by Anon. My sobriety date is 6 December 2016. I’ve been in the ad game for almost 12 years. Our paths may have met; it’s just that I might have been too drunk to remember.
Pretending everything is ok
As a creative, I spend some of my time in boardrooms coming up with ideas or selling them. When I walk into these rooms, I leave my problems at the door. I put on a mask and pretend everything is okay. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. However, we’re taught to fake it till we make it.
For years, I didn’t feel that I had all that much of a drinking problem. Of course, I had problems, all sorts of problems. “If you had my problems, you’d drink too” was my feeling. Even after missing work on Mondays, going AWOL, losing jobs, getting arrested and being hospitalised with depression, I was still in denial.
I think my alcoholism was clouded by the big drinking culture in our industry. I used to jokingly say to my friends, “Bengithi siyaphuza, mara asingeni kule ngamla zase ‘spanini. Ziyabuhlaba!” (I thought black people drank, but we don’t have anything on the white people I work with.)
The beginning
In the beginning, I drank to relax or for fun. Having one or two-nyana during lunch or when working late was and still is the norm. Gradually, the effect of alcohol started doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself. The feeling of inadequacy and fear of people started slipping away. It gave me the courage to walk into air-conditioned boardrooms. Mind you, these boardrooms were too white. No one understood my insights, stories and ideas. Some of my work was getting rejected because I wasn’t articulate enough. I’d walk out feeling defeated and walk straight into king alcohol. One drink was too many and a thousand was never enough.
Please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming the industry for my alcoholism. The ad game has been nothing but good to me. It has introduced me to some kind, smart and very talented humans. I am the person that I am today because of all the countless chances it gave me.
I’m not unique. My illness is not unique. There’s someone else in the boardroom suffering from something. Living with things that happen in your life or head — that other people don’t experience or understand — is hard. The world of work demands more and more from each of us.
Support at work
Work is where we most need the support of others but we feel the need to hide.
We all like to think we can toughen up. When you are feeling at your lowest, it can be hard to trust that your colleagues or employer will understand, and even harder to have faith that they will put your interests at an equal footing with those of the organisation. What I’ve learned is that silence isn’t always the answer. If you’re suffering, speak to someone — even if you’re not quite ready to speak to your boss.
If just like me, when you honestly want to, you can’t quit entirely or, if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, please call Alcoholics Anonymous South Africa (AA) on this number — 0861 435 722.
Our guest writer officially started in advertising as a junior copywriter in 2007. He has worked for four top agencies in Johannesburg. When he realised that creativity had no cultural boundaries, he took his talents to one of the top agencies in the Middle East. His work has been recognised at both global and local awards show.
This year, MarkLives is shining a #SPOTLIGHT on health and wellness in the ad and marketing industries. We would like to hear your story and use our platform to create change in our industry, so please email us at ourstories at marklives dot com.
by Dr Carla Enslin. Here are two scenarios: 1) In a small central African country, riven by social complexity and internal strife, the state and its citizenry commit to a clear and compelling purpose on their road to recovery and so rise from the ruins. 2) On a far lower scale in product format, a bar of soap with ¼ moisturising cream evolves into a range propelled by a determination to redefine the global meaning of beauty.
These two very different scenarios are the results of four fundamental transformations to give rise to being primarily labelled “brand-oriented” and so becoming those countries, organisations, cities, product ranges, entrepreneurs, social movements and cyber communities that acknowledge their own existences as vibrant ecosystems in which unique and compelling reasons for being are central to all that they do and wish to achieve. These key shifts behind strategic brand building present themselves as measurable variables and offer us a brand-business metric to meaningfully support performance.
From the product- to the brand-oriented
Perhaps the most-significant trend in recent times has been the progressive transition from being product-led to marketing-led to being brand-led businesses or organisations. This fundamental shift has become the baseline measurement for a brand-business metric and a significant marker for the transition from production and sales aimed at enticing consumers to spend ever more on possessions, or worse, to simply ‘buy anything’, to brand-led business models focused rather on producing those items and creating those environments for people to prosper. At its core, this is the transition from product proposition to brand proposition or purpose, from a focus on what a product or service does to why it does what it does. A strategic brand has a deep understanding of why it matters, and this sense of purpose is central to how it positions itself in the mind of the market and how it models its business. It instinctively soundboards every decision and action against its very reason for existence. Whether it be a proposed merger, a contemplated acquisition, a new portfolio or a seasonal promotion, all are undertaken as meaningful extensions of the unique and compelling values it has to offer. Those leadership teams and organisations that are still battling to make this transition are wrestling their way past static ways of thinking and doing, and encumbered by legacy systems, processes and structures. A recent line of reasoning in Fast Company (17 January 2019) foretells the right call: “Purpose is something you believe, not something you make up one day as a marketing strategy.”
From a departmental to an organisation-wide brand remit
An ecosystem depends on all parts working together — its leadership thinks and acts brand-first and the purpose of the brand is enshrined as an organisation-wide remit. The standard approach of the past “I suggest you talk to HR (or) marketing” when employee and customer experiences are to be considered has made way for a stakeholder- and purpose-centric organisation, where all units and departments uphold the meaning and valued practices of the brand. In a recent interview on eNCA (28 June 2019), CEO Adrian Gore stated that the moral core of a business can be rooted in a purpose-built brand. Arising from this, the simple idea of making people healthier and enhancing their lives has evolved into a sophisticated, shared-value business model for Discovery.
In a world that is increasingly connected, the brand ecosystem depends on all parts to instinctively think and respond brand-first, and to do so with integrity and vigour. If purpose is the moral compass, the leadership and management determine the true direction and thereby enable and inspire the entire organisation to participate in and co-lead the brand-building endeavours. When the needle is not constant, where decisions and actions show signs of disconnect, doubts and distrust follow and equity may be eroded. Even a 243-year-old iconic country brand in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness may find itself under tremendous strain when artificial constructions such as “false” and “alternative truths” are seen to become part of its brand lexicon, and this in turn suggests that its brand meaning, leadership and people are increasingly out of kilter.
From a set of Ps to a 360-degree perspective
The vital shift, from regarding the brand remit as merely departmental to instead encompassing the entire organisation and encouraging participative leadership towards this goal, has caused major evolutionary changes. Organisations have largely moved from the previously mechanistic approach of the 4/8/12 Ps (product, price, place, promotion, etc) in their marketing orientation to a rather more-holistic and -integral ‘touch’ or contact point approach in shaping and building relationships with all stakeholder groups.
To further underscore this notion, a recent article in the Harvard Business Review led with the headline “Why Every Company Needs a Chief Experience Officer” (13 June 2019), and a recent survey (2018) by the global consultancy team Forrester indicated that 76% of executives today believe that supporting and promoting holistic experience strategies are now high, if not critical, business priorities. The quest to innovate and streamline capacity and capability, eg to implement fully automated stores managed only by artificial intelligence, nevertheless still depends on the strategic imperative to plan systemically in order to deliver the right experience, in the right way, at the right time. Brand-led organisations and practitioners are thoughtfully and carefully investing in outside-in thinking platforms and processes that enable them to map, create and reinforce congruent and meaningful brand experiences as seamlessly as possible. With equal commitment and rigour, they are developing systems and measures from inside out to enable, support and track performance across touchpoints, and to address challenges with increasingly nimbler solutions.
The global branding company, Siegel+Gale, surveys and ranks brands on how clear their identities are to their customers and how easy their services are to use. In the 2018 World’s Simplest Brand Index, Netflix ranked first. The success of this brand depends on a uniquely congruent user experience of convenience and delight in “movie enjoyment made easy” consistently delivered across touchpoints. From the inside out, Netflix leads its brand performance through a cultural model that clearly defines behavioural expectations and how these should manifest in daily operations. The brand’s behavioural code is captured in an internal document called “Netflix Culture: Freedom & Responsibility”, which is implemented fastidiously to build an increasingly more participative and self-regulated brand ecosystem. The brand culture, eg, celebrates those who act like leaders but also personally stoop to retrieve the trash from the floor; those who question everything and speak honestly; and those who are able to identify and discard that which does not matter in order to focus on the ideal and what deliverables may be required in order to achieve this.
From creative marketing communication to creative points of brand resonance
The brand-oriented organisation concerns itself deeply and intrinsically with the performance of every single touchpoint in every stakeholder network, and therefore also with the quality and application of its strategic insights, or in today’s terms, its data analytics. Where employed effectively, as the research company Gartner reasons, analytics moves beyond the descriptive (what happened?) and diagnostic (why did it happen?), to the predictive (what will happen?) and prescriptive (how can we make it happen?). Sophisticated data analytics enables the brand-oriented organisation to create real-time organisation-wide insights into stakeholder experiences, to identify and track the most-influential points of contact, to disrupt industry norms and to produce increasingly more-compelling and -meaningful brand experiences. These brands are insight-confident and purposefully create porous ecosystems, with feedback and participation loops to invite strategic partners and end users to share their thinking, to co-create product and service experiences, or to flag new opportunities.
By way of illustrating the point, as a leading manufacturer of high-quality power tools, DeWalt closely tracks the performance of all of its touchpoints, in particular those critically important in-use reports about its tools. The brand relies heavily on the experiences and insights of its community of more than 10 000 professional tradesmen and loyal customers to co-produce durable products that solve new challenges on worksites and to design entirely new product lines.
On a different track and vastly different in nature, but with similarities in thinking and practice, the small island of Palau located in the western Pacific Ocean hauled in a transdisciplinary team of specialists to help track and analyse the behavioural patterns of all its stakeholder groups in order to gain better insights into the human impact on the island’s natural and protected resources. Ranging from descriptive to prescriptive analytics, a critical point of brand resonance emerged: that first official moment where the visa entry is stamped into a passport document. The development team was able to focus their strategic and creative efforts and to conceptualise a unique and compelling experience, starting with an environmental pledge stamped into all passports and signed off by all international arrivals. This pledge will hopefully continue to resonate with the 2m+ tourists to visit Palau over the next 10 years as they learn to appreciate and perhaps later recall with some fondness all that the island had to offer.
Brands have evolved from focusing primarily on the creativity displayed in planned marketing and communication campaigns to being fully alert to the impact of all their touchpoints and, in particular, those most critical — those points of brand resonance with the most impact on stakeholders because of what the brand stands for. Equipped with sophisticated analytics and meaningful insights into user experiences, the brands of today are able to practice creative strategic thinking to realise the potential of the touchpoints that matter most.
Volvo’s brand purpose has always been to put the safety of people first. The company’s accident research team has been gathering real-world data based on accident reports since the 1970s in order to better understand what happens during collisions. This has enabled Volvo to design cars that are safer for everyone. Volvo’s commitment to purpose and industry wellbeing is public knowledge; in fact, it is 60 years ago now that Volvo freely shared its three-point safety belt patent with the world. Today, we all depend on this for our safety. Most recently, the brand has made all of Volvo’s safety research available by establishing a digital library with data gathered from more than 43 000 collisions and 72 000 people. The library is open and free to any company to learn from — a hyper-transparent step in the best interest of all and a point of committed brand resonance for the brand.
When a unique and compelling purpose adds value to peoples’ lives and becomes an organisation’s chief pursuit and natural way of thinking and doing (a living philosophy, so to speak), then a meaningful brand is brought into existence. Enabled by its leadership and culture, it operates in a mindful and nimble manner and moves outside-in and inside-out to swiftly create and deliver brand experiences that are always congruent with its unique reason for being.
The Havas Media Group’s Meaningful Brands index, conducted across 22 industries and 31 markets, measures brands that are seen to add value to quality of life. It is not encouraging to note that the 2019 results indicate respondents consider 58% of content created by brands as meaningless, and even more concerning is the fact that they could not care less if 77% of brands (three percentage points higher than in previous results), were to disappear overnight. Strategic brand-building is a commitment — a meaningful and holistic strategy. A dedicated culture with supportive operational analytics and designs is a baseline requirement for success, if not actually for survival.
Those transformations identified in this opinion piece present fundamental outcomes and key performance variables towards the useful development of a customised brand-business metric. They guide daily practice and continue to bolster the principles that give us the firmness of purpose to be always congruent in what we believe, say and do.
References & recommended reading/viewing
Atmar, H, Becdach, C, Kleinman, S & Rieckhoff, K, 2019: Bridging the gap between a company’s strategy and operating model. McKinsey & Company, p 2
Dr Carla Enslin is a founding member of the Independent Institute of Education’s Vega School and serves as its head of strategy and new business development. She is a research associate at the University of Stellenbosch Business School and teaching fellow at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
Absa confirmed the loss and the new agency in an emailed response to MarkLives: “In aligning with its rebrand and new business strategy, Absa’s Retail & Business Banking South Africa (RBB SA) division has appointed Wunderman Thompson as its new creative agency, effective 1 December 2019. This comes after a comprehensive open-market procurement process. RBB SA thanks FCB for their contribution to Absa’s brand refresh and positioning over the last three years, and wish them well in their future endeavours. FCB continues to provide services to Absa across all markets.”
Comments Thabang Skwambane, FCB Joburg managing director, “FCB Joburg and everyone who has worked on the account is exceptionally proud of the work we have delivered since winning the business in 2016. Despite this loss, FCB Joburg is in an incredibly good place. We are going to end 2019 on a positive note [all things considerd], and we are eagerly looking forward to 2020.”
by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Ntombikayise Banda (@ntombibanda) is striving to make science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects more accessible to South African learners through low-cost robots that may be programmed in local languages. Her efforts were recognised with a seed grant at the SAB Foundation Social Innovation and Disability Empowerment Awards in October 2019. We caught up with Banda to find out what’s potting with her platform, FundaBotix.
Q5: First of all, please tell us about FundaBotix: how does it work? Ntombikayise Banda: The FundaBot is a low-cost robotics platform designed to equip learners with the skills of the future, and to change perceptions of maths and science as difficult and/or boring subjects. The robotics platform provides learners with the opportunity to develop engineering skills, such as programming, mechanics and electronics, and to gain exposure to other fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT). The accompanying curriculum and activities are designed such that learners are required to make use of maths and science concepts to build the robots and program them to solve various tasks, thereby making the learning of maths and science fun, engaging, and tangible.
The robotics platform is modular in design, making it extensible with various IoT sensors, such as light, temperature, and moisture sensors. The platform may be programmed using mobile devices and PCs, making the technology easily accessible in areas with little computing infrastructure. To decrease the barriers to coding for youngsters, a visual drag-and-drop interface is used, and allows for the robots to be programmed in African languages such as isiZulu and Sesotho. The support for African languages ensures that learners can have a better understanding of technical terms and concepts.
Q5: What inspired you to build this robotic platform? NB: I founded an NGO called SciExplo in 2013 to promote science fields to learners from previously disadvantaged communities. Over the years, we reached out to learners from 18 township schools in Tshwane, exposing them to fields such as aeronautical engineering, biotechnology, robotics and cryptography. A lot of the learners expressed interest in owning robotics kits.
At the time, we were importing our robotics kits from the UK, which was expensive and thus inaccessible to many of the learners. This prompted me to design a low-cost robotics platform to meet this rising interest and need. I also felt that minimal exposure to robotics was not sufficient for nurturing innovation, and that it was very important for learners to be able to continue their learning at home. This led to the birth of FundaBotix, which aims to provide convenience, inclusive education, and access to low-cost but powerful technology.
Q5: Could you talk us through the development process? NB: At the core of the robotics platform is a low-end microcontroller, chosen with cost in mind, but it has memory space limitations. Therefore, FundaBotix had to develop proprietary firmware to innovatively translate user code into a much-smaller memory footprint. Our first prototype was made from cardboard paper with a prototyping electronics board. A number of iterations (and months) later, the robotics platform looks a lot more professional, with the product launch planned for early 2020.
In order to test various aspects of the prototype and curriculum, we partnered with the Mae Jemison Science Reading Room based in Mamelodi, [Tshwane], for running pilot studies. Involving learners early on in our journey helped us prioritise ease-of-use, functionality and learning gains. In March 2019, FundaBotix was incubated by TuksNovation, a business incubator based at the University of Pretoria, providing the company with much-needed business support and mentorship. FundaBotix [also] recently received a Seed Grant at the 2019 SAB Foundation Social Innovation and Disability Empowerment Awards, which will be of great assistance in moving the project forward.
Q5: Are you involved in any other social innovation projects? NB: At this stage, my focus is on FundaBotix to ensure the success of the project and a wide reach of our product and technology. However, I believe that my passion for technology and education will see me create more products in the near future that address the education challenges in our country.
Q5: What can we, as individuals, do to break down linguistic and digital barriers to learning in South Africa? NB: I believe that access and exposure are the two main ingredients in reducing the linguistic and digital barriers to learning. In our individual capacities, I believe that we should either donate to or become part of movements that are actively translating content into various languages to enable easier understanding of learning materials.
Removing digital barriers at its core requires access to computing infrastructure. As active citizens, we can play an active role by being guardians of our alma maters. If each former student contributed monetarily or in kind towards the upgrade of school facilities (and upskilling of teachers), I believe the digital gap would be reduced drastically, moving the country towards equal education.
Other than that, we can impact lives by donating our time and/or resources to education outreach programmes. One important principle I advocate, when bringing technology to learners, is to encourage learners to not only become consumers of technology but to be producers of it as well. Therefore, technology should be used to support learning, and to nurture entrepreneurial and innovative mindsets.
Carey Finn (@carey_finn) is a writer and editor with a decade and a half of industry experience, having covered everything from ethical sushi in Japan to the technicalities of roofing, agriculture, medical stuff and more. She’s also taught English and journalism, and dabbled in various other communications ventures along the way, including risk reporting. As a contributing writer to MarkLives.com, her regular column “Q5”hones in on strategic insights, analysis and data through punchy interviews with inspiring professionals in diversive fields.
by Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA) I’ve steered clear of interviewing advertising figureheads, mainly because I feel the industry is in a pretty sorry state (IMHO), but Khaya Dlanga (@khayadlanga) is an exception — he learnt the ropes in the hurly-burly of top ad agencies, both as copywriter and strategist, before moving client-side. Now he heads up marketing for a dynamic new company that is sticking to the principles of KISS: Keeping It Simple (Seriously).
Full podcast transcript
Bradley Elliott: Welcome to Episode 7 of Only Connect, a MarkeLives.com podcast. I’m your host, Bradley Elliott, founder of Continuon and Platinum Seed. This month I get to interview one of South Africa’s most recognised creators, Khaya Dlanga. Khaya started off on the agency side as a copywriter for agencies such as MetropolitanRepublic and The Jupiter Drawing Room before moving to client side, where he was senior communications manager at Coca-Cola, as well as the marketing manager at Amstel and is now the CMO at Rain. He has also published a number of books — over five, if I remember correctly — and is one of the most-influential creators in South Africa. In fact, he has over 400 000 followers on Twitter [now close on 500k — ed-at-large], and is really seen as a force in the creative industry. We unpack a whole bunch of topics and just a really, really good chat in general. So, I hope you enjoy this and strap in.
Firstly, thanks for taking the time to chat to me obviously. Today I wanted to chat to you a bit about working for Nando’s. I want to chat a bit about humour in advertising and how do you use comedy in advertising. I’m focusing quite a bit on advertising, which is something that I tend not to do. The first thing is this interesting research going around, around how millennials in South Africa actually are ranking happiness as their no. 1 priority and spending time with their family and actually quite an optimistic view. The point is that, apparently, they are quite optimistic about the future which, given our economic history, is interesting but it’s great. So, I think you know, having worked on Nando’s as a start and humour, in general, how do you see that playing to the audience, given that they are going after happiness? Does it play into the audience? Nando’s really are the best. If you look at their community management, their Twitter account…
Khaya Dlanga: If Nando’s community manager is listening, I might be hiring. [Laughs]
BE: Me too! Although I don’t think I’ve got the same budget! KD: Happiness is a fundamental human driver, so it just makes a lot of sense. And especially when people are going through really hard times they want to look beyond their horrible existence at this point in time. Brands that do that will win, and I think that’s why Coca-Cola for many years has just been really driving the idea of happiness even though they don’t really speak; it’s not always ha-ha humour, you know, there’s an emotion that it evokes and because happiness is one of the most-important human needs for us to survive. And I also think that happiness also helps with optimism. I think it also talks to the mindset myth that maybe South Africans have that resilience and the fact that things will get better — that, if they’re worse, they can only get better from there. When I look at some creative people, who are from South Africa, have done very recently some pretty amazing things, like Nelson Makamo, who is a South African artist. I mean, he was on the cover of Time magazine.
BE: Wasn’t he on the Daily Show as well? KD: Yes, yes, he was on The Daily Show [very recently]. And Oprah bought his work, Black Coffee buys his work, Alicia Keys — I just think that there is an amazing sense of optimism on account of South African creativity. When I saw his art on the cover of Time Magazine, I smiled —it’s funny enough, actually — that issue was called “The Art of Optimism”. And then you have Laduma [Ngxokolo]’s clothing label, [Laduma]. He was in New York Fashion Week just a few weeks ago…
BE: He got a standing ovation KD: … and he got a standing ovation, got raving reviews, and his work is going to be on “Coming to America 2”, Eddie Murphy is going to be out there wearing his clothes. This movie that’s coming out next year is going to be huge. And Sho Madjozi, [recently], Ellen posted a video of John Cena dancing to her song called John Cena. I think that our creative people are really beginning to show us that we can bridge the world — we can become explosive on a global scale by actually embracing our South African-ness.
BE: It’s all about having that local root context, as opposed to trying to bridge it through an inauthentic sort of western…
KD: Because that’s already been done. And, so for, me that’s the one thing that I really appreciate and I love to see. If we are not optimistic, I don’t know if we’d be able to break the boundaries that these guys are actually breaking around the world.
BE: There’s a lot of inauthenticity around brands at the moment. People don’t trust brands and they don’t trust the media and all the indexes — KD: By the way, I also hate the word authenticity —
BE: Yeah, when it’s right… KD: What do you mean by inauthentic?
BE: What I mean is, brands typically [are] just using all the new media as a platform to broadcast messaging and not add value to people’s lives, and not really actually live the values that a lot of them stand for. Right? KD: So, what I mean when one is authentic is that, when people are presenting to your brand, the brand owner, the agency, you know that — what do you mean?
BE: 100%, yeah, but do you think it allows brands to be more personable and accessible if done in a human way? Like Nando’s do[es] it well, and I keep on mentioning Nando’s — and that’ll go into my next question — you see guys like Pick n Pay trying to [be funny], and you just know that it’s not their value to be funny or humorous or optimistic… KD: Also, I think that if you are funny in a way that makes sense [for] who you are, that makes sense. For [PnP], it was condescending. Someone said, there was that black intern, no one listened to [laughs] — and that’s what happened in that execution!
And then Nando’s obviously came in and hopped in on that … it was brilliant.
So, with humour, it’s got to make sense. Does it make sense for the brand?
BE: Because it’s hard. Lots of brands take themselves — or companies — I hate the word brands — companies take themselves too seriously. “Oh, we cannot talk like that!” KD: But [for] some companies that works and it’s fine, it’s perfect. It is also very important that the brand owners who are working on the brand also understand the zeitgeist/what is happening in society, and also in connection with the brand itself. That will then translate into the work that is created. I almost feel, when you hire certain people to work for you, one needs to look beyond the person’s capabilities but at the personality of the person and what they are bringing to the brand itself and the fit, exactly. I feel a lot of the time that goes missing. And that is how humour does go completely off.
BE: So Nando’s have done a great job. You can tell the person sitting behind that account (whoever you are again, I’ve tried to find you a few times) is literally living it. They are the brand, you can tell.
I thought we’d come to a question about Rain. What are you doing at Rain? What are the values of Rain and what are you up to here? KD: The most-important thing we want to deliver is to get out of people’s way. Give you great, affordable data and that is it. That’s what we want to do. Because a lot of people are complaining about data — it’s expensive, #datamustfall. We want to be able to answer that question so that people can have access to the internet and do the things that they really love doing. Something that I loved — and I always reference it — [is] that apparently when you get to Facebook, there’s a booklet that you get given and you read: one of the lines or the mantras is, “People don’t use Facebook because they love Facebook. They use Facebook because they love their friends.” For us, I never want to live under the illusion that people love Rain. People love what they can do, because of it. They love the fact that they can access the internet and watch videos, I don’t have to worry about how much money I’m spending because it’s so affordable. And it works.
BE: But isn’t that the true value of a good brand? KD: Yes. When it doesn’t work, people are frustrated with Rain. They’re so mad at Rain. When it works, they don’t think about Rain. And what that means is it’s not just about the brand. It’s not about the product itself; it’s making sure that everything in the background is working toward—
BE: It’s what the product enables. That’s going to mean value. The true value. KD: And to give you that value, so that you don’t have to think about it.
BE: Firstly, it’s an awesome position and message that you’re getting out, but I’ve seen you practice it. I’ll give you two quick examples that I’m thinking of. Your website — super-simple, super-clean; no over-complicated value proposition and fancy navigation. That’s the one thing. The second thing is I’m actually working with another company; I reached out to Michael, Willem and a few guys to partner — and it just was cool, very refreshing [to have them come back and say]: “That’s cool, we can partner but, bear in mind, we give our partners no special rates. Because we’ve got one price, one offering. And whether you are a partner, whether you’re a corporate — that’s what it is. All we want to do to provide good data affordably…” KD: One of the dangers of marketing is thinking that you need to create all the fluff, whereas the key is actually simplicity. Creating simplicity is extremely difficult. It took us quite a while to actually go and say, “The unlimited data network”.
BE: And people get scared that it’s so… KD: We’ve been offering unlimited data. So that’s the network that we are. Why are we not saying that? It’s very obvious in hindsight but to get to that point was not as simple as it seems. Again, for us, we have to try to be as simple as possible. But we’re also okay with being wrong. For example, now we’ve decided that we’re going to remove devices from the website because that’s not our core business; our core business is selling data. Is it a good decision? We don’t know, we might figure out, in a month or two that okay, you know what? Actually—
BE: How do you — I guess [a] bit more of a rhetorical question is — how do you compete against the big guys, like Vodacom, all of them… but I think you’ve indirectly answered it, in that it’s just that relentless focus and actually giving value to the customer as — could you can’t outspend them. You can’t outspend them, so how do you… KD: How I see it is that we’re not competing because we’re providing data only; that’s what we do. And we don’t really offer a similar product, because our products we have [are] like R250 unlimited. I don’t know if there’s anyone else who offers unlimited that way. For 19 hours of the day, you can use as much internet as you want. But we also encourage our customers to keep their other network, whatever network it is they use, because you can make a phone call because [we] can’t make them, and in some areas there are parts where you’re not going to have connectivity. Our philosophy really is that we want to play nicely with others. That philosophy is a driver to where we are because, even the people that work for us, we make sure that they’re really good, decent, nice people; there are no big egos [who] are running around, because the moment we have these big egos is when we will contradict everything that we’re trying to build as a company.
BE: I mean, that’s a great philosophy. I’m sure ‘the competitors’ don’t share the same values. I hate to break it to you, but—
KD: You know what I find interesting? I think individuals are actually more likely to be that way inclined and I think, sometimes, when people are in a boardroom setting, there is a posturing that maybe sometimes may take place. Ultimately, I think every company (hopefully) that exists, the original intention was to always to provide something good to people. And it was never to be this monster that goes to kill the competition and do all that; it’s an ecosystem where everybody can survive. I don’t think you’ve got bad players and [those] who have bad intentions. Maybe I’m naive but I really don’t—
BE: No, I don’t think so. Unless you look at the likes of Steinhoff [laughs]. Greed doesn’t bring out the best in people! But, on that note, I’m going to give you a bit of context around it. Som you’ve got a strong agency background, you just mentioned the agency and actually partnering with the agency as partners. I think agencies are dying — I know you’ve read all about consultancies vs agencies. Can you really partner with an agency? And what I mean, when someone’s cutting a check, is it really a partnership? KD: Because we’re the kind of business that we are, just because I happen to have that marketing function doesn’t mean that I’m not involved in product development. That doesn’t mean I’m not involved in business development. I’m literally involved in as many parts of the business as my abilities can handle. So, I will go and work with other parts…
BE: Sorry, [the] reason for my question is because the role of marketing, in my mind, has changed. It’s now across business functions [rather] than isolated silo functions. Agencies are still working at the silo… KD: You’re right. That’s precisely the reason why — because this is how we work here internally — that I find that, in a lot of organisations, product development will come up with an idea and they say, “Hey, guys/marketing, [here are] all the bells and whistles, now go and to sell this thing.” And, so, what we do here is, “Okay, we need to go and sell this thing. Okay but why do we need to sell it? What is the problem? Oh, people don’t understand. Why don’t they understand it? Because when they get to the website, they don’t know where to click. Why don’t they know where to click? Oh, so the issue then is not marketing; it is that we need to fix something at first, in the background.” So, what I tried to do and that everybody in the business tries to do is to fix the actual issue first. Maybe we have the luxury because it’s still new and young; we can just go back and fix. If it means we have to change the product, then we change the product. That’s how you actually spend less money on your advertising because you fix the real issue, the real problem. Then, when it comes to partnerships, I see these partnerships as very crucial to the success of an organisation. For example — and I agree with you — I think that the current business model of agencies is not sustainable, does not work, and I think neither clients nor agencies really know how to fix them. There are a number of issues there; it’s one where agencies feel that they’re being underpaid for what they’re delivering and, secondly, where clients feel that they’re not receiving any value for what they’re paying.
BE: I was about to say that agencies are overvaluing themselves, and the clients don’t feel the value. KD: Exactly. So now there is this chasm; there’s no agreement at all between the two because, again, the client is signing the check, they’re going to have the power and I hate that word. But it does create the power dynamic. Our model here is we ensure that our partners are in the room even when we’re brainstorming a product. When we’re not even sure what we are going to do yet, they are in the room.
BE: And do you find that they add value? It must be something they’re not used to; they must be taken aback! KD: For now, the partner that we have, with the only partner that we deal with, I really do feel this is the kind of ideal partnership.
BE: But it’s collaboration. KD: Yes, it is. Like if I walk out of the boardroom here, in two minutes I’m in their offices, and I’m talking to them.
BE: They’re an extension of your team. It’s almost like you act as one company. Exactly. And I think that’s great. I mean, in our business, that’s the way we’ve operated best with our clients, as well. You actually are just an extension of that team. KD: One of the biggest challenges as a creative person, when I went to Coca-Cola, was I would be working with an agency and my involvement in the creative process — you could feel that it was making people tense, not knowing how to deal with me or work with me because I’m a client who understands the entire process. It’s just that they still see you as a client who is trying to destroy their — kill their baby — whereas I’m trying to make the baby better.
BE: They’re very protective over their own ideas, right? KD: Because everyone is trying to make something better. I used to say, for me, the creatives [who] I liked the least are the ones who’re the most-protective over their ideas, because what does that tell me about me you as a creative? It tells me that you don’t think you can have a better one.
BE: Also, the whole thing about being creative is thinking outside of the box, so if you can’t let your own idea go, then you don’t have the ability to actually just think outside the box. KD: But my favourite ones listen; they hear you say, “Oh, alright”, and then they’re thinking, and then their work is even better. I love the collaborative process; I am super-involved in the thinking, the strategy, the actual creative itself, how we should work together. And for example, I want to make sure that the agency is not under any financial constraints because, if they are, the agency is strained financially. And this is also the vision of the founders of the company: let’s make sure that the hygiene issues are covered because [then] they will give us their best.
BE: At least that item’s off the table. It’s like when you pay someone a decent salary, the money topic doesn’t become anything anymore; you just know they can perform. KD: That way, you’re going to have a happy agency. And then you’re going to have a happy client.
BE: Did you go through a pitch for that partner? And do you believe in the pitching process? Do you not think that it’ll really just skew the dynamic and bring in that powerplay even more so? KD: It’s a tricky one, because I think…
BE: Was there a pitch for your accountant? KD: That’s hilarious!
BE: Just saying — we don’t do it. You don’t get, say three sets of auditors [to] come and pitch—
KD: You know, I think the problem with marketing is because everyone thinks that they have a great opinion and view of it — whereas no one has an opinion about the accounting — and therefore everyone thinks that they have something to say about it. I feel [that] this is one function that in almost any organisation that everybody has a point of view on, and which you can’t really dismiss everyone’s views, because it’s living and they can see it.
BE: Yeah, my teenager can do social media. This marketing cross function across business and you touched on a few points about collaboration and learning and solving the problem quickly, and that comes back to feedback loops. Marketing, for a while, was always one-way communication. But, if you look what its real job was, it was for growth. And I read a great LinkedIn post recently, and it was [about] ‘can we stop calling people “chief growth officer”? It’s still marketing; it’s just now we’re actually able to measure the growth and sales. You’re now actually accountable because now we can actually tie numbers to you, as opposed to you putting up a billboard and saying, “Oh, well, I’ve done my job”, right? KD: There was a Harvard Business Review, I think last year/the year before (I don’t remember) that I read and it was talking about how the one function most-dissatisfied with in the C-Suite — it was marketing. And the reason for it was because CEOs, when they hire the new CMO, they are like, ‘Great, you’re going to turn the business around; you’re going to create miracles.’ But then they are not given the power to make that happen. So, if I need to speak to finance so that they can fix the processes so things can happen faster, they don’t have the power to do that. Actually, that the problem is, it’s actually the product itself, “Can we add a change?”—
BE: No, you don’t touch it. KD: No, you [can’t] do that. And I think the mistake sometimes for marketers is where you impose your ego on what you’re creating. It’s not about you; it’s about this thing that you are selling and growing or solving. For us, what is the issue that we’re solving? The issue we’re solving is the issue of affordable data.
BE: But you’re also empowered to do it. That’s all the big companies — I don’t know if you’ve seen, I think McDonald’s and all of them — they’ve all lost CMOs; none of them are replacing global CMOs. I don’t think the CMO is a function. I think everyone’s going, “Oh, CMOs aren’t needed.” It’s not the title that’s the problem; tt’s the organisational structure. KD: Because it’s siloed. That’s the problem. It’s siloed.
BE: Some really big retailers that we work with, for customer experience and marketing, forget about sitting in the same room. They sit in two separate buildings, kilometres apart, and I’m like, “Do you guys chat?” “Oh no, IT will link us up.” KD: What tends to happen is the creation of functions that don’t need to be there sometimes. And then, because you’ve created it, [it] needs a reason to exist, and will create work that is not necessary.
BE: And just on that note you talking about being Harvard Business Review, what are your top resources/podcasts/books that you read? KD: I love reading—
BE: Outside of your own Twitter account?! [laughs]
KD: I love reading Harvard Business Review; to be honest, whenever it comes out, I go and buy one. What I’ve also said to marketing students — I always say, you guys are really behind. If it’s in a textbook, in this time, it’s already too late. And you almost have to be quite curious about what is currently taking place rather than what are you reading in the textbook. I feel like we’re living in such a fast-changing world, that what I read is literally — it could be an article that I find online about something that is amazing, rather than something that I found in… Because, at some point, it’s already outdated
BE: Like when you go to YouTube and you watch a music video and the next thing you’re watching [something else] — and you don’t know how you got there? KD: I promise you, that’s literally it, and I just find myself going deeper, and then I go and, maybe if I’m reading about a particular subject, then I just go in and deeper and deeper into it.
BE: Like what you said earlier, I think curiosity is actually something we need to hire for as well. Because, like you said, you can’t have this person sitting in these chief marketing positions or whatever just so isolated. Okay, man, Khaya, it’s been awesome chatting to you. I really appreciate it; I enjoyed that. That was great. KD: Thank you so much.
BE: This has been Only Connect, a MarkLives.com podcast… Until next time — keep connecting!
Transcribed using otter.ai and then edited lightly.
The founder of Continuon and Platinum Seed, Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA)has created a number of businesses in the digital and technology sectors. He believes that marketing needs to be reinvented so that it becomes more useful to humans and brands. He’s also a collector of fine whisky. Bradley contributes “Only Connect”, exclusively to MarkLives.com. In this podcast, he chats to custodians of the world’s top brands about what matters most to them.
by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) They already are, says Styli Charalambous, publisher and CEO of online newspaper Daily Maverick, which turned 10 in October 2019. The online daily has seen its own membership initiative go from strength to strength over the past year.
“Sustainable business model”
“The inspiration came from desperation, and trying to figure out what a sustainable business model looked like for quality news media,” he says. He’s explaining the roots and rise of its membership programme, Maverick Insider, which counted 8 400 contributors as of November. Launched in August 2018, the initiative, which continues to grow, has opened up a range of new opportunities for the publication.
The financial challenges faced by the news media in South Africa and abroad are far from unknown, and finding effective solutions has become integral to the upholding of democracy. Understanding this, Charalambous and his colleagues sought one that they believed would speak to their publication’s values; the idea of a paywall was quickly ruled out.
“We saw that some global players were starting to excel with their paywall solutions, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, but we knew that a paywall was not an option for Daily Maverick,” he explains. “We didn’t want only people who could afford it to have access to it, because of the impact that would have on the country. But recognising that reader revenue was possible, and that people were starting to get traction out of that, we researched the options. Membership stuck out as one that really resonated with the kind of journalism that we do, and our belief systems — and we decided to jump head-first into it.”
“Audience engagement”
Drawing on research by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the Membership Puzzle Project, Charalambous and his team designed Maverick Insider, trialling a short-term recurring donation scheme to gather data and feedback that could be used to polish the membership programme. He emphasises that Insider is about much more than financial contributions, differentiating it from donation or subscription services: “It’s really about taking audience engagement to the next level and embracing it as part of the organisation. We’re committed to it becoming part of our culture.”
While the Maverick Insider membership programme is important to the overall success of the organisation, accounting for close to 30% of its payroll, it’s not intended to become the exclusive source of revenue. “The way I look at it is that general news media need to have 6–7 significant revenue streams in order to survive,” says Charalambous. “Those will be different from one [organisation] to the next. [Finding them] is a process of deep introspection and entrepreneurship.”
At Daily Maverick, these include philanthropy, advertising, events and other sponsorships.
I’m a Maverick Insider, are you? Daily Maverick journalists Defend Truth everyday. Join the community of people who are supporting quality independent journalism.
Going forward, the aim is ultimately for Insider to be integrated in the newsroom and production processes — for the membership programme to become part of the Daily Maverick DNA, he says. The community of contributors have skills and expertise to offer, as well as ideas and information. Engagement, he says, is key, and new hires will likely be made to drive this. Events, of which an estimated 35 had been planned between September 2019 and September 2020, would be an important means of engaging with members, and one of the primary benefits offered to them.
Charalambous stresses that the publication is looking at ways people may become members without making financial contributions (currently the only option). “It’s about diversifying the membership base and getting younger people into that mix,” he says. “Our members do skew older and whiter, and we’ve got to try our best to remedy that.”
According to him, the core focus of Maverick Insider is building a community. “Financial success is not the reason that we’re doing it — it’s a byproduct of building this community — and if we build the community well, financial success will come from that. But if we focus on [money], we’re just going to make the wrong decisions and alienate people, and do things that don’t align with the reason people wanted to support us in the first place.”
Targets
He believes that the programme could celebrate 30 000 or even 40 000 members in the coming years. Currently, the team has a soft target of 500 new members each month but this figure is not fixed. The Daily Maverick website is visited by approximately 1.7m readers monthly, and its newsletter goes out to 115 000 inboxes — a number Charalambous is focused on increasing.
The success of Maverick Insider has debunked the myth that South Africans will not pay for news, he says: “We’re not selling news; we’re selling a news experience. As long as we keep doing our jobs well, and move into more-engaged journalism opportunities, that will only fuel the membership numbers. Which is great, because there’s this linear relationship between the quality of the work that you do, and the support.”
While some may argue that what works at Daily Maverick may not be easily cut and pasted at another media house, Charalambous champions reader revenue as a strong answer to the question of sustainability. “I think there are very few organisations where a membership model couldn’t work,” he says frankly. “How you design it is unique to you and your audience, and your cause, and the benefits that you are offering, or the value exchange, and it’s pretty flexible — you could run a membership plan that doesn’t involve a financial transaction at all, you could have a fixed price, but behind all of that sits the bedrock of audience engagement.”
Continued growth
Hopeful about the state of the news media globally, as it, Charalambous suggests, emerges from more than a decade of “disruption by players that weren’t even originally in its space,” he predicts continued growth for Daily Maverick. By the end of the year, its staff count would have almost doubled in size, he says, and going into 2020 the team would be considering such projects as a books division, following on from the publication of the online daily’s 10-year anniversary book, as well as a multimedia show, podcast, documentary division, and possibly even print news product. “We’re riding the wave of momentum and growth,” he says.
Carey Finn (@carey_finn) is a writer and editor with a decade and a half of industry experience, having covered everything from ethical sushi in Japan to the technicalities of roofing, agriculture, medical stuff and more. She’s also taught English and journalism, and dabbled in various other communications ventures along the way, including risk reporting. As a contributing writer to MarkLives.com, her column, “Press Pass”, is a monthly feature spotlighting media leaders and their responses to the trends and tribulations in the industry.
by Richard Lord (@rlord182) Here are the top 10 television shows in South Africa for the month of October 2019. Because very few advertisers target all adults in South Africa, I have instead broken the data down broadly into the main market (LSM 4–7) and the high-income households (LSM 8–10).
Local content
The first thing that becomes obvious, whether looking at either market segment, is that the tops shows are all dominated by local content. Clearly local is very lekker when it comes to TV viewing in SA! What’s also interesting to note (depending on your outlook) is that the top three shows are identical for main market or high-income, proving that the rest of SA is not like Sandton (not a single M-Net show in sight). For advertisers wishing to speak to the top-end of the audience, the SABC provides the numbers in abundance.
But let’s look at the numbers, starting with the main market first…
Top 10 TV shows October 2019
Channel
LSM 4–7
Uzalo
S1
10 935 422
Generations: The Legacy
S1
9 722 510
Skeem Saam
S1
6 509 864
Scandal
e.tv
5 448 291
Muvhango
S2
5 296 631
Makoti
S1
4 604 855
SABC/NFVF Female Only Filmmaker Project
S1
4 518 676
isiZulu News
S1
4 283 657
Umphefumlo
S1
4 119 422
Rhythm City
e.tv
4 091 355
It should come as no surprise that this audience primarily watches the SABC channels. SABC 1 dominated the list in October, with seven out of the top 10 programmes, including Uzalo, Generations: The Legacy and Skeem Saam in the top three positions. The remaining three spots were taken by Muvhango on SABC 2, and e.tv’s two long-running soapies, Rhythm City and Scandal.
These six shows are consistently the most-watched in SA among the main market, so much so that the SABC, before moving across to Viu, used to put full episodes of its programmes on YouTube where people would use it as a type of “catchup” service. The big three of Uzalo, Generations, and Skeem Saam consistently generated hundreds of thousands of views per episode, often within days of having been uploaded. This shows just how much digital technology has changed the face of TV in SA and how the main market has embraced it to watch their favourite programmes.
But what about high-end households? What were they watching in October?
Top 10 TV shows October 2019
Channel
LSM 8–10
Uzalo
S1
1 268 227
Generations: The Legacy
S1
1 075 468
Skeem Saam
S1
1 018 947
The Fate of the Furious
e.tv
785 316
Scandal
e.tv
766 283
Rugby World Cup: Wales vs South Africa
SS1
699 832
Mad Max Fury Road
e.tv
639 885
Furious Seven
e.tv
596 835
Shell Helix Ultra Cup 2019: Kaizer Chiefs
S1
568 491
isiZulu News
S1
564 854
Two-horse race
It’s a two-horse race from a station perspective within the LSM 8–10 segment, with SABC 1 and e.tv dominating proceedings. Note that the Sunday night movie on e.tv is incredibly popular among high-income households, with three of e.tv’s top spots being a movie — Vin Diesel is clearly a big drawcard. The outlier for October was SuperSport 1, coming in at no. 6.
October was Rugby World Cup (RWC) and the pick of the games was SA’s semi-final against Wales, which was watched by almost 700 000 people in LSM 8–10. The match pulled in a total audience of 815 077 viewers across all demographics. The second most-watched RWC match that month was SA’s quarter final against Japan, which pulled in an LSM 8-10 audience of 619 063. The England vs New Zealand semi-final was the third-biggest RWC game in October, with 467 869 viewers.
Outside of this lone spot on SS1, Msanzi Magic’s Our Perfect Wedding was the best performing Dstv programme, with an average LSM 8–10 audience of 359 000 viewers. This placed it at no. 28 on the list.
M-Net
The best-performing programme on M-Net was a Sunday night movie, Mission Impossible: Fallout, which was watched by 238 000 viewers.
And what of that old favourite of CEOs, MDs and marketing directors, Carte Blanche? The best performing episode of Carte Blanche in October achieved an LSM 8–10 audience of 210 000 viewers, with an average audience for October of 185 723 (or 1.94 ratings). As a matter of interest, the average Carte Blanche viewership amongst LSM 4–7 was 4 482 people.
It will be interesting to see what the November 2019 numbers hold for us, given the RWC final between SA and England on 2 November 2019. Given that this game was flighted on both SABC and SuperSport (whereas all previous games were only available on SuperSport), we may just see this match breaking into the top 10 among both the main market and the high-income households as well.
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.
by Jason Harrison. When I started at Ogilvy as young adman, the folklore and legendary stories from RS-TM (the initials of the founders’ surnames: Bob Rightford, Brian Searle-Tripp and Roger Makin) were passed down from year to year with great gusto.
Tore in half
I remember being told about Searle-Tripp presenting a double-page spread to a very important client, who responded with, “I absolutely love this work, Brian, but what would it look like as a single page?” To which he replied, “Well, it will look like this” and tore the spread in half.
Another one was when a young suit arrived in Rightford’s office a few days after payday to alert him that he’d not been paid for that month. The response was, “Well, if you act like a client in this agency, then they need to be paying your salary, not me, so go ask them for your paycheck.”
Things certainly have changed.
But the one story that’s always stuck with me is of an experienced suit who was called into Rightford’s office to explain why a certain account hadn’t been billed that month. The suit started off, “Well, Bob, you see, er, I have been working very late and very hard and I have really, really tried to get the client to sign off the costs but, unfortunately, they didn’t sign it off before billings closed.”
Rightford closed his notebook, looked the experienced suit straight in the eye and said, “I’m really not interested in how hard you tried; I’m only interested in if you did what needed to be done.”
Hallmarks of a great suit
I love that story, because I believe it’s one of the hallmarks of a great suit: doing what needs to be done. It got me thinking about what else separates a great suit from an average one.
Problem-solvers: Average suits take a client problem, cut it up into a hundred micro problems and proceed to dish the pieces out to every department via multiple job bags and then stand back for all the pieces to return “solved”. Great suits own the problem and they also own the solution by crowdsourcing and testing their thinking with multiple people to build something that’s smart and considered. If a suit can’t solve a problem, he or she is the problem.
Decisive leaders: Average suits say things such as “I’ll have to check with traffic”, “I need to check with the creatives” and “I need to check with production”. Great suits say, “I think what we need to do here is three simple things”, “we both want the best possible solution, so let’s add an extra week and knock this one out the park” or “let’s just take a step back here because I’m worried we’re heading in the wrong direction”. They are decisive, because they know where they’re going.
Ultimate distillers: Average suits are immaculate mystifiers carrying giant duffel bags of complexity into the agency. They say big words, in long sentences, to no one in particular. Great suits have an innate ability to simplify. They take highly complex and fragmented pieces and “join the dots” to provide absolute clarity and direction. They cut away; they never add.
Engaging inspirers: Average suits suck the life out of a room. Everything is a problem (not theirs, of course). Everything won’t work. Everything is a panic. They’re a spinning vortex of “no”. Great suits light fires in people’s minds because they take everyone to a better place; they have a lightness and ease that makes people believe it is all going to work. They are the proverbial calm duck on the surface, while their legs are kicking frantically behind the scenes.
Moneymakers: Average suits are happy to make money someone else’s problem. Give an average suit a monthly and regular retainer, and they are very happy campers. Great suits are hustlers. They work the angles, hunt the opportunities, close the gaps. Ensuring the agency is fairly paid is an obsession. They are always looking for ways to solve clients’ problems that they never even considered, which in turn leads to additional projects and opportunities for the agency. They never settle.
Magic-makers: Average suits are more in love with the process than the end result. For them, ultimate success is when there have been no major upsets, the client is loving them and they can “close and charge that puppy”. Great suits understand that creativity is a messy and convoluted process. They jealously guard big ideas by ensuring there is fertile soil, adequate water and beautiful, positive sunshine. They get their power and inspiration from being as close to the work as possible. They have an intolerance for the ordinary and always leave their indelible fingerprint on the work. Their ultimate success is ensuring the thing that gets made is a thing of exquisite beauty.
Let’s not be…
The times may have changed but the fundamentals of being a great suit certainly haven’t. I never had the privilege of working with Rightford but I really do feel like I did, because he was the original suit. Through his drive, purpose and passion for doing first-class business, in a first-class way, he shaped a clear expectation of what it means to be a great suit for generations to come.
So, we owe him.
Let’s not be shit.
Jason Harrison started as a 23-year-old account executive at Ogilvy & Mather before moving to London five years later to run three agency teams in three different European countries. He joined his old mates again in 2011 as one of the founding partners of the M&C Saatchi Group at 33. He believes that creating beautifully simple solutions for an increasingly complex world will, in fact, save the world. His MarkLives column, “The Suit” is about inspiring and helping up-and-coming suits to be better at their craft. He is no longer on Twitter.
by Siwe Thusi (@Siwe_Thusi) The days of marches have taken an exponential turn. From the streets to the ether, the toyi-toying is now the sounds of ping notifications flooding in from hashtags in tweets and posts. Imagine if Helen Joseph and Lillian Ngoyi had tweeted; imagine if that walk to the Union Buildings had had the soundtrack of manicured nails against a touchscreen. These are ramblings of my mind… but what it does is put into perspective the context of movements and protests today.
Heavy month
September 2019 was an extremely heavy month in South Africa. National conversations on gender-based violence (GBV), xenophobia and other things were the digital protests that we found ourselves involved in.
In the paper, “The Social Organisation of Non-Violence” by Dr Martin Luther King Jr, he notes: “This defence of nonviolent resistance appeared in Liberation as a response to an essay by North Carolina NAACP leader Robert F. Williams that challenged the strategy of ‘turn-the-other-cheekism’ in the face of racist terror. In his September article, Williams had argued that “nonviolence is a very potent weapon when the opponent is civilized, but nonviolence is no match or repellent for a sadist.”
Though King points out that the principle of self-defence “has never been condemned, even by Gandhi,” he rejects Williams’ suggestion that black people take up arms: “There is more power in socially organized masses on the march than there is in guns in the hands of a few desperate men.”
The above statement is pretty intense, even for me. But what the esteemed civil activist was getting at was this notion that protests don’t need to be loud and armed. This sentiment in the ’60s has somehow found its way into the digital age, as socially organised masses, behind touchscreens.
And I thought that was quite interesting.
The hashtag protests
Our involvement and contribution to conversations don’t come as a surprise. In this day and age, it definitely feels like “hashtag protests” find us, depending on who we follow and the content whirlpools created by those who surround us.
It was so easy to be caught in the cross currents of #AmINext, #ClimateStrike, #XenophobiaInSA and #IAmStaying protests in September. But rightfully so. They afforded me the opportunity to learn more about what other people were saying and to get into the closest proximity to their thoughts. And that is the best information privilege that may ever be enjoyed — a protest that also serves as a search engine is what is so incredible about the age in which we live.
The closest to global thoughts, and the most-brilliant placard copy that I’d personally seen in the longest time, was during the #ClimateStrike protest. All from the mouths of babes. Millions and millions of kids as young as 12, marching online and offline for our planet.
“This isn’t a fringe movement. This isn’t a greenie issue. This isn’t a leftie issue. This is a human issue,” is a profound statement that was made by one of the physical protestors in Australia. A human issue. And a large part of our human experience that now plays out online.
Pure intention
The #ClimateStrike was started by 16-year-old trailblazer, Greta Thunberg. This is a clear demonstration that hashtag protests are not defined by ageism but by the pure intention to #MakeTheWorldGretaAgain. But also, geez, what in the world was I doing when I was 16?!
But not all hashtag protests are about a fight; some are just a declaration of positive stance or, at least, that’s what the intention is. #ImStaying is one such. It’s a bid by South Africans across the skin-colour thresholds to convince other South Africans to stay here, at home, and fix things. (Look, there’s overwhelmingly a LOT of work to do, but then ‘how do you eat an elephant’ again?)
I was scrolling through my Facebook when the #ImStaying hashtag sauntered onto my timeline. The video I saw was of a young South African woman who was called down to the factory floor at her work under the guise of “it’s an emergency, Mem”, only to find that the factory workers had a “bride-to-be” sash waiting for her to adorn among her tears, their ululations and traditional wedding songs of the likes of “tswang tswang tswang” to their makoti. Chedder cheese to some but oh so beautiful to many. I was really touched by this move(ment) to remind South Africans of their “why”,
And even more reason to show up for a country so broken.
The return in protest investment
In advertising, we often say “a graveyard where good ideas go to die”, meaning just that: really good ideas that are bombed or thrown out because they are too bold or the client is too conservative/too scared to put marketing budget behind them to bring them to life. So, sadly, no returns.
In the same light I would looooove to see a shift: that, as we willingly join these hashtag protests, our return in protest investment comes in the form of our small, personal, changed behaviours towards any other human being; an unwavering stand in personal truths; and a convincing approach and plea to industry bosses to be more greener and influential in realms where they have access to government officials — where influence turns into choice and an unquestionable stride to change policies in our law, education and service-delivery fraternities. We can’t just hashtag protest for likes and a week-long relevance; we need true and tangible returns showing up.
#FeesMustFall galvanised a movement in real life for doing something in tertiary institutions with regards to funding. I’ve long passed the need for that in my life but a hashtag protest like this one has shifted a funding dial and paved a way for my unborn kids.
And isn’t that the point?
Siwelile Thusi (@Siwe_Thusi) is a qualified South African chartered-accountant-turned-creative-strategist who’s just joined M&C Saatchi Abel from FCB Joburg. She is also a working photographer and writer. Since mid-2015, she’s been in strategic planning, working on some of South Africa’s big brands in different categories and industries in the ATL and digital spaces. She contributes the monthly column “An Accountant in Adland” — exploring where, when and how the two ‘disciplines’ overlap… and why they should! — to MarkLives.com.
by Sabrina Forbes. The production house that’s brought you viral shows such as SuzelleDIY and Tali’s Wedding Diary began as an idea in a bedroom. “Sketchbook was a figment of my imagination about 15 years ago, when I was just a 3D animator trying to make myself look bigger on my invoices. I would always invoice ‘Sketchbook Studios’ but it was just me; the studio was my bedroom in my parents’ house,” says Ari Kruger, who began making films with his father’s video camera when he was 12 and went on to co-create two of South Africa’s most-loved characters.
Combined skills
Not long after its humble start, Kruger (@arikruger) transitioned into directing, still under the umbrella of Sketchbook Studios (@sketchbkstudios). He was still in his bedroom — in a tiny flat. Soon he began dating artist, illustrator, and actress, Julia Anastasopoulos (@knolc) [they were married in 2017]. She was acting in plays and TV ads while he was directing TVCs and music videos. They decided they wanted to do something together and combine their skills.
As he recalls, she had a lot of characters hidden deep within her dying to come out, one such being was an endearing Afrikaans woman who loves to tinker about the house, fixing things her way.
“She is just good at doing DIY. All the original stuff in the videos are her hacks. She used to stick a plastic bag on the wall when she was drilling a hole to catch the dust. That was our first episode and these were things that I was observing about her, thinking, “That’s so weird that she does this stuff; let’s put it in a video’,” he says, when asked on whether DIY was the strategy from the get go.
SuzelleDIY
After a year of experimentation shooting episodes in Anastasopoulos’ flat, the duo decided to use YouTube as the platform to release their content. The web series took off fast and, soon after, brands started knocking on the door. He says that SuzelleDIY was one of the first series to drive South Africans to watch on YouTube; it was the only place you could see it. It was at this time that brands were noticing the power of being in this space but weren’t quite sure how to do it exactly.
It was perfect timing, according to Kruger, albeit an overwhelming and insane experience. It was still just the two of them in the company until producer Natalia Segerman joined, helping to work on brand partnership deals. “That’s when we thought ‘let’s start our own production company’ because we want to be able to facilitate all the brand deals and the productions of the episodes. That’s when Sketchbook Studios became [proprietry limited].” says Kruger.
Three years in, after creating up to 75 SuzelleDIY episodes, many which were branded content with the likes of Checkers, Takealot, and Gumtree, the team decided it needed to look into something else. Enter Tali Babes.
Tali’s Wedding Diary
“Julia has a lot of characters trapped inside of her, and one of them was this character, Tali, who she’d actually had before Suzelle and we thought, well, what could we do with this character? It was almost a reaction to Suzelle being very in the studio and very contained. So, we thought let’s move away from that and take her into the real world and have moving cameras, and go mockumentary-style. It was very liberating to shoot that. There were also more characters to make her world seem more real,” he says.
On their own dime, they shot a two-day pilot. This is when they met Sketchbook’s current commercials director, Glen Biderman-Pam (@glenbidermanpam), after he sent through an audition tape to be Tali’s husband’s best friend and sidekick in the property industry. At this point, they had the bones of the show but no idea what they were going to do with it.
“Making a TV show at this point — there was no way in the world. We couldn’t have even imagined that that was a possibility. So, we made the pilot and then sent it to agencies that we now had relationships with through Suzelle. They all liked it but didn’t know what to do with it. We were like, but this is so good, how can they not see this?” says Kruger, adding that they then heard Showmax had launched again and were looking for original content. Kruger sent in the demo of Tali’s Wedding Diary, got an immediate response and, a year later, had made a full TV show — Sketchbook’s first longform piece of content.
Growing the brand
Next was how to get the Tali brand to grow. Using proof-of-concept learnings from SuzelleDIY, they did what they did best: they stuck to social media and YouTube, launching Tali with a DIY wedding cake episode on Suzelle’s show. Tali also had her own Instagram channel, where short snippets of her life were shared.
Kruger says it took off and grew very quickly. He also believes this show was so popular because this particular group of people had never been portrayed like this, with their weaknesses and strengths shown in raw view. They were all intensely who they were and he says that every South African has, at some point, met a Tali Babes. People know and resonate with these characters. Even though, according to him, Tali is an unlikeable character on paper, the scenarios where she always has a goal (her wedding) but something keeps going terribly wrong allows viewers to see her vulnerability through her struggle.
The team is hoping that the second installment of Tali will go ahead. Kruger says it’s looking positive but, until he’s on set for day one of shooting, he’s not going to believe it. It has, however, been confirmed that there will be a SuzelleDIY movie launched early next year.
Other brand content
It was the organic growth of SuzelleDIY and Tali that showed brands and agencies this production company not only knew what it was doing when it came to creating video content but that it had a solid grasp of the digital landscape and how to use it to grow. Kruger then began being approached to create other types of brand content, with Biderman-Pam acting as one of the commercial directors.
“That, I think, is one of the differentiating things about us a production company. Besides the fact that we do focus on making original content, social media is very much a part of it because we like to marry the two to help launch any original content or other things we’re working on,” says Kruger.
An example is a longform content project with Klipdrift, a talk show on YouTube that is soon to be shown on both MTV Base and BET. Biderman-Pam says that Tali took Sketchbook into a new category of production company with people saying “oh, they’ve done it again”, which means it continues to be approached by brands to create anything from traditional commercials to more creatively led web series. OK Foods and Clorets are two more examples currently being worked with.
Both Kruger and Biderman-Pam agree that it’s a challenging job to continue to ‘feed the beast’ that is digital media and that it’s harder than most people think but it can work out. Biderman-Pam likes to think there are several different ways to approach creating content; it’s just has to be in line with who one is as a person in real life. He has chosen to stick to Instagram to grow his comedy brand, adding that if one puts some time into crafting the idea and then shooting it semi-professionally but ensure it doesn’t just look like another ad, there’s an effect that happens there. If you stay legit and consistent, somebody will find you.
“#Agency/BrandFocus” is an ongoing weekly series updating the market on ad agency performance, including business performance, innovation, initiatives, the work, awards and people.
Sabrina Forbes (IG) is an experienced writer covering the food, health, lifestyle, beverage, marketing and media industries. She runs her own full-stack web/app development and digital-first content creation company. For more, go to moonwrench.com. She is a contributing writer to MarkLives.com.
