The CX-Files: Seven dos & don’ts of journey mapping

by Julia Ahlfeldt (@JuliaAhlfeldt) For many businesses, journey mapping is their first foray into customer-centric thinking and, if leaders don’t find the outputs useful, they might be put off for good. Here’s how to make sure you make the most of it.

Journey mapping is a big buzzword right now and it’s wonderful to see so many companies diving deeper into this customer-focused exercise. It offers a great opportunity for marketing teams and their agency partners to help businesses engage with (and learn about) customers and start working together to improve customer engagement management. However, it also comes with the responsibility to do it right and make the exercise meaningful.

1. Establish what the end use will be

The scope of journey mapping is almost unlimited and there is no one-size-fits-all approach for any business. Once you get started, it may be easy to get sidetracked by the details of every customer’s every possible interaction. But the journey map is not meant to track every possible path a customer might follow; rather, it should be a visual representation of a typical customer route.

To keep your process on track, it’s important to have a clear idea of what your objective is before you begin. While the underlying content might be the same, a map that’s intended to boost employee engagement, for example, would have a different look and feel from one that’s intended to influence strategic business decisions. Be clear on what you want your map to achieve and keep returning to your objectives as the process unfolds.

2. Don’t forget the customer

One of the most-common pitfalls I see is journey mapping that takes place in a business vacuum, without bringing in the customer’s perspective. What you end up with is a process map, rather than a customer journey map.

Customer research, focus groups, mystery shopping etc are all good preparation for journey mapping and will allow you to bring relevant customer insights into the process. Journey maps should help people understand the thoughts, desires, emotions and frustrations of customers as they fulfill a specific need in their consumer life.

If your journey map doesn’t bring this context to life, you need to rethink your approach.

3. Look beyond your brand

Most businesses only think about the customer’s journey from the moment they are interacting with their brand, but the customer’s journey usually begins long before that. Understanding where the customer begins the process (before brand selection has taken place) may unlock valuable opportunities and will improve your understanding of the broader need or desire the customer is looking to fulfill.

4. Don’t use business jargon

Commit to using customer language — rather than business language — throughout your journey-mapping process. Every team I’ve worked with has had to resist the inclination to slip back to a business-centric (rather than customer-centric) point of view, and I find that this one simple rule may help keep your journey map on track.

A good rule of thumb is that the end map should be easy to understand for the average customer; if they don’t understand it, your map has failed.

5. Decide how to use your map

When you’re done with the journey mapping process, and while it’s still fresh in everyone’s minds, make a plan for how you’re going to put it to use. Too often, businesses will produce a fantastic customer-journey map but then just leave it at that. What’s the point? Journey maps may be powerful tools for driving customer-centric change but only if they are integrated into the business.

An obvious “quick win” for your journey map is use it to build broader employee engagement. You may have a marketing team, or even a customer-experience (CX) team, that is very familiar with the customer’s journey with your brand. But what about the engine room of your business — the product-development team, IT, human resources? Usually these employees are a few degrees removed from the customer, with little understanding of their experiences.

The journey map will remind people what they are doing, why they are doing it, and who they are doing it for.

6. Don’t forget to keep it current

Journey maps are living documents, so don’t think of this as a once-off exercise. Our world is constantly evolving, products are improving, and customer needs are ever changing. Journey maps need to be updated continually to reflect changes affecting your business and your customers.

7. Do your homework on service providers

If you Google “journey mapping”, you’ll find a huge amount of information online, and many service providers claiming to have all the answers. Tread carefully before engaging anyone to lead this process for you.

Ask providers to walk you through their process to make sure it includes all the points raised above. A credible provider should take the time to understand your needs and craft an appropriate approach.

No two journey maps are alike, and the steps for creating and using a map as a CX tool should be equally customised.

Quick ways to spot a failed journey map

  • You know the map has gone wrong when it looks like a process map; customers don’t (and shouldn’t) care about what happens behind the scenes.
  • It’s not a useful tool if it’s too complex for the majority of people in your business to understand
  • The final output doesn’t fit on a single page; large page formats are fine but maps that require an entire boardroom wall are not

If it doesn’t illustrate the experience from the customer’s perspective, it’s not a customer-journey map.

 

Julia AhlfeldtJulia 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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Thinking B2B: Applying espoused & enacted theory to B2B marketing

by Warren Moss (@warrenmoss) The espoused and enacted theory may sound complicated and academic but it has very pertinent applications in real life and, specifically, in B2B marketing.

In the context of an organisation, the espoused part of the theory refers to how an organisation says that it behaves — the promise it makes to the outside world. The enacted part is how that organisation actually behaves. Obviously, there may be gaps between these two and the theory is that, the greater the difference, the greater the chaos internally within an organisation. This is true irrespective of the size of the company, or whatever phase of business it’s in.

What happens when the gap is too big

A few years ago, we needed the services of an IT software provider to provide CRM software to our company. It presented its capabilities and all the ways its software could help us solve our problems.

With CRM software, it’s not as simple as buying a product; you have to deploy it, people need to be trained and there are various change-management processes that must be implemented if the changeover is to be successful. We asked the salesperson pitching the services about this, and were assured that it would take away all the pain from this adoption process, that it had a dedicated team whose sole responsibility it was to handle change management and implementation. We were told it it had done this successfully multiple times, that the support team would be on hand 24/7 to help us switch over, and that we’d get all the training we needed to make the changeover a success.

We signed on the spot and bought the new software. However, when it came to deployment, it quickly became clear that its client services teams were not readily available to help us at all, our employees were not trained sufficiently and it was incredibly difficult to actually get the new system deployed.

You know how this ends — we had to cancel the contract and we lost time and money, plus it caused our company a great deal of stress. The pain wasn’t just on our side. The IT software provider lost a client, lost revenue and there was great internal chaos trying to deliver.

And what was the core issue? The gap between what the salesperson promised us and what the company could actually deliver was far too large.

Strategic partners, not just brief-takers

In a B2B context, B2B agencies often get briefs on campaigns where clients tell us what promise they want to make to the world. They want people to be told how they can solve their problems and they are usually very clear on exactly what their value proposition is. But we always take it a step further. Because what a good B2B agency should do is work with the client as a strategic partner to understand whether the brand can actually deliver on this promise. The minute you dig under the hood, you may realise that the brand cannot necessarily do this at all — because it doesn’t have the execution capability.

Making this gap between the espoused and enacted too vast does no one any favours and it’s a huge problem for the client: it makes a promise, the market demand comes in, but then it can’t deliver. Again, this costs money, and creates stress. It’s a big problem for us, too, because when companies stop performing, it cuts marketing budgets, and we could lose our client’s business.

Tailor your promise

Typical business thinking says that, if your business can’t deliver on your promise, you should mobilise your business and fix it. But, actually, research shows that it’s more effective to fix your promise than to change your business. While this may cause friction in the short term, it’s always a better long-term decision.

Taking this viewpoint shifts a B2B marketing agency from filling the role of a mere production house which takes briefs to a strategic partner. That’s why we always emphasise that clients should tailor their promise to their capabilities, rather than tailoring their business – because this has been shown to be the most-powerful and -sustainable solution.

 

Warren MossWarren Moss (@warrenmoss) is the CEO and founder of Demographica, a multi-award winning full service agency that specialises in the B2B category. He is the chair of both the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa (DMASA) and the Assegai Integrated Marketing Awards (Assegais), as well as the only African to judge the B2 Awards, which recognise the top performing B2B marketers in the world. Warren contributes the monthly “Thinking B2B” column, which looks at the latest trends in B2B communications and explains why it is fundamentally different from B2C comms.

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#DesignIndaba: Notes on Design Indaba 2018

by Herman Manson (@marklives) In spite of the physical space feeling more dreary than usual, Design Indaba 2018 ensured a number of strong and critical speakers.

Design Indaba logoThe 2018 edition of “the world’s best design conference”, as Pentagram partner and the event’s MC Michael Bierut loves to call Design Indaba, would organisationally have been coming together in the uncertain, dying days of the Jacob Zuma presidency. The economy was drying up, analysts pointed to a slight lead for the Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma campaign, and there was no indication that Zuma would not see out the full term of his presidency.

And it kind of showed: it felt as if austerity had finally come to Design Indaba. There was the banner-less, lopsided fencing (only covered up on the final morning of the event), the tea- and coffee-less early mornings (unless you were willing to queue and pay for your own at the Woolies counter), the lack of posters and banners at the venue and a toning down of the theatre that had dominated presentations since the conference moved to the Artscape Theatre Complex in 2016.

“New dawn”

The empty seats in the early morning sessions, although filled up as the mornings marched along, were indicative of the traffic snarl Cape Town has become, and the difficulties for anybody outside the CBD or immediate neighbourhoods to make it into the centre of town — and to an event that offers no parking in the immediate vicinity (how about a park-and-bus system for Design Indaba delegates coming in from the further suburbs?).

Thankfully, the “new dawn” continues its slow creep into spaces until recently occupied by state capture as renewal also tries to push into the physical spaces of the Cape Town CBD still occupied by apartheid’s brutal sense of architecture.

This is what Design Indaba has been trying to soften, this year through the colourful playful installation, on the Artscape Piazza, of UK designer Morag Myerscough. The Indaba hopes to continue softening the urban space surrounding Artscape through architectural efforts such as Peter Veenstra’s Dome of Plants, set to be positioned on Luthuli Plaza (if city officials find the political will to approve the plans).

I much prefer the inside/outside space offered by Artscape to the claustrophobia offered by the old venue. It feels much more like Cape Town than the Cape Town International Convention Centre ever could.

Sunu Gonera

The conference opened with an earnest talk by Cape Town-based commercials director, Sunu Gonera. His three-part series of ads, focused on Afrofuturism (for Absolut and Metropolitan), was incredibly interesting to view individually and, finally, as a set. It tracks an Africa that feels both post-apocalyptic and preindustrial. You finally realise that it depicts a continent that has, in fact, survived an apocalypse wrought by the colonial ambitions of European nations. Afrofuturism demands it sheds the weight of this legacy to embrace both a rebirth and finally freedom. It shouts loudly that this is a continent no longer dancing to the strings of colonial aggressors but to its own undeniable rhythm.

It brought the house down.

Sam and Rob Paddock

Cape Town brothers, Sam and Rob Paddock, the duo behind the successful creation and eventual sale of online learning platform, GetSmarter, offered interesting insights into using data to effectively reinvent an existing business and catapult it to success.

Essentially, they decided to partner with their students (their core constituency) for success. With graduation rates for distance learning at some SA institutions settling in the single digits, the GetSmarter completion rate of 91% is worth sitting up and taking note off (I’m not sure you can compare the completion rate of a three-year distance learning diploma with a short course, but let’s go with it for now).

The point is, they have put humans back into distance education through tutor-led classes and small group learning. The company has a student success manager; maybe it’s time for brands to bring on board a consumer champion into their organisations. AI is great but offers no compassion and only artificial (hah) engagement. In an age of chatbots, it feels good to think regular people really make a fundamental difference in organisational success. Design around that for some real change.

Edel Rodriguez

It was great to be exposed to Edel Rodriguez as South Africa charters a post-Zuma course onto the 2019 elections. The Cuban American artist and satirist was posting his take on the Donald Trump candidacy and eventual US election victory when magazines started approaching him to design their covers. The work definitely speaks for itself.

Edel Rodriguez collage of Donald Trump magazine covers

SWINE

Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves of SWINE explored “themes of regional identity and the future of resources in the context of globalisation. SWINE’s work manifests a deep research into materials and modern industrialisation.”

We had the plastic chair made from plastic recovered from the ocean. Which was mostly a film that won lots of awards at lots of award shows. The two also collected aluminium on the streets of São Paulo and created a mobile foundry to melt and make (you guessed it) chairs. But, mostly, it’s a film that won lots of awards. Fordlandia harvested rubber from the rainforest. They made chairs (and a film). You get the drift. They did make the cover of ICON, though.

William Mapham

One speaker who makes a real difference in the world — William Mapham, a specialist ophthalmologist — designed a mobile phone application called Vula which links specialists to doctors active in rural healthcare. The aim of the app is to give rural health workers a tool that helps to get patients quick and efficient specialist care.

During the course of 2017, Vula more than doubled from 1 775 registered health workers at the beginning of January 2017 to more than 3 600, and assisted 5 888 patients in Q4 2017 alone. It is on course to help more than 7 500 patients in the first quarter of 2018. There’s no film but Mapham still managed to bag some awards.

Renata Souza

Renata Souza is a design grad whose work has the potential to transform lives. When her cousin Thomas was diagnosed with diabetes, she set about to design a product to help him take his insulin shots in a way that engages and distracts away from the sore and the chore, a way that is helpful and efficient. The kit, called Thomy, includes a colourful insulin pen that fits a child’s hand and assists with self-injection. Temporary tattoos help children remember where they have previously injected the insulin.

Lebo Mashile

Lebo Mashile, who co-hosted the event, impressed deeply with her powerful poetry and voice. Because even designers and advertising people needs poetry in their lives. Her point on the relevance of African poets — at a time when their European and American counterparts seem to attract less and less attention, and their ability to speak the language of resistance, in the past and also today — was a powerful one.

Neri Oxman

Neri Oxman, associate professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab, was particularly interesting, focused as she is on growing architecture and design, rather than building it. She creates natural objects that are man-made. Her work concentrates on light, air, water and life. Oxman and her team’s achievements include work on a 3D molten glass printer, allowing glass objects to be printed. She is also working on engineering decay into structures to allow them to become biodegradable past a certain point in their lifespan.

Alejandro Aravena

Chilean architect, Alejandro Aravena, was certainly a highlight when he spoke at Design Indaba 2010. As he was returning from the conference, his country was struck by a magnitude 8.8 earthquake, followed by a massive tsunami that destroyed 80% of the city of Constitución.

Well-known for his instance on giving a voice to the people who have to live in and with architecture, he says the city faced a question of rebuilding fast or rebuilding well. Ideally, he had to do both.

His first task was to address the essentials: water distribution, and temporary shelters which he laid out in a courtyard to allow for communal infrastructure such as kitchens, while allowing for a sense of community but without the scale that leaves people feeling hopeless and homeless. Then he moved on to upgrading these temp structures so people would be able to winter in them, and in a way that would allow the shelters to ultimately become part of the final housing solution. By day 20, he could turn his attention to sustainable reconstruction efforts. His first job was to build an open public house to encourage civic participation and give people a real voice in the reconstruction of their lives.

Residents wanted the city to retain its identity and for the rebuilding programme to address issues like frequent flooding prior to the tsunami. His design solutions included more open public spaces; a forested corridor between the river and the city that also serves to protect it from flooding; and a new coastal road to encourage tourism and add to the city’s economic recovery.

Natasha Jen

Natasha Jen offered a critical analysis of the hype around design thinking (she called it bullshit in her 99U talk). She posed six questions on the subject, namely, how do we make it more nuanced (so it doesn’t become a self-fulfilling loop closed to outside thinking); how might we give it a more meaningful vocabulary (extreme user, bodystorming, extreme user); how might we elevate its standard; how might we change its attitude on education (away from very short, cheap and fast online courses); how might we make it more beautiful (and not just useful); and how might we bring more delight to it.

Outsized effect

Yes, nobody wants to see the state of the economy on display at a design conference, although, really, it could be argued that we very much should. It also felt good to see designers actually making a real difference (and not just films). Even minus some of the usual theatre, Design Indaba continues to have an outsized effect on the psyche of designers.

See also

 

Herman Manson 2017Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.

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Fair Exchange: Managing portfolios not for faint-hearted, egotists, selfish

by Erna George (@edgeo23) Managing portfolios is a balancing act, whether it’s finance or brands. I’ve seen many struggle with this and it’s a fine coordination that needs to occur. The challenge for marketing managers or CMOs handling portfolios of brands within the same categories is not only the brands but also helping the brand managers and the agency partners to each stay in their lanes to get the true impact and influence generated by a portfolio.

Define

Key is getting everyone to see the same ecosystem and then buy into it, so there’s little crossover or, at least, managed synergy. First define the space for each brand, get all to embrace it and play nicely — put the portfolio first

Start by defining the playing field and your players, and be clear who you are competing against. Eg, you may be in breakfast such as healthy cereals. Decide which offers the size of prize, scope for growth and ability to be distinct, then proceed.

Within each portfolio, there’s a view of future-growth potential; this is integrally linked to business strategy so mustn’t be taken lightly. A portfolio play allows you a bigger playing ground but how you play is critical. Within the portfolio, each brand will have a strategic role, like chess pieces, and margins and returns for each of these will be different, so resources must be allocated according to role.

If working on the ‘manage-for-value’ brand, accept that budget will be minimal and your focus on tactical activities is at the core. Strategic or power brands, where the significant growth and profitability are expected, need the lion’s share of investment. This may shift depending on the job at hand but know that assigning equal share of budget is not a choice; it’s a cop out.

Share

Share the portfolio play and roles with the full brand team and agency contingent to dispel potential confusion. Marketing bosses, try sharing the love and energy across the team. It’s not easy working on the poor cousin set of brands; this may lead to boredom, frustration and clamouring for ideas that push boundaries, even if a poor fit. Also consider (depending on portfolio and brand size) that agencies could work across the portfolio or on more than one brand in the portfolio to own and keep visible the distinct spaces. Crafting the team to be unified behind one vision is critical for success.

When roles, brand proposition and distinctiveness are well-defined, judging creative is easier but you need systems and great clarity to ensure everyone stays in line. If an idea that an agency or brand team member comes up with fits another brand in the portfolio, let it go where it will flourish. Apply it incorrectly, or to the incorrect brand, and incongruence will be known and felt. Consumers recognise when a brand strays and, with increased competition, there’s just less room for play and error.

Imagine if you had both Lindt and Smarties brands in your portfolio… when a quirky, and lively, idea is presented from the agency managing Lindt, what would you do? The temptation to force a fit could be strong, especially you’ve taken the time to brief the agency, time is ticking and, of course, the idea is breakthrough. But, if anyone can see it for what it is — a Smartie idea masquerading under a connoisseur hat — pull back. Pause and ask the question: which brand for which opportunity?

When you’re too close, you may be wooed by great ideas — I still can be — so set key criteria by which to judge the ideas:

  • Fit with brand personality/tone/character
  • Fit with objective (growth/brand equity building…)

You get the idea — keep yourself honest and make navigation clear for you and agency partners.

Do unto yourself before it’s done to you

Now, staying in line is admirable but not 100% possible; I do believe in the principle of “do unto yourself before it’s done to you”. That’s where managing a portfolio has great power. You have a set of brands that may be effectively used to cover market spaces, fight competing brands and take advantage of new opportunities by extending with sub-brands or stretch as relevant. Think back to when online streaming hit the market: DStv didn’t get overconfident or shy away, imagining that its days were numbered. Would it have helped to fight it? No, it introduced Showmax among other tactics to protect and grow. The benefit of a portfolio is that value options can play a clear role while a new innovative offer can be paired with other sub-brands for great impact. DStv then rides the wave of change, testing what’s working and dialling up or down different options.

A portfolio allows you to play and protect income streams. You can’t go at portfolio play in siloes as then you’ll fight yourself and damage company brands. In managing a portfolio, the left and right hand are in unison even when they are covering different activities; each play is crafted and the impact on your brands is calculated for the best impact against competitors. Co-ordinating the dance is everything. Even if what you do will hurt one of your brands, do it on your terms and strengthen your other players for enhancing relevance.

If DStv had sat back and left Netflix be the only play in digital, it would have lost hand over fist. Now having accepted part of its portfolio relevance has diminished, this has allowed it to share a new growth stream while building armour for the existing one.

In the future, some elements may be rationalised, some will become cash cows allowing the most relevant brands to then grow. This isn’t possible if each brand team is protecting their income stream at the cost of the whole.

Not what you want

And it’s not about what you want.

I hear all too often language that indicates brand teams are bored and want a different direction. Or agencies, which want to be energised with something new, push an idea. No offence but portfolio owners can’t allow empathy for bored brand and agency teams to cloud judgement. While you must ensure teams are motivated, managing a portfolio requires a level of strictness. I’ve been given ultimatums by agencies with “if you won’t take the idea, I will just have to give it to brand x”. It’s taken me a few years to not succumb to the “What if I miss a big one?!” Now, I say, “Go ahead.”

You can reinvigorate while being true to the brand; it just takes more effort. You wouldn’t suddenly want to own hot pink in the detergents category as the Surf or Sunlight brand manager, just because your colour is ‘so last year’– unless you really want to look like a copycat or Vanish wannabe. Mixing things up and being unexpected is important but within a portfolio, when you do this, you have to think it through from every angle twice to stress it’s not owned by another or that it builds on years of heritage. Most of us, even if we work on a brand for more than five years, are but a blip on the history of that brand. Don’t screw it up.

A brand portfolio strategy is about a family of brands that, when activated in unison, allows brand teams to have more widespread relevance with differentiated offers and, therefore, more influence over market performance. But, even though it’s a family, you’re not the parent of the family of brands, as parents often struggle to treat their children in a non-discriminatory way. You care for each brand but you must be somewhat detached in application.

Tips

Brand portfolios offer leverage and, therefore, recognise the role of each of your loved brands and then allocate resources accordingly. Remember:

  • Portfolio strategy links to business strategy, define the playing field, brand roles and communicate this — coordinating the dance of the brands is everything
  • Use your portfolio to do unto yourself before others do to you in order to stay ahead of the wave of change while maximising income
  • It’s not personal; it’s not what each brand wants to be; it’s what the portfolio needs for growth.

 

Erna GeorgeAfter 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.

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BREAKING: ACA CEO tenders resignation

by MarkLives (@marklives) The Association for Communication and Advertising has released a statement announcing that its chief executive officer, Odette van der Haar, has handed in her resignation from the organisation after 11 years in service.

Van der Haar will remain in office until the end of June 2018 and the board will, in due course, announce the official search for a new CEO. She will be joining J. Walter Thompson,* also as CEO.

Thankful for the opportunity

“This has been a high-energy, fast-moving and a great challenge for anyone who thrives on pushing themselves further,” says Van der Haar. “It has been an exhilarating and a dynamic journey which has helped me grow as a person and as a leader. Looking back on my time at the ACA fills me with pride and I’m extremely thankful for having had the opportunity to lead this incredible organisation.”

Van der Haar has driven a number of initiatives at the ACA, including adoption of the MAC Charter and improving the credibility of the APEX Awards. She also promoted the industry code of conduct and professional culture, as well as rules for governing tenders and pitches. However, in a recent editorial, MarkLives called for greater engagement and transparency at the ACA while acknowledging the uniquely powerful position Van der Haar held in the industry.

“Legacy of organisational distinction”

“While the ACA board expresses its sadness at the impending departure of the CEO, the industry is assured of the continuation of the industry guidance and service excellence that she established together with the board over the years. She leaves a legacy of organisational distinction and Odette has distinguished herself as an excellent and ethical leader, a symbol of professionalism within the organisation and the industry as a whole,” says Boniswa Pezisa, ACA board chair.

“We will be engaging all stakeholders over the coming days and weeks, and assure all of a smooth and transparent transition of leadership. We wish Odette well in her new role, and look forward to her continued effective contribution to the industry, both as the CEO of a global agency, and through one or more of the ACA committees,” she adds.

See also

 

Updated on 2018/05/04 at 3:50pm.

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Cover Stories: Avaunt, ELLE SA, Man on the Moon, Rags & NYT Magazine

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

  • Online: Avaunt provides an escape for urban dwellers, exposing them to a milieu of subjects topics to be found outside the city limits
  • Local/print: ELLE South Africa continues to challenge traditional perceptions of beauty within the fashion industry
  • International/print: Man on the Moon celebrates the golden jubilee of a Stanley Kubrick masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey
  • Iconic: Rags, albeit short-lived, contributed a great deal to fashion counterculture during 1970s America
  • International/print: The New York Times Magazine portrays the career trajectory of singer, Janelle Monáe, with posterised effects, duotone filters, complimentary colours, stylish hand lettering, and a pink gradient to boot

Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us at @Marklives and @shanenilfunct.
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Heart-Love-Polygon-Geometric-Flat-Design-Icon-Illustration by lekkyjustdoit courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos  ELLE South Africa, May 2018

ELLE South Africa, May 2018 - Winnie Harlow

Presenting a provocative and enchanting picture of 23-year-old model, Winnie Harlow/Chantal Winnie , the cover for the May 2018 issue of ELLE South Africa challenges mainstream perspectives of beauty, particularly in the fashion world. Harlow’s unique appearance is due to vitiligo, a condition that occurs when the body’s pigment-producing cells stop functioning. Her successful modeling career has raised awareness about the condition but perhaps, more importantly, it’s allowed her to effectively shift beauty standards in the fashion industry. A former runner-up to America’s Next Top Model, Harlow quickly gained prominence, becoming the lead model in campaigns for Diesel, Swarovski and Desigual, to name a few.

Treatment can help alleviate the visible symptoms of her condition, and cosmetics can disguise her skin’s appearance, but Harlow is defiant not to conform, opting to rather stay true to what she believes in. To quote Harlow herself, “You have to do what’s right for you, not because the industry makes you feel like you have to. If you don’t want to, then don’t.”

 

Heart-Love-Polygon-Geometric-Flat-Design-Icon-Illustration by lekkyjustdoit courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos  The New York Times Magazine (US), 29 April 2018

The New York Times Magazine 29 April 2018, Spotify Collins, Andy Warhol Blue Show

After years performing under various artistic guises pop singer, Janelle Monáe, has finally embraced her true self with the release of her latest album, her first studio album in five years, titled “Dirty Computer”. The cover for the 29 April issue of The New York Times Magazine celebrates the advent of her new identity in stellar fashion. Riffing off a bunch of artistic influences (top of mind: Andy Warhol’s posterised screen prints, and Collins Agency’s Spotify campaign with its duotone application of photography, bold use of colour and trendy gradients), Portuguese designer and illustrator, Bráulio Amado, has created a photo illustration about Monáe’s emergence from artistic obscurity.

Amado’s use of a pink gradient, moving from the spine of the cover to the opposite page edge, symbolises Monáe’s movement away from the opaque world of artistic alter egos, out of a pink haze into the clear space of a newly realised, authentic voice. The way that the masthead in the top-left third of the cover has been somewhat concealed by the pink gradient is a lesson to be learnt about the value of understatement, and the power of erasure to amplify a message. Often, hand-lettering, more so script fonts, perform poorly but, in this case, script typography performs surprisingly well. As usual, an interesting read; read the full article here.

 

Heart-Love-Polygon-Geometric-Flat-Design-Icon-Illustration by lekkyjustdoit courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos  Man on the Moon (Spain), issue 3, 2018

Man on the Moon, issue 3, April 2018

Fifty years ago, Stanley Kubrick made motion-picture history with his masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The film predicted many forms of technology that we take for granted today, particularly with its depiction of screen-based media and the powerful influence of brands in the society of the future. As a result, the film signifies a lot more than simply being a classic movie; it is a discursive artifact, a philosophical text and a work of art, to say the least. The way that the movie was created ushered in a more-authentic form of sci-fi cinema, depicting the future in a much more-believable way and influencing other historic films to come, such as George Lucas’ Star Wars and Ridley Scott’s Alien. For its third issue, Man on the Moon Magazine celebrates the golden jubilee of one of Kubrick’s greatest filmic achievements by looking back at his fictitious future as it sits today in a past.

 

Online

Heart-Love-Polygon-Geometric-Flat-Design-Icon-Illustration by lekkyjustdoit courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos  Avaunt (US), April, 2018

Avaunt online, May 2018

Published biannually as a print publication, and updated weekly online, Avaunt is a magazine focused on the act of escaping from the perpetual pulse and grueling grind of city life. Presented as a series of photographed articles and featuring reportage that intentionally goes against the grain of the mainstream press, Avaunt supplies its readership with the mechanisms to adventure into a larger worldview. From hunting eagles in Mongolia to exploring Tokyo’s immense network of underground storm drains, Avaunt cultivates a curiosity for all things extraordinary in this world. It tackles subjects on various scales, such as the world’s most-remote places and the latest discoveries in science and technology; design is ever-present in all its manifestations, from fashion to publishing and graphic design to architecture, always nurturing imagination.

Although the print version of Avaunt is textbook in its execution of layout, typography, visuals and the like, the website is particularly striking. In keeping with a sense of continuity across touchpoints, print and web, and maintaining synergy over the two different forms of media, Avaunt’s website uses an array of interactive elements to keep the overall experience engaging: notably intuitive horizontally dragable galleries, tasteful type pairings, migrating easy-to-use navigation, slick layout and art direction, and an easy-to-use ecommerce platform.

 

Iconic

Heart-Love-Polygon-Geometric-Flat-Design-Icon-Illustration by lekkyjustdoit courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos  Rags (US), 1970–1971

Rags, issue 1, June 1970

Meant to be a fashion doppelganger to Rolling Stone Magazine, Rags Magazine was an anti-establishment publication that attempted to shatter orthodox perceptions of style during the ’70s in America. Rags helped to shape ’70s fashion counterculture during a decade that some say taste forgot. Working against the humdrum office dress fashion of the day, often characterised by heavy earth tones, trippy geometric patterns, crochet, macramé, corduroy, and bell-bottoms, Rags crafted a niche for itself within the history of American subculture. Based in San Francisco, Rags advocated street style and other eccentric forms of fashion, shunning shallow mainstream knock-offs in favor of more-original approaches that were idiosyncratic and characteristically DIY — precursors to the punk aesthetic that would arrive a few years later.

Following Rolling Stone, Rags was printed on newsprint, on the same presses, deliberately avoiding the urge to go glossy — it wasn’t that kind of magazine, opting for raw, expressive, and authentic. The fashion inside was not meant to frame or characterise any particular type. The couture that it saw as meaningful was irreverent, outsider and alternative, opposed to the inauthentic and superficial styles that were popular back then. Rags drew its energy from the diversity and peculiarity of people existing in the city on street level. As such, the magazine nurtured a cultural shift, one that embraced the creation of style for the individual, from shaved heads to tattoos (which were not nearly as common as they are today). The magazine even went as far as to invent odd genres, such as ‘Casket Couture’, inspired by the profession of making clothes for bodies placed in caskets.

Despite existing on the fringe, and gaining notoriety for it, Rags was short-lived, printing only 13 issues. During its roughly two-year existence, it was surprisingly influential, so much so that Women’s Wear Daily, a magazine that represented the opposite of what Rags stood for, had a complete redesign and attempted to emulate many of the editorial design choices that Rags implemented. By 1971, Rags had depleted all its funding with advertisers failing to pay their debts and investors falling to the wayside due to the recession of the early 70s, moving Rags from its initial riches to its ultimate demise.

References

 

 

Shane de LangeShane 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.

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SA TV Ratings: SABC 2 — primetime top 20 for Mar 2018

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

SABC 2 March 2018

BRCSA TV Ratings March 2018 primetime SABC 2

Source: BRCSA March 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.

 

Broadcast Research Council of South AfricaThe 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.

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After Sir Martin, a time for reflection

by Shukri Toefy (@shukritoefy) The recent resignation of WPP CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell, gives us an opportunity to reflect on the state of advertising and communications in South Africa and globally. There are many lessons we may learn from Sir Martin Sorrell as an entrepreneur, and many things that I personally admire and take forward in the three decades he led WPP to global dominance.

Lessons and legacy

At the time, as a former accountant, Sorrell offered a linear-thinking approach to a non-linear industry and brought reforms, standard operating procedures and best practices that will hold the industry in good stead for decades to come. The talismanic leader’s rise to the top of the global advertising and communications industry is a lesson of great visionary leadership. This is almost universally uncontested, yet I’d like to take the opportunity to share a different take on his legacy.

The resignation gives us pause to reflect on the potential for change in a South African context. It’s no secret that this industry is dominated by a handful of monopoly players that are foreign-owned. These companies cast long shadows across creative, digital, production and media. In fact, any company not part of this monopoly is commonly referred to as “independent”.

“Independent of what?”

It begs the question, “independent of what?”

Independent of foreign hegemony? If that’s the case, then perhaps we need to see this resignation as an opportunity to rid ourselves of a form of economic neo-colonialism. In truth, this is as an opportunity to confront ownership models within our industry.

Business leaders in emerging markets should carefully consider their value chains, particularly how they engage marketing communications companies. In SA, the vast majority of spend in this multibillion rand industry surreptitiously flows offshore. Not surprisingly, it finds its way to one of these foreign-owned companies, of which WPP is only one. The four main global companies are WPP, Omnicom, Publicis and IPG.

Now is the time

For an “independently owned” creative business looking to leverage its success through a well-timed sale, the options have been limited to the four companies mentioned above. Now is the time for us as a South African business community to think more deeply about how to create more viable and sustainable options for investment and exit strategies in the industry. We need to foster greater support, participation and representation in the greater creative economy.

Before we even begin to discuss the complexity of economic empowerment, social and economic redress, BBBEE or industry charters, let’s begin the discussion of what it means to be a South African company.

We need to understand the value and impact of building shared-prosperity models in which the employees share in the profits, rather than purely being profit-driven — especially for only a small group of foreign interests.

Opportunity for change

There’s a slave mentality that underlines this industry. It has dominated it for over three decades and we need to stop and change. It’s time to create awareness and share viable solutions for local ownership within the creative economy — a sector that will continue to dominate and play an important role as we move through the fourth industrial revolution.

This is an opportunity for change; a chance to reflect. The time to act in creating a more-inclusive model for the South African advertising industry is now.

 

Shukri ToefyShukri Toefy (@shukritoefy) is the CEO of Fort and he writes in his personal capacity.

“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.

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#AdForumSummit Day 4 & 5: Europe’s biggest indie agency is in 16 countries

by Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) NEW YORK CITY: Last week, on Day 4 of the AdForum Worldwide Summit, 23–27 April 2018, we pitch consultants met with Fly, Serviceplan, the 4A’s, The Escape Pod and The Media Kitchen, and then on Day 5, the last day, with MDC and R/GA.

Fly

This is an independent agency in New York with a good track record. The name originates from the idea that it had at the beginning, which was to fly under the radar until it was ready to expose its work. The agency is very proud that it was intimately involved in the highly successful launch of the Amazon Kindle some nine years ago. There’s a very experienced team with great chemistry between members— always good to observe in an agency. Happy consultants walked away with a gift bottle of Prosecco, one of the brands that Fly looks after and with some specially designed bottles.

Serviceplan

This is a very impressive, German-owned, independent agency — the largest in Europe, with 4 100 employees in 16 countries — and probably one of the first advertising agencies to be fully integrated, including media planning and public relations. It is the only global independent agency group among the top 20.

Where does the name come from? Serviceplan was named by the founder, the father of the current CEO, when he went to his first clients with a service plan comprising all the resources that the client would need in order to have successful advertising and marketing campaigns.

The agency demonstrated its four Is — innovation, independence, integration and internationalism — through its various case studies for clients such as BMW, Adoptify ( adoption of dogs) and ABB. Its offering is the House of Communication, which incorporates all aspects of its business in most of the countries in which it operates.

With revenues of US$477m per annum and offices in Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, India, Middle East, Korea, China, Russia, Poland and Ukraine, it is now opening in the US with offices in Austin, Atlanta and New York. It offers a fully integrated service but, equally, can work on a project-to-project basis, depending on client needs.

A dynamic team which seems able to overcome the typical cultural issues that beset agencies which operate in many countries.

4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies)

Following a good session last year at the summit, AdForum revisited issues raised previously, such as the agency review process (simplifying it to make it faster and more efficient), and relationship management practices between clients and agencies. The group discussed the growth in project reviews as opposed to whole client reviews, a practice which has seen an increase in recent times.

Client conflict (ie similar categories and brands within the same agency) is becoming less and less of an issue; it’s more important for clients to be able to access the right expertise and they will put up with their competitors being in the same agency, provided this is well-managed. We heard the same from Wunderman in 2017 in New York.

The 4A’s recommends that a relationship audit take place after the first 100 days of a new relationship — and I agree that this is very advisable — in order to tackle any early issues that happen during the first three months after agency appointment.

The Escape Pod

More refugees from the networks, this is an agency that has been in business for 10 years with 92 people in Chicago. Advertising, digital, experiential and post-production, this agency can do everything, including build. It’s strong at new product launches and demonstrates diversity in its top team of partners, who all own the business — this is a purpose-built agency for speed and efficiency, removing unnecessary cost layers that are often associated with the bigger holding company agencies.

The Media Kitchen

A high-energy media agency with very strong programmatic, social and mobile media skills, this group of 120 people is spread across five offices within the various creative agency offices of KBS. With offices in New York, Minneapolis, Montreal, Toronto and London, The Media Kitchen works with many of the creative agencies within MDC.

Trends that it is observing:

  • By 2020, 50% of all searches on the internet will be voice-led
  • We touch our mobile phones an average of 2617 times a day
  • Google and Facebook account for 99% of all advertising growth

We heard about an app called AppAnnie, which checks what apps people are using, and solving segmentation with signals.

Despite a very long day for us consultants, The Media Kitchen was a serious highlight of the week.

MDC

This group of agencies sees itself as a federation of agencies with 52 agencies and 30 reporting units. The principle of the network is that the agencies remain owner-managed, although MDC takes a 51% stake, and this means that the owners retain their interest and do even better than they would have done on their own.

Some of the world’s leading creative agencies are here such as Anomaly, 72andSunny, Forsman Bodenfors, CP+B, Doner, KBS, and they rate the network as being one where “[t]he best agencies want fuel, not control, from a holding company. MDC gets this,” as Carl Johnson, founder of Anomaly, says.

We would like to have seem more work from the agencies but, as there are 52 of them, we settled for an excellent film which captured highlights of commercials and work that these agencies have produced.

MDC told us that its top 10 clients in the federation work with at least four of the individual agencies in the group.

MDC has also invested in an impressive array of PR agencies, including Alison and Partners, Exponent, Hunter PR, Veritas, Sloane & co, to a name only some. All of these investments are for long-term yield and purpose, with very few failing as a result of the careful way in which the MDC group manages at a distance, yet effectively brings and creates opportunities within and among the various agencies.

MDC is active in 95 international markets using implementation partners where it doesn’t have agencies eg South Africa and other African countries. It also has MDC Ventures, investments in adtech companies which will help and support the needs of the agencies within the group.

R/GA

We saw this agency 12 months ago and, as always, it has been extremely busy with a lot of new work, continued innovations and clients. An AdForum favourite, R/GA made some observations that intrigued us:

  • The ad industry is in decline
  • Clients are building more and more capabilities in-house
  • Audiences are declining in the media that has traditionally been supported by advertising
  • There are two economies — legacy brands which compete with disruptive innovators
    • Companies that predate the digital revolution
    • Companies that now have asymmetrical competitors eg Amazon competes with Walmart, Uber competes with owned automobiles

R/GA sees opportunity in all of this (as we would expect) and it helps companies and brands grow by enabling them to change. R/GA itself has reinvented itself five times every nine years; it knows how to disrupt itself.

With transformation at speed being key, R/GA showed us case studies for Next Bank, PepsiCo Life Wtr, LaCroix Bubly, SONIC, Carnival Cruises, Jet.com and Siemens. All of these demonstrated the agency’s ability to develop, design, build, create, market and track products and brands for clients. An extraordinary success story that continues to grow and innovate year on year.

A fitting way to end a brilliant week of highlights, this agency has always scored the highest accolades with the AdForum consultants.

And, so, it ended.

See also

 

Johanna McDowellJohanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) is managing director of the Independent Agency Search and Selection Company (IAS), which is partnered with the AAR Group in the UK. She will be presenting detailed and in-depth reports and case studies on each agency from this 2018 AdForum Summit at presentations in Johannesburg and Cape Town in the next month. 

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Who should drive client relationships in the agency?

by Michelle Beh (@JupiterCT) One discussion we’ve been having recently is: “Who should own the relationship with the client?” Should it be the client service director? Or should it be the creative director who’s ultimately responsible for delivering the solutions that clients are looking for?

Recently at a media conference in the US, Marc Pritchard, chief growth and brand officer for the world’s biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble (P&G), said: “It’s time to disrupt the archaic ‘Mad Men’ model, eliminating the siloes between creatives, clients and consumers, and stripping away anything that doesn’t add to creative output.”

The advertising industry prides itself as a creative industry but Pritchard has pointed out that “creatives represent less than half of agency resources because they’re surrounded by excess management, buildings, and overheads.”

Involvement

Gone are the days where creatives sit in their own rooms and brainstorm the whole day, and throw tantrums when clients change their briefs. They have to understand clients’ business and process as well because that impacts on their solutions and approach. They need to be able to help clients sell their ideas to internal stakeholders. And, if the creative director involves clients in the creative process, she’ll find that it’s easier to get to the right solutions faster and easier.

Partnership

If the creative director is involved in writing and driving the brief with the client, she can’t blame someone else for a bad brief. Or for not selling hard enough. She can challenge the client directly at the briefing session. She can find creative solutions to business problems that the client hasn’t thought of briefing in.

The client should be able to pick up her phone and call the creative director directly, without having to go through a gatekeeper. Why shouldn’t the creative director be woken up at 2am when the client has had a spark of idea and wants to bounce it with her partner?

Effectiveness and efficiency

Ultimately, if creative directors are the clients’ partner, we believe that we can create better creative solutions, faster and easier. There will be:

  • Less second-guessing of the brief
  • More direct discussions with the clients to get to the bottom of the problem
  • Less miscommunications and less waiting around for the brief
  • A more-proactive, solutions-driven approach

Can this work?

Yes, but the creative director will need support to help her manage the execution and admin of the relationship so she will not be bogged down by day-to-day menial tasks and stay creative.

Should she be responsible for the profitability of the client? Totally!

Ultimately, we’re not artists but businesses driven by creative solutions. Every organisation today needs to be driven by innovation and creativity but it doesn’t mean that those businesses don’t care about their bottom-line. So why can’t a creative director be involved in driving business profitability through her thinking and relationship management skills? The same could apply to a strategist or a social media manager. The person in charge of driving solutions should have ownership of the relationship with clients, and drive ownership and accountability of the final solutions.

Turn the table

We believe that this will turn the table on the emphasis on which resources agency should have more of — producers of solutions rather than just people managing relationships.

 

Michelle BehMichelle Beh is the managing and strategy director at The Jupiter Drawing Room (Cape Town) (@JupiterCT). She has extensive experience working with global brands in developing their branding and advertising strategy for over 16 years across Asia-Pacific and South Africa on brands including include BMW, Budget Insurance, Burger King, HP, Hyundai, Mediclinic, Protea Hotels, SASKO (Pioneer Foods), Nokia, Singapore Telecommunications, Skip, Singapore Tourism Board, Unilever, Virgin Group, Windhoek Beer and Zurich Insurance.

“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!

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