by Herman Manson (@marklives) Acceleration Media, a pioneering South African digital business that lost its way — thanks to brand confusion, a temporary leadership vacuum and shareholders issues — has been given a new name, CEO and, hopefully, purpose.
New shareholder Amorphous has shaken up the business and has appointed a new CEO, Andre Steenekamp. It also finally allowed the business to rebrand to 25AM. Steenekamp was previously the chief operating officer for Amorphous.
Amorphous is another digital pioneer, having launched in 1998. While Amorphous and 25 AM will continue to be managed as separate businesses, Steenekamp believes there remains space for the companies to collaborate and promises to bring a creative-agency mindset to the media business.
Steenekamp will help lead a shift from media to assist the business in becoming a customer-engagement-focused digital consultancy.
A brief backgrounder
Acceleration launched in Cape Town in 1999 as a media planning and buying business, thanks to an early relationship with ad server DoubleClick. The media business was split from technology marketing business in 2005. The latter was turned into the eMarketing technology specialist company Acceleration (which cause quite a bit of brand confusion in the market). WPP Digital bought a majority share in this business in 2012.
The media business, now Acceleration Media, was sold to Kagiso Media and Lagardère Active Radio International (LARI), a division of France’s Lagardère group, in 2008. LARI owns a stake, alongside Kagiso, in Radmark. Acceleration Media diversified away from online media buying and planning towards search engine marketing, online reputation management (ORM) and social media.
Late last year, Kagiso Media decided the business was not part of its core focus and sold its 50% shareholding to Amorphous, a digital agency and partly owned subsidiary of by the Times Media Group (TMG) — but not before a management vacuum was created, first by the departure of CEO Tony Sousa and then GM Stephanie Houslay.
Lagardère, of course, already had a business relationship with TMG through magazine licensing agreements (before it shifted the licensing of Elle and Elle Decor to Gisèle Wertheim-Aymés and Isiko Media).
Consolidating the new business
As a first order of business, Steenekamp has had to establish trust in the new leadership team from staff and clients, both left jittery following the management vacuum and shareholder swap. Next has been to start evolving the business, in line with changes to the market and to get a jump on the competition.
The need to rebrand the business was obvious, and Steenekamp wanted to position it as a “new brand with history”. The name, 25AM, references Acceleration Media (AM) and its international shareholding is referenced in the 25 — both shareholders sit the same line of longitude — 25° east of Greenwich.
Its key offering, online reputation management (ORM) tool Radian6, will assist the business in expanding into African markets beyond South Africa. Uganda and Zimbabwe are in its short-term sights. It helps that shareholders TMG has been actively making acquisitions in East Africa, while LARI has a footprint in Francophone Africa, and Steenekamp hopes to piggyback 25AM’s services into these markets through these pre-existing relationships.
25AM is also looking for partnerships with other African agencies, where they would be client-facing while 25AM manages the technology backend.
25AM will also become more involved on the consultancy side through client strategy services.
Jozi, Google & YouTube
25AM employs 19 staff in Cape Town and another 14 in Johannesburg. Johannesburg used to be client-facing, with production happening in Cape Town, but this is changing and the Jozi office should outgrow Cape Town by the end of the year.
While ORM is the rising star in the 25AM service stable, it also has a good search team and has been ramping up its relationships with both Google and YouTube.
The agency also recently launched a customer-engagement report, something it hopes to do on an annual basis, as its sits on a huge database of consumer data through its media business. It shows that there is more than one step on a customer’s journey — 90% of search conversions requires at least three steps, while 90% of media conversions requires 10 steps. Some 30% of search conversions is assisted by media.
In terms of YouTube, 4.5 million+ South Africans watch YouTube videos every month and the platform serves 176 million page views to South Africans every month; mobile and tablet traffic make up 30% of that figure. Some 42.9% of those users is aged between 15-24, followed by 27.5% of users aged 25-34.
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