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How drones are influencing media & entertainment

by Jono O’Connell. Just as the IT revolution is reengineering how businesses operate, so, too, are drones drastically altering the events, media, video and filmmaking industries. They are here to stay and, like it or not, this emerging technology is unleashing new possibilities and opportunities for private and commercial use.

Reshaping industries

I don’t say this just because I am in the industry; drones really are surging in popularity and totally reshaping industries. If you don’t want to take my word for it, then refer to the figures in the PwC global report on the commercial applications of drone technology — May 2016. The value of drone-powered solutions to all applicable industries has been pegged at a staggering US$127bn dollars and, as someone in the industry who sees their value, it’s exciting to note that the media and entertainment sector is right in the crosshairs of this shift, with a possible impact projected at almost US$9bn.

Due to the dynamic filmmaking capability of drones, directors have increasingly and specifically been writing scripts for shots that use drones. Why? Because drone shots have a unique capability of romance; they take the viewer on a journey that evokes emotions few other methods of filmmaking can. By being able to offer an anamorphic lens option, this emotion may further be amplified.

When it comes to the shoot, where you would normally need moving platforms and rigging to shoot aerial and high-angle shots, with the application of drones, this constraint may, in some cases, be removed, although shots within 50m of people, buildings and public roads would be precluded, due to local drone regulations. This doesn’t apply to operators who have obtained an exemption from the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) and listed it in their operational specifications.

Improve production times

When it comes to benefits, drones also have the potential to improve production times — but only if the operator is highly skilled and has all the legal approvals to operate a drone in a particular place — which, in turn, may pass on cost savings. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you may end up negatively impacting the budget. The bottom line is further impacted by drones being able to move effectively and in a controlled manor, and that one drone may replace two or three outmoded solutions. Thanks to technological advances, you may now attach the same camera you would use for stills onto a heavier weight-bearing drone.

So, even though drone technology is evolving and improving, great results are largely dependent on the pilot, camera operator, operating conditions and clear communication between team members. Directors and creatives are constantly seeking to push boundaries to create sensational and intriguing content. Achieving these results in a safe, professional and reliable manner must be the holy grail.

If you’ve never used drones in a production environment and feel compelled to introduce the new technology, be warned. The South African Aviation Legislation, Part 101, pertaining to the use of drones, is considered to be among the most-stringent in the world. Flying drones for commercial purposes in South Africa requires very serious considerations from legal and logistical standpoints, as well as performance limitations. So get your paperwork in place.

When sport meets technology

Outside the production environment, drones are making waves in the sporting and events industry. A great example of this is the hugely popular FPV drone racing, which is a big spectator sport that has a lot of money behind it. Spectators watch the first person view (FPV) feeds of drone pilots as they navigate tight sequences, going go head to head through exciting neon-lit race courses. The pilots compete for serious prize money when it comes to international competitions, such as the World Drone Prix.

Drones are impacting life as we know it in so many ways, from social and recreational use to how we produce ads and films, compete for sports titles and even get medicine into the hands of those in war torn countries — not forgetting managing the rhino-poaching crisis and keeping track of this endangered species. Drones are now part of life and, who knows, maybe we will soon see drone highways? Farfetched thinking? Perhaps not.

Jonathan O’Connell is owner of Timeslice Cinematography, a specialist high-end feature film and TVC drone operator. He was a speaker at the recent media and entertainment trade show, Mediatech Africa.

“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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Global Headline Makers: Sandrine Huijgen, Netherlands

by Mark Tungate (@MarkTungate) Cloudfactory’s Sandrine Huijgen has made an unusual journey from client to creative, and from storyteller to “storydoer”. Find out how she and her team are helping brands make a positive contribution.

Since there’s a certain poetry in almost everything Cloudfactory does, the quirky Amsterdam craft agency is the perfect inspirational launch-pad for creative partner, Sandrine Huijgen, who originally aspired to being a writer (and still writes fiction in her “increasingly limited” spare time). Huijgen owes her involvement in advertising to her father, who packed her off to business school in Nantes — back in her native France — with the goal of ensuring her future employability. “There were not many people with a literary background in the school, but I absolutely loved it. And I loved the advertising module best of all.”

Although a job in Paris would have made sense after that, she found the city large and unfriendly. “Plus the French way of working didn’t really appeal to me. It’s very hierarchical.” Instead, she headed for Ireland, where she was marketing manager for low-cost airline, Ryanair. “I had the freedom to do anything I wanted, as long as it didn’t require a budget,” she laughs. “So I was forced to be quite creative. Luckily I could make unlimited use of tickets.”

Love

Love took her to Amsterdam, where the experience she’d picked up at Ryanair led to a senior communications role at electronics giant, Philips. “That’s where I first met Jessica Kersten and Sandeep Chawla, who were working at DDB and are now my partners at Cloudfactory,” she says (Olivier Teepe is the fourth member of the team). However, before Cloudfactory, there was a seven-year stint at Heineken, where she became global communications manager and worked on award-winning campaigns with Wieden+Kennedy.

“At the end of it all, I really wanted to be a creative myself, but I thought ‘Will anybody take me?’ Because who goes from client to creative, which is a sort of an odd switch? But I’d been taking creative writing classes for three years and I felt ready.”

At that point, her old pal Kersten started Cloudfactory, “as a sort of craft shop — she didn’t want to get trapped into a big agency career and was looking for something more creatively nourishing.” It was Kersten who persuaded Huijgen to come on board three years ago and help take the “factory” to the next level. “From my experience, I understand very well what the client wants and how to convince them — I speak their language — and Jessica is someone who is really visual and conceptual, so together we’re a great team.”

Getting in on the “act”

Cloudfactory’s approach is predicated on two ideas. The first is that brands should embrace the idea of “doing good”. Instead of adding to the information glut, they should create something that makes a positive contribution or is, at the very least, thought-provoking.

The other is “storydoing” rather than storytelling. An installation or a happening of some kind. Cloudfactory calls these “acts”. A case in point is its recent work for cider brand, Strongbow. Going right to the core of the brand — if you’ll excuse the pun — the agency evoked apples in a joyous and unexpected way by creating a floating orchard on a barge in the middle of New York City.

“Strongbow wanted to position itself as a global brand, particularly with millennials. We know that millennials really like to change things — they want to find ways of using their talent to make the world better. But they often live in cities that are at the same time exciting and exhausting, without much green space. So we thought Strongbow, which of course comes from apples, could legitimately bring green into their urban environment. Hence the idea of urban orchards.”

Cloudfactory and Strongbow teamed with horticultural artist Mary Mattingly, founder of Swale — an earlier floating garden project, launched in 2016 — and “urban gardener” Monsieur Plant, who specialises in living-art installations. The pair also features in a related film directed by Fredrik Bond. Both artists were involved in the creative process. Strongbow’s support delivered a much-wider public awareness of Swale, especially internationally.

“Of course we’re here to build a brand and sell a product — but we can also help communities, involve real people and make their dream happen. It’s kind of a win-win, because quite often people who want to change the world don’t have a lot of money and scale.”

Huijgen says Cloudfactory has attracted very little cynicism about artists “selling out” to the world of advertising. “Millennials have very accurate bullshit detectors. But I think they can tell that we’re genuine and that these are authentic partnerships. We work hand in hand with the artists.”

Thrives on collaboration

In fact, she adds, the agency thrives on collaboration. “There are 22 of us here full time, but we often bring in people from outside. We’ve worked with biologists, ornithologists. We get very inspired when we’re working with people who have nothing to do with advertising.”

She notes that the agency has its own industrial designer. “I love to sit down with a director and write a script together. But, as a group, I’d say what we really all love is making things.”

Mark Tungate (@MarkTungate) is the editorial director of the Epica Awards (@EpicaAwards), the only global creative prize judged by the specialist press. A British journalist based in Paris, Tungate is also the author of seven books about branding and advertising, including Adland: A Global History of Advertising and, most recently, The Escape Industry, a journey through the business of travel. Over his 30-year career, he has has written for leading newspapers and magazines in the UK, France and the US.

This “Global Headline Makers” column, which profiles creative stars making headlines in their home markets, is syndicated monthly from Epica.

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The Real McCoy: Disrupting disruption

by Sean McCoy (@TheRealMcCoyTRM) While the likes of Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat, Facebook and a long list of other game-changing platforms have been fundamentally technology-based, it strikes me that not all disruption needs to be a function of the world of bits and bytes. There is the often-overlooked role of people that comes into play.

So, while boards of directors are being reconstituted to face the future through the internet of things and boards themselves are preoccupied with this, perhaps we need to be reminded of the capability that exists through people and a disruptive approach to competing through culture — a more positive and proactive culture than what Uber has been experiencing of late and, essentially, disruption through the power of people.

Enter Tony Hsieh

Ironically, a tech entrepreneur himself, who was a millionaire at the age of 24 emanating from the successful sale of LinkExchange to Microsoft, Tony Hsieh has been drawn to the connectedness and sense of tribe, suggesting that being part of something bigger than oneself leads to a greater level of happiness. For him, the right tribe is a space where people feel truly connected and care about the wellbeing of one another.

Through the formation of a venture capital fund, he has invested in a startup called Zappos (Zapatos being the Spanish word for shoes) and has made a foray into the somewhat-ordinary online shoe business, but one that is promising to be disruptive in its approach to customer service.

Customer-centric strategy

Going beyond the cliché, Hsieh believes that an obsession with customers and delivering a truly wow experience is the strategy that would differentiate. Staff members are fanatical about service, constantly seeking to surprise, amuse and engage customers. A ‘please at any cost’ orientation has led the approach and includes many initiatives, one being a 365-day free returns policy. Its whole philosophy is to deploy the bulk of its marketing spend into customer experience and allow word of mouth to be its true form of marketing.

It also believes that the customer who calls the company is worth five-to-six times the lifetime value of one who transacts online only. Every effort is therefore made to drive telephonic contact with customers — an interesting and contrarian approach to the tech-orientated thrust of e-commerce.

Unique culture

Zappos doesn’t play by the conventional call-centre performance rules. All new recruits have to undergo several weeks of active call-centre training and involvement, irrespective of their role. There are no incentives to get customers off the line quickly and to manage call time. There are also neither prepared scripts for agents nor encouragement to upsell customers. There is a real commitment to service and to developing personal emotional connections with clients. This principle also extends to suppliers who are made to be an extension of its business, with same-day responses to telephonic and email queries and open online access to key sales and inventory metrics that ensure transparent supplier involvement in ‘the running of the business’.

A slightly ‘weird’ culture is encouraged and employees (referred to as members) are invited to be themselves, decorating their office in a very unusual and quirky way or coming to work in fancy dress. Work-life integration has been developed as the alternative to work-life balance, reflecting the belief that the two may be enjoyably inseparable, given the right conditions and the right people.

Zappos has developed the renowned ‘offer’: US$3000 to any employee who wishes to leave the business after training and at any time in the future. This serves as a test to ensure that staff is not just there for the salary but is committed to the long-term Zappos vision and culture. This is in spite of Zappos not paying the most-competitive salaries in the industry but clearly offering a culture with a difference — in 2013, 25 000 people applied for a job at Zappos and only 250 were hired.

Although the company was acquired by Amazon, it has been allowed to operate independently and under Hsieh’s leadership. Amazon has undertaken to protect the Zappos culture and give it the desired freedom to function autonomously and continue on its successful path.

Holacracy

Zappos continues to disrupt through culture and, in 2013, was one of the best-known adopters of holacracy worldwide. This is defined as a new organisational form with a flexible, self-governing structure, where there are no fixed jobs, only temporary functional roles. Holacracy intends, among other things, to help employees make full use of their skills, collaborate effectively and improve the company by eliminating bureaucracy and bottlenecks. In its most-ideal form, it aims to empower everyone to be entrepreneurial.

While not without his detractors, who’ve implied that he is more-engaged in social behavioural experiments rather than business performance, Hsieh has provided much food for thought in his approach to innovation and disruption. In a world that is increasingly dehumanising progress, his is an excellent illustration that disruption through people is still a very viable option.

References

Dr Sean McCoy, MD and founding member of HKLM, is a prominent figure in the branding arena, with his expertise centered on client service, brand strategy and business development. He contributes the regular “The Real McCoy” column focusing upon internal branding to MarkLives.

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Ad of the Week: What happens when you don’t job-hunt with PNet

by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki) Joe Public and PNet.co.za send a powerful, visual message to people who are unhappy in their jobs in a series of ads that make fun of a sad situation.

How do you visualise what it’s like to be caught between a rock and a hard place in the job market? Joe Public knows the answer to this and has produced the perfect print campaign for PNet that’s a story at a glance.

If you haven’t searched for a job lately, PNet.co.za is an online service that promises “to accurately match the best candidates with the best companies”. An online personnel placement agency, PNet.co.za has employment listings in most main industries, from agriculture to wholesale, throughout the country. It pioneered the online recruitment agency concept back in 1997, with the idea of providing web-based access to online jobs, professional CVs, and career advice. Since then, the PNet system has evolved into a set of online tools that aim to meet the needs of recruiters and job seekers, and it claims to have a client base of some 12 000 companies, with a database of over 2.3m active and passive career seekers.

View all the Ads of the Week at a glance on our #AdoftheWeek Pinterest board!

Watch our 2017 #AdoftheWeek playlist on YouTube

But let’s get back to the Joe Public campaign. The agency has produced three simple yet powerful print ads that are low on copy and high on meaning. Each one depicts a different scenario of how someone might feel if stuck in a ‘dead-end’ job.

First, in “Webs”, there’s the poor fellow who’s been so long at his workstation, in the dark and dingy server room, that cobwebs have grown over him. His head rests in his hand as he stares disconsolately at the screen. The copy at the bottom simply reads, “A better job is waiting” with the PNet website address. This copy is consistent across all three ads.

The second ad, “Dusty”, depicts a receptionist covered in dust: she is holding a phone that harks back to a previous era (as does the depressing dark-wood decor) and the expression on her face reads: “My life’s on hold.” The colour palette is sombre.

The third ad, “Moss”, should be called “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” This unhappy employment candidate seems to be a clerk in an accounting department. His desk is outfitted with equipment from a bygone era — note the rotary dial telephone — and the surrounds are gloomy and depressing. The young man is covered in bright green moss, and he looks half-asleep as he gazes down at his desk, no doubt just waiting for five o’clock to come around.

Artfully done

The photography, styling and lighting in these scenes are artfully done. Each shot has a light source that illuminates the subject, accentuating the gloominess of the surrounds. It’s hard to tell whether the cobwebs, dust and moss of each ad were done using special-effects makeup or Photoshop (or a combination of the two) but, either way, the ads are all well-conceived, especially in terms of the colour palettes used in each.

Being stuck in a job you hate can be depressing, and these cleverly conceived scenes depict this but in a way that is humorous and immediately obvious. The payoff line neatly sells the product without doing any unnecessary hard-sell; I believe that minimalism in copy always works with a strong visual.

If you follow Ad of the Week, you’ll know that Joe Public is a regular. There’s good reason for this. The work it does sets it apart — the agency is increasingly showing is how astutely it understands its clients, the environments they operate in, and their unique business problems.

It’s not often that we choose a print ad, so it’s great that we’re bucking the television trend with a powerful print offering. Thanks, Joe Public, for chasing the Monday blues away with this fantastic series for PNet.co.za!

Credits

Advertising agency: Joe Public
Executive creative director: Roanna Williams
Art director: Katlego Baaitse
Copywriter: Sarah Forbes
Illustrator/photographer: Carioca

Ad of the Week, published on MarkLives every Wednesday, is penned by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki), the CEO of Ornico, a Brand Intelligence® firm that focuses on media, reputation and brand research. If you are involved in making advertising that is smart, funny and/or engaging, please let Oresti know about it at clientservice@ornicogroup.co.za.

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Fair Exchange: Bring on the facts but in the most open-minded way

brain-head-psychology-closed-mind courtesy of Pixabay

by Erna George (@edgeo23) Monochromatic views are difficult in marketing as there are emotional and rational elements to how decisions are made. Everyone has a certain context, agenda or background, even in the boardroom, and, unless you take an approach that allows the unseen perspective to be a possibility, you could lose before you’ve started. Many will say this is just about politics; I say this is reality, and understanding people and the contexts they have and taking these into account makes ideas and business work more effortlessly.

Rational

I recently learned that leaning only on facts may not yield a rational response, making my previous column only partly correct. Why is this?

A bald statement of facts may come across as aggressive and challenging in a direct way. Without your knowing, your simple statement of the facts may seriously dispute a stance someone else in the room has made public previously. Like it or not, people have reputations and egos, and these matter whether at a family event or in a business meeting. You need stakeholders to see and support your point of view in order to get alignment and decisions carried forward. It is possible to confront and diverge from existing perspectives in a way that brings everyone on the journey.

One way to do this is via questions. Experts or senior team members with different points of view will find a fact-based perspective that seeks inputs more compelling vs a fully insistent stance. Show the facts and state that the resulting route, and check if there are further inputs to build a comprehensive view. If the facts clearly indicate a completely different direction to the current one, position the facts and ask if you could be missing a trick or if everyone sees any opportunities in a shift.

“You catch more bees with honey”

All-in-all, showing the facts in a tone and manner that are confident and open-minded could help you win battles and wars – the old adage of “you catch more bees with honey”.

Another consideration is that, without borrowing some of the experience and different insights in the room, you could come across as ego-driven, even if this isn’t the intent. It makes facts appear more biased and personal. Marketers who come across as arrogant might be viewed as on par with non-business-thinking marketers. It’s rarely about you; it’s about how you deploy facts, findings and experience to deliver offers which are ideal for consumers.

Ask for builds or other views before requesting a decision to bring others on the journey. But don’t do this in a patronising way; you can’t ask any old question and you must actually be open to the content coming your way. The right questions to dig deeper will yield a new train of thinking that shows something your fact base may not have considered.

Balancing

Then you need to be open to and prepared for the opportunity of something new. Balancing your language and tone to be confident and clear, while not being too emphatic and closed, will be vital. You can’t dither or dawdle, welcoming every possibility. Balancing being open and confidently taking a stand is an art that, when mastered, will drive a smooth pathway through the labyrinth of perspectives and opinions.

What is often frustrating is when people use facts one day and not on another; you can’t alternate and employ the approach that best suits or supports your view on a particular day. This is especially true if you’re the gatekeeper, as this could be viewed as poor judgement. Develop an approach rooted in fact that is at least fairly consistent for teams to feel confident in your style and in you.

Facts are critical but it seems that, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, facts are interpreted by ear of the listener. Not reflecting an understanding that people have individual perspectives, and want to be led via engagement on aspects of current business reality or future potential, would be an oversight.

Use facts plus the right questions to lead thinking that takes context into account
Be open to ‘what if’; you may be surprised that you’re not right
Integrate this behaviour into how you operate so it’s not viewed as insincere or condescending

May the right questions bring you solutions.

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.

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Shelf Life: Egg, Ogilvy shift the focus for Metropolitan

Cheryl Hunter (shelflife at marklives.com)’s weekly pick of all things new — product, packaging, design, insight, food, décor and more!

Metropolitan launches #ISeeYou
McCann moves Cremora back in time
Coca-Cola Food Fest showcases local fare

Being seen

Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town’s new campaign for Metropolitan shifts the focus off the financial giant onto its customers with the message, “We see you. We’re for you.”

According to Llewellyn Allen, head of brand, Metropolitan is wanting to challenge both the market and the company itself: “This absolutely had to be something not seen or heard before and it had to shift the conversation and force us into being genuinely client-centric.”

Ogilvy Cape Town ECD, Tseliso Rangaka, led the creative work, which resulted in a shoot on Joburg rooftops featuring musical pioneer, Spoek Mathambo. Directed by Sunu Gonera of Egg Films, fresh from winning Gold, two Silvers and a Bronze at Cannes Lions last month, the spot follows Mathambo around Johannesburg, between midnight and the early hours of the morning, as he acknowledges real people for what they’re already doing to make every day a success. These vary from taxi-drivers, security guards and shop keepers to explosive creatives such as fashion designer, Floyd Manotana, from Floyd Avenue; jazz band Gontse and the Puzzle; and street artist R1.

Allen says the goal was to give strong and relevant currency to the expression as a positive sentiment: “We know full well that sometimes people can use ‘I See You’ in an aggressive or hostile way but the deeper truth is that really seeing someone should be a positive thing. It’s important for us as Africans to celebrate the broad range of people who drive African success. I loved the idea of introducing these diverse characters to the world in a heroic and cinematic way — irrespective of their trade or profession.”

#ISeeYou was seeded socially in an unbranded way for a month by NATIVE VML before the TVC launch in July 2017.

metropolitan.co.za • Facebook • Twitter
eggfilms.tv • Facebook • Twitter • Ramify
ogilvy.co.za • Facebook • Twitter • Ramify

Staying original

Coffee creamer, Cremora, has launched a campaign to return the South African brand to its original taste, reviving memories of a calmer time when we spent time with our neighbours and enjoyed our communities.

Says marketing manager, Nithal Soni–Ramjee, “Thanks to its ingenuity, Cremora as a brand has gone beyond being merely a coffee creamer — it tells a story, unites us and looks to enhance the simple pleasures in life such as sitting down with a good friend and a rich, smooth and creamy cup of coffee.”

Soni–Ramjee believes everyone has a memory of the original Cremora taste: “Some remember drinking coffee on frosty winter mornings or sharing a cup while chatting with a loved one. In its new campaign, Cremora celebrates this feeling of nostalgia and happy memories being passed from one generation to the next.”

Conceptualised by McCann Worldgroup Johannesburg, the campaign includes the launch of a Cremora recipe book containing extra creamy savoury and sweet recipes such as Cremora scones, coffe-infused Cremora tart, creamy lamb (sishebo) stew, samp with butter beans and creamy spicy chicken livers.

nestle.co.za/brands • Facebook • Twitter
mccann.co.za • Facebook • Twitter • Ramify

Fabulous foodstuff

Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa is shining a spotlight on our local gourmet on the go and traditional gems in its annual Coca-Cola Food Fest.

More than 4 000 eateries have registered to participate in the 2017 competition and foodies may attend one of two regional semi-final events to sample some of the culinary delights that will judged at the final. The 12 finalists, representing the top-three meal categories selected in Durban and Johannesburg, will each receive R22 500. The finalist in each category will receive R150 000.

Found along SA’s highways, byways, country lanes, suburban cul-de-sacs and busy city thoroughfares, what these hole-in-the-wall eateries, cafes, food trucks, shisanyamas, pubs, shebeens, coffee shops and high-end restaurants all have in common is delicious food. Meals may range from steak sandwiches to grilled steaks and stuffed filet mignons.

The events will be held at Durban’s People’s Park on 19 August, and at Jozi’s James & Ethel Gray Park on 2 September.

ccbsafoodfestival.co.za

Shelf Life is MarkLives.com’s weekly column covering all things new. 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.

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Production company rethinks role & content in social media era

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Daniel Siegler once tried to to entice us to head to Mars. Today the creative director and executive producer at Word. continues on his own mission to… not Mars but somewhere unconventional, anyway.

Siegler describes Word. as a strategic production company; he wants it to offer more than most South African production houses do. Word. straddles the worlds of commercials, music and branded entertainment, positioned as a soundboard for the changing landscape of agency clients and the entertainment industry. Apart from production services, Word. also offers film development and access to a number of local and international directors, including Rick Wall, Adriaan Louw, Luke Huxham and Specter. Clients have included Porsche, BMW, KIA, Topman, C&A, adidas, Somfy, Coke, HPE, American Apparel, Marteria, Sony, Panasonic, Diageo and Chloe.

On their own terms

The company goes beyond client work by developing its own long-form content, where the producers make the rules and explore projects on their own terms. Sometimes these projects find commercial partners; sometimes Word takes on the role of distributor, as it did with its recently launched 33-minute film, Tour of Ara. This follows a bicycle race that is ridden mostly on SA-built steel racing bicycles over a 800km, dirt-road route in the Karoo. The two categories in the race are each open to only 40 racers. The film is directed by Rick Wall and produced by Siegler.

According to Siegler, projects such as Tour of Ara allow the directors and producers to claim ownership of their creativity. The film is in its launch phase and will be touring cities with strong cycling cultures, as well as ad agencies , it being a tool to reach creative directors and to showcase Word’s directorial and production prowess.

Companies such as Word are well-positioned to tell authentic stories with which brands may easily align and feed to their content hungry social media audiences. With a focus less on product and more on authentic storytelling, the content is less stale and offers a broader view of how brands can inspire dialogue with communities of interest. Reality, says Siegler, has never been more relevant for brands, and this is mostly thanks to social media.

Access to international producers

Access to international producers, he says, need not be prohibitively expensive: Word. sources talent in Europe, Asia and the US. It will open a Europe subsidiary in Berlin in Aug 2017, allowing for SA talent to work overseas and access more European talent in South Africa. The Berlin office will be headed by Kay Bohlmann, a long-standing business partner of his.

There is no reason that SA corporates should not have access to global talent or vice versa, especially as they follow global trends away from ads towards brand films and music videos (think Adidas, which won the Entertainment for Music Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2017, or the Absolut “One Source” music video and brand film).

SA brands should certainly risk being more creative in the TVC content it produces, says Siegler, especially if it wants to see increased quality in its content, as well as more-engaged consumer conversion. Fewer and fewer people have time for meaningless work, which certainly won’t stand out in the content explosion that is digital. Everybody is looking for good content, and outside the traditional film spheres of cinemas and TV. Fashion and retail brands, in particular, face interesting content and brand challenges in a competitive market, yet they continue to be focus on photography with video remaining an afterthought. Word wants them to access film and music to a much greater degree that they currently do.

Breaking into music videos

With its focus on film, commercial- and cultural content, Word. is successfully breaking into the music-video business: it is currently shooting for Major Lazer, a US band that has seen more than 2bn YouTube impressions. The band is using Word. director, Adriaan Louw (known for his his Riky Rick videos), and filming is taking place in Johannesburg. The video mixes talent from the US, Nigeria and South Africa.

(The Word. video is still in production — the release date is in August 2017).

Advertising needs to become less abstract and more integrated into the reality of life, says Siegler. As advertising changes, so will agency, and production companies. It’s not quite a mission to Mars but it’ss a pretty exciting prospect none the less.

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

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By Invitation Only: Regenerating adland — brave leaders required

future-time-letters-scrabble courtesy of Pixabay

by Rowan Belchers (@ThePeoplePro) A bright but different future awaits those who are willing to drop what they’ve always known, and get excited about the vision of a reinvented sector. Leaders must do the hard work and make the tough calls that will make that vision a reality.

The downfall of the advertising industry has been predicted for as long as I can remember. It’s an oversimplified prediction: one that lacks an understanding of the nature of change. Advertising will always be around in some form; we may accept that with certainty. What is equally certain is that the sector is undergoing profound change.

For the many people I’ve been involved with in the industry, advertising feels hard right now. Squeezed for profits, their client relationships are being strained and agencies are losing their value in the eyes of those clients. Most people in the game know intuitively that the advertising sector is not ‘in flow’ — if flow describes something in the right form, in the right place, at the right time.

This, however, is a column of hope and encouragement for leaders in the advertising sector. It contains some observations, some learnings and some advice, all underpinned by positivity about a way forward and knowing how the path to change may be eased. My hope is to offer some ideas and perhaps some tools for leaders in the industry. The operative word here is “leaders”, as the future of the sector lies squarely in their hands. So, herewith my suggested toolbox: six pointers to help leaders navigate through the next evolution of advertising.

1. Developing the ability to ‘sense’

‘Sensing’ is the combination of observation, intuition, deductive reasoning, and insight. You will need finely honed skills to make sense of the very-complex changes that are afoot in the business world. You’ll need to form clear thoughts as to the external stimuli and your required response within your businesses. Without these skills, it’s like walking in the dark and opens up the possibility of a strategic blindside that may have immediate and calamitous results. With the advent of autonomous cars, imagine the sensing skills those in the automotive industry have to learn at the moment, for example.

There is no predictable way forward and so leaders are forced to look out over their landscape, take in all the changes in front of them and try to form a working hypothesis. This is not easy but is very necessary and you will need to draw on all of your senses in order to form this view. Practically, this means making space for time, dialogue, external exposure, deep thinking and self-observation — all anathemas to the advertising sector and its busy, deadline-driven nature. However, the price of not taking this time — to slow down, accessing other parts of your brain and your deep intuition — might be considerable.

2. Bravery in the presence of uncertainty

There is a horrible feeling that accompanies the dreaded, slow, downward creep: everyone feels the approach of an “ending”. I experienced this first hand in Silicon Valley in 2000 as the dot.com boom turned. Businesses kept plodding forward, though everyone could see the end in sight. There was a palpable sense of inevitability about the place. I recognise some of those sentiments currently across the advertising sector: fading optimism, creeping cynicism, and a sense of foreboding.

This is a necessary step in the evolution of the sector but it’s only useful if it elicits a positive response. And that response may be to get ahead of the story, potentially cannibalise your business, write some new rules and have a go at doing things differently. Crucially, this is going to require standing up to clients and stating your ongoing ‘wants’ without fear of recrimination.

Brands have had it coming for a long time now and they, too, need to recalibrate how they think about agencies. But it won’t happen without agencies making the first move and letting go of some big clients along the way.

3. Understanding the term “organisational development”

I refer to organisations as “vessels” in order to give leaders a more-tactile interpretation of the businesses they oversee. I find that the term “business” may dehumanise what is a very real, living, moving organism. We are learning more about the complex and fascinating nature of these vessels all the time, and this improved understanding is a source of great potential, performance and profit for leaders. Assuming, that is, that leaders also understand the topic of organisation-building — in my experience, most leaders don’t.

The vessel is the key to getting stellar performance from your people — and, as you all know, advertising is nothing without its people (the advent of AI notwithstanding.). How you build the vessel, the shape of the vessel, the beliefs within the vessel, and the habits of the vessel — these all either enable or disable your performance. How to shape performance is, therefore, an area that leaders need to know a lot more about.

4. Solving complex problems and the role of external expertise

The only antidote to complex problems is expertise: people who understand a topic at a deep level, who spend their days and nights thinking about it, reading about it, and figuring it out. This brings a new dynamic to the business sector. Consultants have always been considered useful, but the value of an external expert these days is going beyond being a ‘nice to have’, and is becoming a requirement due to the complexity of the topics: from block chain and AL, to machine learning and neuroscience, etc.

It is imperative for leaders to have a trusted core of advisors to whom they can turn. Advisory relationships must be free from the ‘grudge-purchase’ sentiment that hindered consulting-type relationships of old.

5. Welcoming a new kind of talent

It’s hard to adequately describe the rate of change that we’re going to have to handle in the near future. I recently worked with a Zurich-based outfit that prepares companies for the changes looming in the business environment. Its view is that we’re about one-third of the way along the ‘hockey stick’ change-curve. And this is the slow third! As we cross the halfway mark, things will quicken markedly as technology starts really starts to disrupt us.

Your talent set-up will need to look very different within a one-to-three-year horizon. Accept that and work with it. It’s highly likely that there will be no fixed job descriptions, offices will be flexible workspaces, most communication with be done digitally, and most of your people will hold down more than one position across a variety of companies. You should be making innovative moves in this territory right now, so that you’ve at least got the ball rolling. My recommendation is to make sure you have someone within your HR function who’s strategic, and is not purely administration-orientated as most HR practitioners are.

6. Applying digital learnings to your own business

The biggest favour you may do yourselves is to invest generously in the best tech available. It’s such an easily solved problem and instantly opens up possibilities that are hard to imagine from the vantage point of today. It’s like getting a (relatively) free jump on your competition by making sure you’re set up for the inevitably huge change that is coming our way fast.

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In closing, I am constantly amazed at the exponential power of leaders to make moves that positively impact the prospects of so many people. This is a time in the advertising sector when leaders are being asked to step out of the shadows and act boldly. The disappearance of advertising is a myth but the undeniable downward slide is there for all to see.

Rowan Belchers (@ThePeoplePro) is the founder and CEO of Lockstep, a boutique consultancy specialising in CEO and executive leadership craft. Lockstep believes in developing “Leaders at their finest”.

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MagLove: The best magazine covers this week (21 July 2017)

MarkLives MagLove best magazine covers 21 July 2017

by MarkLives (@marklives) Our choice of the best South African and international magazine covers this week:

ESPN (Body Issue)
MyKitchen
New Scientist
Outside (Staying Alive Issue)
The Plug
The Week

Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us at @Marklives.
Want to view all the covers at a glance? See our MagLove Pinterest board!

ESPN Body Issue, July 2017

ESPN Body Issue, July 2017 - Isaiah Thomas

ESPN Body Issue, July 2017 - Javier Baez

ESPN Body Issue, July 2017 - Joe Thornton and Brent Burns

ESPN Body Issue, July 2017 - Julian Edelman

ESPN Body Issue, July 2017 - Kirstie Ennis

ESPN Body Issue, July 2017 - Michelle Waterson

An interesting and diverse cast of naked athletes. What snow where?

MyKitchen, August 2017

We got a sneak peek at the August issue of MyKitchen. Snow on the mountains, soup in the belly. Bliss.

New Scientist, 15 July 2017

Our inner geek freaked out by the question posed on the cover.

Outside (Staying Alive Issue), WoAugust 2017

A fantastic, moody, cover shot of Alpinist and photographer, Cory Richards, as he talks about surviving panic attacks, PTSD, alcohol abuse and turning his life around. Unexpected and powerful.

The Plug, July 2017

This July, rapper Cassper Nyovest rocks the cover of this South African culture magazine.

The Week, July 21, 2017

The Putin/Trump bromance explained. Feels like true love.

MagLove is a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. It recognises well thought-out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three) covers and celebrates the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that has created each of them.

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SA TV Ratings: e.tv — primetime top 20 for Jun 2017

Remote control courtesy of Pixabay auto-corrected

by MarkLives (@marklives) The hottest primetime television shows on e.tv in South Africa revealed: TV ratings for June 2017.

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.

e.tv Jun 2017

Source: BRCSA June 2017

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.

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