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Young, Gifted & Killing It: Sibu Mpanza

by Veli Ngubane (@TheNduna) The creative space has witnessed YouTube’s meteoric rise as a platform for creative content. It has grown as a tool that content creatives such as Sibu Mpanza (@Sibu_MpanzaSA) have used and made a successful career out of. In this interview, he shares his dreams of shooting a documentary, how he has made money from YouTube and why he sleeps with a notepad and pen next to his bed.

Veli Ngubane: Tell us more about yourself: where did you grow up and what did you want to be when you were growing up?
Sibu Mpanza: I was born in Mpumalanga, in a little village called Balfour where my mom’s side of the family lived. My mother and father moved to Cape Town when I was just a few weeks old. I moved around Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain in my younger years. I went to Wynberg Boys High School where I focused on the cultural extra murals offered. I was in the choir, in most of the bands and did drama. I played percussion for the Cape Philharmonic Youth Ensemble and Cape Philharmonic Youth Wind Ensemble in my final years of high school. I was also accepted into the South African National Youth Orchestra programme in matric. I wanted to study music and travel with an orchestra but my parents would not allow it, so I studied social development and gender studies. I ended up dropping out in my final year.

VN: Please explain what you actually do and what an average day looks for you?
SM: I am a digital entrepreneur and I create content on YouTube. I have a business that creates social media content for a whole range of South African and international brands. It usually starts with answering emails and setting up for the video I am going to shoot that day, writing the script and shooting. After I’ve shot a video, I will meet with my clients and have other meetings. I am home in the afternoon editing videos and uploading. Most of my days are spent producing and editing YouTube videos. I have also recently been appointed as a content producer and co-host for a show on YFM, called Run This Town, which airs Monday to Thursday 7pm–10pm.

VN: Without giving everything away, how does one make money of YouTube; is it a viable career in South Africa?
SM: It is a viable career even though there are only a handful of us who are making good money from it. Most SA YouTubers will make money in three different ways:

The ads Google places before, during and around your YouTube videos.
A brand will use you on their social media as an internet personality, using your face to drive awareness or sales. This content would live on the brand’s social media.
The YouTuber will create the content for the brand to market their product/ idea. The content will live on the YouTuber’s channel.

VN: Influencer marketing has been the ‘buzz’; what is the future of this form of marketing?
SM: With the rise of video content creators, influencer marketing in South Africa will get a facelift in the form of YouTubers. It will move from the ‘traditional’ fashion blogger or ‘Instagrammer’. I know young people tend to connect more with video content, so it’s only a matter of time ’til we take over.

VN: How are brands getting it right and wrong in the digital space?
SM: Right: They are giving creators more creative agency. Listening to our ideas and including us at their conception and planning phases of their campaigns, not just including us at the end. Wrong: Brands still want big ideas but are not willing to pay ‘big idea’ money.

VN: Celebs are catching on, getting YouTube channels of their own. How do you feel about this, being a pioneer in the space?
SM: I think it’s fair and opportunistic at the same time. A few of us worked incredibly hard to make YouTube a respected platform for creators in South Africa. It feels like celebrities who weren’t willing to risk it before are now riding on the legwork we did. At the same time, YouTube is for everybody; you can never have too many of us. I hope this rise of celebrity YouTubers shines a brighter light on smaller creators, too.

VN: It’s Youth Month: what does this month mean to you and how do you think it should be celebrated?
SM: It means paying tribute to those that came before us. Those who lost their lives in 1976. It means carrying on their legacy. I think it should be celebrated by highlighting all the great work the youth is currently doing in South Africa. Many young South Africans have taken it upon themselves to help their communities and build their image of a better world. I think that should be widely celebrated.

VN: Tell us about your company and business journey.
SM: I moved to Johannesburg with the dream of being a full-time YouTuber. I was going to edit videos as a freelancer until I had enough money to go out on my own. Luck was on my side; a month into my move I was contacted by an agency because a brand wanted to work with me. After that partnership, I collaborated with over 30 brands during the course of 2017. It was around collaboration number six that I was advised to start a company around my business. I had never realised I wanted to be an “entrepreneur” until someone pointed out that’s what I was. The growth is quite strong for a company that is in such a small industry.

VN: What is creativity in your own personal definition?
SM: It’s a way of understanding. A way of taking your imagination and your ideas and learning how to present them in your own authentic way. I feel the only part of my job where I really use my creativity is when I take all this information I receive and package it in an informative and interesting way for my viewers.

VN: What do you feel is missing in the ad industry today?
SM: Not that it’s really missing but it could be better. I feel we need more representation of black people in decision-making roles. Many of our ads in South Africa are still one-dimensional views of black people and I think the only way that is going to change is if young black people get a seat at the table.

VN: Where and when do you have your best ideas?
SM: In bed just before I go to sleep. I always keep a notepad and a pen next to my bed.

VN: What advice can you give to young people wanting to get into the business?
SM: Don’t do it for the money. It is a long-term game. Always create content you’re passionate about. Try not to copy other people; be yourself and you will stand out.

VN: Tell us something about yourself not generally known?
SM: I have wanted to be a documentary filmmaker since I started YouTube.

VN: What exciting projects are you working on at the moment?

SM: I am launching TheMpanzaNetwork, a network of video content creators and YouTube channels in South Africa. There are many creators who want to start YouTube channels and presenters who want platforms. I want to help people start YouTube channels, and also find presenters for my channels. To give people opportunities and helping them hone their skills.

VN: Please would you supply two or three pieces of work that you are most proud of?
SM: My recent collaboration with Tsogo Sun.

Explore Durban With Me

A Film About Failure

A documentary I directed about failure.

Veli Ngubane (@TheNduna) entered the world of advertising with a passion after completing his BSocSci (law, politics and economics) at UCT and a post-graduate marketing diploma at Red & Yellow, where he’s currently advisory board chairman. He also sits on the IAB’s Transformation & Education Council, is a DMA board member and has judged Loeries, Apex and AdFocus. He is the Joburg MD and founding partner of the largest black-owned and -managed full-service agencies in the country, AVATAR. He is also co-founder of M&N Brands, which is building an African network of agencies to rival the global giants. In his monthly column “Young, Gifted & Killing It”, he profiles award-winning, kick-ass black creative talent in South Africa.

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Shelf Life: Three Ships TVC • NuMe’s Not So Naughty • 80th Burger King

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

Winning whisky
High-quality, minimum-hassle snacking
Breaking out the burgers

Three Ships Whisky #MadeExceptionalMadeHere

#MadeExceptionalMadeHere, the new Three Ships Whisky TVC created by Net#work BBDO, is meant to be a reflection of the tenacious spirit of the South African people and their achievements, which stand out not just locally but globally.

https://youtu.be/ygbDpoecND8

Says Meryll Stocks Roos, Three Ships brand development manager, “From the inner cities and across the landscapes, shot in down-town Johannesburg and the hills near Heidelberg, the ad brings the essence of Three Ships Whisky’s success from a country that in the traditional sense was never destined to make whisky. “The narrative applauds the South African dreamers, true believers and doers who make the country an extraordinary place to live in with a sense of pride.”

According to Mike Schalit, Net#work BBDO chief creative officer, the ad is rich with optimism and boldness: “We wanted to portray a sense of belonging and pride in what we as South Africans do and how we do it in our own way. Made here is about being proud of the courage and world-class ambition that we have in abundance right here, how we are not simply benchmarking but how we strive to stand out. “The country’s hard conditions, history and challenges create toughness within us and an optimism and joy in being able to, in spite of these contradictions, thrive with ingenuity.”

The ad is filled with metaphoric touches, showing how SA literally turns things upside down — including making globally award-winning whisky.

threeshipswhisky.co.za • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram
networkbbdo.co.za • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram

NuMe launches ‘Not So Naughty’ range

High-quality, minimum-hassle snack company NutriSeed’s NuMe brand has launched a new, premium range of “Not So Naughty” gluten-free baking products. Shelf Life spoke to SA founder, Nadine Hardy Petzer, about her growing success.

With a desire to eat delicious food that’s equally nourishing and healthy — without the hassle of exhaustive preparation but unable to satisfy this aspiration — Petzer opted to solve the dilemma herself by developing her own food. Little was she to know that this decision was to be the start of her new career and what morphed NutriSeed into the business it is today.

Being behind all product and recipe development at the company, Petzer is an intuitive, serial innovator: “We strive to provide products that fill a gap in the market — solutions that are taste-centric but never at the expense of health.”

Petzer says for many their eating choices are not their own. and their allergies and food sensitivities dictate their options, with meals feeling like a challenge: “In this day and age, people don’t have time to stay at home and prep meals for hours on end. My heart is in developing products that will assist with that challenge. Better yet, we offer guilt-free convenience.

“Few would argue that in life there’s little more valuable than health and time, and that’s what we stand for. Convenience without compromise.”

Sugar-free, low-carb and with no artificial additives, these premixes are easy to bake; include a deliciously decadent Chocolate and Pecan Nut mix for brownies and muffins; and are widely accessible at Dischem nationwide, as well as Food Lovers Market and specific Spar and Pick n Pay outlets.

nutriseed.co.za • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram

Burger King SA opens 80th outlet

Burger King SA’s 80th restaurant has opened at the Kolonnade Retail Park in Tshwane; it’s the 20th restaurant to be opened this financial year, with the business on track to open another 20 restaurants by next financial year.

Says Juan Klopper, Burger King SA COO, “We continue to grow in the South African market. We now have 35 drive-thrus in a restaurant network, achieving restaurant sales on average in excess of R1m per month. “We feel further development is key to achieving long-term traffic growth in our existing restaurants and our strategy remains focused on scale, by identifying the communities that love our burgers and building restaurants to reach them. We have established a proudly South African supply chain, sourcing nearly 100% of our products locally, which has proven intrinsic in achieving competitiveness in this market.”

Hassen Adams, Burger King SA chairman, adds “We have created employment in excess of 3 500 jobs to date and, with the inception of another 20 restaurants, we will be able to confidently say we will create direct employment for over 4 000 employees.”

burgerking.co.za • Facebook • Twitter

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.

African Echo: Mozambique — become the country you’re destined to be

by Nuno Rainho. It’s no secret that Mozambique is a country gifted with an abundance of natural resources which include trillions of cubic feet of natural gas in the Rovuma Basin, considerable oil reserves in the southern part of the country, and holds some of the world’s largest untapped coal deposits. From an outsider’s perspective, the key question is: How can a country so rich below the surface in such resources be — above the surface — one of the poorest countries in the world?

A complicated story

The answer is in the numbers, particularly those pertaining to the economy, and numbers don’t lie. They do, however, tell a complicated story.

While Mozambique’s economy is slowly recovering from years of warfare and health issues, population growth is on a faster track. The combination of the two translates into almost 55% of its 30m people living below the poverty line, with 90% earning less than US$2 a day and only 26% having access to electricity.

The country’s poor infrastructure and unskilled labor force is a huge concern for the future development, as well as a major obstacle to overall economic and business growth. The question on everyone’s lips is: How to change this?

Some believe that the country’s natural resource wealth could be used to kickstart the national economy, as well as drive it to the next level, since its value is estimated at US$39bn. It’s also estimated that only 32% of the population is urban, leaving room for exploration of natural capital, and that the population is young (averaging an 17 years of age), which makes available human capital for development of the country. No doubt, the future of the country relies in the education and upliftment of these young generations.

Melting pot

Mozambique is a ‘melting pot’ of cultures, with its influences going beyond the African borders. Its official language, for instance, is Portuguese, and its major religions are Catholic (28%) and Muslim (18%). Mozambicans are becoming more and more proud of their African heritage — you can see this in the new generation, called Afrilennials, with their unique approach to life inspired by local knowledge.

And how do brands fit in?

Services dominate the country’s current economy, accounting for 43% of GDP (as mentioned, natural resources are plentiful but underdeveloped). Agriculture is also vital: 32% of GDP and employing 80% of the total workforce, while industry accounts for 25% of GDP, bringing up the rear. Within these three broad sectors, manufacturing accounts for 12% of GDP and transport, communications and trade account for 11% each, while mining accounts for 2.5% (but is growing rapidly).

It stands to reason, then, that the biggest categories of spend therefore come from these sectors. In order of spend, they are: telecommunications, non-alcoholic beverages, banks and financial services, food and retail, with Vodacom, Coca-Cola Sabco, Unilever, Tropigalia and GOtv being the big spenders.

Marketing communication

From a brand perspective, marketing communication has been forced to evolve fairly quickly from the one official language to recognising that the population has developed its own peculiar expressions in what many are calling ‘Moçambiquês’: “maningue”, “como anima”, “estamos juntos”, “mahala”, “txilar” and so many others.

I often say that brands are like animals; they constantly need to mark their territory otherwise they will lose ground to other alpha brands. With 80% penetration, television is currently the main vehicle brands use to communicate with consumers in Mozambique. This is unlikely to change in the near future but, as Mozambique’s infrastructure is enhanced and digital technologies become more prevalent, I fully expect social media to become much more relevant for the big players within five years. Good brand activation, regardless of sector, always works in Mozambique, and the out-of-home market is a strong medium. The added value of the latter is that it allows geographical segmentation of the communication and, in a country with low level of literacy and income, works well as long as there’s a strong visual element.

My advice to visitors, especially those coming to Mozambique for business, is to adopt a positive attitude and — instead of the poverty — see opportunity. On the one hand, in the next few years, sectors expected to grow include consumer goods, food and beverages, business-to-business and pharmaceutical and healthcare. On the other hand, technology companies expect flat revenues.

As much as the country is rich in natural resources, it’s rich in its people who, from the north to the south, never fail to express their joy of living each day. Mozambicans are happy and optimistic.

The smile in every answer

Although the country is presently facing challenges, Mozambicans live each day with great satisfaction and strongly believe that better days will come. They are so creative in so many ways and reinvent themselves to face — with a smile — the obstacles that come their way.

I am an expat who lived most of my life in Portugal and then two years in Angola before coming to Mozambique. Here, I fell in love. With the smile in every answer. With the couples dancing cheek-to-cheek, the taste of the amazing seafood and the vibrant colors of the country. I love my secret romance with the warm Indian Ocean; the upbeat atmosphere of young people dancing the Marrabenta; the taste of my beer and cashew nuts in the afternoon, taking in the African sunset; and the realisation that it’s possible to find the perfect balance between family and work.

Thank you so much, Mozambique. My wish for you is that someone unleashes the power within, so you become the country you’re destined to be.

Nuno Rainho is managing director at Back Communication, one of the agencies in the FCB Africa network. Nuno has 18 years’ experience in Portugal (at Brandia Central, Publicis, Ivity Brand Corp), Angola (at Grupo Zwela) and in Mozambique (at MKT and Back Communication). African Echo seeks to unpack markets in Africa, highlight business opportunities and share insights into what works and what rebounds.

“Motive” is a by-invitation-only column on MarkLives.com. Contributors are picked by the editors but generally don’t form part of our regular columnist lineup, unless the topic is off-column.

Headspace: Storytelling & your evolving brand’s narrative

by Tenielle Maris. Storytelling has been around for centuries; it’s become engrained in human behaviour and has the ability to infiltrate the psyche by conveying messages in emotive and powerful ways.

Neuroscience has just begun demonstrating an understanding of the effects of storytelling on the brain but the verdict is out: stories have the innate ability to affect us at an incredibly deep intellectual and emotional level. According to neuroscience researcher, Dr Paul Zak, storytelling can cause the brain to produce the neurochemical oxytocin, which produces emotions such as kindness and empathy that are then encoded into long-term memory.

Higher involvement

According to a study published by Kantar Millward Brown on media and digital trends for 2018, content that tells a story is more likely to elicit an emotional connection and higher involvement from viewers vs those with no story. Beyond lending itself to some beautiful and shareworthy content, storytelling — when done well — may also generate profit, loyalty and a long-term legacy for a brand.

It therefore comes as no surprise that brands with a clearly defined story are the ones that are really connecting with consumers, and the reason that so many brands are baking storytelling into their strategic approach. Brands with a clear purpose and story —such as Apple, Tesla, Red Bull — are undoubtedly among the most successful in the world because their consumers are taken on a journey, time and time again, to experience their brand purpose.

So, if none of this is new news, then why all the sudden hype around storytelling? Simply, the penny is starting to drop for more and more brands that, in order to make a lasting impact in the minds of consumers and engender long-term brand saliency, there needs to be a very clear reason for being that shines through an ongoing conversation between the brand and its audience.

Consistency and simplicity

While many brands may believe that they do, in fact, have a story that they’re trying to tell, they fall short when that story is relayed in an ambiguous and overly complicated way. With the endless amount of noise from brands, consumers certainly don’t want to have to work hard at uncovering your message for themselves: what you’re saying had better be crystal-clear or you’re going to lose the people you’re trying to connect with from the onset.

If a brand is to embark on the journey of telling a specific story to its audience, everything that that brand does should link back to that same story and brand purpose in an authentic way. If not, those actions will not only be schizophrenic and random at best but will dilute a brand’s meaning in the lives of those who matter.

A change in approach

With the increased emphasis placed on storytelling, it comes as no surprise that one of the biggest focus areas for brands right now is on starting with the story: instead of beginning with preferred media channels and platforms, marketers and advertisers are starting with defining the story that will best bring that brand’s purpose to life. Only once that story is clearly defined are touchpoints selected that naturally support in telling that story.

What this all means is that we need to shift the focus from advertising — and the associated definitions and processes — to creating distinctive and uninterrupted brand experiences for consumers.

Getting it right

Airbnb’s brand purpose comes through powerfully through all that it does: wanting to make people feel that they can belong anywhere. It’s a shining example of a brand that demonstrates a consistent and seamless alignment of its internal values and external behaviour through the story that it tells.

Through curated travel stories, people are placed at the centre of all brand activity to, in turn, invite others to experience travel in a distinctive way.

“Great content and storytelling is so important now for any brand. As a community-driven company, we don’t want to just talk about our product, but instead put our community front and centre of any campaign.” —Jonathan Mildenhall, Airbnb CMO

By reaching audiences on an unconscious level, brands have the ability to elicit emotions that will ultimately make the brand more-distinctive and -memorable in the minds of consumers. We marketers and advertisers need to constantly challenge our clients and one another on whether we are really staying true to the story we set out to tell. We need to constantly be asking:

“What is my (brand) story?”

References:

Tenielle Maris is strategic director at TTL agency, 34°, in Johannesburg. Beginning her career in branding and communications, she has spent the last decade in the marketing industry where she has worked upon big brands spanning the African continent. Having found her passion in understanding what drives human beings to connect with particular brands, her time is spent getting up close and personal with the people whom brands are trying to connect with. Tenielle contributes the monthly “Headspace” column, which unpacks anything and everything that helps marketers and advertisers understand why people connect with brands, to MarkLives.com.

#AgencyFocus: Riverbed ups creative game to bolster positioning

by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Johannesburg-based full-service communications agency, Riverbed, has set high targets for 2018, in a bid to take the business to what CEO Monalisa Sibongile Zwambila calls “the next level”. Emerging from what was a challenging year for many in the industry, Riverbed is leveraging new wins and hires to bolster both its creativity and position in the market.

Advertising added on

“We started very much as an activation and PR agency, and then we added on our advertising competency,” she says. “What we really want to be in a position to do is make a difference in terms of creativity.”

Zwambila is confident that the recent onboarding of industry heavyweight Adrian Miller as ECD will give the creative side of the business a boost. “Over the years, we’ve always focused on being ideas-led, but we believe this appointment will really cement that and help us take things to the next level,” she says.

The addition of Catherine Blomkamp as head of design, to help shape and improve the craft coming out of the studio, is another move that Zwambila sees as strategic. “We’ve also beefed up our team in terms of design, and strengthened our operations division, which is key in terms of delivery and execution,” she says. The agency is identifying opportunities internally, and will be looking to start entering awards, such as The Loeries, to build its brand in the creative space.

Black-female-owned and -managed

Riverbed remains both independent and one of the largest black-female-owned and -managed agencies in the country. Over the past decade, it has made a name for itself as a leader in the transformation sphere and has snagged numerous industry accolades, including finalist for the 2016 AdFocus Small Agency of the Year award, runner-up agency to watch in South Africa in the 2017 MarkLives Agency Leaders’ Most Admired Poll, and Joburg agency to watch for two years running. Zwambila also took home the Business Achiever for Gauteng award in 2017.

A key challenge, she says, is sustaining growth while retaining the ability to offer an agile, nimble solution to clients. With client attention increasingly on the bottom line, against a backdrop of rapidly changing technologies, Riverbed has found these attributes to be key to success.

As the market shifts further towards brand experiences, clients are seeking agencies that provide them with cost-effective, integrated solutions. Zwambila believes that this is something Riverbed is ideally positioned to provide. “We believe an agency that can create brand experiences across platforms in a compelling way is where things are moving towards,” she says. This is something she feels has differentiated the agency in many of its current campaigns, notably its work with Aware.org to change perceptions and behaviour around responsible drinking.

https://youtu.be/jhZaHhyhLPU

Account wins

The Association for Alcohol Responsibility and Education (AWARE) partnered with Riverbed towards the end of 2017. Other recent boons for the agency include accounts for Bridgestone and the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), as well as a large chunk of Unilever’s Sunlight and Surf business. This has helped it rebound from the loss of Unisa’s TTL account last year. Agency revenue tops R70m.

Riverbed has seen its fair share of offers from multinational companies but has no plans to accept them. “We’ve kept the global agencies at bay because we’re focused on delivering our vision, and we believe the time to enable that is now,” she says. “We’ve always been focused on building an independent agency, one of the most-renowned in the country, and that’s the journey we are on.”

Transformation and making an impact as a leader, too, remain front and centre for Zwambila, who is set to complete an MBA through Henley Business School later this year. “There’s a business case in our customers understanding the value of transformation beyond just a tick-box item. I believe that the transformation narrative has to go beyond BEE and sit in a space where brands completely understand the value of working with a transformed agency, because of the insights and understanding of the market that comes with, and the value that can be garnered from that,” she explains.

theriverbedagency.co.za • Ramify Premium

Office locations: Johannesburg
Revenue band: R70m+ (FY2017)
Staff count: 32
Key clients: Association for Alcohol Responsibility and Education(Aware.org), Unilever, PPC, Bridgestone, Supa Quick, Nestle, Industrial Development Corporation (IDC)
Services: ATL, BTL, digital, activations, PR

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.

Brands must speak less more often — James Yeats Smith [interview]

James Yeats Smith. Credit: Olivier Teepe.

by Nils Adriaans (@nilsadriaans) A South African export living in creative epicentre Amsterdam, James Yeats Smith (aka JYS) is a creative director with a wealth of international experience that’s shaped his view on the ‘obligation’ brands have to society. Following a recent move from Anomaly to international creative studio, Cloudfactory, in this interview he unpacks why the world needs more thinking brands.

Nils Adriaans: Why should brands think harder before they speak?
James Yeats Smith: There’s a lot of terrible advertising in the world. But, before there’s terrible advertising, there’s usually a brand adrift without a clear purpose. If a brand doesn’t have an understanding of why it exists, it can’t add value to anyone. And that’s dangerous. That’s when advertising pollutes society. Finding the centre of gravity takes a lot of time, thought and reflection. But, once it’s unearthed, meaning always follows.

NA: So when ís a brand valuable?
JYS: Meaningful brands have a higher order to what they do, a reason for being that transcends the simple exchange of goods and services for compensation. Brands that are able to self-examine and understand the relevance they have in people’s lives are worth having around. Ones that don’t, aren’t.

I respect brands that have a point of view on the zeitgeist — what it is, what it could be, or where it should go. Political malfeasance has dominated culture of late, and truth and trust [are] in short supply. In that respect, The New York Times has an ironclad purpose and point of view. Danish brand, Bianco, on the other hand, holds up a black mirror to the world with this topical take on the status quo.

https://youtu.be/zBXvLdvyWls

NA: That can come across as rather lofty. What if you’re just selling a 50c bag of crisps?
JYS: You don’t have to save dolphins to have a meaningful purpose. The question is simply why you’re selling crisps. Is it because: a) you love crisps and make the crispiest crisps, b) you hate crisps and want to get rid of them, [or] c) you have mixed feelings about crisps and are re-evaluating your life choices. Any of these reasons can be the beginnings of a brand purpose, as long as it’s true.

NA: What’s the role of creative agencies in this equation?
JYS: By definition, creative agencies act as proxies/connectors for brands, but the best ones act as agents for the public, too. They help hone the reason why a brand exists in a way that is true to its origins, but also in a way that is relevant to people right now. Often brands and their agencies get entangled in a web of analysis and circular logic, forgetting that we’re really just speaking to people. People who feel more than they think. Good agencies help brands think but the best agencies also help them feel.

NA: Give me a few brands that stand for something more…
JYS: I love visiting independent brands and meeting the people who make it happen. I was in Detroit last year and Shinola made a big impression on me. Their mission is to restore Detroit’s marginalised workforce to some of its former glory, while making exceptionally crafted watches, bicycles and leathery things. In a similar trend the Hiut Denim Co. is another beautiful brand that I had the pleasure of experiencing first hand in Cardigan, Wales. They make a damn fine pairs of jeans, while retooling local denim craftspeople sidelined by cheap manufacturing. While those brands are both about putting people back to work, something less high-brow caught my eye that reminded me that laziness can be a purpose, too.

NA: When we spoke earlier, you said: “To provoke thought in others, I need to do a lot of thinking first.” What kind of thinking is that? Can you elaborate on that?
JYS: It’s less a kind of thinking and more a process of distillation. Getting to the essence of something takes time.

NA: How much time?
JYS: How long is a piece of string? It changes brief to brief. Sometimes you need a day, a week, a month (or six), sometimes a year.

NA: You also said the thinking will lead to creativity. How do you actually stimulate creativity within yourself?
JYS: I used to think I could stimulate creativity consciously but I’m not so sure anymore. I’m starting to feel that it’s much more unconscious and mysterious — like a process that doesn’t want to be understood. It’s quite a romantic point of view.

NA: How do you prepare yourself for a brief, for example? How do you get your juices flowing, so to speak?
JYS: It starts with a good brief. There needs to be tension, a rub, some contrast. I’m looking for drama. If it’s missing, then rewriting the brief is good way to get the synapses firing.

NA: On a more abstract, higher level: what inspires you?
JYS: Music is a profound source of inspiration to me. Interpreting briefs through music helps me disrupt my thought process in unusual ways. For instance, a deep and meaningful problem might require something lo-tech like Mall Grab to shake it up, whereas a sales campaign might benefit from something reflective like Nils Frahm.

NA: As a creative director, how do you stimulate creativity within your teams?
JYS: Creativity is not a chore, nor should it ever feel like one. I try and remove the obstacles that make it seem that way sometimes. In my experience, people are much more creative when they’re encouraged to:

Be unavailable — creativity needs room to breathe. Get out of the office and check emails once in the morning and once in the afternoon
Be dramatic — sometimes that’s the only way to protect the work
Be unrealistic — there are more than enough pragmatists to bring you back to reality
Be an adult — freedom demands responsibility, so be dependable, be responsible and, most importantly, be on time for things.

NA: And then there is the whole agency and the client. How do you, James Yeats Smith (JYS), build a creative culture for everyone to flourish in?
JYS: You can’t please everyone. I’ve tried. [Yet] what works well is a culture where people take the work seriously but not themselves too seriously. It makes the process super-fun and, when it’s fun, the work always benefits.

NA: What would be the best thing that could or should happen to the industry as a whole?
JYS: Treat people intelligently.

NA: Having worked in South Africa (where you had your own boutique agency), in New York and in Amsterdam at different high-level agencies implies you are ambitious and have an entrepreneurial mind-set. What drives JYS?
JYS: Being creative is hard. I respect anyone who tries. Even Hemingway called the blank page the white bull. The thrill of facing that white bull, and winning every once in a while, is what makes it worthwhile.

NA: You recently swapped an international network, Anomaly, for somewhat of a hidden gem in Amsterdam, called Cloudfactory. Why?
JYS: Agencies tend to work on things behind closed doors and then reveal the answer. It’s a ‘ta-da’ moment that almost never works first time. At Cloudfactory, we foster a much more collaborative approach with our clients, as well as the makers, the craftsmen and -women. To do that, we need good chemistry between everyone, and a lot of respect in both directions. But, when we get the alchemy right, the results are spectacular.

NA: What does it mean for the agency, having a new, extra creative leader under their roof?
JYS: In simple terms it allows Jess [Jessice Kersten], Sandrine [Huijgen] and I to divide and conquer, and create more good work, more of the time.

Nils Adriaans: And what does it mean for you, personally? What does your future look like, if it were up to you?
JYS: Over the next tow years, I want to help Cloudfactory grow in the right way. And by that, I mean scale without compromise. It comes down to choosing clients who want to think with us, create with us, and succeed with us. Clients who embrace co-creation as part of our methodology — not just a buzzword. And, as a matter of course, it also means choosing to work with people who create things, the ones with the dirty hands, those who can’t wait for the ink to dry. By being choosey in these two areas, we keep our creative hearts healthy.

Nils Adriaans (@nilsadriaans), once editor-in-chief of Amsterdam-based Creatie magazine, is now ambassador of the (international) creative industry in more than one way: as a writer, as an interviewer, as a connector and as a consultant.

Cover Stories: Interview, Readymag Stories, The Lake, TIME & Zeit

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: Interview used a simple concept, celebs talking to celebs, to generate content for 50 years
Online: Readymag Stories argues how design education was invented by two schools: Bauhaus and Vkhutemas
Local/print: The Lake incites a state of post-postmodern hubris, as opposed to the sublime, in a colorful performance of fashion, photography and art
International/print: TIME gives an education in digital marketing, making a print magazine cover go viral
International/print: Zeit Magazin unpacks in abstract terms how ideologies come-into-being

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)_/¯ The Lake (South Africa), issue 20, June 2018

The historic ebb and flow of the creative pursuit is far from binary, nor dictated by dualities and hierarchies. It may be argued that the underground needs the mainstream so that there’s at best something to rebel against. In turn, the mainstream feeds off the underground for new ideas and fresh angles. While nothing is original and the best we may do is recycle, remix, mashup, deconstruct, parody and so on, there’re still some interesting hybrids out there yet to be spliced together. The cover for issue #20 of The Lake delivers one such chimera, inciting a state of post-postmodern hubris in a colorful performance of fashion, photography and art. Juxtaposition, pastiche and appropriation work in overdrive with this cover, titled “Sad Rasta”, delivered with the photographic prowess of Travys Owen. It speaks to a broader series of images, a fashion shoot within the spread, titled “Avoirdupois — A System of Weights”.

TIME (US), 11 June 2018

Ideas are rarely easy to formulate, execute and implement, so it is always exciting when a candid idea becomes a reality. Despite all the dystopian and Orwellian visions about our surveilled and mediated world, drones are in our future. For its June 2018 issue, TIME magazine has gotten rid of the solid red border that normally frames its covers, opting for a cover image shot by a drone. Here the ever-present solid red border is made of real drones, 958 of them to be exact, choreographed to be in perfect mathematical organisation with each other. Exact calculations had to be made to get this drone army in position. TIME worked with Intel’s Drone Light Show team and Astraeus Aerial to create this spectacular display of lights in the night sky above Folsom, California. As one of the largest drone demonstrations ever performed in the US, TIME couldn’t have wished for better publicity, with the spectacle going viral on the internet over the past week. And, so, a print magazine cover becomes online content.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Zeit Magazin (Germany), no. 22, 24 May 2018

In his book, Spectres of Marx, the father of deconstruction, Jaques Derrida, alluded that ideology is ghostly, lurking now and later haunting. Ideology is inescapable, extremely abstract, constructed, and seemingly not connected to reality. Yet it affects us in very real, ontological, ways. In a roundabout way, the cover to the latest issue of Zeit Magazine depicts Derrida’s explanation of ideology and its inherent ‘spectrality’ as a ‘hauntology’.

Zeit has printed three different covers to communicate this ambiguous message, using a visual narrative reminiscent of constructivism, specifically the formalism of El Lissitsky and Kasimir Malevich, and the modernism of the Bauhaus, recalling the work of De Stijl artist, Peter Keler. In short, this tryptic of covers unpacks in abstract terms how ideologies come-into-being. In order, each cover states (translated from German): 1) choose the two lines with the same length, 2) of course X and C!, and 3) did you believe this? It’s how ideologies work. Allowing the audience to figure out the puzzle, the question here is: why do people believe so vehemently in ideologies? From an awareness of how metanarratives work to relations of power structures and institutions, we need to defy more and obey less.

Online

Readymag Stories (US), June 2018

The latest Readymag Stories declares that design education was invented by the Bauhaus (Germany) and Vkhutemas, (an acronym for the Moscow-based Higher Art and Technical Studios Soviet Union). Most people would be familiar with Bauhaus or, at best, have been exposed to work from the Bauhaus in their lifetime. Vkhutemas, in comparison, has gone largely unrecognised but has regularly been compared to Bauhaus. Both schools were similar in organisation and scope, often exchanging knowledge and expertise. Both schools were also at their most prolific during the inter-world war years.

Bauhaus, initially founded in 1919 (Weimar, and later Dessau), drew from all the early modernist avant-garde movements in Europe, blending the rudiments of art, craft, discourse and design into a historically significant curriculum. Vkhutemas, founded in 1920 (Moscow), was a Soviet state art and technical school created by order of Vladimir Lenin himself, meant to cultivate generations of artists, artisans, designers and craftsmen to the highest industry standards. As opposed to Bauhaus, which was influenced by Dadaism, futurism, cubism, De Stijl, and other important avant-garde movements, Vkhutemas influenced key avant-garde movements such as constructivism and suprematism. Overall, abstraction and experimentalism would prove to be common traits of both schools, understood to be transformative factors in the modern perception of reality, signifying progress, the future, industrial and technological influence. Vkhutemas closed in 1930 due political pressure, internal conflicts and the onset of World War II. Bauhaus closed in 1933 due to similar circumstances.

Readymag encapsulates this history beautifully with the most-recent publication for its “Stories” series, subtitled “The History of Two Great Schools”. Using abstract forms and emphasising space, with a characteristically modernist colour palette, and precise geometry in typographic execution, the site makes for an extremely informative and pleasing experience.

Iconic

Andy Warhol’s Interview (US), 1969–2018

Founded in 1969 by notorious pop artist, Andy Warhol, Interview was a lavish magazine that milked the gospel of celebrity worship and the cult of personality. The publication contained close tête-à-têtes between celebrities and creatives, gossiping about cinema, music, art, fashion and politics. Dubbed “The Crystal Ball of Pop” and following Warhol’s unique perspectives, including his mantra “From A to B and Back Again”, conversations were informal and eccentric, and largely went unedited. It was a simple model that generated great content, which lasted for 50 years.

In May, 2018, for print and online, Interview closed its doors. This sudden closure is rumored to be due to internal issues, including a rental disagreement, hemorrhaging of upper-level staff, and various litigations from former personnel. A striking portrait of Joaquin Phoenix adorns Interview’s final cover; fellow actor and comedian, Will Ferrell, has a conversation with this actor.

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 2 — primetime top 20 for May, Apr 2018

SA TV Ratings 2018 pics sourced from Pixabay

by MarkLives (@marklives) The hottest primetime shows on SABC 2 in South Africa revealed: TV ratings for May and April 2018.

SABC 2 May 2018

BRCSA TV Ratings May 2018 primetime SABC 2 — Click to enlarge to view clearly

Source: BRCSA May 2018

SABC 2 April 2018

BRCSA TV Ratings April 2018 primetime SABC 2 — Click to enlarge to view clearly

Source: BRCSA April 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.

Fair Exchange: Partner-power for brand-growth expectations

team teamwork together cooperation courtesy of Pixabay.com slider

by Erna George (@edgeo23) I’ve either worked with agencies or been client-facing within an agency for 20 years. I’ve deliberately constructed my career to cover both sides, with a level of depth to allow me to tap into both at any moment. The goal is to be a more-understanding client or client service provider, because having a great client-agency partnership is the only way to succeed. But to what extent does everyone do this anymore?

I’ve been out of the agency game for three years, so I collaborated with Ross Cooper from Paton Tupper, whom I’ve worked with on and off for many years (starting in about 1999!). His view and mine are fairly close, yet we often speak as if we’re on either side of the spectrum, rather than each ‘side’ of the same round table. The basics still apply and there’s some concern around the table about how young and busy people are appreciating this partnership, when all the WhatsApps, emails and other non-face-to-face channels can get in the way.

Understanding and sharing

Partnership is facilitated by understanding and sharing:

From the agency view: “Agencies need to be immersed in their clients’ business and the only way this is possible is if there is a good partnership between both parties. Clients need to involve agencies with their strategic plans upfront to enable them to be pro-active and add value to their businesses.”From my side, I couldn’t ask for more. An agency that doesn’t understand your business, brands or the context of the brief is unlikely to interpret any request well first time around. The benefit of investing time in building a strong relationship with an agency that truly understands your brand is invaluable. But, as clients we need to put in the effort to share and keep our partner agencies on our strategic journey. Marketers take agencies on trade visits and share what they’ve learned from competitors or as strategic journeys change. Share all the information you have. Don’t test agencies by keeping aspects a secret, as trust is eroded and they can’t help you if they don’t know everything.
The agency perspective is that, as agencies, they’re expected to know and understand the clients’ business and brands inside out, but few clients take the time to understand how agencies work — the creative process, the traffic planning and what goes into producing good work. I fully agree with the view that understanding your agency will help you formulate better briefs, know what to expect in terms of timings and deliverables, and further strengthen your relationship. The impact on turnaround time and efficiency is positive with this two-way understanding.We must find the optimal way for both parties to understand and appreciate each other’s worlds. Sending team members to work in the agency for a few days is a challenge from a cost and resource perspective, but it is important to find a way to share and demystify processes and to discover what makes each side tick — this will change the way you interact and yield great benefit. My advice is to keep this understanding alive in the timeline and to avoid any unnecessary interactions.
I couldn’t agree more with the agency view that collaboration and co-construction between agency partners is critical. In the past, agencies were particularly protective of their intellectual property and weren’t prepared to collaborate with other agencies or specialist suppliers. These days, however, clients want to engage with a variety of specialists to achieve the best possible result from project to project, which means more collaboration is needed between BTL, ATL and digital Agencies. While it goes without saying that good briefs are critical to optimal output, this is where collaboration is also useful, especially across multiple teams. Brief in the work but consider a good discursive briefing session and build the final brief together to lay the foundation for a smooth process to follow.

Speed

Speed is a two-way street all can benefit from:

To agencies from a fellow agency person: these days, speed to market is critical, which means agencies need to be more flexible with project timings. While traffic systems are in place for very good reasons, agencies must be able to accommodate the occasional urgent, unexpected project; it’s part of the great service that clients expect in a strong partnership.
To clients from my client-eyes: having too many contacts and hedging your bets on creative routes complicate matters. If you want a smooth process to deliver on-point work. you need to offer a streamlined and clear briefing and revert process. Marketers, agencies aren’t there to manage your indecisiveness. Sending mixed signals of “it’s nice but…” sends the creative team down an unclear path. Rather signal where starting from scratch is required. Together we must co-drive brand growth agendas. Agencies can help see the wood for the trees to keep you ahead of the competition and deliver breakthrough impactful creative — not to test your label in three different shades of green.

Money

Speed has a big impact on area no. 3 — the money. Understand the money and how you may impact this in the best way possible.

What agencies tell us is that agencies and your business will flourish with managed to-and-fro reverts. Understand, marketers, that while your salary happens whether you meet target for a month or not, this isn’t the case in a time-bound business. Realise that every duplicated meeting for an agency means revenue that must be made up elsewhere or cost added to existing work-streams. When you receive a higher-cost estimate, I can guarantee you will doubt the value of the deliverable vs the cost. Before you get irritated, think about your role in the process.
Agencies, please consider that, as clients, we need work that impacts brand growth — the hours are a means to an end but, if you bring 4+ people to each meeting, with deliverables being sub-par, clients won’t see value in this. As impressive as it may be in the beginning to show commitment with a large team presence, clients are more interested that the right people are in the room and that deliverables are met and impactful.
From the agency perspective, there is a view that agencies need to adopt or consider a policy of “open-book” costings to build trust and loyalty between both parties. This transparency works both ways, and clients need to expose agencies to their budgets, so that agencies can allocate the required resources effectively to various projects.
Lastly, while pitches are sometimes a necessary part of the business, there’s certainly something to be said for building a strong relationship with an agency that truly understands your brand and knows it inside out. Also, offering a small rejection fee with each pitch helps agencies to cover the costs involved in the work they’ve done preparing the pitch document.

If you get the basics right, the rest can follow. But, if you don’t, you’ll be continually haggling on timings and cost, over what you think they said or what they heard. No-one wants to feel like they’re on a playground where conversations must be refereed. Forget what each of you think you heard the other say and together decide what winning looks like for the project. Craft the ultimate end point together — what will success look and feel like at a total level and for each party — and then the process is more unified, with the creative team being energised and the bottom line being positively impacted. More importantly, everyone will have a lot more fun.

The basics

It really is about the basics, so ensure the young and/or new marketers are clear on these:

Construct this relationship from the outset with clear rules of engagement around ways of working
Understand each other’s worlds (operations, key needs and costs) as the foundation for a strong alliance
Craft the brief and end-point together (face-to-face as far as possible), so that the journey is seamless and more fun.

After starting at Unilever in a classical marketing role, Erna George (@edgeo23) explored the agency side of life, first as a partner at Fountainhead Design, followed by the manic and inspiring world of consultancy at Added Value. She has returned to client-side, leading the marketing team in the Cereals, Accompaniments & Baking Division at Pioneer Foods. Her monthly “Fair Exchange” column on MarkLives concerns business relationships and partnerships in marketing and brandland.

The CX-Files: The changing role of the CMO

change-arrows-clouds-sky-direction courtesy of PIxabay

by Julia Ahlfeldt (@JuliaAhlfeldt) Customer expectations of companies are rising by the day. For those companies that understand the importance of delivering a customer experience that meets and exceeds expectations, the burning question is: Who shoulders the responsibility for rallying the organisation to deliver on what the customer needs and expects?

There’s no clear-cut answer to this yet. In the meantime, as businesses are under mounting pressure to constantly deliver on their brand promises, the responsibility often defaults to marketing because they’re responsible for some related tasks (eg customer research and social media monitoring).

As marketing teams across the globe scramble to keep up with these new responsibilities and expectations, the role of the chief marketing officer (CMO) is constantly evolving. These are some of the most noticeable shifts and requirements for a successful CMO today:

The CMO needs to craft unique experiences

Marketing used to be primarily focused on pushing out relevant information about the company and its products to targeted consumer groups. This was a key sales driver, and often the marketing team’s most-important KPI. While that is still relevant today, it’ll only get you so far and marketing teams now need to pay more attention to the “pull” factors. Competing on price and product is more difficult when customers can easily search for the best deals available online.

When there isn’t much to differentiate product A from product B in terms of price and availability, customer experience becomes the deciding factor, and the customer’s experience begins before they’ve even chosen your brand or product. Research from 2015 showed that 82% of smartphone users consult their phones on purchases they’re about to make in store. The best CMOs factor this into their marketing process and attract new customers by offering a customer-centric digital experience from the outset.

The CMO needs to define customer engagement in a digital world

Probably the most important example at this point in time is how companies respond to feedback and queries via social media. Facebook or Twitter may be the first port of call for your most-valued customers to voice their questions or dissatisfactions. Do you have a team in place to adequately deal with this?

In the old “push”-focused marketing, it was easy to relegate social media to a junior team member, as it was seen as simply another channel for disseminating messages. But. today, customers are expecting interactive support on social media — and the most-junior member of the marketing team isn’t necessarily best-placed to provide these. Any social media plan or strategy needs to start out with a focus on how to deal with customer issues, and ideally it should be a collaboration between customer support and marketing.

The CMO needs to bring all stakeholders together

According to a recent IBM study on the role of the CMO, having a collaborative workplace, where employees are incentivised to share knowledge and work together to solve problems, is a core characteristic of a customer-centric culture. The CMO may need to be the one advocating for a cross-functional approach within an organization, and should be a natural diplomat who’s skilled at bringing various stakeholders together to deliver on a united purpose.

The CMO needs to understand data

The quality of customer data available today, compared to 10 years ago, is astounding. But who’s bringing it together and figuring out how to use it? Often this responsibility also falls to marketing, and this is another example of where a cross-functional approach, in this case between the CMO and the CIO (chief information officer), works better. Ideally, the CIO would be tasked with data synthesis and analysis, whereas the CMO would look at how to understand the data from a customer’s point of view — and look for ways to improve customer experiences based on this information.

The CMO needs a design-thinking approach

According to the IBM study, 79% of the most successful CMOs say they use a design-thinking approach to improve their customers’ experiences. Design-thinking revolves around developing a deeper understanding and empathy for customers and their needs. Instead of thinking “How can we market our product?”, design-thinkers start with “What do our customers want, and how can we give them this?” Design-thinkers will continually question and test their assumptions and are open to experimentation. They want to find solutions to problems customers didn’t even realise they had in order to deliver exceptional experiences.

Julia Ahlfeldt (@JuliaAhlfeldt) is a certified customer experience professional (CCXP). She consults to blue-chips and multinationals, working with Virgin Active, Momentum, Absa, and American Express, Ross Stores and JP Morgan Chase in the US, among others. By tapping into her vast local and international network, she produces a monthly podcast, Decoding the Customer, interviewing leaders on CX trends and adoption (including Michelle Beetar). She contributes the new column, “The CX-Files”, to MarkLives.

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