Masterclass Notes: Assumptions derailing relationships post-pitch

by Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) After the pitch has been completed, various assumptions may derail your new relationship during the early months. Here’s how to avoid this happening.

Agree — do not assume

The most-destructive things for the relationship between client and agency are unfulfilled expectations and unarticulated assumptions. Agreeing to, rather than assuming, what is in scope and what is out of scope is vital at this stage. It’s not only the big stuff such as campaigns and commercials; it’s the detail such as travel costs and travel time, competitive analysis work on an ad hoc basis, attendance at and frequency of meetings, and producing a deck for a presentation, etc.

Don’t set the retainer fee too soon

With all of this in mind, I’m increasingly starting to recommend that marketers and agencies agree to a fee for the first three months, rather than for a full year. It’s then easier to arrive at the fee for a full year once you’ve had chance to work together and find out more about each other, as well as set up a way of working to suit both parties.

It’s also possible to work on a cost-estimate basis during the three-month period for even greater flexibility, if both parties will commit to that; it might be more work and effort in the short term to keep track of costs but it’s a much-better way of assessing outputs and related costs in the short term.

When to set the service level agreement (SLA)

According to findings of the AAR’s recent client/agency research, almost two-thirds of both clients and agencies feel it’s useless to set out an SLA at the start of the relationship as the pressure points and realities are still unknown. It seems more advisable to set a framework based on the range of services required from the agency and then to amend these as the real situations come into play. For example, how many rounds of amendments to creative work will you accept?

Level of input from senior team members

It’s likely that the level of planning and strategy required in the early part of the relationship will necessitate a greater level of hours invested by the senior team members. Perhaps this needs to be taken into account in a phased approach to the costs in the retainer fees during the early stages. This may then be adjusted later on in the relationship, when implementation is simpler and a more-regular fixed monthly fee may be contemplated.

Communication

Whatever you agree, it is vital that it is communicated to your team quickly and clearly so that they know what to ask for in the full knowledge of what is in the scope of work. Equally, communication with the agency team is important so that misunderstandings — no matter how small — don’t occur. Maintaining a fluid approach requires consistent monitoring and yet it allows for new opportunities to come in and be implemented quickly and easily. Proactively managing the relationship is better than being swept along by it.

~~~

I recommend a six-month health check into the relationship so that any niggles may be easily ironed out and rectified, thus avoiding disappointment on either side. Every relationship starts with both sides wanting it to succeed — the key for both sides is communication.

 

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. Johanna is one of the few experts driving this mediation and advisory service in SA and globally. Currently she is running the IAS Marketers Masterclass, a programme consisting of masterclasses held in Cape Town and in Johannesburg. Twice a year she attends AdForum Worldwide Summits.

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Dissident Spin Doctor: When PR agencies go rogue

by Emma King (@EmmainSA) The unfolding details of the #GuptaLeaks emails have been fascinating reading, despite whether they prove to be true or, as those implicated state, “fake news”. For those of us in the PR and communications industry, the most fascinating of all must surely be the integral role that the now-infamous UK agency, Bell Pottinger, has allegedly played.

I wrote about it in a recent column but, as more allegations and titillating details have emerged, I have found myself riveted to the story, and more needs to be said concerning what this means about us and our industry.

Unravelling allegations

At first look, the unravelling allegations seem right out of a Jason Bourne movie, or perhaps a radically updated James Bond one. All the requisite details are there — from outrageous amounts of money being lugged around, literally, if reports are to be believed, in unmarked bags; to plotting and scheming that spans continents and reaches right into the highest levels of government. Central to all of this seems to be the role that our ‘favourite villainous’ spin-doctors, Bell Pottinger, have played.

I’ve often told people that what we do is not rocket science. When people are having a panic attack about the size of a logo or a media invite going out a day late, it’s not the end of the world; no one’s life is at stake. That what we, as PR people do, is not so earth-shatteringly important as to lose a night’s (ok, or too many nights’) sleep over.

And, to be fair, what Bell Pottinger have been accused of doing is not a million miles away from that which has been common place for years. Some of the most well-known, -experienced and -admired people in the industry have cut their teeth in the political sphere — think Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s political spin-doctor for his years in power. The role that PR plays within the political landscape — building relationships with and securing support from influential groups; informing public opinion; building up a person or organisations’ reputation — is not new.

Different league

But this is PR in a different league.

Apparently, a group of wealthy, connected and powerful businessmen have, literally, attempted to take over a democratically elected government.

Let that sink in for a moment.

So, where does the work that “legitimate” lobbying (or, on a much-smaller and more-insignificant scale, the corporate or consumer PR work we do for brands) cross the line to become that which we find so horrifying with all that appears to be the case with Bell Pottinger and the #GuptaLeaks saga? There’s a very fine line between the two and, in this case, several red flags which should make us alarmed, very alarmed.

Red flags

The first is that private wealth, coming from a very small group of people, funded the PR company that in turn used its expertise to influence government and legislation. This is a fundamental spit in the face of democracy — it means that, if you’re wealthy enough, you’re able to overcome the rules and leverage the power of a democratically elected government in your own favour. It means that, if you’re not wealthy beyond belief (which is pretty much everyone else), you’re powerless to change this. It overrides the very founding belief of democracy, which is that no person is more important or has more rights than the next.

The second red flag is that of how the PR agency rolled out its campaign. According to various news reports, it engaged in a number of dubious tactics, including fake “influencers” and Twitter trolls which spread its dodgy messaging and which were unleashed in full force against any detractors. Hand in hand with this was the besmirching of innocent people’s names and reputations [latest: BREAKING: Protesters target our Peter Bruce after anti-Gupta articles on TimesLive — ed-at-large] when they “got in the way” and the creation of messaging that was not only aimed at excusing its client’s behaviour but at hiding and obscuring the truth.

This is not about press releases pushing the benefits of some product or other. This is about the development of stories and narratives that went further to sow political and racial divisions in an already divided and politically sensitive country.

I wonder what it must be like to have been part of the Bell Pottinger team who worked on this account, if all the allegations prove to be true. I’ve always found it difficult, if not impossible, to work on ‘PRing’ an account that I found morally dubious.

Did they think we were fools?

So what do you think the agency team members thought or felt when they were working on this account? Did they honestly think they were doing some kind of valuable or good work? Did they think that we fools at the bottom of the darkest African continent knew or deserved no better? Or did they just take the big fat pay cheque and walk away, not caring what havoc they’ve caused at the other end of the world?

The reality is that this PR, lobbying, spin doctoring, whatever we may call it, has been bent and twisted to benefit a very few, those who already inhabit a league of wealth and power that’s incomprehensible to most South Africans. This is not a game that is being played with no consequences. Real people and real lives have been impacted, and the politics of a nation that we used to believe was protected by a mythical rainbow has been permanently besmirched.

Imagine being the spin doctors who are proud to have that on their résumé?

For more

Further news

Updated at 3.31pm on 29 June 2017 and link to PR Week added at 2.10pm on 30 June.

 

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

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No Loeries, Bookmarks for Publicis agencies in coming year

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Following the announcement during last week’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity that Publicis Groupe will withdraw from all award and trade shows for one year, effective 1 July 2017, it has been confirmed that local Publicis agencies will be unable to enter certain South African award shows this year. These include Loeries 2018 (the final entry deadline for 2017 closed in early June), Bookmarks 2018 and Pendoring 2017.

Says Kevin Tromp, CEO of Publicis Africa Group, “The decision announced at Cannes by Arthur Sadoun affects all awards shows globally for 365 days… and then we’ll be back, empowered by the new Marcel tool, which will add real value for our clients.”

Local Publicis agencies unable to compete over the next year include OwenKessel Leo Burnett, Publicis Machine, Saatchi & Saatchi, Saatchi & Saatchi Synergize and Liquorice, among others.

The cost savings Publicis Groupe will achieve is supposed to fund Marcel, an AI system being developed by the group.

 

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

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Clicks ’n Tricks: Taking digital to the dark side

by Charlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) Most contemporary marketers are familiar with the dark web — it’s the password-protected place inhabited by monsters who peddle terrorism, drugs and many other heinous unmentionables. It’s a part of the internet few of us want to have any association with. But how many of us have heard of, or are actively engaging with, dark social?

No, I’m not referring to Black Twitter, nor am I speaking of the place that Schweizer Reneke hockey mums post saucy images.

Dark social is a growing nuisance for digital marketers who are keen to attribute the source of web traffic and its potential to deliver online sales. It refers to the untrackable sharing of content through social media channels. And, like the dark web, which is way larger than the internet most of us use, the amount of traffic from dark social shares dwarfs the regular sharing of content.

If someone clicks a link to your website from an open platform such as Twitter or Facebook, analytics programmes will generally tell you where that referral visit came from.

Attribution atrophy

But, as the popularity of private messaging apps such as Snapchat and WhatsApp has grown, so too has the amount of web-content people are sharing through these media. The trouble is that links shared this way lack referral tags, so platforms such as Google Analytics attribute their visits to ‘direct’ traffic, encouraging us to make false assumptions about their source.

According to research from Radium One, some 84% of onsite shares (where someone copies a URL and pastes it into email or a messaging app while reading a piece of content) happen over dark social channels — not surprisingly, much of this is coming from mobile.

Now, we’re all aware that Facebook is a huge source of traffic for most websites. Yet RadiumOne found that only 11% of site-originated mobile shares and 21% of mobile clickbacks happened worldwide via Facebook. Put another way, dark social gives seven times the number of site-originated mobile shares that the world’s largest social media giant hands out.

Why is this a problem?

A simple, personal, example will shed some light. The other day, waiting in the airport lounge for a flight, I decided to find a new clock for my kitchen.

I typed a couple of queries into Google and clicked on a paid ad for a well-known a local retailer. After browsing through a few pages, I saw something I liked and used the email share feature on the product page to send a link to my wife. A little later, she clicked through from her laptop and bought it.

When the retailer looks at its funnel attribution, it’ll see that she made a purchase after visiting just one page from a desktop device via a direct traffic source. What it won’t see is that the sale had a gigantic assist from (and was arguably generated by) paid search on a mobile device.

And if that’s happening with other customers, it pretty much stuffs up the clever attribution modelling that digital marketers use to justify ROI.

So what to do about it?

The challenge is that there’s no real solution. That said, it would be remiss to not gauge the scale of the problem. Doing this is relatively easy. All you need to do is open your analytics platform and run a filter to show the landing pages that attract direct traffic. It’s fair to say that any long links (such as /contemporary-metal-clock-60cm-7404010870) weren’t typed in manually, so they probably came from dark social.

While this won’t help you determine how the content was originally shared/which channels assisted the conversion, it’ll shed some light on how much dark social traffic you may be receiving, and it might give you some ammunition the next time someone questions the value of your spend on other channels when direct’s apparently doing so well.

As with the retailer I visited, you could include sharing buttons on your site to encourage people to share content using these, rather than copying and pasting the link. But, even if these have UTM tags, the likelihood is that any traffic source data that these carry will be stripped out if visitors are directed to a secure (https) website.

So, for the time being, we’re in the dark. But, with growing awareness of the challenge, it’s unlikely to be long before some bright spark comes up with a solution.

 

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

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Ad of the Week: Vodacom gives voice to the youth

by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki) Vodacom, Ogilvy Team Red and director Dan Mace of Egg Films provide a voice for the youth that’s not just for Youth Month (June in South Africa) but which will endure for some time to come. This is because the form the commercial uses is an authentic youth ‘language’ that is relevant and that resonates.

I’m a big fan of spoken-word poetry, in general, and Andrew Miller, in particular. “Poetry matters (even when you don’t like it),” he writes defiantly on Daily Maverick about the spoken form. He says that poetry — particularly spoken word — matters to all of us. “Poetry is a vital mechanism in our society, through which important conversations are held. Those working within the broad realm of development and education use it all the time, because it’s one of the most effective tools at our disposal. Whether you’re running a business skills workshop, a tertiary class on sexual violence or you’re simply working within the more conventional structure of the classroom, poetry is frequently a crucial tool of philosophical engagement. Kids latch onto it so easily, so practically, because it is threaded into their genes and their jeans; into the norms, nuances and modes of urban life.”

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YouTube icon Watch our 2017 #AdoftheWeek playlist on YouTube

With Miller’s thoughts on spoken-word poetry in mind, I want to applaud Vodacom and its agency, Ogilvy Team Red, for a campaign centred on South African’s youth that gives voice, and an important platform, to spoken word. The campaign contains a commercial in the spoken-word form, and was posted online at YouTube just before Youth Day, alongside a handful of videos on the Vodacom channel featuring local female beat poets.

The TVC, entitled “This is Your Time 4 (#TIYT)” spells out a message of disruption and youth empowerment, in a monologue spoken by a young schoolgirl. The video starts with a closeup on her face. The camera tracks back to reveal her environment, wearing a school uniform. In voiceover, the young girl says: “Look at me. What do you see? You see a poor girl living in a shack.”

A flash-cut sequence takes us to the young girl sitting with some friends. Angrily, she asks: “How dare you? How dare you put me in that box?”

The flash-cut sequence then moves to the inside of a taxi, where the young girl says, “I am a poor girl, living in a shack. But my situation will not hold me back. I’ve got dreams and hustle and a 20-year plan. A whole universe of knowledge in the palm of my hand.”

The visuals that accompany this move from an office block to a library and a cell phone, emphasising the importance of data-based technology for education. Youth Month also saw the launch of #internet4all, an undertaking by the government to have internet available for all SA citizens by the year 2020. This programme will no doubt involve the cellular providers, and the hope is that internet access will not only be ubiquitous but also affordable.

The NXT LVL packages that Vodacom is offering, which also target the youth, are a start. An app provides low-cost access to music videos, based on duration rather than data consumption. One may only hope that this will be extended to educational material, too.

Getting back the ad: the scene cuts to an exterior, where the young girl is standing on a crate, yelling “Watch me rise! Rise! Rise! Say that again! Rise, rise! Can I get an amen?”

A little child passing by with mother yells: “Amen!” in response. The young girl smiles and continues her soapbox speech: “‘Cos in our hearts is an ambition so woke, alive and beating with the words the ones before us spoke.” The scene cuts to a flashback of a poster and an animation depicting the Soweto riots.

The final scenes take place on an overhead walkway, and the roof of a building at sunset, with the city in the background. The young girl continues the spoken-word poem: “This world of information will revolutionise! Lift us up, one by one, and open our eyes. And the magnificent thing is, there are millions of us, just like me. Now ask yourself: What do you see?”

The screen fades to black, with the text, “This is your time,” which transforms into the hashtag #TIYT. The #TIYT campaign is currently calling for vocalists, DJs, hip-hop artists and bands, between the ages of 18 and 24, to enter a competition that will pair five finalists with established artists who will take them through a 10-week ‘boot camp’ to help them develop their talents.

The cinematography in the ad is moody, with a blue-grey grade that is reminiscent of dawn light. Many of the scenes are shot at dawn or sunset, and mostly in the city, which hints at a ‘high-tech’ solution for today’s youth. The subdued palette also acts as counterpoint to the young girl’s energy and enthusiasm.

Now let’s end with another insight from Miller: “Poetry works where other devices fail precisely because it evokes the metaphorical power of creativity, while also harnessing the seldom utilised power of empathy.” And that is also what makes this commercial work so well. In a context where everyone’s trying to court SA’s youth, often with clumsy irrelevant outreaches, the Vodacom campaign works because it speaks a language that’s real and relevant.

Credits

Advertising agency: Ogilvy Team Red, Johannesburg, South Africa
Chief creative officer: Pete Case
Executive creative director: Matthew Barnes
Creative director: Candice Hellens
Art director: Mantwa Toka
Copywriter: Palesa Motiki
Business unit director: Lerato Molele
Producer: Helen d’Hotman
Production: Egg Films
Director: Dan Mace
Producer: Vjorn du Toit
Executive producer: Colin Howard
DOP: Fabian Vettiger
Assistant director: Lisa Holland
Director’s assistant: Zolani Shagease

 

 

Oresti PatriciosAd 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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Media Redefined: Putting the Cannes Media Lions into context

by Martin MacGregor (@MartMacG) Media is all about context. In fact, any media strategy’s goal should be to put the advertising message into context so that it is fully understood. Very simple, really. And this year’s Cannes Media Gold Lions winners clearly show once again that the ideas where message and medium work closely together to create context are the ones with impact and that win.

Cannes LionsContext is one word which keeps popping up in my head these days. The more outrage I allow myself to be exposed to on social media, the more I keep thinking “context”, and the severe lack of it that most people seem to have when it comes to any issue. How do you define context? It is fully understanding something, to understand its environment and all the factors as to why it is what it is. Clearly, EQ levels have fallen drastically globally, because there is very little context applied anywhere.

Equality Signs

Nike Colombia • J. Walter Thompson Colombia

My favourite Lions winner is a Nike idea for female runners in Bogota, Columbia, where the consumers themselves provided the context. The insight was that most signage in the city (and in any city, for that matter) uses only male figures. Ponytail stickers were placed in shoeboxes when new shoes were bought, as well as other direct-to-female media, with the call to action to change this obvious gender bias. Suddenly the signage across the city became transformed as female runners, spurred on by social media, applied the stickers.

Nike was the heroine with simple and subtle contextual advertising that was fully understood.

Fearless Girl

State Street Global Advisors • McCann New York

The more-famous example, which also won Gold in the Media category (and many others, plus four Grands Prix), was the Fearless Girl in Wall Street in New York. Having recently visited it, I can vouch that a more-simple example of context you will struggle to find. The message is so well understood that to see it in real life was a powerful, goosebump-filled moment.

Bradshaw Stain

P&G • Saatchi & Saatchi

https://youtu.be/g-wpAP6iouU

On a much-shallower level was a Gold-winning idea for Tide washing powder which involved a simple stain on a shirt. In the pre-chat before the Super Bowl, one of the broadcasters clearly had a stain on his white shirt. Social media went mad thinking he hadn’t noticed. When pointed out live on air by his colleague, he rushed off air and, using Tide, had his shirt washed in time for the next break. What better context to show the effectiveness of your product than showcasing its benefit live on air?

Digitally, there were some really good algorithm-driven Gold winners that showed the potential of data and digital to hugely up the context potential.

Hungerithm

Mars Chocolate Australia • Clemenger BBDO Melbourne

https://youtu.be/GFVcR760kY8

Snickers in Australia developed an algorithm that measured “general anger” on social media throughout the day and linked it to its instore pricing. When the nation was more angry than usual, the price of the bar went down, and it was advertised online and instore as such. Over a five-week period, the price changed over 100 times a day! A perfect example of the context of a moment and how consumesr are feeling.

Innovating Saving

Jet.com • R/GA

I’ve left the Grand Prix winner, an online retailer called Jet.com for last, as it did use context but in a way that mislead consumers. It worked but it did feel like a gimmick.

For the Super Bowl, it created a Super Bowl commercial online so that, when you searched (the ultimate context environment) for Super Bowl ads, it came up. Very clever and it outwitted a lot of the big-spending Superbowl advertisers but, personally, feels a too much like trickery.

I find in our industry, a lot of time is spent on getting the messaging right. Just remember, the real impact comes from consuming it in the right context. Ideas would be much better if as much thought were put into that.

 

Martin MacGregorMartin MacGregor (@MartMacG) is managing director of Connect, an M&C Saatchi Company, with offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Martin has spent 18 years in the industry, and has previously worked at Ogilvy and was MD of MEC Nota Bene in Cape Town. He contributes the monthly “Media Redefined” column, in which he challenges norms in the media space, to MarkLives.com.

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Agency Life: What it means to be creatives of the future

by TJ Njozela (@tj_njozela) With all the new buzzwords, it may seem as if creatives have to make a dramatic change to stay relevant, but here are a few tips to help make the transition from old-school to a creative of the future.

There was a time when creative roles were simple and straightforward. Copywriters were the wordsmiths, art directors were artwork and layout specialists, and designers were visual artists. If you worked on TVCs, radio, print and outdoor, you were an above-the-line creative, and in-store, direct mail, activations, etc were the domain of below-the-line creatives. But then brands started looking for a full-service offering and agencies switched from the traditional way of doing things and creative roles to through-the-line thinking. Then the digital age came into full swing, and there was a split between main agency (TTL) and digital creatives.

It used to be that digital was a request at the end of a brief. Now, everyone realises that digital isn’t just something you throw in list of elements to make a 360º campaign. This means that creatives no longer have a simple and straightforward role but rather have to be multidisciplinary and approach work with a media-agnostic mindset in order to create integrated work that engages people at every touch point.

Know what people are into

Visit the market. Go to the comedy show that everyone is talking about. Check out the new restaurant that people are flocking to.

By being immersed in what people are into at the moment, you’ll gain real insights from the people that you’re trying to reach. You’ll also get a chance to observe how they consume content and the kind of things they share. Without a solid insight, there’s a huge chance that your campaign, no matter how much you push it, will fall flat because it’s not relevant or relatable.

On the flip side, great insights have the potential to engage people in a way that may make a campaign loved and shared. Getting into your target audience’s mindset in real life, not theoretically, you’ll find it easier to come up with ideas and ways to engage with them in a way that makes sense in their world.

Learn some new tricks

Don’t just stick to what you know. Speak with developers to have a general understanding of what is or isn’t possible in the backend. Work closely with your strategists to turn refined research and strategic platforms into unique insights. Find out what it takes to launch a successful activation.

The more skills you have in your creative toolbox, the easier it will be to think across channels. Before you know it, you won’t just be a copywriter, art director or designer but a versatile can-get-anything-done creative superstar.

Go figure

When you get a brief — whether it’s TV, radio, digital, or social content — instead of thinking of an execution that meets the requirements, rather think of an idea that can work across multiple channels.

A big idea gives you the flexibility to create work that is tailor-made and uniquely executed for each medium while still communicating the same core message. By starting with the idea, even a simple brief may be amplified and become a fully integrated campaign.

The main objective of any brief is to solve a business challenge, and a big idea may also help you find a platform that will have the most impact for the particular challenge you’re solving for. You might find that a TVC brief might work better as content on social media, or a web banner may have more reach as an outdoor campaign.

In a nutshell, having a big idea gives you more opportunities to explore unique and creative solutions.

Creatives now

The best creatives today are the ones who don’t operate in silos based on expertise but whjo collaborate, broaden their skillset, and continuously learn. It does take a shift in the way you approach things but, once you get into it, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t been doing it all along.

 

TJ NjozelaTJ Njozela (@tj_njozela) is an award-winning senior copywriter at FCB Africa with several years of experience in the advertising industry. More than a writer, he is also a reader, a thinker, and an avid liker of things; and he once walked from Joburg to Cape Town in 30 days to raise funds to buy wheelchairs for people in need. #30Days30Wheelchairs. TJ contributes the regular “Agency Life” column, in which he gives career advice for working within the advertising industry, to MarkLives.

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Shelf Life: A Retroviral revamp for Russell Hobbs SA

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

  • The Art of Living from Russell Hobbs
  • CareerSteezy TV launches on South African campuses
  • Mbongiworks and Rajah Spice in One Pot

Living with art

Russell Hobbs has aligned with digital agency, Retroviral, to create new ways for the evolving South African consumer to experience how it views appliances through its Art of Living campaign.

According to Retroviral’s Mike Sharman, talented and influential creatives Karabo Poppy Moletsane, Sindiso Nyoni and African-based international fashion brand, KISUA Africa, are fashioning conversations in and around the importance of African identity and aesthetics through design, illustration and fashion: “They were selected by Russell Hobbs with the intention of bringing art out of the gallery and into an everyday understanding through this exciting, progressive campaign. This affirms the brand’s role as a market leader and further establishes its commitment to its consumers by bringing a point of conversation and differentiation, highlighting African creativity and the engagement with the world of functional art through a series of high-profile collaborations.”

Russell Hobbs has also partnered with Boardmans to bring commissioned experiential, immersive and distinctive installations by Moletsane, Nyoni and KISUA Africa to life in key stores in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town from mid-July 2017.

Sharman says this makes the collaboration a first of its kind within the luxury appliance category in South Africa.

From 1 June to 30 September 2017, shoppers who purchase any Russell Hobbs appliance, from any retailer nationwide, will be eligible to win R100 000 or one of three exclusive Art of Living appliance collections, styled in collaboration with the creatives.

russellhobbs.co.za/artofliving • Facebook • Twitter
kisua.com • Facebook • Twitter
Facebook • Twitter
retroviral.co.za • Facebook • Twitter

 

Careers on campus

Career Steezy is a new, nationwide, campus-orientated digital content channel aimed at assisting students to get to grips with the challenge of finding employment.

In a recessionary economy, many youths don’t have access to the personal networks required to land a good job interview, and lack on-the-job experience. Menzi Mndebele at BlackBold Media, the company behind Career Steezy TV, says: “It is possible to secure solid employment, but you have to be fresh and equipped with the tools and knowledge that will allow you to make an impact.”

Steezy is a SA slang term for ‘fresh’, and this ethos is captured in campus content that showcases great careers, discusses the subjects students need to pursue to make those careers real, and drills into the details of finally cracking your industry of choice.

The channel is being broadcast to most colleges and universities where research has indicated that many graduates haven’t identified and followed career opportunities while studying: “There are options out there for qualified young adults — if they know what to look for, and where to look for it. Such options include learner ships, internships, holiday jobs and bursary placements, to name a few.”

The content — broadcast through an app — aims to boost awareness around key subjects, with different shows casting light on the various changes taking place in different job markets. Career Steezy will also feature occasional content that caters to matriculants, including items on how to apply for NSFAS study aid, how to locate and apply for bursaries and how to approach accommodation in the first year.

Facebook
blackboldmedia.co.za • Facebook

 

Stirring the pot

Designed to introduce Rajah Spice’s new Flavourful and Mild flavour, the “Rajah One Pot for Everyone Game Show” activation has been created by Mbongiworks as a fun activity that entertains and educates.

Rajah Spice One PotRajah buyers get the chance to use a giant wooden spoon to find prizes in a giant pot, after proving purchase with their till slips, plus Rajah shishebo to sample, accompanied by a locally produced Rajah gospel song and other engaging activities.

Says Mbongiworks co-founder, Rob Muirhead, “Township audiences are served a steady activation diet of the same ‘gig rig’ rebranded for the next often-competitive brand. Our game show is genuinely entertaining and impactful, and about as far away from the ‘formulaic’ as you get.”

The activity is essentially a giant ‘win-and-spin’ and is supported with in-store sampling and live reads on African language radio stations inviting the audience to join in the fun at top township malls.

rajah.co.za • Facebook • Twitter
mbongiworks.co.za • Facebook • Twitter • Ramify

 
Cheryl HunterShelf 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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Brands & Branding: Clichés vs meaningful company values

by Elsa Gouws. In an age of high competitive intensity and a tough economic climate, companies are struggling to drive brand differentiation and attract top talent. As a result, it is critical to express who you are as a company through a distinctive set of values. Indeed, strong values provide a unique window into workplace cultures; they drive internal behaviours and they guide decision-making frameworks within businesses. In essence, values that truly mean something to employees will be profoundly felt by the customers and communities they serve.

Sadly, we regularly see outdated and clichéd company values such as “integrity, teamwork, quality, customer satisfaction, respect, excellence and innovation” bandied about — without taking into account what they really mean to the business or staff. In a study[i] of 150 multinational companies, 74% claimed integrity as a core value, 41% espoused concern for customers and 39% respect. Yet employees, for the most part, just don’t know what to do with such generic brand values…

So who’s getting it right?

Brands that have a strong, values-based approach to doing business drive individual accountability and engagement through their inspiring, high-performance workplace cultures. Google, Wholefoods and GE are standouts. Their organisational cultures are grounded in a set of core beliefs and commitments expressed through values that steer their respective business strategies, and determine their ways of working. For them, it’s not about the writing on their office walls but about the who that are committed, live the brand and do their part in achieving the business goals.

Brands with strong, values-based approaches

WholeFoods, an organic food retailer, specifically states that it believes in “selling the highest quality natural and organic products available” — which makes it very clear to employees how it should be sourcing, delivering and designing its products.

Similarly, Google doesn’t just claim “customer-centricity” as a core value. Instead, employees adopt the mantra “focus on the user and everything else will follow”, which translates into meaningful products and services that truly serve the needs of its users.

So when is it a good time to consider relooking and adjusting your company’s values?

  • When your company is going through massive organisational change and/or brand repositioning
  • When social and economic contexts change, thereby changing your customers’ needs and expectations
  • When it’s clear your company’s current values hold little meaning for your employees
  • Lastly, when your ‘company values’ are different from your ‘brand values’ — these should be consistent

Here are six tips on how to create distinctive values within your business:

  1. Make sure your values are aligned to your purpose and positioning, and bring these to life in tangible and practical ways.
  2. Try ‘bottom up’, not just ‘top down’: through collaborative workshops, involve people from all levels inside the organisation in the creation of values.
  3. Select a core group of brand advocates to lead the change: 5-10 individuals (depending on size of company) from anywhere in the organisation who best represent what the brand stands for, have a gut-level understanding of the culture of the organisation, and have the highest level of credibility with their peers[ii].
  4. Reinforcement is critical — repeat, reward and recognise.
  5. Involve the people that interface with your customers on a daily basis.
  6. Treat the process with respect and have patience.

[i] Notre Dame University, Do corporate values make a difference? 2016
[ii] Jim Collins, Aligning Action and Values, June 2000

General reading

  • Harvard Business Review, Make Your Values Mean Something, July 2002
  • A Great Place to Work, Organisational values, November 2014
  • Business Insider, The 5 values Facebook looks for in every employee, 2016
  • Forbes, Enron, Ethics and Today’s Corporate Values, February 2013
  • Linkedin Pulse, 10 Lessons in Defining Your Company Values, May 2013

Buy your copy of Brands & Branding 2016 today.

 

Brands & Branding 2017 preliminary coverElsa Gouws is a strategist at Yellowwood. She has a master’s degree in business science and the management of luxury goods and services from the International University of Monaco in Monte Carlo, and a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Stellenbosch.

The article first appeared in the 2016 edition of Brands & Branding in South Africa, an annual review of all aspects of brand marketing — consisting of case-studies, profiles, articles and research. Editorial contributions and sponsored brand profiles accepted until early August for the 2017 edition. Copies of the current edition are still available — buy one here.

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Big Q Consultancies: Difficult to shake campaign-dominant logic

by MarkLives (@marklives) What may the broader agency and marketing community learn from the rise of non-traditional firms now operating in the advertising agency space? What processes and practices are giving these firms an edge, and to what would the rise of these players be attributed, in spite of the best integration efforts by the traditional agency networks? We asked a panel of key industry executives for their take. Next up is Joshin Raghubar of iKineo.

Large consulting and technology firms such as IBM, Deloitte and Accenture have moved definitively into the digital-marketing-and-communications space ad agencies once hoped to dominate themselves. In the UK, IBM iX, Accenture Interactive, BAE Systems and Deloitte Digital UK already rank in the top five interactive agencies based on revenue; Accenture Interactive, part of Accenture Digital, was named the world’s largest digital agency network by AdAge last year.

Joshin Raghubar

Joshin RaghubarJoshin Raghubar (@Joshin) is an entrepreneur in the media, marketing, and technology sectors. He is engaged in the evolving role of entrepreneurship, trust and innovation in the ‘good society’: he is the founder of iKineo, a Pan-African customer engagement agency; Sprout, digital media performance firm; and Explore Sideways, an online purveyor of wine tourism experiences. Joshin is chairperson of the Bandwidth Barn and non-executive director of Cape Innovation & Technology Initiative (CITi), Enke, Africa Leadership Initiative (Southern Africa) and African Leadership Network. He is a fellow of 2016 Yale World, ALI, Aspen Institute’s Global Leaders Network, US-Southern African Centre for Leadership and Public Values, and a Bertelsmann Foundation’s global Transformation Thinkers programme member.

Traditional ad agencies certainly have had a head-start on the management consulting industry to dominate the digital customer engagement and experience services portfolio for clients. However, by not being able to step out and above the ‘creative communication and advertising’ mindset, and firmly into the problem-solving business and leadership territory, agencies have once again ceded the high ground to consultancies.

Accelerated digitalisation of business

All industries are experiencing the accelerated digitalisation of business. This is not just about digital communication but the digitalisation of everything. The internet of things (IoT), big data, on-demand fulfilment models, dynamic pricing, and an avalanche of other forces are reshaping the competency and opportunity set required for marketing service providers.

In a Contagious Magazine article, journalist Dan Southern noted that, even as far back as 2004, the Journal of Marketing published a paper that is now one of its most frequently cited, which asserted that “the objective of marketing is shifting from efficiently delivering tangible goods to market towards creating value through the exchange of intangibles such as knowledge, information, and skills, to the benefit of customers.”

In other words, marketing was already evolving then from a campaign-dominant activity to a service-design-led activity. In this new world, where the power has shifted from companies to customers, marketers and their agencies needed to become service and product designers, strategy consultants, data scientists, user-experience (UX) specialists, intangible product owners, and customer community managers. The space between a brand experience in the media and an actual user experience has shrunk to one click, and it was only a matter of time before service providers would have to have credible capabilities throughout this value chain.

Able to respond and move

Consulting firms and other non-traditional agencies with established business leadership brands, which already have had some of these competencies, have been able to respond to these new opportunities more quickly, and have been able to move into the adjacent communications market by adding the necessary creative and innovation skills.

Even though they’ve had at least 13 years since the writing has been on the wall, for many traditional agencies, it has been difficult to shake this campaign-dominant logic. However, it may not be too late. In this age of disruption, creativity and innovation are required more than ever. In the quest to regain some of the territory lost, there are a number of valuable lessons to be learned from the growing consulting practices.

  1. Management consulting firms have direct access to the C-suite. They continue to invest in maintaining this access and have invested heavily in thought-leadership along the digital transformation value chain. In sharp contrast, many chief executives today only vaguely know the name of their ad agency or digital agency. If digital is fundamentally changing the chief executive’s business, she or he will only naturally turn to people who speak the language of the C-suite.
  2. Consulting firms haven’t been shy to acquire agencies with capabilities in UX, digital, design, branding, video and other creative domains. Over an 18-month period in 2015 and 2016, Accenture acquired 40 marketing firms. Whereas consulting firms have been buying capabilities, perhaps traditional agencies should consider buying firms for their C-suite brand share. Alternatively, along with attracting the right leadership talent, agencies may have even created new leadership brands free of the traditional advertising legacy.
  3. Consulting firms have maintained their high-value pricing model. Agencies are victims of their resource-plus pricing model which, combined with margin squeezes, have resulted in clients being serviced by the lowest-cost staff who aren’t equipped to deal with complex client needs. This also means that consultancies simply can afford to hire the better talent.
  4. Consultancies have been quicker to demonstrate actual capability and intent by walking the talk. For instance, many have established innovation centres and actual incubators, where clients may work with them to build up new businesses and digital products. These initiatives are valuable sources of client stickiness and collaboration.

The legacy of the CMO/agency relationship has been challenged and even been disrupted by the technology and consulting firms. This disruption holds many lessons for agencies still in the fight to reclaim their territory.

See also

 

MarkLives logoLaunched in 2016, “The Big Q” is a regular column on MarkLives in which we ask key industry execs for their thoughts on relevant issues facing the ad industry. If you’d like to be part of our pool of potential panellists, please contact editor Herman Manson via email (2mark at marklives dot com) or Twitter (@marklives). Suggestions for questions are also welcomed.

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