MarkLives.com • Page 118 of 579 • Independent industry news for marketing, advertising & media execs

#CannesLions: Day 1 highlights, notable wins

by César Vacchiano (@cvacchiano‏) CANNES, FRANCE: The theme for this year’s Cannes Lions is Transformation. In 2016, it was Experience. In 2017, it was Disruption. David Shingi, the digital prophet we met in New York at the AdForum Worldwide Summit, is here at Cannes and he’s predicting that the theme in 2019 will be Analogue — quite ironic.

Gender equality

There’s a lot of talk about gender equality. Yesterday, on Day 1, Monday 18 Jun 2018, they also talked about equality for men: the US is one of the four countries in the world with no parental leave (the other three being Papua New Guinea, Lesotho and Swaziland!).

Digital transformation in business

There’ve been lots of examples of business transformation and how business should move to digital. L’Oréal recognised that 8% of its global sales is through ecommerce, and an astonishing 40% in China!

Innovation

MullenLowe Colombia was recognised for its idea to access Google through first-generation phones (not smart phones) and voice messages. This is very useful for poor people who live in communities with no wifi access and basic phones; they can now access Google through a platform called mylife.

There was an interesting case shared by IBM on the blockchain possibilities, apart from investing in bitcoins. Maersk and the immense possibilities of transparent world trade. We can all think about our own businesses and the potential that blockchain offers.

New countries at Cannes

New countries are investing in having a presence at Cannes and we haven’t seen countries such as Peru, Denmark and Israel here before now. They’re promoting how innovative they are, and the talent of people and companies working in those countries.

And a shift in media companies

Apart from all the new-age companies (tech) that’ve been investing in the last years in having a visible presence at the main Cannes beach and cabanas ( such as Facebook, Google, Adobe, Pinterest, Spotify, Accenture Interactive), we’re now seeing some traditional media companies that have been able to shift into digital (WSJ, CBS) and we’re seeing lots of new ones (Teads, Rubicom, Braze, Feverr, Comcast…).

From seven to five days

The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has been shortened from seven days to five days this year and this has meant that the large volume of people, which normally increases as the week goes on, has already started to be present from Day 1. The level of intensity of the programme and momentum is therefore as intense at it would normally be by Day Four of the event. It should be interesting to see how the rest of the week goes.

Awards

Awards last night were for the healthcare and pharma sector. Notable awards went to:

Project 84: adam&eveDDB London
Sip Safe: Y&R Melbourne
Black Supermarket — Carrefour: Marcel Paris
Corazon — Give your Heart — Montefiore Organ Donation: John X Hannes NY (Grand Prix)
Health Agency of the Year: FCB

Johanna McDowell also contributed to this report.

César Vacchiano (@cvacchiano‏) is president and CEO of SCOPEN, an independent research company headquartered in Spain. Trained in economics and business with postgraduate degrees in American universities, he is an international speaker and contributor to various publications, specialist in image studies and positioning agencies, advertisers and media. César has been at SCOPEN since 1993 and today is the company’s top executive worldwide.

“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.

— One subscription form, three newsletters: sign up now for the MarkLives newsletter, including Ramify headlines; The Interlocker, our new monthly comms-focused mailer; and Brands & Branding, launching soon!

B2B Customer Centricity: Why it’s vital for needs-based segmentation

jelly-marmalade-sweet-candy-sugar courtesy of Pixabay

by Mark Eardley (@mdeardley) In this third Q&A with Laura Ramos, Forrester’s VP and principal analyst serving B2B marketing professionals, we’re looking at centricity in the context of market segmentation and the role it plays, first, in identifying everyone who influences buying decisions and, secondly, in understanding the reasons that motivate those decisions.

Needs-based segmentation is key to producing sales-creating marcoms that are regarded as relevant and credible by the right people in the right places at the right time. Get the segmentation wrong and none of that will happen — your marcoms won’t trigger sales.

Back2Basics: “It is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper.” Peter Drucker’s emphatic words from his 1954 book, The Practice of Management, highlight the hard-nosed importance of understanding customers — of being knowledgeably customer-centric. In B2B, the big buying decisions that create big sales are influenced and made by many different people from both inside and outside the business. How does centricity help marketers identify all these people and why is that important?
Laura Ramos: It’s astounding how correct and prescient Drucker was when he called out the customer as the lynchpin of business success. In B2B, marketers and sellers focus a lot of attention on using technology, data, and analytics to identify key influencers involved in the decision-making process.

Account-based marketing, for example, is enjoying tremendous new (or should I say renewed?) popularity because it uses technology and process to help solve the ideal customer-identification problem.

The data marketplace has exploded with solutions and services aimed at addressing the origin and governance of business-buyer data — and the desire to put this data into practical use. Predictive analytics, just as one example, is demonstrating its power to raise the bar on identifying the accounts, to forecast which will be more likely to close, and reshape B2B marketing outcomes.

The issue isn’t with identification as much as it is with knowledge. Sure, you can pick out the “top 10” people who are most likely to influence the purchase decision in a major account, but what are you going to say to capture their attention?

Marketers must move beyond basic demographic, firmographic, and BANT criteria to uncover the issues, concerns, and motivations buyers share. And use this understanding to foster relevant business conversations and interactions outside of the offer-response communication paradigm at the heart of traditional mass-marketing and media mix approaches.

Customer centricity lets marketing and sales understand who is important in making the decision, what they care about, and — most importantly — how to position your company’s offerings in a way that can help them. If you can’t make the conversation all about them, they won’t listen.

B2B: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” Theodore Levitt, circa 1960. Rather than segmenting based on, say, firmographics within target markets, it’s surely far more effective to segment according to what is valued by decision-influencers — ie to understand and describe how products and services will fulfil each influencer’s specific needs. For needs-based segmentation, how does centricity enable marketers to define and address the prevailing reasons that motivate influencers to unanimously support a buying decision?
LR: I completely agree that segmenting by the value — or outcomes — decision-makers desire is a far more effective approach. Judging by what’s happening in the market, I would say this is an aspirational goal for most marketers. We’ve been so steeped in product-centric segmentation — if we do any segmentation at all — that it is like trying to cure an addiction to get marketers to segment differently.

Traditional product-centric segmentation focuses on what we want buyers to know about us. Today, buyers can figure that out long before they talk to sales, fill out an online form, or otherwise make themselves known to us. Instead, they want to know that you understand them, their business, the problems they need to solve, and the market conditions they face.

Marketers need a much-broader understanding, a richer set of data, to develop customer-centric segmentation and to detect the lookalikes belonging to each segment. It’s easy to group prospective accounts by size, industry, or geographic location; it’s difficult to group them by their marketing technology maturity, their philosophy on outsourcing, their financial risk-taking profiles, or a score of other, more revealing characterisations.

Customer-centric firms invest in the processes, technology, talent, metrics, and organisational structures that put winning, serving, and retaining customers foremost in their strategy setting, budgeting, and execution. These firms prioritise investment here above meeting typical operational goals. Even more, this obsession with customers creates a culture devoted to understanding and solving buyer problems. When a company operates in a customer-obsessed manner, knowing buyer motivations and how to address their needs directly — without a lot of technical gobbledygook or long-winded, flowery explanations — comes naturally.

Following this overview of centricity’s central role in guiding needs-based segmentation, in the next Q&A we’re going to look at how a centric approach enables B2B companies to produce the right messages across the buying decision cycle. This series of Q&As will end with an exploration of how to measure the outcomes produced by centricity. Next up: B2B Customer Centricity — how it empowers marketers to create content that creates sales.

#AgencyFocus: Publicis Machine repositions, embraces pop culture

by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Publicis Machine is set to embark on a new brand journey that sees it reorganising the way it does business, in a bid to better serve clients in a rapidly shifting social context. Through an initiative called The Machinery, the Publicis Groupe Africa agency — which operates independently yet collaboratively — is repositioning itself to focus on ingraining brands into popular culture.

Critical to sustained success

This is something that Gareth McPherson, group executive creative director, and Neal Farrell, managing director, see as critical to sustained success in the market. In a world that is increasingly connected, digital and informed, and where consumers are quick to act and react, the biggest challenge for brands, says Farrell, is keeping up. They can be in one day, and out the next. The key to remaining relevant, then, is becoming deeply embedded in the daily conversations that are taking place.

“If you look at the marketing landscape, there’s so much noise out there, and brands are constantly fighting for attention,” says Farrell. “How do you make an impactful difference? If brands want to thrive today, they have to be completely immersed in the action, be part of our lives.” For the agency, this means anchoring brands in popular culture, which McPherson defines as a set of practices, beliefs, and objects that are dominant or ubiquitous in a society at a given point in time.

“For us, popular culture is the dominant conversation,” he says. “It’s what’s happening around us; it’s what people are talking about, worrying about, excited about. It’s politics, music, fashion, literature, dance. But it’s also Instagram and Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and SnapChat. It’s global warming, fake news, artificial intelligence and data privacy. If a brand is part of the popular culture conversation, it is a part of consumer lives; it’s that simple.”

Pop culture

The tricky part is keeping up with pop culture, which, of course, is constantly changing. This is where The Machinery comes into play. “It’s a way of organising ourselves; a system of working, but also a philosophy of how we work,” Farrell explains. “Campaigns aren’t linear anymore, and the ‘always-on’ approach is one we need to use. Because we’re a company made of specialist divisions, we have the format to do that.”

Publicis Machine comprises several specialisations that have been established over the years. Integrated but operating independently and able to attract clients on their own steam, these divisions include Answered, which focuses on research and insights; NURUN, concentrated on technology; Narrative, tasked with content; and Moon Walk, responsible for influencer- and media relations. The system has grown from the agency’s roots in digital branding and communication.

By changing the way in which the specialist teams think of the brands with which they work (from time-based projects with beginnings and endings to constantly-moving, ongoing processes), Farrell and McPherson believe they can create a brand culture that is able to keep in step with society. “The branding process should never stop at the end of a traditional campaign, because every campaign should yield new insights that should give rise to the next narrative. And so on, ad infinitum,” says McPherson.

ROI and stability

If they’re successful in their endeavors, it could mean excellent ROI for clients, as well as serious stability kickbacks for the agency. “If you ingrain brands in popular culture, if you make them relevant to the market and secure mid- to long-term success for them in that market position, it secures your role as an agency in their world,” explains Farrell.

The Machinery has been a long time in the making. Publicis Machine has effectively been operating on these kinds of principles for years already; it just hadn’t articulated as much, says Farrell. “The Machinery is not the result of hours of boardroom-strategising but rather the consolidation of tried-and-tested working methodologies that have successfully inserted brands into consumer conversation — and kept them there, no matter how fast the conversation moves,” he says. As examples, he cites the agency’s local work with longstanding client Red Bull, renowned for its support of trend-setting sounds, and Martell Cognac in its association with the Afropunk festival.

“Machine has always been the sum of its parts, and creativity has always been our differentiator,” adds McPherson. “We’ve always been close to the pulse of the zeitgeist, and applied insights to make work that is relevant.”

Market perception

Despite significant management changes in recent months, the market perception of the agency hasn’t taken a knock, says Farrell, and the operational team is on a good footing. He describes business performance as solid, with revenue poised to grow in excess of 10% this year, and the churn rate for talent staying below 5%. Publicis Machine hasn’t bid farewell to any clients over the past year and has started working on new business, including PR and content for fintech innovation hub, Barclays Rise Cape Town.

publicismachine.com • Ramify Premium

Office locations: Cape Town, Johannesburg
Revenue band: R50m
Staff count: 100
Key clients: Pernod Ricard, Red Bull, Direct Axis, Emirates, Sanlam Reality
Services: TTL (strategy, creative, digital, technology, content marketing, research, PR & influencer)

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.

Unorthodoxy: Combating brand indifference & active avoidance

by Gau Narayanan. A lot has been written about the importance of gathering, analysing and using data to give the customer exactly what she wants. And rightly so. This approach allows marketers to understand the customer better, add value to her life and efficiently drive audiences down a purchase funnel. However, a maniacal focus on the data alone is leading to us forget about the human at the end of those programmatically served eye balls.

Primary marketing challenge

This is important, because our primary marketing challenge is to tackle one thing and one thing alone: mass indifference. Assuming people are open to being converted assumes people are open to our messages; they’re not. They go about their lives pursuing what matters. And what matters today has always mattered: the basics of the Maslovian hierarchy — food, shelter, finances, family, friends, social mobility and self-worth [don’t forget internet access these days — ed-at-large]. Brands won’t matter unless they help people realise these hopes and dreams.

Don’t kid yourself that people care about your brand. Here’s a simple test: If Apple somehow fell prey to an Enron-esque scandal and foreclosed tomorrow, would the millions of fanboys go back to writing with a pen and a paper? Would they mourn the loss of a fantastic, creative company like the loss of a family member? Or would they would simply move on with their lives? Studies by the Ehrenberg Bass institute also show that, despite $billions invested to develop a differentiated positioning, people don’t see it, and feel that brands are substitutable.

Source: How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp

If you can’t avoid them, block them

To further prove this apathy to marketing, we can look at ad blocking, which is becoming an industry in its own right. In a survey conducted by PageFair, in December 2016, over 615m devices were running ad-blocking software globally, a 30% YOY growth. It’s been there on your TV with your PVR (be honest: how many of you watch your own ads, let alone are able to stop family members skipping?); it’s on pre-rolls; and soon, through software, the public will be able to block ads completely on their devices. There’s also been talk of blocking ads at the network level, by UK networks EE and O2, due to the compromised user experience and data costs caused by the slow-loading programmatic advertising.

The masses have spoken — they are sick of terrible advertising, sick of spam, sick of junk mail. And this has been the case from day dot. People took themselves off the phone list, off direct mailing lists, off emailing lists and now they have the power to block advertising using ad-blocking software.

Beating the blocker

However, people still want brands to entertain them, make them laugh, make them cry and add value to their lives. Whether it’s through a film, through an experience, through a game, an act of kindness or through a coupon if you understand what people want and deliver a great experience, with the right message at the right time, they will let you in and reward you with patronage.

Film

Experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_larVGi5J0

Game

Act of kindness

Coupon

So how do we go about combating indifference and active avoidance?

Schools of thought

There seems to be two schools of thought:

Programmatic conversion

The first focuses on adding value through programmatic conversion. Using data, algorithms and the power of programmatic to serve audiences ever more-relevant messaging to help close the deal. This messaging is based on using machine learning to understand peoples’ online and offline behaviour, where they are in the buying cycle, their location, and their platform and device. Sure, the technology is currently clunky, inaccurate and irritating (notice how advertising for a car follows you around the internet right after you’ve just bought one!), but Moore’s Law tells us that this will get better and quickly. Very soon, we’ll understand our consumer so well, nudging them toward the sale will feel seamless to them.

Mass consideration

The other is to focus on people, not just pixels, by creating value through mass mattering. Tell them why your brand exists in the world, why it should be noticed, remembered and bought. Be empathetic, insightful and matter, en masse. Enter popular culture with a bang; more importantly, become popular culture. Have a view, drop to one knee, stand for something or stand against something. Understand human nature, understand what matters and authentically enter the conversation. I call this mass consideration, because it builds aspirational value and salience at scale.

Person before pixel

I’m sure you’ll have a view on which school to follow. My view is that we need embrace complexity and do both. The sweet spot is where the two meet and I’ve labelled this personalised mass mattering. This is when the pixel and the person are equally understood. If we do this and get our distribution right, the right message will be served at the right time.

But there is an order effect.

I believe we do need to start with understanding the person and their hopes and dreams. When we start to matter, people (subconsciously) let us in, and our branded messages turn up on the news, on TV shows, in the music charts, and this fame causes the brand to be talked about, tweeted about, and shared through memes and gifs on WhatsApp. The data from Peter Field and Les Binet’s analysis shows that this fame results in sales, because it’s only when people care and overcome indifference that they’re most open to being converted.

After 13 years at AMVBBDO in London, Gau Narayanan came to South Africa to become MD of Net#work BBDO and regional director for BBDO Africa in December 2014. His monthly “Unorthodoxy” column on MarkLives questions the orthodoxy of how we thought marketing and advertising worked, looking instead at best practice from the world of behavioural economics, neuroscience and data from the IPA that shows us how marketing and communications works and how it can help the business.

#CannesLions: SA makes Glass, Pharma, Radio, Design, Print shortlists

by MarkLives (@marklives) Of the shortlists released this morning, Monday, 18 June 2018, South Africa has made it onto Glass, Pharma, Radio & Audio, Design and Print & Publishing. We failed to make the shortlists for Health & Wellness, Innovation, Titanium, Outdoor and Mobile.

Glass — The Lion for Change

A01 (Glass )

Title	Client	Product	Entrant company	Idea creation
THE NEWS YOU NEED TO SEE	PEOPLE OPPOSING WOMEN ABUSE	PEOPLE OPPOSING WOMEN ABUSE	POWA Johannesburg	JOE PUBLIC SHIFT Johannesburg

Pharma

A02 (Regulated: Direct to Patient)

Track	Title	Brand	Product	Medium	Entrant company	Idea creation	Production
Health	BRONKI BOOSTERS	CIPLA SA	ASTHMA INHALER CASINGS, COMIC BOOK, ANIMATED SERIES, INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEOS.	Product Innovation	VML Cape Town	VML Cape Town	RESONATE AUDIO Cape Town / RITUAL STUDIO Cape Town / ROCKETFUEL Cape Town / STUDIO KRONK Cape Town

Design

C04 (Social Engagement)

Track	Title	Brand	Product	Entrant company	Idea creation
Communication	MTV #FCKHIV	VIACOM / MTV	MTV	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG

Print & Publishing

A13 (Not-for-profit / Charity)

Track	Title	Brand	Product	Entrant company	Idea creation
Communication	FRASIER	COMMISSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY	COMMISSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY	DDB SOUTH AFRICA Johannesburg	DDB SOUTH AFRICA Johannesburg
Communication	ETHAN	COMMISSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY	COMMISSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY	DDB SOUTH AFRICA Johannesburg	DDB SOUTH AFRICA Johannesburg
Communication	ERIC	COMMISSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY	COMMISSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY	DDB SOUTH AFRICA Johannesburg	DDB SOUTH AFRICA Johannesburg
Communication	STEVE	COMMISSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY	COMMISSION FOR GENDER EQUALITY	DDB SOUTH AFRICA Johannesburg	DDB SOUTH AFRICA Johannesburg

B02 (Publications for Good)

Communication

THE NEWS YOU NEED TO SEE

PEOPLE OPPOSING WOMEN ABUSE

POWA Johannesburg

JOE PUBLIC SHIFT Johannesburg

Radio & Audio

A01 (Food & Drink)

Track	Title	Brand	Product	Entrant company	Idea creation	Production	Media	PR	Additional
Communication	1. MAKE A DIFFERENT FRIEND – THE REALLY SMART WATCH GUY	ABINBEV	CASTLE LAGER	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG
Communication	3. MAKE A DIFFERENT FRIEND – THE PINKIE RING GUY	ABINBEV	CASTLE LAGER	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG
Communication	2. MAKE A DIFFERENT FRIEND – THE NO SENSE OF PERSONAL SPACE GUY	ABINBEV	CASTLE LAGER	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG

A04 (Consumer Durables)

Communication	MOORE’S LAW	DURACELL	DURACELL BATTERIES	GREY AFRICA Johannesburg	GREY AFRICA Johannesburg	FINE TUNE STUDIOS Johannesburg
Communication	BLACK MIRROR	DURACELL	DURACELL BATTERIES	GREY AFRICA Johannesburg	GREY AFRICA Johannesburg	FINE TUNE STUDIOS Johannesburg
Communication	PETROL	DURACELL	DURACELL BATTERIES	GREY AFRICA Johannesburg	GREY AFRICA Johannesburg	FINE TUNE STUDIOS Johannesburg

A05 (Automotive)

Communication	STALKER	VOLKSWAGEN SOUTH AFRICA	VW BRAKE ASSIST	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	WE LOVE JAM Cape Town
Communication	FUNERAL	VOLKSWAGEN SOUTH AFRICA	VW BRAKE ASSIST	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	WE LOVE JAM Cape Town

A07 (Travel)

Communication	DATE	FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADVENTURE	YOUTH & ADVENTURE	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg
Communication	SWIM	FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADVENTURE	YOUTH & ADVENTURE	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg
Communication	FESTIVAL	FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADVENTURE	YOUTH & ADVENTURE	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg

A08 (Leisure)

Communication	VERWOERD	APARTHEID MUSEUM	APARTHEID MUSEUM	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	PRODUCE SOUND Johannesburg
Communication	BOTHA	APARTHEID MUSEUM	APARTHEID MUSEUM	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	PRODUCE SOUND Johannesburg
Communication	SMUTS	APARTHEID MUSEUM	APARTHEID MUSEUM	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	PRODUCE SOUND Johannesburg

A09 (Media / Entertainment)

Communication

HUGH MASEKELA TRIBUTE

UNIVERSAL MUSIC AFRICA

HAVAS JOHANNESBURG

A11 (Consumer Services)

Communication	IGUGU LEBO	CELL C	C SURANCE	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg
Communication	IGUGU NOMSA	CELL C	C SURANCE	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg
Communication	IGUGU SIYA	CELL C	C SURANCE	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg

A12 (Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) / Corporate Image)

Communication

SOCCER SONG FOR CHANGE

AB-INBEV AFRICA

CARLING BLACK LABEL – ANTI WOMEN ABUSE INITIATIVE

OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN

0307 FILMS Cape Town / BLACK GINGER Cape Town / DELIVERANCE POST PRODUCTION Cape Town / THE WORKROOM Cape Town / VIDEO CARTEL Cape Town

AB-INBEV AFRICA Johannesburg / OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN

AUDIO MILITIA Johannesburg

B01 (Use of Music)

Communication	IGUGU NOMSA	CELL C	C SURANCE	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg
Communication	IGUGU SIYA	CELL C	C SURANCE	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg
Communication	IGUGU LEBO	CELL C	C SURANCE	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg	1886 Johannesburg
Communication	SOCCER SONG FOR CHANGE	AB-INBEV AFRICA	CARLING BLACK LABEL – ANTI WOMEN ABUSE INITIATIVE	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	0307 FILMS Cape Town / BLACK GINGER Cape Town / DELIVERANCE POST PRODUCTION Cape Town / THE WORKROOM Cape Town / VIDEO CARTEL Cape Town	AB-INBEV AFRICA Johannesburg / OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	AUDIO MILITIA Johannesburg

B02 (Sound Design)

Communication

FESTIVAL

FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADEVENTURE

YOUTH & ADVENTURE

TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg

B03 (Script)

Communication	DATE	FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADEVENTURE	YOUTH & ADVENTURE	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg
Communication	SWIM	FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADEVENTURE	YOUTH & ADVENTURE	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg
Communication	FESTIVAL	FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADEVENTURE	YOUTH & ADVENTURE	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg
Communication	PC	VOLKSWAGEN SOUTH AFRICA	VW BRAKE ASSIST	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	WE LOVE JAM Cape Town
Communication	STALKER	VOLKSWAGEN SOUTH AFRICA	VW BRAKE ASSIST	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	WE LOVE JAM Cape Town
Communication	FUNERAL	VOLKSWAGEN SOUTH AFRICA	VW BRAKE ASSIST	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	OGILVY & MATHER CAPE TOWN	WE LOVE JAM Cape Town

B04 (Casting & Performance)

Communication	DATE	FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADEVENTURE	YOUTH & ADVENTURE	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg
Communication	SWIM	FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADEVENTURE	YOUTH & ADVENTURE	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg
Communication	FESTIVAL	FLIGHT CENTRE YOUTH & ADEVENTURE	YOUTH & ADVENTURE	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg	TBWA\HUNT\LASCARIS Johannesburg
Communication	2. MAKE A DIFFERENT FRIEND – THE NO SENSE OF PERSONAL SPACE GUY	ABINBEV	CASTLE LAGER	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG	OGILVY & MATHER JOHANNESBURG

Updated at 1.02pm on 18 June 2018.

Cover Stories: Blast, Keen On, i Newspaper, Nataal & Vanity Fair

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

Iconic: Blast became a formative component of early 20th-century modernism in England
Online: Keen On is an online avant-garde digital art magazine that tackles serious ontological and epistemological subject matter, from posthuman bodies to cyberfeminism
International/print: I (Informação) Newspaper uses Andy Warhol’s art to parody the historic meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un
International/print: Nataal seeks to spread knowledge about artistic output stemming from contemporary Africa and the diaspora
International/print: Vanity Fair plugs “Solo: A Star Wars Story” in the most-elegant and -composed manner

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

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Nataal (UK), Issue 1, June 2018

Initially an online publication, London-based Nataal introduced its first print edition earlier this year, distributed as a large-format, 340-page biannual magazine. Contemporary African creativity being the focus, the magazine collaborates with artists and designers, drawing from popular narratives about Africa today and seeking to disseminate knowledge about artistic output stemming from the continent. The current edition has been published with two covers. The first features a portrait of Senegalese model, Mame Thiane Camara, shot by Julia Noni in Dakar. The second provides an image taken by Johannesburg-based Kristin-Lee Moolman, visualising prevalent trends such as Afropunk and Afrofuturism which are currently flooding global catwalks, thanks in-part to emerging fashion icons such as model Emmanuel Adjaye portrayed here on the cover. Moolman’s work is reminiscent of fellow South African photographer, Frank Marshall, and his seminal body of work titled Renegades.

The online magazine is as noteworthy as its fledgling print version, with concise galleries and profiles about key designers, writers, fashionistas and other cultural custodians from Africa and the diaspora. The distorted typography gives the site a graphic edge, alongside a consistent use of art directed photography. Encompassing artist interviews, photo essays, and various fashion-related elements, Nataal advocates the ever-evolving, highly pluralistic, landscape of contemporary African creativity, moving away from the occidental gaze towards the future gaze of the perceived other.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I (Informação) Newspaper (Portugal), 12 June 2018

Talk about a historic meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un has been in the air since April this year. A summit initially set for 24 May was canceled by Trump. Pyongyang also looked hesitant to meet, with its apparent rejection of Washington’s precondition of “total, complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation”. In short, the aim of this meeting was to discuss denuclearisation, for both America and North Korea, even though it’s highly unlikely that America will decrease its nuclear arsenal. 12 June saw this historic summit become a reality, hosted in the relatively neutral, central, city of Singapore.

It goes without saying that these two individuals are household names, due in part to the reasons that this summit had to happen. I Newspaper parodied this situation on the cover to its 12 June edition, the day of the summit. Riffing off Andy Warhol’s infamous series of screenprints, which included portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Richard Nixon, and Mao Zedong, to name a few, Portuguese cartoonist Vasco Gargalo positions these two eccentric leaders as pop icons. Apt, given the political environment in which Trump and Kim exist, dictated by social media, reality television, fake news, and the like.

Vanity Fair (US), June 2018

Emilia Clarke, famous for her role as Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, graces the cover for this year’s summer issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Aside from photographer Craig McDean’s striking portrait, which effectively captures Clarke’s elegance and composure, the most-compelling element of this cover are the subtle pastel tones, supported by its clever headline, “Solo Flight”. A variety of textbook colour contrasts — warm and cool, light and dark, complimentary and monochromatic — all seamlessly, almost intuitively, combine to make for a pleasing cover with heaps of shelf appeal.

Naturally, all this serves to plug the blockbuster film, “Solo: A Star Wars Story”, wherein Clarke portrays Qi’ra, a childhood friend of Han Solo and his first love.

Online

Keen On (Austria), Issue 6, June 2018

Keen on is an online magazine for digital natives and other internet subcultural tenets that dissects various creative approaches — academic, philosophical, cultural, etc — to the digital arts. Founded by curator, critic and digital strategist, Sabrina Steinek, Keen On endeavors to be an interactive, avant-garde, digital art magazine. Tackling serious ontological and epistemological subject matter, from posthuman bodies to cyberfeminism, #6 approaches the topic of codes and algorithms in a digital aesthetic, arguably anti-aesthetic, reminiscent of retro Web 1.0 graphics, cyberpunk, seapunk, vaporwave, and the like. With its scrambled visuals, clashing, often pixelated, graphics, odd typographic combinations, and CGA-like 16 colour palette, Keen On is idiosyncratic, an anomaly, and surprisingly well designed.

Iconic

Blast (UK), 1914–1915

Ezra Pound first coined the term “vorticism”, used to describe a British avant-garde collective initially inspired by Italian futurism but which later became an anti-futurist movement. Blast was a literary magazine used to advocate vorticism, a quarterly published by cofounder of the movement, Wyndham Lewis. In a letter to James Joyce, Pound defined the magazine as a new futurist, cubist, imagiste quarterly, mostly comprising painters emulating the Italian avant-garde. Vorticism was initially spurred-on by a seminal series of lectures by Filippo Marinetti, the founder of Italian futurism, who visited London in 1910, squarely placing futurism within the British modernist narrative. Vorticism would come to be an influential avant-garde movement, separate from futurism, after Marinetti increasingly aggravated Lewis due to his arrogant stance and overbearingness, which continually placed futurism as superior to vorticism. At the helm of this contempt towards Marinetti and the futurist vision was Blast, which became a formative component of early 20th-century modernism in England.

Blast had a short but fruitful existence, with only two printed editions. The first edition, published in July 1914, had the word “Blast” emblazoned diagonally across its magenta cover, and contained the vorticist manifesto written by Lewis with Pound’s help (it was essentially a list of ‘blessed’ or ‘blasted’ things). The second edition was published one year later, in July 1915, and included two poems by TS Eliot, Preludes and Rhapsody on a Windy Night and a play by Pound, among other contributions. The magazine attempted to forge a tradition for English modernism. Lewis implemented bold, sans-serif (grotesque) typography, not commonly used at the time, to attract a modernity-savvy audience, undoubtedly influenced by Marinetti’s experiments in concrete poetry, such as Zang Tumb Tumb.

About a month after Blast was first published, World War 1 was declared, which almost brought vorticism to a halt. Most of the movements exponents were killed during the war. Lewis managed to survive the trenches and tried to revive vorticism after the war; he even attempted to publish a third edition of Blast but to no avail. The destruction caused by the first mechanised war, something that the futurists worshipped, caused most remaining vorticists to relinquish their modernist inclinations and return to more-traditional form of representation. By 1920, vorticism had lost all momentum, killing any aspirations to revive Blast.

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: DStv — primetime top 30 for May 2018

SA TV Ratings 2018 pics sourced from Pixabay

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

DStv May 2018

BRCSA TV Ratings May 2018 primetime DStv — 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.

The Martini Shot: The non-negotiable importance of safety on set

security-sure-protection-osh-note courtesy of Pixabay

by Bobby Amm. The recent and very tragic deaths on set of DOP Carlos Carvalho and actor Odwa Shweni serve as a stark reminder that safety on set and adequate preparation are not something to be taken lightly, and that the production community must do more to ensure that these types of incidents do not happen again.

Shweni died after been swept over a waterfall in the Drakensberg mountains while rehearsing a fight scene for local feature film, Outside, while Carvalho — who was an extremely well-known and popular DOP on commercials — was killed after being headbutted by a giraffe while filming an international feature film, Premium Nanny 2, at Glen Afric in Broederstroom. There will undoubtedly continue to be many questions in the coming months about why these two accidents occurred, how they could have been prevented and what lessons the industry might learn from them.

Important issues to consider

The reality is that film sets may be very dangerous places, and proper provisions must be made to ensure the safety of everyone involved in the making of a film or commercial, as well as the general public. Although it may seem obvious, it’s worth reiterating some of the important issues that all clients, agencies and production companies need to consider:

1. Work with reputable production companies that are experienced in making commercials

As tempting as it may be to save money by using a production company that has limited experiences or makes a habit of cutting corners to save costs, the consequences may be dire when it comes to safety. When one considers that filmsets often incorporate diverse and dangerous elements, such as stunts, pyrotechnics, action vehicles, weapons, wild animals and hazardous locations, knowledge and experience count. A lot.

2. Carry out a proper risk assessment

When planning anything that is remotely dangerous, it’s important to make sure a thorough risk assessment is done beforehand to identify any and everything that could possibly go wrong. To do this, it’s important to bring in an expert with credible qualifications who may advise you of the risks and draw up a plan of action, which everyone involved should be advised of in advance and should follow on the day.

3. Use the services of skilled professionals

Stuntmen, precision drivers, certified drone operators, special effects supervisors, armourers, pyro-technicians and a number of other professionals who are trained in safety in their area of expertise are an essential part of the film industry and should always be hired in. Under no circumstances should production companies try to take these responsibilities in-house as this could constitute negligence, should an accident occur.

It’s also important to ensure that all non-essential personnel remain clear of the action.

4. Communicate & do the paperwork

All matters relating to safety on set must be communicated properly to everyone involved and records must be kept detailing when and how this was done. Although this kind of recordkeeping may seem tedious and unnecessary, it’s vital to ensure legal compliance.

5. Appoint a qualified safety officer and medic to oversee safety on set and attend to any incidents that may occur

Where the producer identifies potential risk, a safety officer should be appointed to oversee on-set safety and a qualified medic should be in attendance to treat anyone who’s injured in an accident on set. When shooting particularly complex stunts or setups, production should consider increasing the number of medics and having a medical rescue vehicle on standby.

The safety officer and medics should always be in close proximity to the action and shouldn’t take on unnecessary additional functions or duties that could divert their attention away from potential risks.

6. If in doubt, say “no”

Part of the safety plan on any set should be to encourage anyone who is apprehensive about safety, or any activity they’re asked to undertake, to report their concerns to the safety officer or the producer without fear of recrimination.

All reports should be taken seriously, acted upon and properly documented.

7. Prioritise insurance

All production companies and agencies should carry insurance to cover any emergency, personal accident, disability or death on set and public liability. With rising medical costs, the amount of cover that’s been taken out in the past needs to be increased to cover all eventualities.

The CPA has recently launched a new Film Producers Group Insurance Scheme, in collaboration with partners in the UK and the South African insurance market, to substantially increase the benefits that are currently on offer and provide increased protection to members, clients and all personnel working on set.

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

Brands & Branding: Brands beware — don’t fall into the emotion trap

by Nigel Hollis (@nigelhollis) Emotion has a huge role to play in determining which brands people buy and when. However, ignoring the interaction between emotion, recognition and brand associations risks motivating no one. To avoid the emotion trap, marketers must figure out how to harness the power of emotion to benefit their brand.

Faster than we can form a conscious thought, the process that Daniel Kahneman refers to as System 1 primes us to think and behave in certain ways. But System 1 doesn’t necessarily dominate our more-deliberative System 2 response. The social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, uses the metaphor of an elephant and a rider to describe the interaction between the intuitive System 1 and deliberative System 2. The elephant represents our instinctive, emotional response and the rider our more considered response.

The elephant, which is more powerful than the rider, has been trained by evolution and experience to respond in certain ways to the world around it. When intuition fails the elephant, the rider, who has more knowledge, will often steer the elephant in the right direction. But if the two start out with a clear path, the elephant and the rider will work together and reach their destination faster. Marketers need to appeal to both the rider and the elephant to get people to behave in the way they want.

Training the elephant

Antonio Damasio states, “Emotions are a very intelligent way of driving an organism toward certain outcomes.”

When faced with a familiar situation, the elephant makes decisions quickly and easily based on prior experience. The elephant is largely guided experience, either direct experience or by indirect learning through education, entertainment and conversation. For example, testing people’s instinctive emotional response to various prompts reveals a strong negative response to images of Adolf Hitler. This is a learned response otherwise, for most people, Hitler would represent little more than a small man with an odd moustache.

The implication for marketers is that people can be “trained” to respond positively to a brand, just like any other stimulus. The dominant force shaping our instinctive positive response is prior positive brand experience. But those responses can be amplified or enhanced by other experiences related to the same brand, such as events, advertising and sponsorships. However, to help build a strong response, these indirect experiences must deliver an impression that is consonant with prior experience. And, importantly, these experiences must be connected to the brand in people’s minds.

How the elephant decides

In order to respond intuitively to anything, we have to know what it is — we have to recognise it quickly and easily. If we don’t, then the elephant is going to be confused and the rider will have to decide what to do. This is when having a clear path will help the elephant and the rider move in the same direction. Think back to the Tropicana packaging debacle, when a change in the brand’s packaging caused an immediate drop in sales. There was no clear path for the elephant to follow. Shoppers who would have instinctively chosen Tropicana failed to recognise their own brand and were forced to think about their purchase. In reviewing the possible choices, some people noticed new, more attractive or cheaper alternatives and their habitual purchase was disrupted. Marketers need to ensure that people can recognise their brand quickly and easily in cluttered environments like web sites or stores.

Like recognition, brand salience — the speed with which the brand comes to mind in a specific context — is vitally important to brand choice. Academic and Kantar Millward Brown’s own research finds that the brand first thought of is the one most likely to be chosen. In the absence of a direct prompt, such as a name, logo or design, people must quickly and easily associate the brand with a contextual cue such as a need, situation or social context. Then prior experience must be positive and strongly associated to the brand in people’s minds in order to generate an intuitive emotional response stronger than that for other brands.

Motivating the rider

On the one hand, the elephant can easily get confused by new decisions or experiences. The rider, on the other, can deliberate and make decisions about what the best choice might be best when faced with something new. In many categories, the degree of uncertainty about a purchase decision is much higher than for packaged goods and the rider exerts more control over decision-making, particularly when buying for the first time. Uncertainty might be associated with the importance of the decision — which car to buy or which insurance company to choose — or it might be related to the size of the investment — buying a premium brand, no matter how desirable, could be a challenging decision for someone on a limited budget.

Whatever the reason that causes the rider to exert more control, it is moments like these that are critical to brand growth because they represent times when people are open to change and consciously appraise whether they are making the right decision. Because we humans find conscious deliberation to be hard work, the faster we can make a decision, the happier we are. We may not always be rational decision-makers — no one can trade off all the facts in making a specific purchase decision — but humans do like to feel they can justify the decisions they make. Marketers should help people do this by offering easily remembered rationales for purchase.

The specific brand associations that will cause someone to choose a specific brand are many, varying by brand, category and context, but, ultimately, they ladder up to two meta associations. The foundation for any successful brand is that people find it meaningful: that it meets their needs and that they have an affinity for it. The more people that like a brand compared to the alternatives, the better. To be chosen and, in particular, command a price premium, people must also recognise something different about a brand, a property — functional, emotional or societal — that other brands don’t share. The brands that people find to be meaningfully different tend to be chosen more often — they grow faster as salience increases — and they can command a higher price point than competitive brands.

What goes around comes around

The strange thing about our ability to make decisions is that, much as people try to separate the elephant and rider, or System 1 and 2 in Kahneman’s terminology, the two are inextricably linked. What triggers an intuitive emotional response today likely originates from a past, more-deliberative experience. The balance of power fluctuates between the rider and the elephant, depending on the intensity of the response and the difficulty of understanding the situation and making a choice. To ensure their brand is chosen, marketers must amplify the positive associations and feelings that make a brand seem meaningful and different to potential consumers. Even when not consciously considered, these associations will help determine the intuitive emotional response to a brand and ensure it is the one chosen.

Nigel Hollis (@nigelhollis) is chief global analyst at Kantar Millward Brown and brings over 30 years of research experience to bear on his understanding of how marketing communications may build and sustain brands. His first book, The Global Brand, published by Palgrave Macmillan, takes a close look at the challenges facing marketers and global brands today and identifies the best practices to help aspiring global brands achieve success on the world stage. His latest, Brand Premium, details how to develop a strong brand and generate financial revenue growth. Brand Premium won the 2015 Berry- AMA Book Prize for the Best Book in Marketing.

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

BREAKING: Shaka Sisulu acquires majority stake in Retroviral

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Shaka Sisulu, entrepreneur and founder of digital and social media agency Plum, has acquired a personal 51% stake in Retroviral Digital Communications. Mike Sharman, Retroviral co-founder, CEO and chief creative strategist, retains 49% ownership.

“With [my] becoming a shareholder of Retroviral, the two businesses will work in tandem,” says Sisulu. “It is our vision to grow our combined revenues from around R30m to over R100m in five years through this alliance.”

Says Sharman, “Shaka brings diversity into Retroviral’s ownership structure, but this is no superficial empowerment deal. We are bringing two disruptor agencies closer together in order to continue producing award-winning work. Shaka and I share the same vision and have only the greatest respect for each other.”

No merger yet

According to Sisulu, he’s known and worked with Sharman over the years and has always been keen to collaborate with him. At this stage, the two agencies won’t be merged; Sisulu says both shops are working well and are positioned for growth. A merger further down the line would not be out of the question, however.

Sharman says Plum and Retroviral offer similar services but have targeted different demographics. Their future collaborations opens up a more-diverse range of markets to clients.

Sisulu is a well-known media personality (on radio, and later as a presenter of SABC 3’s Trending SA show), with investments in several businesses active in the commercial communications industry. Sisulu flirted with controversy as a key player in the 2016 “ANC War Room” local election saga, a matter he says was resolved in his favour following a default judgement on a defamation case against Sihle Bolani and Sihle Bolani Communications in his favour.

Bidvest buyout

Bidvest Media, a division of Bidvest Group, had previously held a majority stake in Retroviral, which it acquired in 2015. Sharman would not comment on the share buyout from Bidvest required to facilitate the deal with Sisulu, citing a confidentiality agreement.

A new board for Retroviral is in the process of being appointed. Sisulu will serve as executive chairman, and Sharman will continue as company CEO.

Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.

Gender equality

Digital transformation in business

Innovation

New countries at Cannes

And a shift in media companies

From seven to five days

Awards

See also

Critical to sustained success

Pop culture

ROI and stability

Market perception

Primary marketing challenge

If you can’t avoid them, block them

Beating the blocker

Film

Experience

Game

Act of kindness

Coupon

Schools of thought

Programmatic conversion

Mass consideration

Person before pixel

Glass — The Lion for Change

A01 (Glass )

Title

Client

Product

Entrant company

Idea creation

Pharma

A02 (Regulated: Direct to Patient)

Track

Title

Brand

Product

Medium

Entrant company

Idea creation

Production

Design

C04 (Social Engagement)

Track

Title

Brand

Product

Entrant company

Idea creation

Print & Publishing

A13 (Not-for-profit / Charity)

Track

Title

Brand

Product

Entrant company

Idea creation

B02 (Publications for Good)

Radio & Audio

A01 (Food & Drink)

Track

Title

Brand

Product

Entrant company

Idea creation

Production

Media

PR

Additional

A04 (Consumer Durables)

A05 (Automotive)

A07 (Travel)

A08 (Leisure)

A09 (Media / Entertainment)

A11 (Consumer Services)

A12 (Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) / Corporate Image)

B01 (Use of Music)

B02 (Sound Design)

B03 (Script)