camping trip. The friends pulled the air beds out the cupboard, inflated them and decided to call their effort the Airbed & Breakfast.

Chesky had never considered being an entrepreneur. Instead, he went to art school. The day he told his social worker mom that he was going to be an artist, she said to him: “Oh my god, you’ve chosen the only path that pays less than a social worker. You’re going to be an artist and you’re going to get paid nothing.” Back then, her big dream for her son was that he’d get a job that would pay health insurance.

“I’d never even heard the word ‘entrepreneur’ growing up. Nobody ever said you could be an entrepreneur,” Chesky said in the interview. “In hindsight, the only entrepreneur I knew was Bob from Bob’s Pizza.”

Arrived as strangers, left as friends

Despite this, the pair managed to get three people to stay with them — and their guests all slept on air beds on the floor. But the experience generated an epiphany; the guests had arrived as strangers but left as friends. It was this experience that made the friends realise they were onto something. A few months later the pair got engineer Nathan Blecharczyk to help them build out the site that would become the first iteration of Airbed & Breakfast. And that’s when the real hustle began.

Source: Lessons learned scaling AirBnb 100X by Jonathan Golden on Medium

“We were one of the companies that launched a couple of times. We kept on launching to get a lot of press. If you launch and nobody notices, you can actually keep launching,” Chesky says. And so, Airbnb kept launching, and the media kept writing about it as if it’d just launched.

Other growth drivers

How else did the founders of Airbnb drive growth for what is now one of the world’s biggest hospitality marketplaces?

GrowthHackers.com details the founders’ first bid to raise cash. “The founders needed a way to raise money. They bought a ton of cereal and designed special edition election-themed boxes, released that fall—Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s, which they sold at convention parties for [US]$40 a box. They sold 500 boxes of each cereal, helping them to raise around [US]$30k for Airbed & Breakfast.”

At Medium, Jonathan Golden, former product manager for Airbnb, tells another story about what he noticed shortly after joining the startup. “As I scrolled through the listings I noticed something: Those faces in the reviews? Several were walking around the office. My face became flushed. Had I just made the biggest mistake of my career? Did I join a pint-sized marketplace that was running off of the credit cards of its employees?

Tough

The early days were hard. Traction was a daily obsession, because getting growth was really tough. But the big breakthrough came in the form of a #growthhack that has now become legend. Let’s call it the Craigslist Platform Integration. Airbnb didn’t have the cash for traditional marketing; that would have bankrupted the business. Instead, it had to hack a solution to putting its brand in front of the faces of millions of people who wanted to rent, or rent out, parts of their home. Growth guru Andrew Chen, formerly with Uber, explains this hack really well on his blog. He wrote that Airbnb “picked a platform with tens of millions of users where relatively few automated tools exist, and have created a great experience to share your Airbnb listing. It’s integrated simply and deeply into the product, and is one of the most impressive ad-hoc integrations I’ve seen in years. Certainly a traditional marketer would not have come up with this, or known it was even possible — instead it’d take a marketing-minded engineer to dissect the product and build an integration this smooth.” Read the whole hack on Chen’s blog and you’ll be amazed, particularly the part that this hack was done without a public API on Craigslist’s part.

Just 10 years later, Airbnb has a market value of some US$31bn, is active in over 191 countries worldwide, and has managed well over 3m guest arrivals. The company’s revenue for 2017 was recorded at some US$2.6bn

Takeouts

The big takeouts from this story?

Early growth stages are often a grind. Keep grinding anyway but measure everything so the hard work pays off by becoming iterative.
Traction doesn’t always come from marketing or sales. In a digital world, engineers and coders can often help crack solutions to scale.
Growth isn’t a linear path but endless cycles of risk and experimentation aimed at getting growth.
User experience is everything. Friction is the enemy of scale.
You don’t have to be born an entrepreneur to build the next big thing.

For deeper insights, watch Reed Hoffman, LinkedIn founder, interviewing Chesky for a Stanford University class on growth taught by Hoffman.

#AgencyFocus: TBWA\Hunts — “always in beta mode”

by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) TBWA\Hunt Lascaris is emerging from a two-year-long reinvention process, the results of which are becoming tangible. CEO Karabo Denalane says that the ad agency has evolved into what could casually be called Hunt Lascaris 2.0.

Disruption

In 2016, he and his team asked the same question that the agency founders first did when opening their doors in 1983: what do the next 20-30 years look like? The answer, he says, lay partly in merging with TBWA’s Digital Arts Network (DAN) and retail offering, The Integer Group, and partly in reworking internal structures and processes to create a new version of Hunts that is increasingly agile and rooted in disruption.

The focus on ongoing improvement is part of the culture, explains Denalane. “We have a saying that we’re always in beta, We’re always adopting an agile methodology within our team.” As part of this, a new unit, D/Live, has been set up that “scrubs the ’net for insights”, producing work based on social listening, that might be sent to clients for speedy sign-off via non-traditional channels like WhatsApp.

It has also invested heavily in data science to better inform its creativity, he says, drawing on the expertise of David Uribe, recently appointed as TBWA’s regional data director for Africa and the Middle East, for insights into data collection, use of client data and data visualisation.

Strong client base

The emphasis, in all of this, is building the agency’s capability and being a “real partner” to clients, says Denalane, of which it already has a very strong base — one that has grown over the past year. “In mid-2017, we landed the MTN South Africa account, and a couple of months later we landed Liberty,” he says. “On top of that, we’ve had some great organic growth in our existing clients, being Nissan, Datsun and Standard Bank, and we also did quite a lot of project work for new, smaller clients.”

This added up to a solid performance in 2017, something he expects will be repeated this year. He anticipates financial growth of approximately 35–40%, up from the 30% growth the agency saw from 2016 to 2017. He adds that the remaining months of 2018 could see some of the pitches in its new business pipe come to fruition, potentially boosting the figures.

#BreakingBallet

Hunt Lascaris has also strengthened its brand in the past year, recently walking away with the title of South African Agency of the Year at the One Show Awards, and taking second in the individual agencies South Africa category at the Creative Circle Annual Awards. Its Breaking Ballet campaign for Joburg Ballet also garnered the agency Gold and Silver Lions at Cannes this year, as well coming joint #6 in the MarkLives #AdoftheYear2017 countdown.

If Hunt Lascaris has its way, it’ll be adding many more international awards to the trophy cabinet in the coming years. “We don’t just see ourselves as competing locally; we want to be a world-class agency coming out of Africa,” says Denalane. This, he explains, would happen through the deployment of teams into other markets to work on international assignments, partnering with other agencies in the TBWA network where possible. Participating on the international stage necessitates investment in employees in order for them to be able to operate at a global level and be truly disruptive — the agency’s modus operandi, he adds. “Our most-valuable assets walk in and out of the business every day.”

Staff development

Training, internal and as part of the TBWA group, is a core part of staff development, he says, and aims to grow skills both within and outside of an employee’s area of specialisation. “Talent is one of the things we are really investing in,” he says. “We also have to ensure that our people feel fulfilled, like this is their home, this is where they can grow and be amazing individuals; it’s not my company — it’s all of our business.” Some of the initiatives include workshops, exchanges with other agencies in the TBWA group and self-training modules. There are also financial incentives for finding new business leads and talent.

Earlier this year saw former ECD Jenny Glover move to Juniper Park\TBWA in Toronto; Denalane says he’s just glad she’s “still in the family”. As the business scales up, it will be looking at adding more ECDs to the team but, for the moment, it has “great talent”, he says, mentioning creative director Nikki Garrett, as well as recent hires Spike Kunene and Carl Willoughby as ECDs, and Marc Ashwell as head of strategy, who, according to Denalane, brings key digital skills to the team.

Together, they will be working to disrupt and deliver value by “changing the game, fast-tracking the rules and challenging everything we know,” he says. “Our competition is everything in culture; people get distracted, and anything that moves people away from our brand — that’s what we are competing against.”

$TBWA\Hunt Lascaris logo$

tbwa.co.za • Ramify Premium Profile

Office locations: Joburg (HQ), Cape Town, Durban
Revenue band: R100–R150m
Staff count: 130–135
Key clients: MTN South Africa, MTN Group, Standard Bank, Nissan, Liberty, Joburg Ballet, Student Flights, City Lodge
Services: Full-service creative, digital & data agency

Last updated at 4.46pm on 9 July 2018.

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.

Clicks ’n Tricks: Google rearranges furniture; drops AdWords, DoubleClick

gem unicorn fantasy horse courtesy of pixabay

by Charlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) To a collective yawn from all but its most dedicated of followers, Google announced in late June 2018 that it was rearranging its furniture. No, this wasn’t a response to Apple’s move to a new HQ with its fancy cancer-defeating standing desks; it was a rebranding exercise.

Folded into

From July, Google has retired AdWords and DoubleClick. The former becomes Google Ads while DoubleClick (which has flavours for both agencies and publishers) will be folded into Google Marketing Platform and Google Ad Manager.

While the dry nature of the headline announcement received little media exposure, the move should be of interest for anyone with more than a passing interest in the future of marketing. On the one hand, Google is recognising that its core business — AdWords — has become difficult to use. That hampers its ability to squeeze yet more money out of the mittelstand, the core group of small-to-medium-sized businesses on which the global economy is based. At the same time, it’s seen an opportunity to change DoubleClick, its enterprise business, into a much-broader marketing technology platform. Martech is flavour of the moment; last year, marketers put 22% of their budgets into tech systems that will (hopefully) improve their ability to build lasting relationships with their customers. More on its ambitions on this space in a moment.

When Google launch AdWords in 2000, it had roughly 350 advertisers which ran basic text ads against desktop search queries. Move forward the best part of two decades and millions of advertisers spend billions of dollars through it each year.

Monsters, Inc

To encourage them to spend more, Google’s added new features. In doing si, it’s created a monstrously complex beast with a confusing array of ad formats. ranging from the original text to shopping and from display to video.

These are flighted on a massive inventory that includes its primary search engine, its YouTube video channel, Gmail, Maps and a bunch of partner sites and apps. With so many formats, channels and audiences, AdWords campaigns can be tweaked in a multitude of different permutations. Which means you need a degree in stats and the patience of Job to configure the damned thing.

Digital unicorns

Popularity and complexity mean one thing. Skills shortage. And it’s not just a South African thing. Search job portals all over the world for digital marketing roles and you’ll see that the most in-demand vacancies are for paid-media campaign managers. Decent ones are as scarce as unicorns.

So, Google’s taken some steps to address this. As well as improving the platform’s UX — long a sore point for its users — the all-new Google Ads will incorporate machine learning to automate the production of ad creative, its targeting and delivery. Indeed, this will now be the default setting for all new advertisers.

Despite this, agencies like mine will still be looking for those darned unicorns!

Martech ambitions

For enterprise customers, Google had noticed that many of its larger corporate users were using APIs to pull together data from DoubleClick and its Analytics 360 platform, which operated as siloes. Its own data showed that advertisers which integrated their analytics with their media platform got better results, so unifying the two into Google Marketing Platform made perfect sense. But it also speaks to Google’s Achille’s heel.

It’s built the business off the back of one good idea and a bunch of acquisitions. It’s bought more than 200 over the years — indeed, DoubleClick was a US$3.1bn purchase back in 2008. Integrating businesses into each other is tough so, to a large extent, Google’s let them be until it’s seen compelling enough evidence that there’s money to be made by pulling them together.

The explosion in martech spending has clearly jolted Google into action but whether it’ll be able to knit together a platform that can take on the likes of Adobe, IBM and Oracle remains to be seen.

Charlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) is CEO of Rogerwilco, a multi-award-winning independent digital agency best known for its expertise with Drupal, SEO and content marketing. A Scot by birth, he moved to South Africa in the early 2000s in his quest to support a winning rugby team — a search he’s reluctantly forsaken. Together with Mark Eardley, he co-authored Business to Business Marketing: A Step by Step Guide, (Penguin Random House, 2016) and may be found on LinkedIn. Charlie contributes the monthly “Clicks ‘n Tricks” column, which looks at how brands are using digital channels to engage their customers, to MarkLives.

Cover Stories: Matter, Nest, Romance Journal, Superbalist & The Economist

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

International/print: Matter brings the spirit of art brut to life while creating awareness about brain injury issues
Iconic: Nest was a bizarre, eccentric title that negated the appeal of glossy and luxurious interiors magazines
Online: Romance Journal explores truth through the eyes of 10 influential creative women
Local/print: Superbalist (previously The Way of Us) describes Afrocentrism through eight SA style-icon profiles
International/print: The Economist tells Hollywood to watch Netflix, and illustrates how women now have the right to drive a car in Saudi Arabia

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

Superbalist (South Africa), July 2018

The oft-quoted phrase, “know thyself” (ironically connected to Socrates, one of the fathers of Western philosophy), comes to mind with the latest iteration of Superbalist’s magazine. So, too, what does it mean to be Afrocentric? It’s a layered question, littered with many clichés and plagued by so many stereotypes, but one would think that it has something to do with ‘the new’ within, the future of African identities, and the continued evolution of African forms of representation. The autumn/winter 2018 edition of Superbalist magazine (previously called The Way of Us) certainly makes a good attempt to formulate a resolution to these thoughts.

Motivated by the expression “show them!” and personified by a selection of South African style icons, this issue comprises eight covers in all. Using the same dual-cover format as previous issues, one side dedicated to women and the other side to men, the eight brand ambassadors — Maps Maponyane, Nomalanga Shozi, Trevor Stuurman, Kwena Baloyi, Rich Mnisi, Manthe Ribane, Didi Simelane and Lulama Wolf — were selected due the way in which they have respectively mastered their personal image, literally wearing their identity while effectively representing their values and not losing sight of who they are. A few common traits connect these tastemakers: a belief that one should never limit oneself and an innate pride in Africa, and all convey their personalities through fashion. All this speaks nicely into Superbalist’s brand purpose and message, to boot.

Ultimately, the story that each cover tells comes full circle: all eight fashionistas are Afrocentric-storytellers. Among other things, the question of identity and representation is arguably a question of knowing oneself, taking risks, rebelling against establishment, challenging history, and advancing towards a distinctive African future.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The Economist (US), 23–29 June 2018 and 30 June–6 July 2018

The Economist has delivered two noteworthy covers over the past few weeks. The most-recent issue parodies a familiar view of Hollywood, broadcasting to the filmmaking industry that it needs to take Netflix seriously. In one well-manipulated photograph, Hollywood needs to keep a close eye on this technology giant that has rapidly become a household name. The flipside to this argument is, as the cover headline, suggests: “Can Netflix please investors and still avoid the techlash?”

Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, is the subject of the cover for the previous week’s Economist. Media and tech-savvy, Bin Salman is hailed as the man who will succeed in transforming the Arab and Islamic world, and finally open the region to the rest of the globe. As the headline states, “The Saudi revolution begins” — a tall order, given Bin Salman’s penchant for autocratic rule. Nonetheless, he’s instituted some radical reforms that are altering the Gulf region, depicted on the cover by Israeli illustrator and graphic designer, Noma Bar. With its clever play of positive and negative space, and grasp of gestalt practices, the cover illustration references Bin Salman’s most-recent policy of allowing women the right to drive a car. It speaks for itself.

Matter (UK), issue 1, June 2018

We all perceive reality in our own unique way and experience things differently; something that should unite and not separate us. This isn’t a question of who’s inside and who’s outside the bounds of accepted norms. Art brut emphasised this point. Instigated by French painter, Jean Dubuffet, who saw fine art as dominated by academia and stale traditions, Art brut was commonly attached to terms such as “outsider art”, “naïve art”, “low art”, and “raw art”. It supported art that would have ordinarily been understood as crude or obscene by the establishment and traditional standards. As such, Dubuffet embraced the art of the mentally ill, the ‘naïve’ or ‘primitive’, prisoners, and children, including graffiti and the like. It advocated that these forms of representation were unadulterated and the purest form of human nature and creative expression, unhindered by convention.

Matter is a new culture magazine that shares a similar vision to that of Dubuffet and art brut, celebrating the things that make us different though contemporary literature, art, music, food, and philosophy. Published by Headway East London in support of Action for Brain Injury Week (14–20 May), this first issue investigates living with brain injury, generating awareness about the frequency of this issue. As a collaborative undertaking, contributors to the magazine are all members of Headway, all affected by brain injury in some way, all survivors sharing their experiences through new creative faculties that have been cultivated at Headway, not forgetting the individual challenges that still exist. The cover artwork, signed Jason’s, could weirdly be compared to market-related futures in the line of succession from Dubuffet and George Grosz to Willem de Kooning and Karel Appel to Robert Hodgins and Georgina Gratrix, and the like.

Online

Romance Journal (US), issue 2, June–July 2018

For millennia, truth has been one of the core branches of western philosophy. In his historic Socratic dialogue, The Republic, Plato used the allegory of the cave, which described a dark cave-like space filled with chained prisoners, portraying in abstract terms consciousness and human nature. The ‘truth’ for these prisoners is literally the shadows that they project upon the walls of the cave, caused by a distant light source at the entrance to the cave, out of the prisoners’ sight. The prisoners couldn’t see the truth beyond their perception of their own shadows. Roughly 2266 years later, in his book Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche responded: “With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see nature falsely…”, after declaring that “Christianity is Platonism for the masses”. Aside from truth most commonly stemming from the perspective of western patriarchal power structures, on many different plateaus and multiple layers it’s a challenging metaphysical and existential subject to tackle. Romance Journal is a publication that attempts to discover what truth is today and, in turn. tries to nurture a greater sense of consciousness within its readership. Each issue has a theme that is explored from the perspective of 10 influential creative women, all ‘woke’ and backed up by personal raisons d’être.

Truth’s relation to resistance is the theme for the second issue of Romance Journal. Perhaps the human urge to explore, ‘our’ innate curiosity, and our pursuit of ‘truth’ might not exist if it weren’t for the will to resist institutionalised truths. In this context, feminism is resistance to patriarchal truths, ulterior to established narratives. The printed version of Romance Journal is tasteful and visually striking, but the website can’t be overlooked for its succinct design approach. Mirroring the art direction and photography of its print sibling, the site exhibits a sense of style through its unorthodox typographic pairings, discreet interactive elements, and bold and offbeat colour contrasts, alongside a neat contributor list that features portraits of all the female creatives on hover of their respective names. Not to mention the thought-provoking video content.

Iconic

Nest (US), 1997–2004

Published by eccentric designer Joseph Holtzman, Nest was an anti-materialist interiors magazine critical of superficial, trendy, and consumer-driven design. The magazine featured non-traditional, non-conformist interiors complimented by elaborate production methods in relation to its design, with extremely experimental formats and spreads. The tactility of Nest — its unusual physical dimensions, unexpected shapes and surfaces, and experimental printing techniques — was a real selling point, produced to match the often-bizarre contents inside, which included stories about the room of a 40-year-old diaper fetishist, the storehouse of Napoleon’s penis, the accommodations of Navy seamen, a man who lived and worked in a tiny cell space, and a photo-essay about living in an igloo, among a plethora of other intriguing features.

Nest was published as a quarterly between 1997 and 2004, with a total of 26 issues printed before its demise. Based in the Upper East Side, New York City, Nest avoided the conventional appeal of the regular glossy and luxurious interiors magazines. It wasn’t a magazine that embraced white space, filling as much real estate on each page as possible, and covering every spread with juxtaposed imagery, type, colour, texture and pattern. Wallpapers and textiles were often used as backgrounds, and decorative typefaces were favored above more-tasteful, considered typographic pairings.

Nest was anarchic and maximalist, rather than minimalist, but this didn’t mean it lacked a significant design sensibility. Layouts complemented production processes and printing methods, all connected in some way to the stories inside. Covers were flamboyant and often ornamental, almost baroque or rococo-esque, featuring die-cut rounded corners, wavy edges, obtuse angles, irregular shapes and other unconventional, asymmetrical design elements. As a result, Nest has become a rare and collectable publication.

The demise of the magazine is rumored to have been caused by Holtzman’s depleting inheritance, which he used to publish the magazine, coupled with a loss of motivation to keep the publication in print. Bizarre and eccentric to the end.

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.

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

SA TV Ratings: SABC 3 — primetime top 20 for May 2018

SA TV Ratings 2018 pics sourced from Pixabay

by MarkLives (@marklives) The hottest primetime shows on SABC 3 in South Africa revealed: TV ratings for May 2018.

SABC 3 May 2018

BRCSA TV Ratings May 2018 primetime SABC 3 — Click to enlarge to view clearly

Source: BRCSA May 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.

Dissident Spin Doctor: Shaping society positively

success-business-businesspeople-plan courtesy of Pixabay

by Emma King (@EmmainSA) It’s easy to sit back, whether as a business or an individual, and expect “them” to sort out the problems in society. It’s equally easy to complain when “they” don’t get it right and when issues don’t get rectified. But I’ve always been of the opinion that someone doesn’t have a right to whinge and moan if they haven’t bothered to try and do anything about it; don’t come telling me that you haven’t voted and then in the same breath complain about politics.

Make the choice

So, if this stands true, surely it makes sense for business leaders — whose impact, reach and might are far more than that of an individual — to play a role in shaping society positively. For however much one person may pledge not to use single-use plastics, for example, until the Woolies and the PnPs and the MacDs of the world make a decision at executive level to stop handing out plastic bags or straws at every opportunity, the fight is far from being won. [PnP announced this week that it’s starting to trial compostable supermarket bags — ed-at-large.] That takes a very special kind of business to do this, one that has a visionary leadership team, and one that’s prepared to sometimes make a choice that’s not necessarily the easiest or cheapest to carry through on.

As someone who heads up a business that is minuscule in comparison to those behemoths, there seems little chance that my lil’ ol’ team and I alone may turn the tide on gender inequality in the workplace, or create a transformed industry, or rid the sea of plastic pollution. But there are some things that we’ve done that I believe make a small impact in and around the communities which we work with and operate within. I think that any business could do the same, without having to rely on the budgets or impact of scale that the big boys and girls have access to:

1. Focus your energy on stuff that makes a real and meaningful difference

It’s easy for businesses to allocate a CSI budget that does a couple of projects which look good in the end of year report, or which produce good photo opps for the social media streams. But if they don’t make a meaningful, lasting difference, what’s the point?

For me, it means doing a couple of things really well, rather than lots of things badly, and knowing that, within that one small community, something or someone has really benefited.

It also means doing more than just ticking the box and this extends to more than just client work. If we’re to see true transformation in our industry and our country, it has to be about more than just finding the easiest way to rack up the BEE points. Economic transformation is not just about enabling a small group of people who are sitting at executive and ownership level; it’s about fundamental changes that need to be made at grassroots levels — addressing issues of children having access to basic education (let alone tertiary); radically looking at ways to improve literacy levels; and building more mentorship and internship programmes that allow young people to enter the industry.

These are all core skills that we inherently hold within our businesses — how can we share them better?

2. Consider what may be of value over and above cold, hard cash

“Making a difference” doesn’t always mean having to write out a fat cheque. We have an incredible amount of skills that we sell out to clients every day. Imagine if we saw the value of those skills and allowed others to benefit from it —if we shared our knowledge on branding and marketing, or building a business, or even designing a logo, with young up-and- coming entrepreneurs. (My experience with them is often that they have boundless energy and commitment, and are incredibly innovative, but often are desperate for mentorship in fine-tuning and guiding their ways of working.)

When I started my business, I also wanted to look at ways in which we could use the skills we have to benefit initiatives and people in South Africa that need it, not just the clients that have big budgets. It’s resulted in us taking on pro-bono clients and projects that we can offer real value to and has meant that we’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with some of the most-inspiring clients of our carers, getting involved in everything from tracking rhino poachers in the middle of the bush in Kruger to running social media and fundraising campaigns for an initiative that pairs at-risk kids with shelter dogs to learn life skills to hosting an annual Christmas party for an organisation in Khayelitsha.

We’ve recently extended this so that each staff member allocate three-to-five days a year of their time of company resources — whether that be time painting a wall, building a website, or doing a campaign — for a “passion project” or deserving initiative of their choice.

And this effects more than just morale; it effects the bottom line as well. I believe that a business, where people feel that they have a valuable role to play, results in happy employees and less staff turnover.

3. Create a place where you want to come in to work at every day

What it all comes down to, however, is more than just about “doing good”. I personally like to come in to work in a business where we feel as if we’re making a positive contribution to the society which we operate in.

Mahatma Ghandi famously said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” Closer to home, our new president quoted Bra Hugh, challenging South Africans to join his call to #SendMe to help those in our society who need our help.

I’m pretty sure he’d be pleased if many of us in this industry put up our hands to volunteer.

Updated at 10.35am on 6 July 2018.

Emma King (@EmmainSA) is the owner and MD of The Friday Street Club (@TheFridayStClub). She is allergic to bad grammar and ampersands, but likes working her way through piles of novels and travelling the globe. She contributes the monthly “Dissident Spin Doctor” column on PR and communication issues to MarkLives.com.

A barking good influence

by Federico Dedeu (@FedeDedeu) The petfluencer — this is a portmanteau that shouldn’t have marketing weight and yet it’s managed to corner a significant part of the global market and is seeing a rising popularity in South Africa. Grumpy Cat, that perpetually frowning kitty, has managed to launch an entire car range. There are agencies dedicated to representing famous pets from around the world, and both people and brands are lapping up the love.

The world’s most-followed pet, Jiffpom, had 7.73m followers as of January 2018 — that’s 7.73m people tuning into Insta to watch a Pomeranian wear clothes, look cute and generally just drop money into his owner’s lap.

Roaring trade

It’s easy to imagine that petfluencers are a roaring trade across both ponds; after all, the influencer market is more mature on international shores and there is slightly more openness to the idea that a pet could be a celebrity. However, the South African petfluencer market is experiencing significant growth, with some pretty nifty petfluencers glowing with cuteness on mobile screens. Three of the most popular are:

Trez_and_Tydus with 151k followers
goldengirlcalibear with 19k followers, and
hermesthebulldog with 11.1k followers.

These aren’t the only pets to have enough of a following to gain brand attention and influencer platform recognition. _piggyinthemiddle_ , max_and_willow, and loiustheweim are also gaining rapid traction in SA. All of these Instagram accounts are about dogs, which is a little same-same compared with international influencers, but their popularity is indicative of a growing trend.

Emotions

One of the biggest reasons behind the rapid rise of the petfluencer is the emotions they inspire. Social media is often a maelstrom of shouting matches, angry videos, trolls, spam and rage. The seas of calm are rare, and many people are turning to pet social channels to cut out the negativity — something sweet to counteract the bitterness. The daft behaviours, the ability to relax completely, their talent for wearing the latest furry fashion with aplomb. Petfluencers make people happy.

Their popularity is further reinforced by the fur baby economy — Gale found that 44% of millennials sees their pets as starter children, making this a powerful place for brands to place their, well, paws… This generation loves the cute and often sets the pets up in real-world situations, dressed up to look like fuzzy people being adorable in generally fairly banal settings. Who could not love a Pomeranian reading the paper? Very few people, that’s who.

Some of the most-popular breeds tend to be pugs and French bulldogs, although cats with a certain personality twist tend to do well, too. These breeds are very good for brands looking to build awareness as they’re often featured on newsfeeds and have very loyal followings. What the pet has that the standard selfie-taking influencer doesn’t is a sense of relaxed engagement. A person artistically holding up a bag of dog food can’t hold a candle to a puppy having a lie down next to a full bowl of that very food. Petfluencers tend to deliver better engagement, allow for more-creative content development and may endorse a variety of products, from pet food to beds to toys. Because petfluencers make people happy, they’re a great fit for brands that want their ads and engagement to generate that sense of goodwill.

Brands

Some of the most noteworthy brands that have used petfluencers include The Body Shop, Fanta, Coca-Cola, Flying Fish, Ford, Katy Perry, Friskies, Persil, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz. The reality is that, where there’s an imagination, brands now have a way of engaging with people through the furry parts of their hearts.

The success of the petfluencer is driven by a number of different reasons, ranging from their ability to transcend gender, age and culture to their being accessible and entertaining and so much more. And now is the time to do it.

Federico Dedeu (@FedeDedeu) is EMEA business development lead at indaHash, a global tech platform connecting social media influencers and their followers to brands around the world. Based in Johannesburg, Federoco is an industry veteran with more than 18 years of experience in marketing and advertising, and has held positions at some of the leading advertising and media agencies in South Africa. He has led accounts for brands such as Coca-Cola and Standard Bank.

“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.

eMarketplaces & Brands: Impact on consumer product choices

by MarkLives (@marklives) What roles do brands play in today’s world of ecommerce? How does this impact on how consumers choose products? We emailed a panel of key industry executives for their take on South Africa’s ecommerce market. Next up is Melissa Workman of Teljoy.

Melissa Workman is digital marketing coordinator at Teljoy. She has three years’ experience in digital marketing and has worked for various agencies on top brands such as Nando’s, Vespa, Nashua, Blue Ribbon and 1^st for Women. Her interests lie in the digital space, digital innovation and building successful brands.

How is ecommerce impacting on how consumers choose products?
The increasing internet penetration in South Africa means that, every day, more people are logging on to do their shopping. Brands here need to make it quick and easy for consumers to find products because, just like in your traditional brick-and-mortar stores, consumers like to browse online stores and compare products before making their purchase. And, when you consider the statistic that ecommerce has grown by 25% locally but only 1.5% of consumers end up making a purchase, you’ll often find that it’s because people are more comfortable going into the store to make the purchase, rather than doing it online. They’re using the online platforms to do their homework.

But, if brands do want consumers to migrate to online, then they need to ensure that the user experience is seamless and positive.

Other factors to consider include:

Your site needs to be easy to navigate and check out
Free delivery is always a big financial factor to consider but can make using your platform more enticing
Specials specific to online. Many brick-and-mortar stores that also have online offerings run specials specific to their digital platform. This is a great way to convert your traditional shoppers to online
Product comparison tools — consumers want to be able to browse and compare products before buying. This is especially the case for higher-value items such as TVs or appliances. It’s our job as retailers to make this process easy and seamless.

What should brand managers know about online retail through online marketplaces (such as Amazon.com and similar local operations)?
It’s extremely important for the product demand to be predicted correctly prior to listing your product/s onto an online marketplace (especially if you run a special). The more popular your brand or well-known a specific marketplace is, the higher the volume of customers will be searching the site which means that your product has a higher chance of being sold. The last thing you want is to make a consumer wait, due to low stock availability. Not only does this reflect badly on your brand but the online marketplace, too, and could ultimately result in a lost sale. This is one of the many reasons consumers still go into a physical store to make a purchase.

On the flipside, if your brand is not as well-known as some of the popular South African brands, the uptake of your products may increase at a slower rate. It’s then essential for brand managers to work closely with the marketplace to find innovative ways to increase awareness and sales for your product/s.

Mutually beneficial partnerships are key to success. How do you make your brand stand out on the other platform? Some ideas here could be to run an online competition through their platform, offering incredible specials on your products and even collaborating through blog posts on their website and social media platforms.

How may a brand optimise its presence in these online retail spaces to make it easy for consumers to find and access their products?
It’s important to ensure that your products are listed correctly on the ecommerce site, whether this is by department, by brand or on specific deals/specials pages. Another important consideration is that often customers, who aren’t too sure what they are looking for, make use of the search bar functionality and it is therefore equally as important that your product/s appear under the correct results pages.

Finally, what are your predictions for online retail’s current and future share or retail spend in South Africa, how will mobile change online buying habits, and how will it impact consumers’ offline buying behaviour?
Although we may think that online buying through mobile far outweighs buying from desktop, this is often not the case. As seen with Teljoy customers, we only see a slightly higher number of purchases via mobile vs desktop. Older consumers are slower adapters to making online purchases through mobile; however. we should see this change in the near future. Convenience will be highlighted as a significant benefit as more and more consumers move away from desktop to mobile purchases and it’s this convenience that will reduce offline purchases.

Shelf Life: Pre-loved drives new category • Quickademy • Eat Out app

Cheryl Hunter (shelflife at marklives.com)’s weekly pick of all things new in retail — consumer products launches, retail news and FMCG campaigns!

Ewaste creates opportunity
Quickademy graduates
App out

weFix launches new range as demand grows

Affordability and environmental consciousness are driving a relatively new trend in South Africa as a staggering 50m tons of electronic waste (mostly computers and smartphones, according to Statista) finds its way to African and Asian landfills annually.

According to, Grant Webster, weFix COO, says SA is a massive contributor to this waste, generating about 300 000 tonnes of electronic waste each year — about 5.7kg per citizen. “South Africans are increasingly calling for refurbished or reconditioned products that exist within a new ‘circular economy’ that rejects the ‘take, make and dispose’ industrial model.”

While consumers may have the desire to buy devices new, weFix says its newly launched range of i2 refurbished iPhones enables consumers to enjoy one of the world’s most-popular mobile devices without breaking the bank, and contributes to the new economy. He points out that some consumers upgrade their smartphones every 18—24 months as their voice and data contracts expire and asks what happens to the old devices: “Mobile devices may be refurbished for a number of reasons. Most are ‘pre-loved’ or second-hand, but others are damaged during shipment, demo units that have been shop-soiled, or new devices that have a fault upon opening. weFix replaces damaged parts with new parts, bringing an otherwise-intact unit back to life.”

There are currently three devices in the range, from the i2 iPhone 5S 32GB to the i2 iPhone 6 64GB model, each packaged with earphones and a screen protector. In line with the weFix philosophy of “repair rather than replace”, a one-year protection plan from insurance partner, Click2Sure, is an optional addition to each package, meaning that devices are insured from the moment consumers leave the store.

“When purchasing an i2 device, consumers have peace of mind knowing that they have a genuine high-end smartphone restored to full working condition and appearance by credible technicians who offer a one-year warranty on their work,” says Grant.

wefix.co.za • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram

Supa Quick empowering drivers

Online research has shown that drivers desire much more information on vital information about basic vehicle maintenance, from tyres, shock absorbers and batteries to exhausts and brakes. This has prompted Supa Quick to launch Quickademy.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWPVLpxIPFsq2pWdgj9Vm00bHw0mvZYXd

This online resource of how-to videos and blogs is designed to provide consumers with more information about their vehicles in an entertaining format, presented by two familiar faces: Lunga Shabalala of Top Billing and Man Cave fame, and actress Shannon Ezra.

Search results from Google and YouTube show that, in a typical month, 4.4m South Africans search for content on tyres, 2.24m on batteries, 246 000 on brakes and 90 500 on shock absorbers. Typical searches include how to change a tyre, how to determine the correct tyre pressure, and how to disconnect a battery.

Desiree van Niekerk, Supa Quick brand manager, says Quickademy is responding to a clear market need: “We believe that the more-knowledgeable consumers are about their vehicles, the better and safer their driving and ownership experience will be. Informed consumers make better choices and have a better customer experience, and we are on a mission to empower consumers and improve their driving lives through easy access to reliable, easy-to-understand information.”

Consumers who join the Supa Quick Quickademy will be able to confirm their new knowledge by answering a few quick questions — and make themselves eligible to win a BMW Advanced Driving Experience.

supaquick.com/quickademy • Facebook • Twitter

Geo-location makes Eat Out app

One of SA’s most-recognised restaurant guides, Eat Out, has launched a new app which gives users the ability to find, book and review more than 6 000 restaurants across South Africa.

The app/bookings system is a collaboration between Naspers and New Media, a division of Media24. It has been developed to find restaurants using geolocation technology; users may search by area, for a specific cuisine type, or by using the restaurant’s name. Developed by a team of software developers from Naspers led by Evan Person, features include the ability to bookmark favourite restaurants, view restaurant menus, view specials in the area, and share reservation details with dining companions.

According to Person, the app delivers the power of SA’s largest and most-comprehensive restaurant directory to mobile: “Apart from the incredible user experience, the app also offers diners the ability to book instantly. This is not only of value to consumers but it’s also of great value to restaurants. It is also the first of several new features we will be bringing to the food space in SA over the coming months.”

The Eat Out app may be downloaded from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.

eatout.co.za • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram

Shelf Life is MarkLives.com’s weekly column covering all things retail. Notify us of yours at shelflife at marklives dot com. Want to sponsor Shelf Life? Contact us here.

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.

Sustainable CSI — support small biz to grow communities

by Nontokozo Madonsela (@NontokozoM88) Corporate social investment (CSI) should never be undertaken with a box-ticking approach and a donor mentality; a business mindset is more effective than a charity one. Instead of donating money or even time, companies should look to support businesses already active within communities. This is a form of social entrepreneurship.

Deliberate, systematic and practical

For private enterprise, CSI should be deliberate, systematic and practical — the same way every company conducts its commercial business. And, as with like every sales and marketing strategy, CSI should also aim to have the broadest possible impact.

To have impact, it’s essential to have focus. Organisations should review their CSI strategy to ensure a focussed approach that meaningfully addresses our country’s key challenges — take youth employment, as an example. In this instance, your CSI programme would support youth development initiatives that operate sustainably and lead to measurable results: real jobs, careers, profitable businesses and community benefits.

This approach also meshes neatly with President Cyril Ramaphosa’s recent call to enable youth employment. In his 2018 State of the Nation speech, Ramaphosa called on us to roll up our sleeves and work together to address youth unemployment, to prepare for a new era of technological change, and to encourage growth for shared prosperity. The response came from every corner of the country: count us in! This was just the call South Africans had been waiting for. Yes, individuals and companies alike want to uplift the poor, create jobs and reduce inequality, but how?

More efficient

Instead of rallying their workforce and painting walls at a preschool for a day, companies should consider hiring a local painting business to complete the project. This will provide employment, grow business and probably ensure a more-efficient outcome.

An even more systematic approach would involve conducting an audit of schools in the community that need painting, and then hiring local small businesses to do the job. Similar multiplier benefits may be achieved by looking at a community’s maintenance, security and catering needs.

Investor businesses may also offer their expertise to coach and mentor their community partners on how to be more effective in their communities. Engaging with organisations that are already active in a community would build mutual respect and give benefactor companies more credibility.

Business opportunity

Corporates can make a significant contribution, cost-effectively, by being a catalyst for enduring change, instead of a saviour with a chest full of donor funds. Creating a business opportunity is more likely to endure. That way, when the corporate partner leaves the picture, the project sustains itself as a business.

Building businesses creates more jobs than charitable donations do. There will be an innovative way of doing this in every sector — companies themselves will know what methods to use.

Technological empowerment is another way to enable development on a business basis. There are numerous examples of African tech solutions to African challenges. You can already buy goats on Facebook, and there is a South African crowd-farming platform that helps investors purchase cows online, and have them managed remotely, like an investment portfolio.

Partnering, mentoring and sharing

The challenge is not the ideas but the opportunity to make them real. Effective CSI can be about partnering to enable tech innovation that benefits communities and opens up sustainable business opportunities. This might mean creating free wi-fi zones, building an API interface for community developers to build apps on or, simply, hiring township businesses to build websites and apps. Mentoring and sharing expertise can also help community businesses to grow. Given the platform, the ideas will come.

As businesses, we all need to introspect in the industry we’re in, and think of ways we can make enduring sustainable change. We need to really leverage all the abilities of existing small businesses, and all South Africa’s talent and creativity. Then we will really be heeding the president’s call — really be making a difference.

Nontokozo Madonsela (@NontokozoM88) is group CMO at MMI Holdings. She has over 18 years of experience in brands and marketing, specialising in marketing and brand strategy, creative development process, delivery of brand and corporate identity and strategic execution of advertising and marketing campaigns.