Media Future: Add-on lenses are reinventing phone photography

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) We live in an age of re-invention. Numerous tools, technologies, and even media formats, are constantly reinvented as the power of competition-driven innovation and distributed knowledge produces solutions to problems we’d thought solved generations ago.

The camera is a perfect example. Digital photography has utterly wiped out the old world of film photography. And now the very nature of digital photography is changing as phone cameras begin to rise up the technology curve to meet the serious photographer’s single-lens reflex (SLR) devices.

But there are still many things the typical phone camera simply cannot do. One of the most common sources of digital disappointment is the phone camera’s use of a digital zoom instead of an optical zoom. Digital zoom merely magnifies an existing image. Optical zoom uses a telephoto lens to zoom into the scene, and usually gives vastly superior results. Someone who has used a zoom less on an SLR camera tends to be deeply disappointed by the digital zoom experience.

The solution is either to get a phone designed to be a camera, or buy an add-on that gives the phone capabilities beyond its hardware limitations. Here are two of the best add-ons available:

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-QX10 (Android and iOS)

At first sight, this is a bizarre gadget: a stand-alone zoom lens that connects to a smartphone via Wi-Fi. However, it clips onto the phone to turn the phone into something close to an SLR unit, with both still and video functionality.

Once an app called PlayMemories is installed on the phone, and the Cyber-shot is connected via Wi-FI, the phone screen becomes the viewfinder for the lens. That means the lens does not have to be clipped on – it can be placed within connectivity distance of the phone. And that means you can position it to look round corners. It’s not very versatile in that configuration, but could be a useful security or journalistic accessory in the right situation. Don’t think spycam: this is a very obtrusive device that looks like nothing but a camera lens. It is also very slow in processing images, so is not great for capturing action.

However, the 18.2MP lens doesn’t have to mean massive file-sizes: PlayMemories resizes images to make them feasible for sharing. The lens is compatible with any Android or iOS smartphone.

And the zoom? It lives up to its advertising, providing real 10x zoom rather than magnification, meaning a long-distance image that does not instantely pixelate when enlarged. A stand-alone camera will always be a better option if photos are the thing, but this is a great way of turning a high-end phone into a high-end camera.

Olloclip 3-in-1 Photo Lens (iPhone only)

At the other end of the zoom scale, smartphone cameras also don’t do too well with coming in close. We’ve seen the great work you can do with high-end phones from Samsung, Sony, LG, HTC and even Alcatel and BlackBerry, but they can all take you so close and no further. Enter the Olloclip 3-in-1 Photo Lens, which clips over an iPhone’s camera lens. It adds Macro, Wide Angle and Fisheye functions that approximate the quality of dedicated SLR camera lenses.

The Macro allows 10x magnification 12-15mm away from a tiny subject – a distance and zoom at which conventional smartphones give up and go blurry. The Fisheye function gives a 180-degree field of view, and the wide-angle doubles the iPhone’s normal field of view. A 4-in-1 version adds 15x Macro, while a telephoto edition provides 2x optical magnification.

The Olloclip is almost magical in the way it gives new meaning to close-up. Between this and the DSC-QX10, even photo-fiends could find themselves living comfortably without SLR.

Arthur Goldstuck heads up World Wide Worx (www.worldwideworx.com) and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. He is a consulting editor to MarkLives and our media tech columnist. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee.

This article has been republished from Gadget.

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The Switch: Gearing up for success in an organisation

by Alistair Mokoena (@AlistairMokoena) A question that’s been on my mind a lot lately is how does one gear up for success in an organisation.

Most of us have read bestsellers such as “Good to Great”, “Blue Ocean Strategy” and “Eating the big fish”, all of which contain great nuggets on how to create commercial success.

But what I’ve learnt in my time as a leader is that the best advice often comes from talking to staff about what they would do if they were in charge. So, instead of reading more business books, I’ve taken to having lunches or a few beers with colleagues.

Here’s why:

1. Make the agency vision real

Many leaders come up with lofty visions that are hard to remember and irrelevant at an individual level, and therefore not sticky.

A vision is a picture of what success looks like. It has to be big, it has to be relevant and it has to be exciting. Given a choice between “being the agency of choice” and “the coolest agency to work with and for”, I’d choose the latter.

People get excited about visions that speak their language and visions that tap into their own aspirations. Everyone wants to partner with the cool guy.

2. Weave your agency values into your daily lexicon

Values don’t belong on your intranet. They are the glue that holds an organisation together. They are the code that shows others that you are a family.

At best, they are rules of engagement, which help us navigate complex human relations. This, they achieve, by transcending hierarchies and piercing through rank.

Encourage the management team and key opinion leaders in your agency to popularise your values by making them part of daily speak.

3. Set clear stretch goals for everyone

We all know how margin-sensitive our industry is and, for this reason, no agency can afford ‘fat’ of any kind.

There is no room in any organisation for people who are walking around aimlessly without set goals.

To get the most out of people, we need to arm them with meaningful goals that will help them pursue personal and organisational goals.

4. Make accountability clear and personal

It’s important to have clarity around who’s responsible and accountable for what. Nothing great can be achieved if there’re too many chefs in the kitchen.

I’ve seen great ideas get watered down because there’re too many commentators giving input.

I also know that people are motivated by the knowledge that they own something and can therefore claim the success that comes with that.

5. Encourage an entrepreneurial culture

Entrepreneurs are hungry and are driven to succeed. They are not wasteful and are always looking for better ways to do things. They chase new business like their lives depend on it. Their passion for what they do is infectious and their authenticity is a magnet to prospective clients.

These need to be the standards that every employee aspires to.

6. Encourage a coaching and counseling leadership style

Coaching is about getting people from good to great, while counseling is about helping people get out of a negative frame of mind into a positive one.

Both are equally important.

You need to keep a constant eye on the energy levels in your agency. Weekly or monthly “fun” interventions are more effective than a once-off team building.

7. Develop a greenhouse culture

We are quick to shoot down ideas. And we are also guilty of making ideas the sole preserve of the creative department.

Yes, the creative team is accountable for producing creative ideas but we shouldn’t be precious about where a great idea originates. We need to encourage and reward creative thinking across the organisation.

8. Democratise information

Trust your staff to handle information maturely.

Some leaders do not believe in sharing financial information and business issues and challenges with staff. I’ve found that people prefer and appreciate honest and frank disclosure. It empowers them to make choices, and very often these choices are to the benefit of both the individual and the organisaiton.

It’s much easier to commit to an organisation when you know where it’s headed.

9. Learn from successes and failures

The agency world is a frenetic rollercoaster ride with some deep lows and major highs. We are constantly running from job to job.

We need to make time to pause and reflect on lessons learnt from our successes and flops. There’s great value in doing that.

If you are not a learning organisation, your future is bleak.

10. Use the power of positive self-talk

On a good day, your mind buzzes with positive thoughts and optimism. On a lousy day, the critical and pessimistic voices in your head shout the loudest. How do you ensure that your staff is psyched and ready to conquer the world most of the time?

You need to develop an organisational brand proposition that captures your organisation’s ‘best self’ and use these positive attributes as your agency’s war cry. It will soon travel from lips to lips and be your agency’s ‘truth’.

As you can see, most — if not all — of these tips are about going back to leadership basics. Leadership is a journey. Enjoy it.

Alistair Mokoena (@AlistairMokoena) is a Unilever-trained Chartered Marketer with lots of blue-chip marketing experience. He’s currently MD of FCB Joburg. Mokoena contributes the monthly “The Switch” column to MarkLives.com.

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Ad of the Week: The great banking switcheroo

by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki) Digital advertising is becoming increasingly important in the world of advertising, and the reason is obvious. What are we without our mobile phones, our tablets, our computers or our connected TV screens? But there’s another digital screen that people use very often, and that advertisers overlook.

Innovative use of ATM screens

This week I want to focus on the innovative use of a screen we’re all familiar with — but that has largely been ignored by advertisers. Yup, I’m talking about automatic teller machine (ATM) screens.

Want to view all the Ads of the Week at a glance? See our #AdoftheWeek Pinterest board!

One of my bugbears is being charged extra if I use an ATM from a bank that’s not my financial institution. Lately, banks have been putting messages on ATM screens, warning customers of this additional fee. But when it’s late at night, or if you’re on the road at a garage, convenience forces you to grit your teeth and make that withdrawal.

The point is that this space offers clever marketers the perfect captive audience. You’ve got to look at that ATM screen, and there’s nothing stopping banks from using it as an opportunity to market directly to the visiting bank’s clients. It’s cheeky, but it’s not illegal. In fact, it’s damn smart.

This is exactly what FNB did with a campaign aimed to get clients to switch to the bank that calls itself “the most innovative bank in the world” after winning the 2012 BAI-Finacle Global Banking Innovation Awards.

Gloo ATM campaign for FNB: “ATM Switch”

FNB | ATM Switch from Gloo on Vimeo.Here’s how FNB’s ATM switcheroo campaign works. When a client from another bank inserts her or his card into an FNB ATM, in addition to a warning message indicating that this person will pay increased transaction charges, a screen comes up offering the option to switch banks.

Clever line of copy

The great switcheroo campaign has a clear, clever line of copy that speaks directly to customers.

For example, an Absa client gets a message saying: “If your bank is making you see red with bank charges, switch to the bank with free card swipes, fuel rewards, and more.” Other messages play with the opposition banks’ slogans.

Banks have been criticised about their charges by everyone, from customers to the ombudsman for banking services advocate Clive Pillay and the national consumer commissioner Mamodupi Mohlala-Mulaudzi, for some time now.

Varying fees

In many developed countries, there is no ATM charge, particularly for ‘native’ transactions. But in South Africa, fees vary wildly from bank to bank.

A study done by BusinessTech last year found that a withdrawal of R1000 cost anything from R4 (Capitec) to R15.60 (Standard) at a ‘native’ ATM, and R7 (Capitec) to R22.30 (Standard) at other ATMs. Capitec is the only bank that has capped its fees at R4 and R7 for native and other withdrawals respectively. Which makes me wonder whether this is what accounts for the bank’s rapid growth in recent years.

FNB’s pricing strategy has been to keep its fees in the middle ground while offering incentives such as petrol rebates, cellphone and tablet financing and the eBucks rewards system. Recent research by TNS Global shows that, when it comes to switching current accounts, banks that offer rewards gain twice as many customers.

Getting customers to switch isn’t easy

But getting customers to switch banks isn’t easy. The TNS survey cited reveals that only 4% of consumers surveyed switched accounts in 12 months.

Another survey, this time by the US based advocacy group ConsumersUnion, reveals that one in five people consider switching banks, but don’t do so because there are so many obstacles holding them back. The report, called Trapped at the Bank: Removing Obstacles to Consumer Choice in Banking, shows consumers frustrated with fee increases want to change banking brands, but the perceived schlep of the administration involved in switching is what holds these customers back.

“Unfair bank practices and rising fees are prompting more and more consumers to consider voting with their feet and taking their money to another bank or credit union,” says Consumers Union attorney, Suzanne Martindale. “But many consumers don’t follow through because moving your money takes a lot of time and money and some bank policies make it harder than it should be.”

Very cheeky but effective

But let’s get back to the FNB’s great ATM switcheroo campaign. Once in front of the FNB ATM screen, if the person doing a transaction selects “switch,” she or is asked to enter his or her cellphone number for a personal banker to contact him or her immediately. And voila! An opportunity to make a sale directly with a customer who is dissatisfied with his or her current bank opens up straight away, resulting in a sales-driven campaign that’s very cheeky but effective.

In fact, the campaign has been so effective that FNB claims to have gained over 19 000 leads in one month, which resulted in 1555 new cheque and credit card accounts being opened, and 3978 value-added product sales for FNB.

By using a media channel owned by the bank (ie the ATMs), FNB has been able to make directly targeted sales at a much-reduced cost when compared with traditional or online media. It has also been able to demonstrate, in a practical way, that it is a bank that’s in tune with its customers’ needs, and also shows itself to be innovative and proactive.

The clever campaign was conceived by Gloo — which has been chosen by the Financial Mail’s AdFocus as the digital agency of the year for seven years in a row. All hail to Pete Case and the team at Gloo!

Ad of the Week, published on MarkLives every Wednesday, is penned by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki), the CEO of Ornico, a Brand Intelligence® firm that focuses on media, reputation and brand research.

If you are involved in making advertising that is smart, funny and/or engaging,
please let Oresti know about it at info@ornicogroup.co.za.

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#trendMARK: Social media commerce in the Reassurance Economy

a trendMARK feature by Dion Chang (@DionChang) Let’s talk about retail disruption and other top trends for 2014, including: social media commerce; catering to the millennial palate; the reassurance economy; and millennial martyrs (the big data backlash).

1. Retail Disruption

The rise of online shopping is proving to be one of the most significant game changers for the retail industry. It is not only changing consumer behaviour, but also the value chains of the retail industry. Initially, the dilemma of providing either a non- or offline service, has now evolved into servicing a more complicated hybrid shopper.

Retailers are now grappling with problems like ‘showrooming’, where customers try on merchandise in-store but make the final purchase online. Landlords, in turn, are coming to terms with Shoppable Windows: touch screens mounted on regular shop fronts that enable passers-by to browse and buy from the online inventory of a retailer who no longer needs to rent the floorspace, or physically stock the merchandise. These disruptions create new business models for brands and consumers while the landlord sare the ones left short changed.

2. Social Media Commerce

The social media landscape nudges its way towards a more commercial realm. All social media platforms start out as a free service and monetising the machine once the users have adopted the platform is a tricky balancing act, which can elicit a backlash from its loyal users.

Facebook bought Instagram for$1-billion, when it was two years old, had 9 employees and no revenue stream. Now with over 150 million monthly active users it is gearing up to sell advertising. Designer Michael Kors posted the first advertisement in November, and immediately received a mixed bag of 200 000 comments and likes – but like it or not, social media advertising has arrived.

However, Starbucks (always one step ahead) has already ventured into Social Media Commerce with a “Tweet a coffee” service. It allows app users to buy a coffee for someone via Twitter just by tweeting @tweetacoffee to (@recipient’s Twitter Handle). What could be more social?

3. Catering to the Millennial Palate

The fast food and fizzy drinks industries are doing a whole lot of soul searching. Not only do they have to adapt to a more health -conscious public, but their next generation customer base–the millennials–are proving to be fussier than they thought. McDonalds is still reeling from being knocked off the top 10 list of millennial favourite restaurants.

The iconic Campbell soup company has literally embraced the hipster within and sent its research team to find the Holy Grail: a youth-appeasing formula. The results were“heat and eat-on-the-go” concoctions like Chicken & Quinoa and Spicy Chorizo soups.

Coca Cola on the other hand launched a new derivative called Coca Cola Life, also targeted specifically to millennials. This new variant has natural sweeteners, reduced calories and environmentally friendly packaging, with—most notably—the iconic red label switched to green. It is becoming clear that appealing to millennial palates is not just a taste twist ,but re-thinking the entire DNA of a brand.

4. The Reassurance Economy

Consumer trust is at an all-time low. As consumers, and as citizens, we have been bombarded with irrefutable evidence that we’ve been consistently hoodwinked and lied to by brands, financial institutions, service providers and governments. We’re wary of the food we eat, skeptical of the sports matches and athletes we watch, unsure of our social media privacy setting sand nervous about the new world of online banking and retail.

It’s no wonder that word of mouth recommendations from family and friends, as well as consumer opinions posted online, are the preferred methods of introducing new brands, or promoting the now rare concept of brand loyalty. Trust has become a commodity, and unlike a transient advertising campaign,building long-term trust requires a whole new brand strategy. There are no quick fixes.

It’s like a slow food movement for brands. Say hello to the Reassurance Economy. Gaining trust takes time, is variable and can be lost in a second.

5. Millennial Martyrs (the big data backlash)

Edward Snowden sacrificed everything for his beliefs, as did Aaron Swartz and Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, whom TIME magazine called, “the Geeks Who Leak”: ‘hacktivists’ who leak sensitive information that they believe contravenes personal privacy and freedom.

When Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison he issued this statement, “When I chose to disclose classified information, I did so out of love for our country and a sense of duty. If you deny my request for a pardon I will serve my time knowing that sometimes you have to pay a heavy price to live in a free society”.

In a similar vein, actor Wentworth Miller outed himself as a gay man, publicly rejecting an invitation to attend the St. Petersburg International Film Festival, due to Russia’s anti-LGBT laws. This new breed of martyr is growing. Governments should watch them closely, as should corporations, companies and brands.

This feature first ran in trendMark, the discerning trends resource for African marketers and corporates. Read or download the full magazine via Issuu. For a PDF copy, click here.

Dion Chang (@DionChang) is a trends analyst and the founder of Flux Trends.

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Design Annotator: #designindaba expo product highlights, new Polo Vivo ad a hit

by Uno de Waal (@Unodewaal) Today’s Design Annotator features the best from 10and5 in the form of:

Highlights from the 2014 Design Indaba Expo, and where to find the products now
A selection of brand activations from this year’s Design Indaba Expo
“The Hit”, a new ad for the Volkswagen Polo Vivo
Native VML’s fully equipped e-reader app, bookly
An ad that shows you can start the fun by paying your TV licence anywhere
An interview with SA-born comic book artist Willem Samuel on his new graphic novel series
A feature on filmmaker, photographer and founder of Mirage magazine, Henrik Purienne
More on what it’s like to be in the top 10 of the Absa L’Atelier competition
A My Day Job interview with visual development artist Lorraine Alvarez Posen

DESIGN INDABA

Highlights from Design Indaba Expo + where to find them now

Like tens of thousands of others, we headed to the Design Indaba Expo last weekend to peruse the vast locally and most often hand-made wares on show.

The large amount of visitors provides excellent exposure for South African/African designers and makers but can be quite challenging to navigate. So, here are our pic(k)s of the 2014 Expo for a peaceful online browsing experience.

Brand activations at the 2014 Design Indaba Expo

Among the hundreds of independent designers showing at Design Indaba Expo were the big brand sponsors who play a key role in making the annual event such a success.

Here are the exhibits, installations or activations by brands at this year’s expo and a little explanation of how they’re using spaces such as these to connect with a design-minded audience.

ADVERTISING

Volkswagen Polo Vivo: The Hit

Almost exactly one year on, Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town has released a followup to Volkswagen’s Polo Vivo TVC ‘The Answer’ which plays off the premise, “If Volkswagen can make Polo Vivos available for such a crazy price, then who knows what other crazy things might happen?”

In this commercial titled ‘The Hit’, an involuntary reaction becomes the next nationwide sensation.

bookly by Native VML | From e-reader app to writing platform

bookly is a fully-equipped e-reader app by Native VML that was initially launched on Mxit in May last year (2013).

This week, it launched a second phase becoming not only a platform for reading, but also for sharing writing. Here we take a closer look at the app and how it works.

Pay your TV licence anywhere to start the fun

SABC – Clown Love from GIANT FILMS on Vimeo.

This ad, directed by Peri van Papendorp for DDB Johannesburg, features a hilarious love story between the main female protagonist and her clown lover, set in the veggie section in a supermarket.

The SABC aims to show that, no matter where you are, you’ll be able to pay your TV licence which, as a result, means that the fun can start anywhere.

Find out more and see the credits here.

INTERESTING

An Interview with SA-born comic book artist, Willem Samuel

Willem Samuel, a South African comic book artist currently based in the UK, has been busy with some very exciting projects of late.

One of these takes the form of illustrations for Protea Boekehuis’s reissue of Die Swart Kat book series. Additionally, Samuel is in the process of releasing a six-issue graphic novel called Mengelmoes, which charts his life growing up in South Africa.

Here we get to know a bit more about Samuel and what he does.

Featured: photographer and filmmaker Henrik Purienne

Henrik Purienne is a photographer and film director currently residing in Cape Town, Paris and Los Angeles. In 2010, he founded Mirage, an international fashion magazine for which he is now the co-editor-in-chief and creative director.

Purienne, Purienne’s book of summer holiday snapshots, portraits and outtakes, was published by Prestel Publishing (Randomhouse) last year.

We spoke to Purienne to find out more.

Absa L’Atelier | Being in the Top Ten

As we heard earlier this week from the 2013 Absa L’Atelier award winners, winning isn’t actually everything.

In fact, just entering the competition is the most important part. By doing so, you position yourself alongside the other young South African artists who are busy forging their art careers and creating important networks.

We’ve spoken to some of last year’s Top 10 finalists to find out more about what entering this competition really means for you as a young artist.

My Day Job: Lorraine Alvarez Posen

After living in Zimbabwe, Canada, Argentina and Norway, Lorraine Alvarez Posen returned to Cape Town, where she now works as a freelance designer and professional visual development artist for feature animation and film.

Here we find out more about her, as well as the various things her day job consists of.

Design Annotator is a regular column on MarkLives featuring the top design work from South Africa’s biggest online creative showcase, Between 10 and 5, which is curated by publisher Uno de Waal (@Unodewaal), inaugural South African winner of the British Council South Africa‘s Young Creative Entrepreneur (#YCE) Digital Publishing Award in March 2014.

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The Sell: Why TV advertising is cheating…

by Mimi Nicklin (@MimiNicklin) The ad men of old, they had it easy. That’s my opinion. And I can proudly say my father was one of them. One of the men who defined the glamour and edginess that advertising still imbues today.

He sauntered round London in style, shot TV commercials on far-flung beaches, and then went to the smartest restaurants in London to celebrate a ‘job well done’. They billed a fortune, drove fast cars and successfully built brands that will outlive them all.

Exhausting, yes, but only because they spent 60% of their time socialising over whisky and 40% actually creating work! (Right, Dad?)

Sold product by the pallet load

The reality, however, was that they sold product by the pallet load. It didn’t just see a 1% uplift but a 21% uplift, and it didn’t just move during the ‘promo’ but increased steadily over time. They were the superheroes of selling and both they and their clients went on to write the rules of how to sell a brand. They founded the way agencies think, plan and create, and they are entirely responsible for the fact that the TV ad was always, without fail, upfront and centre.

At that stage, shoppers were actively looking for stimulus, consumerism was booming, cell phones were space age and microwave meals were yet to be invented. Quite simply, selling wasn’t that hard.

People were looking to spend money and looking to advertising campaigns to tell them how. Package the product ‘nicely’, promote it in the public domain, use smart copywriting, a beautiful cast and a large product shot, and you could be pretty sure it would sell.

Fast-forward 30 years

Fast-forward 30 years and, sadly, our selling model is not as simple. Here we are working 14-hour days, spending hours in store watching shoppers, millions of rands talking to them and a small fortune incentivising them, and yet our retail sales are still flat.

Our shoppers are indebted, lacking confidence and only buying what ‘they have to’ and yet still we passionately come to work every day to sell our brands and ‘build momentum in Quarter 2’.

But in reality, while we are successfully building brand love and establishing the new, don’t we still tend to be doing it via TV ads and other ATL type beautifulness?

This is not enough

So here it comes, my opinion, and that is that this is not enough. Not enough of a challenge, not enough of a success and not enough of a move from the days my father was still making ads — when lunch started 12.30pm and ended with a train home at 6pm!

It’s easy to capture love in media built for storytelling, with 30” to make you cry, laugh or smile, or in a print medium that you personally hold in your hands. It is simple to reflect culture, tradition and habit in high definition and with summer’s greatest pop hit to grab instant attention. But what about doing all the above in retail? Does no-one feel like taking on the challenge?

It seems to me that, for every TV ad that more effectively talks to the South African audience, wins more awards and links more seamlessly with Facebook, that same brand entirely misses its shoppers when it is in retail. It captures their hearts but it doesn’t change their minds.

“Don’t have the time”

I suspect it’s because many of our most talented ad people “don’t have the time” (aka the energy or passion) to work creatively on the BTL and shopper elements of the mix. The client asks for a through-the-line presentation and the agencies lead with TV and then draw up a wobbler that follows the same colour palette and uses the ATL headline in a smaller font. Contentious, perhaps, but not all together wrong?

Of course, there are those whom hire specialists and open new units to ‘understand the shopper’ but my cry is for some of the senior stars of our industry to help us change the pattern:

Let’s make the shopper work original, engaging, stand out, digitally ‘alive’.
Let’s push our junior creatives to learn this space, and let’s demand our advertising schools put it on the curriculum.
Let’s engage our agency staff in a space that is now taking an ever-higher proportion of all advertising spend worldwide (shopper marketing spend is reported to be increasing 5% YoY by Booz and Company, and P&G alone now spends US$500 million a year in shopper marketing).

South Africa is way behind

South Africa is behind (way behind!) the rest of the ad world in terms of shopper brilliance. If we don’t drive the change with our own agencies and clients, the global guys will soon sweep in and do it for us.

We’ll be left behind, the budgets will move, and no longer will we have the (slightly less) fast cars or ‘squeezed-in’ long lunches to celebrate brilliant sales results.

So, if you are reading this, client or agency, please understand I am not asking for less TV or less creativity — indeed, the total opposite. I am asking you, our industry to extend what we already do brilliantly all the way from the TV screens and up to the shelf. It may be less visual, emotional and musical but, hell, it could just be 10 times more valuable in real ROI terms.

Times now demand a change

So, thank you, Dad, and all your genius admen colleagues of old, for putting us in the right direction, but times now demand a change. Nowadays getting it right via the ATL comms alone is cheating. From now on, the brands that really win will get it right above the line, through the line, and down the line… all the way to the till.

Mimi Nicklin (@MimiNicklin) followed her passion and experience in the consumer, retail and shopper space from regional roles in Europe and Asia, to South African shores in 2010. Having led global brands through the line for Procter & Gamble, and two of London and Hong Kong’s top agencies, her background gives her an international perspective to add to her depth of SA understanding. She serves as strategic director and a partner at 34 Group. Mimi contributes the monthly “The Sell” column concerning shopper marketing to MarkLives.

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The Word: Service-delivery protest ideas to activate evangelists

by Mongezi Mtati (@Mongezi) South Africa sees at least five service delivery protests per day, some of which receive more media attention than others, and they all become the talk of the town. Let’s look at what makes these worth talking about and what we, as marketers, can take away when thinking of building a community of evangelists and managing them.

The communities in which these protests happen don’t seem to have anyone leading them; everyone pulls together and engages with the issues of the day. They don’t seek a single person with thousands of followers; they don’t make any one person the hero and the ultimate evangelist for their cause.

In most instances, when brands start or build evangelist communities, they tend to focus more on those with a larger following. They discount the fact that almost everyone is an influencer, or that they can be. These are people who drive actions, who spread the word and connect the people in their networks with a message — mostly a marketing one.

Service delivery protests are not as thoroughly planned and executed as marketing and advertising strategies are. Their strength lies in the collective action of communities. What can your next strategy include that every protest already has?

[Note: these are by no means all the elements that make up protests but a few that this piece could focus on. I have also steered clear of socio-economic and political issues.]

1. A united goal

One of the things that bring people together, for both service delivery protests and brand evangelism, is a common, united goal which is known to everyone and which everyone stands for. The goal may vary from transforming something in society to rallying behind a brand of choice.

The message behind it is normally easy to spread and the people involved know what it means from day one. There are no long lists and heavy marketing speak that alienate the layman.

So, it all starts with a goal that the community adopts as its own.

2. Start the conversation

The communities start far-reaching, localised conversations that go far beyond their surroundings through various platforms.

Without the benefit of ‘expert marketers’, the message still reaches out to relevant stakeholders. Aside from burning tyres, community members get the word across from one person to the next, everyone knows what the single-minded message is, and anyone can speak on behalf of the protesters.

Most marketing messages get lost in translation, thus leaving brands on one side of the fence and would-be evangelists on the other side. People spread the message about what they perceive a brand stands for, while the brand itself says something else.

So, the most successful word-of-mouth campaigns have a single-minded message that spreads from one community member/one engaged and passionate evangelist to another.

3. Amplify a single-minded message

Most — if not all — the protests that I’ve seen have a common thread running through them, mostly as the result of corruption or local amenities that are not being attended to. The community members have over time, according to reports by community members themselves, attempted peaceful communication. Their message is clear to everyone present and the perceived authorities at whose attention the message is aimed.

If you have ever walked into a store, with the intention of buying something, and no one is there to assist you, not only are you more likely to leave but you are also likely to share that experience with your network and warn them against the store.

We all know this but we think a different set of rules apply. What the protests prove — about four to five a day — is that the same rules apply to everyone indiscriminately.

Customers want to be heard; even the most difficult ones want to be listened to, which is more often than not the reason cited for loyal followers and positive testimonials — when handled well.

In most instances, brands care more about the people with a larger social-media following, without realising that people lead communities which may number anything from two members to 1000 offline — and you can’t track any of it.

Wouldn’t you rather have the peace of mind of knowing that you have evangelists spreading a positive message about you, whether or not there is an active campaign running?

4. Garner community interest

In the midst of all the things that separate them at other times, community members stand together when they want to get their message across. We have seen this in everything, from e-tolls to Eskom’s load-shedding and, in every single instance, where people have looked past political differences and focused on issues that affect broader society.

Customers also come together for brands that they believe put them first or stand for something the community deems worthwhile.

In what is dubbed the biggest crowd-funding campaign of all-time, free computer operating system Ubuntu called out to its fans and evangelists ahead of attempting to launch its Ubuntu Edge smartphone to the public. Unlike brands of a similar and international following, Ubuntu released its plans publicly and called upon its community to support the development.

Although the Indiegogo campaign fell US$19 million short of its target, it still managed to raise US$10 267 352 worth of pledges from 22 053 backers worldwide.

Similar to the media coverage we see almost daily in South Africa, Ubuntu Edge pulled together its evangelist resources. It received coverage on some of the top sites, such as this Mashable article which was shared 1300 times.

Have a look at these statics from Indiegogo below:

5. Let the community lead

One of the many things that the advent of protests shows — over and over again — is that people want to stand for something. We all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, as shown once again by the solidarity against e-tolls. The influencers among us are constantly leading the conversation, in what seems to be an informal structure, and the word gets out.

Service delivery protests are part-proof that there are influencers in every community, most of whom go unnoticed and whose pleas are ignored. There are people in every brand’s community who lead the pack, individuals who support you by talking to people in their network, and they are the ones who also rally the masses to your message.

They may not have the thousands of followers whom you expect would tilt the scales, but collectively they influence enough people to cause a dent.

Do you know who these people are? Or do you think you can control the conversation and limit the outcome?

Mongezi Mtati (@Mongezi) is the founding MD of WordStart (www.wordstart.co.za). Apart from being a kiteboarding and sandboarding adventurer, Mongezi connects companies and brands with measurable word-of-mouth. He contributes the new “The Word” column on word-of-mouth marketing and social media strategy to MarkLives.

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Smart Africa TV: The Adventures of T Boy

by Russell Southwood (@BalancingActAfr) In this interview, Debra Odutuyo of MTA Productions talks about her new TV comedy show with T Boy (@dontjealousme), which takes the YouTube comedy star from Meet The Adebanjos and makes him the focus of a new show, The Adventures of T Boy.

Odutuyo discusses who T Boy is, as well as:

how the TV show came to be made;
the story set-up of the show;
an update of the second season of Meet The Adebanjos;
the success of Meet The Adebanjos on SABC in South Africa;
and the distribution plans for T Boy which will launch on the Evening Standard’s new TV channel London Live.

Russell Southwood is the founder of Balancing Act and the web TV channel Smart Monkey TV, and has been an analyst in telecoms, internet and broadcast in Africa for the last 14 years. Smart Monkey TV aims to capture the energy at the crossroads between African culture and technology. MarkLives is syndicating content from Smart Monkey TV on a weekly basis for the column “Smart Africa TV”.

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Dailyfix — the new daily lifestyle fix for grown-up, stylish women

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Fairlady, Home and Ideas, all magazines in the Media24 stable, recently jettisoned their brands’ online presence and instead decided to invest in creating a new digital portal and brand, Dailyfix, to serve as a combined online home for their respective audiences. We talk to publisher Marina Smith about the strategy.

MarkLives: What is the thinking behind combining the online audiences for Fairlady, Home and Ideas?

Marina Smith: Fairlady, Home and Ideas have joined forces to create a fresh digital portal, Dailyfix.co.za. This property offers a daily lifestyle fix to grown-up, stylish women and delivers one of South Africa`s most-desirable female digital audiences to advertisers.

Dailyfix was created to respond to the market trend of visually driven content and give advertisers the opportunity to connect to significant, targeted audiences. The aim is to deliver a larger daily audience than what is possible for the individual brands.

Dailyfix covers 12 broad content categories — Lifestyle, Recipes, Beauty & Fashion, Work & Money, Home, Garden, Wellness, Crafts, Win, Wedding, Test House and SHOP, all powered by content from Fairlady, Home and Ideas magazines.

The Dailyfix crew has access to a massive volume of archived content and are able to repackage just about any category, as well as produce web-only content for audiences and advertising clients. With the Pinterest-inspired design, the site is wonderfully visual and can offer users and sponsors galleries and videos. The site is fully responsive and equally useful and beautiful on smartphones, tablets and desktops.

MarkLives: Does it not dilute the brands of the three print titles?

Smith: Not at all, on the contrary, it further cements these brands as some of the most important vehicles giving clients insight and access to desirable South African female audiences. The brands continue to connect to their individual social media audiences and cross-market via Dailyfix.

MarkLives: What role did the cost of running three different brands online vs one combined brand online play in the creation of Dailyfix?

Smith: Cost is obviously an important factor, but it is not the no. 1 driving force behind the decision. Our no. 1 driver is to deliver depth of content to consumers and significant scale to advertisers.

MarkLives: Who takes editorial responsibility for the site — a new team or the existing magazine teams?

Smith: Existing magazine teams — collaborating in a fresh way — each taking responsibility for specific categories. The Dailyfix content editor sets the tone for the portal.

MarkLives: Is this a model you would consider for other Media24 titles serving similar audiences?

Smith: It is theoretically possible, but would depend on many factors. We are currently exploring various approaches.

MarkLives: What is the business model for Dailyfix?

Smith: Very desirable audiences are delivered to clients through driving traffic on the portal, social media platforms as well as daily newsletters covering a multitude of subjects. Dailyfix gives advertisers the opportunity to connect to significant, targeted audiences.

MarkLives: What are your audience projections looking like?

Smith: Watch this space.

MarkLives: How does the site fit into your online ecommerce strategy, which seems to be driven by Spree.co.za?

Smith: The Dailyfix portal fully supports Spree.co.za and the teams work closely together, as well as with other e-commerce partners.

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MagLove: Do-it-yourself cover colour

by MediaSlut (@MediaSlut) My choice of the best international and local magazine covers in MagLove this week:

What’s On Dubai
Esquire Weekly
Globe Magazine
The Nation
Women’s Health UK

INTERNATIONAL

What’s On Dubai, March 2014

A fun cover featuring “Art Dubai 2014”.

What I like about it is that it’s striking, even just in black and white, but I’m sure it will be even more cool once you’ve coloured it in with the colours suggested on the bottom right corner.

Esquire Weekly, 27 February 2014

Esquire recently launched “Esquire Weekly”, which appears to be a new weekly digital magazine “featuring original stories by Esquire’s best writers” that is free to digital subscribers.

Making it a digital issue gives the editorial team more freedom to be creative and take chances. I think it dressed up the cover perfectly for this issue!

Globe Magazine, 21 February 2014

A powerful cover about Pope Francis, his first year how he’s “set a dramatically different tone for the Church” and asking the question, “Will it be enough to bring back the flock?”

Very powerful, I think.

The Nation, 3 March 2014

The Nation is a weekly journal of opinion and features analysis on politics and culture, and has been around since 1865. With its new issue, it looks at “Media Malpractice” with reference to Putin, Sochi and Ukraine.

I’m not sure what is written in the article, but I consider the typewriter creating an image of Putin to be very striking and effective.

Women’s Health UK, April 2014

Subscribers received a fun (and different) type of Womens’ Health cover with Heidi Klum.

The editorial team has played around with picture type and typography, showcasing all the different hats she has worn as part of her career.

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

MagLove by @MediaSlut is a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week, recognising well thought-out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three-in-one) covers and celebrating the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them. The (for now anonymous) blogger behind MediaSlut knows way too much for his own good about media in South Africa, magazines in particular. His mission is to show when SA magazines fail but, most importantly, also when they succeed. If you’re looking for a library about SA magazines and news, this is your one-stop pitstop.

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