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#BigQ2020: The future is here

by MarkLives (@marklives) What are the industry expectations for the marketing and advertising industry in 2020? A panel of key agency and marketing execs discusses the macro environment, budgets, changes in messaging, movement in the industry and any consumer and communication trends they’ll be looking out for in the year ahead. Next up is VMLY&R‘s Jarred Cinman.

Jarred Cinman

Jarred Cinman (@jarredcinman) is the CEO of VMLY&R South Africa, part of the global VMLY&R network. He founded one of the first professional web services firms in 1995. After selling his first business to the VWV Group, he became part of the founding team of VWV Interactive, which went on to dominate the web development industry during the late 1990s. In 2010, Jarred was part of the team that merged Cambrient into NATIVE, which became NATIVE VML in 2013 and VMLY&R in 2018. Jarred was IAB South Africa chair for three years, sits on the Loeries committee, is a board member of the ACA and DALRO and, in his spare time, answers his email.

2020 has such a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? The kind of thing sci-fi movies as recently as the ’90s might have included to evoke the idea of a distant, utopian future.

As the real 2020 begins, it’s more dystopia that we fear — a year of tumult, turmoil and tension. Britain will Brexit. Trump will fight to appease his bottomless ego. And here at home we’ll confront a combination of economic woes and political animosity that impacts all of us. All of this is happening within a context of global threats, the most serious of which is climate change/crisis, combined with a not coincidental rise of the far right that simply denies it’s happening.

This column is called “Big Q” — the Big Question — so I’m starting with the biggest ones. What does this mean for the advertising industry in South Africa? Like all good trend-watching articles, I will pare it down to three big things to watch out for. Like all good trend watchers, I’m hereby disavowing anything I’ve called wrong in the past.

#BigQ2019: Is advertising screwed? — Jarred Cinman
Big Q 2017: Jarred Cinman’s expectations for the SA ad industry

Trend 1: Industry disruption

There’s a fun one to kick off with. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon/rocket scientist to work out that the South African economy is under immense pressure. Advertising is largely concentrated on consumer-facing brands and so, when consumers spend less, that hits the industry’s biggest clients where it hurts.

There are times when this may lead to more ad spending as competition increases but, unfortunately, many clients don’t trust their agencies as much as they used to. Thus, marketing is being given budget cuts combined with increased targets/expectations and asked to “prove your value”.

Trend 1 summary: Less marketing spend, more focus on returns, impatience with “creativity”
Look out for: Lots of account moves, agencies struggling to make profits, agencies which know how to drive results moving ahead of the traditional shops

Trend 2: New market entrants

A lot of these new entrants are no longer that new but they are yet to capture a major chunk of business. Watch this space.

There are two primary disrupters here: the consultancies and black-owned independents:

We pitched against Accenture and Deloitte recently for the first time on social media work. They were very aggressive on pricing and, as I understand it, made a compelling case for data and marketing technology. They didn’t win. But, for us anyway, this was a strong indicator that they’re shifting into top gear to win in this space. Globally, Accenture Interactive won Kimberly-Clark’s baby care business in the US in November 2019— its first big win after paying hundreds of millions for Droga5. Call this a Droga5 win or an Accenture win but the story worked.

There are constant rumours about a big consultancy buying one of the large independent agencies in SA. At some point, one way or the other, these people will take their place on the agency ranking tables.

Several black-owned agencies have also made good progress last year — notably Avatar (which most recently picked up some big Unilever brands, and opened in Durban), The Odd Number and Riverbed. Even if they haven’t won a major market share yet, they’re being included more often on the big pitch lists, so it’s only a matter of time. What’s unique about these agencies is that they’re structurally immune from being swallowed up by a big group. Their ownership itself is a USP, and so they effectively must remain in local hands.

In addition, 2019 was also the year of big ownership changes to deliver on MAC charter targets. A number of WPP agencies are now 51% or more in black hands. My understanding is that other networks (such as Interpublic in Africa, which recently renamed FCB Africa to Nahana Communications Group) also tackled ownership last year.

Trend 2 summary: Many more choices for clients when choosing agency partners, ramping up competition
Look out for: Big local account wins for consultancies and black-owned agencies; global networks further simplifying and clarifying their offering; more agency mergers/downscaling (and closures)

Trend 3: The next wave of digital

This year will be 25 years since I founded my first “internet” business. At the time, the internet was imminently about to transform society: we would buy everything online; we would communicate only digitally; and we would all wear weird goggles that would port us into a virtual 3D world.

Well, 25 years later and a lot of this has come true. But it took its time getting there, especially here where artificially inflated connectivity costs held us back for at least a decade (and still do, to some extent). But it’s fair to say that, if you include WhatsApp and B2B applications, the internet is now pervasive in our society. The weird goggles remain largely a disappointment. But, as will remain true forever now (unless we destroy the biosphere), technological change has only started to make an impact.

The extent to which marketing will be automated, generated and smartened is barely understood by the average marketer or agency bigwig (including me). Everyone pays lip service to concepts like programmatic media, algorithmic creative and data — that overtraded word deployed to win admiration everywhere.

There’s no specific tech that arrives in 2020 but many that are reaching maturity and becoming best practise. In particular, anything that may be automated is being; and machines can do things exponentially faster and more reliably than humans. We know that targeting and ad serving is already driven by algorithms and data (at times creepily so) but content is the next pin to fall.

Expect to see more impressive generated creative that adapts while it runs. I’m not someone who believes this marks the “death of creative” but rather the birth of organic creative. Like any organism, this type of creative will have a kind of DNA that replaces the “big idea” and will evolve from there. It’s a really exciting prospect — and also one that traditionally-minded creative people will hate.

Trend 3 summary: Traditional methods of marketing and their digital replacements will drift further and further apart; what we call “advertising” will be unrecognisable compared with today
Look out for: Iconic local campaign success with technology at its core, and creativity as its partner — and the desperate scramble as everyone else tries to catch up.

#BigQ2020: The rise of behavioural science

Rita Doherty

Rita Doherty (@ritadoherty) is the chief strategy officer of Nahana Communications Group (formerly FCB Africa). With a BA in philosophy, an honours in English lit, and an MBA with a cum laude dissertation in decision-making, culture and technology, she’s worked across multiple categories, from banks to baked beans. In 2014, the Coca-Cola team in Atlanta handpicked Rita to help refresh the brand globally but, more recently, she published “The Big Easy: Scientific Marketing and the Creative Instinct”, based on her explorations of new insights coming out of behavioural economics and scientific marketing.

There’s a lot of buzz in the air about behavioural economics. But what is it exactly, and what does it mean for marketing?

Traditional marketing theory was developed 50 years ago but most of what we know about the brain and decision-making was only learnt in the last 20 years. It’s time to unlearn traditional marketing myths and embrace modern marketing, which is rooted in the latest scientific knowledge of human nature. Let’s look at how human beings actually make decisions to understand how to influence behaviour.

For the last 400 years, economic theory has been dominated by the belief that human nature is fundamentally rational. This belief has formed the foundation of our social sciences, including economics and marketing. Traditional economics is built on the idea that people tend to make rational decisions based on the information they have available. Marketing is also built on this rational paradigm of human nature. We think consumers watch ads attentively and think about them, gather information about options and are persuaded by differentiation and reasons to believe.

Emotions

But it turns out emotions are much more fundamental for making decisions. In 2002, psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for Economics for his pioneering study on human nature, which revolutionised economic theory, and gave birth to behavioural economics. Kahneman and his statistician partner, Amos Tversky, dedicated decades to working out how people think and behave. In 2011, Kahneman published his seminal book, Thinking Fast and Slow, which maps out how human beings make decisions. His ideas have been revolutionising almost every field of knowledge ever since. It’s marketing’s time.

Kahneman found that rational thinking plays only a minor role in decisions, if at all. He concluded that people tend to make decisions intuitively, based on what satisfies their needs in the easiest way at the time. This is a radical paradigm shift in our understanding of human nature — from a rational, to an emotional decision-maker.

Marketers generally buy work that ticks all the rational boxes because they believe people are ultimately going to make a rational choice about which brand to buy. But science has now validated that emotion is the biggest driver of behaviour by far. In fact, most of our decisions are made emotionally without any thinking at all, or very little thinking. How is this possible?

Different ways of “thinking”

Kahneman argues that the human brain has two different ways of “thinking” — one is a rational system and the other is an intuitive system. He calls these two different ways of thinking System 1 and System 2.

System 2 is the part of us we’re most conscious of. System 2 can actively gather information, ascribe values to different options, and evaluate and compare in order to optimise decisions. Because we’re conscious of our rational thoughts, we ascribe personal control to our rational minds. Our rational minds are indeed magnificent and capable of great things unknown to other earthly creatures, but most neuroscientists today believe that System 2 influences only about 5% of our decisions. Why so little?

Kahneman argued rational thinking is limited because it’s slow and high effort. If we had to stop and think about what to do when a saber-toothed tiger attacked, we’d be dead. And if we had to rationally think about which cellphone provider was the best, we’d be busy for months. Luckily, System 1 is capable of fast decisions. But how does it work? What is intuitive thinking? Kahneman and Tversky concluded that System 1 is fast because it uses heuristic techniques. A heuristic is a shortcut or ‘rule of thumb’ that uses predetermined formulas for action — if this, then that. For example:

If it’s risky, avoid
If it’s scarce, take it all now.
If other people do it, it’s okay

Speed

The great advantage of heuristic techniques is speed. That’s why System 1 is in charge. System 1 screens everything. If it feels something’s boring — it will ignore it. If it feels something’s important — it will tell System 2 to pay attention. If something’s pleasurable — it will want it.

By the time the slower System 2 gets going, it’s already received clear instructions from System 1 about what to do. This means our rational thinking doesn’t operate in a vacuum. We think inside an emotional space, which nudges thinking in a specific direction, even though we’re not aware of the emotional bias.

In all decision-making scenarios, System 1 is always the first to respond and always creates the emotional context for thinking to take place in. System 2 only plays a role when it’s unsure about System 1, which isn’t often, because we tend to trust our own instincts. This is why System 1 makes about 95% of all decisions — it’s fast and low-effort.

The decision-making paradigm that underlies traditional marketing is unfortunately still rooted in the rationalist view that human beings choose the brands that will satisfy their needs better or uniquely. But System 1, which is making our brand choices, makes decisions intuitively, based on what satisfies needs in the easiest way at the time.

Brands therefore need to create desire and make it easy for people to choose them. From an advertising perspective, we need to make it easy for people to notice us, trust us and recall us at the moment of purchase. And here in lies the magic — because it turns out that the strategies that deliver are based on the ancient intuition of the creative instinct: be unexpected and create a powerful emotional connection. Bring on the behavioural revolution!

Q5: EQ will get you everywhere, says Khanyi Mpumlwana [interview]

by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Khanyi Mpumlwana (@kahnyee_), FCB Joburg creative director and Find New Words co-founder, has a few words for young women — and everyone else — in advertising.

Q5: We know you’re not a fan of the term “diversity”. What would a truly inclusive workplace look like to you?
Khanyi Mpumlwana: The ECD grew up in Khayelitsha and met her wife erhontshini. The creative director used the ramp to get into the building. The creative team both don’t really speak English. And all of them are in the room because they’re brilliant at their jobs. A somewhat reductive demonstration, but you get the point.

Q5: There’s a lot of talk about the need for conversations to effect change in the advertising and marketing industry. What can we do to ensure those conversations are effective, and lead to actual change?
KM: A culture of mentorship. Accountability. A well-written to-do list. An industry project manager who takes minutes at public forums and follows up with an email to check if the promises were actioned. I don’t know. Even a list of things the individual can do to turn the conversation about inclusion into a tangible experience.

Q5: You’ve risen through the ranks at FCB. What advice would you give to young women who are just starting their careers in adland?
KM: Your EQ will get you everywhere. The industry needs intuitive, empathetic people with strong minds and warm hearts. You have it. You’re already a better leader.

Q5: What has been the biggest challenge for you personally, over the course of your career?
KM: Honestly? Trying to find the time to feed my insatiable need to make purpose-driven work.

Q5: What’s happening with Find New Words? Where are you going to take it in 2020?
KM: I was going to reply to this with “refer to previous response,” haha. Things slowed down quite a bit, but we’re working on picking right back up again. We’ve had a couple of conversations with some really excited people — we’re hoping to start with the education part of our plan in 2020.

Connect with Mpumlwana on LinkedIn

Extract: Africa culturally predisposed to succeeding in future world of work

Yellowwood: Africa's Opportunity in the Future World of Work

MarkLives (@marklives) is running two extracts from a recent Yellowwood paper, “Africa’s Opportunity in the Future World of Work”, over the next couple of weeks. Here’s the second, “Africa culturally predisposed to acquiring skills relevant to the future world of work”.

Africa culturally predisposed to acquiring skills relevant to the future world of work

by Amanda Murray & Nokuthula Radebe (@askYellowwood) Africa’s rich diversity dividend and existing informal economic structure and skills acquisition processes closely match those of the emerging global gig economy. In contrast to much of the current narrative speaking to Africa’s ill-preparedness for the fourth industrial revolution [4IR], the continent’s existing cultural predisposition presents Africa with an opportunity to leapfrog directly, and independently, into the future world of work.

Africa currently only leverages 55% of its human capital effectively, compared with a global average of 65%. With the World Economic Forum (WEF) predicting that approximately 15–20m increasingly well-educated Africans will enter the workforce annually for the next three decades, in the current narrative Africa looks challenged to effectively leverage its human resources for growth and inclusion.

Different view

We present a different view.

Both academic research and numerous case studies highlight the advantages of workforces comprising diverse skills sets, life experiences, backgrounds, classes, cultures, races, sexes and sexual orientation. As a continent with hundreds of different ethnic identities, languages and a myriad of religious and cultural beliefs and practices, Africa possesses a distinct advantage in a naturally diverse population long accustomed to navigating diversity.

We also assert that Africa’s established, and highly informal, culture of skills acquisition is equally well-suited to the rapid and remote acquisition of skills. In this sense, contrary to current narratives, the fourth industrial revolution has the potential to play out advantageously for the people of Africa from a skills-acquisition perspective.

Industries, and increasingly professions too, are today much more fluid. The relevance of a four-year degree spent acquiring specific information, is, for example, increasingly questioned. In the age of the internet, an unimagined amount of information is readily and instantly available to anyone with even a simple hand-held device. As such, the skills required in the fourth industrial revolution are less likely to focus on the acquisition and retention of information or knowledge. Instead, skills enabling the finding, assessing and application of readily available information are likely to become more relevant.

WEF report

This assertion is supported by a recent WEF report predicting that, in future, people will need complex problem-solving, critical-thinking and people-management skills. These skills are far more suited to the creativity, consensus-building, judgement and decision-making expertise required in tomorrow’s heavily service-oriented economy. Navigating this future economy successfully is expected to require advanced negotiation ability, supported by emotional intelligence and cognitive flexibility.

Despite the very different skills sets required in the future world of work, formal education systems around the world have hardly changed in the last 40 years. Adequately preparing people for this future world will significantly alter what — as well as how — we currently learn. In Switzerland, for example, approximately 70% of high school graduates don’t enter universities. Instead, the majority of learners complete an apprenticeship to gain the skills required in particular fields.

While adapting the world’s very-established education systems is likely to be a disruptive process, Africans already learn in much more informal, social, multicultural and diversity-rich environments. This means that Africa is already culturally predisposed to acquiring many of the more ‘human’ skills required in the fourth industrial revolution.

A contributor to our report, for example, asserts that in Africa the curriculum covered in most traditional subjects is outdated and has ‘stains’ of colonisation. In relooking education from an African perspective, the continent perhaps has an opportunity to leapfrog many of its increasingly irrelevant inherited educational structures, developing instead much more creative and entrepreneurial skills sets more-suited to the future world of work.

Clear opportunity

From this perspective there is a clear opportunity for both governments and businesses in Africa to help address the continent’s skills deficit. By investing in digitally accessible micro-learning platforms and programs that quickly close skills gaps, build capability and provide shorter pathways into the job market, Africa can shift the burden of education from the state, enabling every business and every person to participate in developing skills.

In short, technology presents Africans with an opportunity to quickly develop the skills sets to operate in an expanding global gig economy for which Africa is already culturally well adapted to navigate.

Across Africa, people are increasingly aware of the changing nature and structure of work. Significantly, this is happening on a continent culturally at home with operating in a highly decentralised informal economy, closely matching the emerging global gig economy. There is also a growing recognition, especially amongst African youth, that the kinds of skills provided by Africa’s existing educational systems are not adequate for tomorrow’s work environment. Significantly, this realisation is matched by a confidence that these skills can be acquired independently online by a generation of digitally literate, and highly connected, young Africans.

Contrary to current assertions that Africa is ill-adapted for the fourth industrial revolution, combined, these trends in fact equip Africa to effectively leverage its existing human resources for higher growth and broader inclusion in the future world of work.

#BigQ2020: Efficient vs effective

Marc Horne

Marc Horne is the chief strategy officer at Machine (@thisismachine), part of the Publicis Groupe. His interest in understanding human behaviour and his desire to help make brands part of culture have forged his career over the past 17 years.

The only constant is change — an ‘opening phrase’ heard in many of our business-planning meetings last year because it’s never been more true. So, how is the advertising and marketing industry going to not only step up but thrive?

We can’t ignore that the world is heading for a global downturn, what with the latest US-Iran crisis, growth in the US slowing, the looming Chinese debt crisis, the Brexit debacle, the oil markets in turmoil, the ailing Eurozone economy, and the list goes on… The reality is that the world is bracing itself for a recession.

On home soil, we have our own challenges to navigate, too. Our economy has, once again, performed poorly; expenditure pressures mount as the government continues to bail out ailing state-owned entities; sovereign debt continues to rise; we have one of the world’s highest unemployment rates; and, arguably, the most-volatile currency. What all this has resulted in, is low consumer confidence and a depressed business environment. This means businesses are under an immense amount of pressure at the start of 2020. To survive the unrelenting ‘squall’, they’re going to have to continue to look for more-efficient and -innovative ways of doing business.

Era of opportunity

Yes, these times are challenging, but at the same time they remind us of why we work in this industry. This is the era of opportunity. It’s our chance to be part of defining how brands and agencies engage going into the future, and how agencies evolve themselves to meet their brands’ ever-changing requirements.

I believe these trends will become even more pronounced in 2020:

New agency models: We are already seeing this internationally with the likes of The&Partnership and Oliver Group, where agency teams across multiple disciplines sit within the brand — effectively becoming a true extension of the brand.
Crushed both ways: Business consultancies such as Accenture have extended their strategic consultative relationships to the creative outputs through their acquisitions like Droga5, and production houses are continuing to grow their product output to become more like agencies.
Going in-house: More brands are going to build their in-house capabilities beyond having just a “creative studio”. For example, in the past, “strategy” was a key agency discipline but now we’re going to see it become more and more sought-after as a function within brands. WARC’s The Future of Strategy has covered it extensively.
Growing role of procurement: The role of procurement is now a major part of the decision-making process. We’re going to see more business being awarded to agencies based on rate cards, more brands being consolidated among fewer agency partners for economies of scale, and the retained billing model shifting more towards project-based work. The challenge for agencies, in the words of Warren Buffett, will be to demonstrate: “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
Reinvestment and specialisation: Agencies have realised that they need to properly reinvest into their businesses if they want to lead. I believe we’re going to see agencies investing in more specialists and getting them to work together to create full brand experiences, and we’re also going to see agencies building true data and insights capabilities, so they don’t just have to rely on third-party data.
End-to-end: We’re going to see more brands choosing to work with partners that provide an ‘end-to-end’ solution from creative and media to production and so on. This is about efficiencies but, more than that, it provides a real opportunity to create better, more-effective communication solutions. The result of this is that we’re going to see more agencies consolidating their offerings, and more holding-company operating models emerging.

Shifts

These are just a few operational shifts that we should all be aware of, and find the opportunities within. But there’s one major shift we’re seeing in the communication space which has become more predominant over the past few years — and that’s the tendency to focus more on short-term sales and not enough on building long-term profitability. This is the result of pressure for immediate and demonstrable results, overemphasising marketing ROI, and shorter CMO and agency tenures. It’s also the result of the growing role of procurement — in a world where big data and advanced analytics can be overwhelming, the ‘drive’ is about becoming more efficient and, as a result, the focus on being truly effective is lost, as Les Binet and Peter Field’s research has shown.

At the start of 2020, it’s my view that the industry at large will be less seduced by big data and will remember the importance of long-term data; we’ll work towards finding the optimum balance between short-term sales and long-term profitability. This change will shift us back to what we all truly do: build brands.

There’s no doubt 2020 is going to bring with it its own challenges but those who look for opportunities in these turbulent and uncertain times will be at the forefront amid all the change.

Here’s to an exciting 2020.

Watched: Top 10 TV shows deciphered — Dec 2019

Remote control courtesy of Pixabay auto-corrected

by Richard Lord (@rlord182) It’s a new year, a new decade, and a new opportunity for advertisers and media owners alike to try new things, be creative, break with the conventional and stand out. But before I get into the new year, I need to wrap up 2019 and look at what December last year had in store for us from a TV-viewing perspective.

No major events

The thing that stands out for me, when looking at last month’s data, is that there weren’t any major events that dominated the TV ratings and drew in massive audiences. With South Africa essentially going on leave for the month of December, our TV screens were dominated by the usual local fare of dramas and soaps.

Main market

These were the top 10 shows (averaged data) for the main market (LSM 4–7).

Top 10 TV shows December 2019	Channel	LSM 4–7
Uzalo	SABC 1	8 535 240
Generations: The Legacy	SABC 1	7 217 946
Skeem Saam	SABC 1	4 713 827
Muvhango	SABC 2	4 218 781
Scandal	e.tv	4,047,442
Come Duze 2020	SABC 1	3 388 898
Makoti	SABC 1	3 281 755
Imbewu: The Seed	e.tv	3 247 730
Miracle	SABC 1	3 190 707
Shakespeare in Mzansi: Death of a Queen	SABC 1	3 184 656

The first point to note about the December figures is that, while Uzalo, Generations, and Skeem Saam consistently remain the top three programmes watched by the main market, the December audiences were lower than they were in November…and quite significantly!

Top 5 LSM 4—7 Nov 2019 vs Dec 2019	Nov 2019	Dec 2019	% Diff
Uzalo	10 606 852	8 535 240	-19.5%
Generations: The Legacy	9 331 778	7 217 946	-22.7%
Skeem Saam	5 819 989	4 713 827	-19.0%
Muvhango (SABC 2)	4 803 688	4 218 781	-12.2%
Scandal	5,079,616	4,047,442	-20.3%

The biggest show outside of the usual suspects was Come Duze 2019, which is an annual New Year’s Eve countdown show on SABC 1, featuring celebrities, musicians, DJs and actors.

The second thing to note is that 7 of the top 10 shows aired on SABC 1. SABC 1 was the clear audience winner among the main market in December!

High-income

Now let’s have a look at the high-income earners:

Top 10 TV shows December 2019	Channel	LSM 8–10
Uzalo	SABC 1	1 071 010
Generations: The Legacy	SABC 1	848 952
Skeem Saam	SABC 1	823 785
Scandal	e.tv	620 857
The Queen	Mzansi Magic	593 440
Imbewu: The Seed	e.tv	535 345
Zulu News	SABC 1	489 832
Come Duze 2020	SABC 1	479 235
Chips (movie)	e.tv	47 ,178
Our Perfect Wedding	Mzansi Magic	468 858

When looking at the top 10 shows among LSM 8–10, we’re again struck with how similar the list is to the LSM 4–7 list (sharing six of the same top 10 programmes). This highlights, once again, just how wrong marketers’ perceptions of what TV shows high-income earners in SA are watching: they’re not watching M–Net; they’re watching SABC, and exactly the same shows as the main market. For interest’s sake, the top performing show on M-Net was a movie called Second Act, which features at no. 62 on our list with an LSM 8–10 audience of 228,000 viewers.

Also notice just how much smaller the LSM 8–10 audiences are, compared to the main market. Uzalo’s average LSM 4–7 audience in December was 8.5m viewers, compared to just 1.0m LSM 8–10 viewers.

Whereas SABC 1 dominated the top 10 shows for the main market, we see that e.tv and Mzansi Magic (the only DStv channel to crack the top 10) made up 50% of the top shows watched by the high-income earners. Both segments were clearly up for a New Year’s Eve party, however, with Come Duze 2020 featuring in the top 10 among both segments, with a combined audience of almost 4m viewers.

Sport

Finally, what about sport?

After the highs of the 2019 Rugby World Cup in November, rugby still remained a popular sport on the Dstv platform, with the Rugby Sevens in Cape Town being one of the most-watched sporting events by the high-income earners. It was watched by 289 000 people on SuperSport 1, compared to the 789 000 who watched the RWC final.

For the main market, unsurprisingly, it was soccer, soccer, and more soccer. The Telkom Knock Out soccer match between Maritzburg United and Mamelodi Sundowns was watched by 2.8m people [for those who’re interested, Sundowns beat Maritzburg 2-1, coming from 1–nil behind with two late goals by Mauricio Affonso in the 54^th and 74^th minutes — I love Google :) ].

And those are your top 10 TV programmes for December!

* This story was updated at 2.12pm and 3.40pm on 20 January 2020. Scandal was ‘averaged’ regardless of the stations flighted, which inadvertently pulled the figures down. Scandal on e.tv, for example, was flighted on e.tv’s main channel, as well as its OVHD channel, eExtra. The eExtra channel obviously has a much-lower audience than e.tv itself, so it was pulling the numbers down. While the numbers in the original article were correct, the programmes were being averaged across multiple channels, which is the incorrect way of showing them. We regret the error.

Richard Lord (@rlord182) is media and operations director at Meta Media, South Africa’s newest media agency, and part of Nahana Communications Group (Interpublic Group of Companies). With over 20 years’ experience in the media industry and having worked for FCB, UM in London, and The MediaShop, he’s spent most of his career with IPG.

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#BigQ2020: Client, agency expectations for 2020

Keri-Ann Stanton

Keri-Ann Stanton (@KAmuses) is head of PR for Avatar PR, part of the Avatar Agency Group owned by M&N Brands, a new agency network for Africans by Africans. A multi-award-winning PR strategist and creative (APEX, Loeries, SABRE EMEA, African Excellence and Prisms), she works across sectors and disciplines from FMCG to SOEs. The global Holmes Report named her as one of the top 25 communication innovators in EMEA in 2017 and she has been invited to speak on various panels in Miami, Rwanda and SA.

I expect more projects, less retainers

Watching the whirlwind of client changes and restructuring and getting future-ready or whatever buzzwords of the moment are used to deal with the ugliness of a shrinking economy and retrenchments and downsizing: I expect more projects and less retainers.

It takes nerves and guts of steel to work in this environment because it affects your planning, your resourcing and cashflow. But agility also breeds creativity, and high-impact project work maybe rewarding as you work within tight parameters and timelines. I like it.

I expect more best-of-breed collaboration

This is the time for freelancers to regain their foothold in the economy. High-output, high-delivery project work isn’t made for junior staff. You need to be able to pull best-of-breed consultants together who understand collaboration, specialisation and end goals. Instead of trying to fit an existing team around every unique brief, I’ve moved to creating ‘dream teams’ that fit the client, project and timeline.

I expect more main-market briefs

Q4 2019 was an eye opener in just how many ‘traditional’ agencies have been failing clients in understanding the market they’re selling to. And the answers to this are anything but simple. The main market is nuanced, segmented, regionalised. When clients understand that, and give time to the right agencies to craft these solutions (what’s up with these one-week turnarounds?), then we may actually start seeing good work instead of plasters over mediocre solves.

I expect more media closures

I don’t think I need to explain further. Magazines and newspapers are luxury items now. While there are some clever crowd-funding and paywall campaigns, the money needed to keep true, proper journalism alive is shrinking. The upside is that all the marvellous storytelling talent can be absorbed into your best-of-breed team collaborations.

I expect more safe, less edgy

When clients are under pressure (doing more with less) and agencies are under pressure (doing more with less) and the relentless wheel of delivery picks up pace, then safe, tick-the-box campaigns become the norm. I saw it in the entries that I judged last year across Prisms, Sabre EMEAs, Loeries etc — the industry feels depressed.

I expect more events and activations

Clients are wanting something tangible. Something they can see /touch/hear/feel and that puts them bang! centre in the middle of their markets. I’m not sure it’s the most-effective tactic but I’m seeing more and more of it.

I expect more ‘testing’ and ‘trying’

The era of long relationships and commitments and growing together seems to be coming to a messy end. Clients are jumpy and jumping: a project with this one, a project with that one — chasing bigger and better on less and less. Nerves and guts of steel, as I said earlier. Rest when it’s quiet because three campaigns will land at the same time the following week.

I expect more downsizing

Clients want to know you have big teams and resources, and can handle their work seamlessly. But the pitch win soon translates into projects and tight budgets. Agencies can’t cope with heavy overheads and need to become more agile and flexible in answering to these changing needs.

I expect more disruption from my younger peers

The kids are okay, and they are doing the things. From Skinny Sbu hustling the president to wear his socks to Zkhiphani.com owning a space that marketers haven’t woken up to properly [full disclosure: M&N Brands, which owns Avatar PR, established M&N Entertainment a year ago to house its media investments, including the newly acquired youth culture magazine] — these are the ones I watch.

I expect more demand for senior hands-on

Clients need answers on the spot; strategy changes in real time. I’m not sure how we’re growing the next generation of practitioners in a fast-paced environment like this. It’s worrying.

I expect more hyper-connectedness

Unless you’ve mastered your craft and expanded your skills and are committed to outcomes, 2020 is going to be very, very hard for you. We’re working on a national campaign — with multiple stakeholders — that has no meetings: it’s Google Docs, Dropbox, Slack, Zoom, WhatsApp groups and, very rarely, emails. I’ve watched the youngsters thrive, and the seniors struggle. Adapt or die.

Clicks ’n Tricks: Tech that puts the customer first

career-resume-hiring-job-interview by Coffee Bean courtesy of Pixabay

by Charlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) One of the greatest challenges facing advertisers today is the effective incorporation of technology into campaign execution.

As marketers, we’re allocating an increasing amount of our budget to marketing technology (martech) — getting on for a third of total spend according to Martech Today. This is undeniably good news if it improves the efficacy of our advertising and helps us serve creative messages that resonate and elicit a response from our target audience.

Is SA getting martech spend wrong?

Yet, I have a very real concern that here, in South Africa, we’re spending on the wrong type of martech.

Globally, there’s a big move towards unifying data so that brands may better understand existing customers, and thus tap into their needs and upsell them. Gartner reports that interest in customer data platforms (CDPs), which facilitate this, is at an all-time high.

This investment is tightly aligned with an oft cited 2014 study by the Harvard Business Review which found that acquiring new business is, depending on your sector, somewhere between five and 25 times more expensive than keeping current customers on your books.

But, locally, anecdotal evidence from conversations I’ve had with CMOs suggests that, across the banking, insurance, retail, ecommerce and auto sectors, companies, unaware of the potential of CDPs, are continuing to invest in data management platforms (DMPs) and other end-of-life ad tech in an effort to reach third party (ie unknown) audiences. In short, they’re building new empires rather than developing their current ones.

Unholy trinity

A mid-2019 Clicks ’n Tricks column spoke to the folly of this: an erosion of consumer trust, reduced cookie lifetimes and rampant ad fraud offer a trinity of reasons to move spend away from ad tech.

So why are South African brands seemingly so far behind their global counterparts when it comes to procuring effective martech? Why, indeed, are local companies not adopting CDPs in the way their international peers are?

In large part, I suspect it comes down to awareness. Little, if anything, has been said of CDPs in the local media and on the conference circuit. And the few brands that have implemented the tech are the local divisions of multinationals, having done so at the behest of their global management.

Why a CDP?

In the spirit of enlightenment, here follows a short summary of how CDPs work and why they have the potential to be such good news.

In most companies, customer data is fragmented — often lying in silos within marketing, sales, customer support and other line of business departments. It’s fragmented because customer journeys are not linear. As consumers, we research brands — and converse with them — across multiple channels and through multiple devices. Yet we expect brands to know who we are and to personalise our content (or, in a world where many brands still don’t get this right, we really, really like to spend with the ones that do).

As a CDP typically acts as a piece of middleware, it’s capable of ingesting and tagging data from pretty much any source, which means that it works to augment, rather than replace, other technologies that marketers have invested in. By standardising data storage and streamlining its processing, companies gain a single view of their customers. Aside from the obvious benefit this offers in helping better please the customer by personalising content to their interests, it can also address privacy concerns by providing effective data governance structures which will be of clear value to those companies still grappling with the implications of GDPR and POPI.

As with any tech implementation, deploying a CDP will have complexities, although constraints are more likely to be at a human implementation level, rather than with the technology per se. But the potential rewards for businesses willing to make the investment in unifying their customer data are significant. Analysis by London Research, which interviewed more than 200 companies with revenues of US$50m+, found that half of the respondents already used a CDP and that they were 2.5 times more likely to have significantly outperformed against their organisations’ main marketing goal than the non-users.

#BigQ2020: 20/20 vision

Masego Motsogi (@masegom) is the managing director at Grid Worldwide and her experience in the industry spans over 16 years. She has worked with clients across various industries, has a keen interest in youth and women development and their advancement in the industry. Masego strongly believes that the communications industry has potential to influence culture, and as such should take itself and its product with the seriousness it deserves.

2019 was a very interesting year. One could easily call it the year of negatives, what with the undeclared but very evident economic downturn; the plethora of commissions of enquiry that occupied our news headlines on a weekly basis; the upsurge of crime, especially femicide; the mess that is BREXIT; the impeachment enquiry on the other side of the Atlantic… I could go on but am sure you get the point. Certainly, from the personal conversations I had with peers, it seems this negativity or heaviness was experienced by many in their personal capacity. I’ve no doubt that other years had their share of negatives, but 2019 seemed to outdo the whole lot.

Macro issues

Macro issues matter but what do they mean for the industry we operate in? In my view, I think we’ve mostly been preoccupied with the world’s goings on and almost buckled down to just do what is expected of us. Have I seen the dial shift with the work we do? Perhaps yes in a few instances, along with the understanding that they likely haven’t been seismic events that call for big press statements and that some of these growth points will be incremental in nature.

Being the eternal optimist that I am, I would be loath to keep it at just a year lodged with negativity. I believe negative experiences do offer opportunities for learning and, hopefully, growth as the ultimate result. And so maybe 2019 offers us just that as 2020 begins.

Many pundits seem to have come to a consensus that 2020 is a year where hope will be revived and where the rewards for the slog put in during 2019 will pay off. This is the view I choose to hold myself and, with this, I put my hope in our industry and ever-present spirit to do work that delivers the goods but also impacts on our society.

What we can do

There are a few things that I strongly believe we may glean from years past and either continue to build on or start doing with great intent.

Technology to increase efficiencies

“Fourth industrial revolution (4IR)” seemed to have firmly etched itself into the South African lexicon in 2019. With these sorts of terms bandied about, though, we tend to focus on the theory and lag in delivering what they need to do. There have certainly been tracks made in relation to using technology to improve efficiencies. This, however, could be much improved to afford us more time to get back on the ground to learn much more from society and cullture, and the communities that make it. In turn, this will allow us to know much more and give us access to minds who deliver on culture. This leads me to my next point.

Stop using social media as the sole source of cultural insights

There’s no doubt that social media offers opportunities to ride the relevance train — we saw this recently with the #KFCproposal working phenomenally well for KFC. The reality, though, is that, with or without the social media eye, life carries on and what give work gravitas are true human insights. To understand these, we need to get back to being human beings by living life (and not through social media) and do our best to avoid being samples of 10 in the office that offer “insights” that are relatable only to us and our tribes. This will continue to lead to hollow work.

Honesty as a key tenet of our conversations

Having come into the industry close on 18 years ago, I remember how very hard but truly honest conversations could be had between clients and their agency partners. It would appear that 2008 and other factors that I am yet to decode have led to a largely master/servant relationship between clients and what I intentionally call agency partners. I hope that we can go back to building partnerships that are founded on respect and understanding, allowing us to be experts in our respective fields and resulting in constructive conversations.

Inform, entertain and inspire

We need to constantly remind ourselves why we do what we do. We’re here to inform customer about the brands we touch, and we need to do this while we entertain and education — but in an inspirational way and, where possible, make it beautiful. This needs to be our mantra, our daily reminder why we do what we do. While we do this, we need to remember what impact these often-repeated messages which we’re tasked to deliver have on our society.

2020 — what does it look like?

I’m looking forward to yet another year that’s injected with a greater degree of excitement and positive; to inching closer to us being able to deliver work that we’re increasingly proud of; to us realising that we can be pioneers in delivering communication ideas in new and different ways beyond the TV, computer and mobile screens; and to continuing to deliver meaningful work that builds glory for the brands we touch and the consumers of those brands.

Fair Exchange: Managing long- vs short-termism in marketing

in-the-short-term-in-the-long-term by Gerd Altmann courtesy of Pixabay

by Erna George (@edgeo23) I was recently trying to quell the frustrations of young marketers on the increasing operational focus required of them. In the discussion, I was asked how I would balance the long-term strategic principles or plan-setting with the (read the words carefully) very real challenge of short-term operational focus areas. The insolent marketer in me wanted to ask, “Is the long term just not as ‘real’ then?” but I didn’t (thank heavens the more-mature, more-calm me retained control).

Shape of marketing

You may be asking, “Is the short term taking over?” How do we protect long-term brand-building and -investment, and how do we keep young marketers engaged in their roles while building their strategic muscles? With the economy being under pressure, who is being brave enough to protect the brand story in the longer term? The focus on the bottom line or ROI is not going to go away. The shape of marketing is changing or, in some areas, has forever been altered, and it’s no longer a question of “either/or” but rather how to manage both. Love it or hate it, it unfortunately is what it is (yes, I hate that saying, too).

Having had a few people come and go from my teams over the years, I’m always keen to understand what the shape of marketing is externally. I’m also surprised by some of the roles being so generalist, while others seem almost myopically tight in focus. What do I mean?

Discipline and bravery

There are roles that focus across the value chain, where marketers have to immerse themselves in all aspects, from factory production and supply chain to on-shelf promotion and brand communication on social or other media. These roles yield commercial marketers who get involved with operations at a deep level — capability understanding, forecasting, costing and continuous monitoring and interjecting across all activities in the value chain. Sometimes, people feel overwhelmed by the weighting of the non-marketing activity focus and question whether this is marketing. The high operational focus with the increased short-term fires can take over, and finding room for the longer-term/more-strategic planning feels near impossible. The reality is that it will be up to each of us to make room for this, even in the most operationally focused business. This requires discipline and bravery. Be disciplined in planning diary time each week or month to conduct immersions, trade visits and/or competitor searches, and protect this external view/strategic development time. With the strategic framework in place, you’ll be able to sift the good from the bad — activating the short-term operational activities within the right framework. This will build the brand story slowly but surely.

Be brave and cultivate ways to ask what the purpose of daily tasks or rework are. Stop short-term elements that don’t build on the bottom line or towards the long-term plan. Sometimes holding the mirror up is what’s needed to stop the madness of swirl. This is easier said than done but we have to try. Perhaps recommend alternatives to the request that yields a result that satisfies but manages the energy and effort to the right quantum. Even in budget cuts, be more ruthless about cutting smaller bits and pieces and maintaining investment behind the correct bigger and bolder (more-strategic) areas. Use the consumer needs and agreed-upon strategic-growth vectors to justify these. Leaders, be open to hearing when people are ‘fighting’ for the right things.

Don’t remove the stretch

On the other end of the spectrum, there are marketers who focus tightly on brand communications — such as digital or promotions. While more focused, the commercial aspects of costing and tracking will still be present and ROI will be critical to finding the ‘formula’ of what works or what doesn’t. This does allow space for creativity, for thinking of the next big win that translates to the bottom-line return. However, I’m told that seeing the big picture (the strategic direction) is often hampered as scope narrows, and that a too-tightly defined role presents challenges in maintaining interest and showcasing potential for progression. Leaders, beware that, in the pursuit of lessening the load and trying to ‘protect’ marketers from the operational humdrum, you don’t remove the stretch required to grow and the scope to see the bigger picture.

Marketers, be cautious of losing your bravery, your curiosity or your voice to the safety of today’s returns.

While becoming more commercially astute, learn how to justifying bottom-line wins and longer-term prizes.
ROI (and budget cuts) must influence marketing strategy in line with answering the consumer needs
Leaders, beware of carving up roles to be too small to make them feel more creative; rather build in targets and disciplines that balance creative, thinking and doing.

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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Jarred Cinman

Trend 1: Industry disruption

Trend 2: New market entrants

Trend 3: The next wave of digital

See also

Rita Doherty

Emotions

Different ways of “thinking”

Speed

See also

See also

Africa culturally predisposed to acquiring skills relevant to the future world of work

Different view

WEF report

Clear opportunity

See also

Marc Horne

Era of opportunity

Shifts

See also

No major events

Main market

Top 10 TV shows December 2019

Channel

LSM 4–7

Top 5 LSM 4—7 Nov 2019 vs Dec 2019

Nov 2019

Dec 2019

% Diff

High-income

Top 10 TV shows December 2019

Channel

LSM

Sport

Keri-Ann Stanton

I expect more projects, less retainers

I expect more best-of-breed collaboration

I expect more main-market briefs

I expect more media closures

I expect more safe, less edgy

I expect more events and activations

I expect more ‘testing’ and ‘trying’

I expect more downsizing

I expect more disruption from my younger peers

I expect more demand for senior hands-on

I expect more hyper-connectedness

See also

Is SA getting martech spend wrong?

Unholy trinity

Why a CDP?

Further reading

Macro issues

What we can do

Technology to increase efficiencies

Stop using social media as the sole source of cultural insights

Honesty as a key tenet of our conversations

Inform, entertain and inspire

2020 — what does it look like?

See also

Shape of marketing

Discipline and bravery

Don’t remove the stretch