Shelf Life: The power to make a positive impact

Louise Marsland (@Louise_Marsland)’s pick of new product, packaging and design launches this week:

  • Jack Daniels fashion gear now available in SA;
  • Stimorol steps up activation for students;
  • Energizer promotion gives back; and
  • Danone teaches kids about nutrition and design.

Fashionable Jack Daniels

Jack Daniels fashion gearJack Daniels fashion gear 2

If you’re a fan of Jack Daniels Whiskey, you may also be a fan of its fashion line — now available in South Africa through its online store on the Jack Daniels Facebook page.

Up until now, the only place to get hold of the Jack Daniel’s fashion wear or collectable items was in Lynchburg Tennessee! Located on the local Jack Daniel’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/JackDanielsSA, the retail store — called The Jack Daniel’s Hardware Store — is the first of its kind within the South African liquor market.

The store sports a range of branded men’s and women’s fashion clothing and other specialty items, from custom-built jukeboxes to the classic Jack Daniel’s T-shirt. It also boasts free delivery to anywhere in SA.

JD marketing manager in SA, Dino D’Araujo, says the store provides a range of high end clothing and memorabilia.

“JD merchandise seems to have acquired a cult-like status with our fans and we’re excited to finally be offering items previously unattainable. We also plan to add a whiskey collection in the near future, which will enable our customers to purchase rare Jack Daniel’s bottles and gift packs.”

Jack Daniels South Africa has 80 000 Facebook fans and this number is expected to grow with the addition of the option to purchase the bespoke branded gear.

Stimorol slides on to campus

Stimorol student activitation

Those of you who were at the University of Cape Town (UCT) will no doubt remember the famous Jameson Hall stairs with groans, after having had to trek up them a million times to lectures. That’s why Stimorol’s most recent activation on the ‘Jammie’ stairs was a sure-fire hit with students.

The brand erected a slide to help students get to the bottom of the long stairs in a fun way, part of Stimorol’s sampling campaign to students, #SeeWhatUnfolds to “liberate fun”.

The campaign activation’s main aim was to lift the moods of students, what with exams approaching, and students were offered a taste of Stimorol chewing gum to assist with their “mind shift”, a ride down the slide, a helium balloon and the chance to have their pic taken in a special enlarged frame with Stimorol brand ambassadors.

A sassy activation from Stimorol.

Energizing Christmas charity

Energizer festive season promotion

Christmas has come early for Energizer consumers as the brand rewards customers with its new on-pack/in-store promotion — and passes on the Christmas cheer to children’s charities.

The promotion, ‘Make the festive season last longer’, rewards consumers with daily prizes while collecting gifts for various children’s charities at five shopping malls.

Energizer community members and local shoppers across SA are being encouraged to share the festive spirit by either buying gifts off the children’s wish lists or by sharing the festive spirit through giving gifts of their choice to the children from these charities.

The campaign will run through October until December 2013, when Energizer and the various participating malls will host parties for underprivileged children, where the gifts will be shared.

The extended holiday cheer campaign, including on pack stickers, social media, radio, mall and point-of-sale activations, will run through October, November and December 2013.

“We believe everyone has the power to make a positive impact,” says Rashmi Vadivelu, brand manager, Energizer South Africa.

Danone moulds learners

Danone design and model-building competition winner 2013

Danone received 3000 entries from schools for its design and model-building competition as part of the Danone NutriDay School Programme nationwide educational initiative. The initiative targets schools across the country and teaches students and parents how to lead a healthy lifestyle through the consumption of dairy regularly.

This is the second year the competition has run, and learners had to build a 3D model out of empty NutriDay yogurt containers. Cash prizes were on offer for the winning team, school and teachers.

A rhino sculpture made by Maclaren College in Cosmo City was the eventual winner.

“The aim of this year’s competition was to give students the opportunity to let their imaginations run wild. We understand the integral role that creativity plays in the physical, social and emotional development of children worldwide — and adding our message of the importance of dairy consumption makes for a great combination. The entries we received this year were original, imaginative and of an exceptional standard,” explains Kirsten Reynolds, brand marketing manager, Danone South Africa.

The 2013 NutriDay programme was rolled out in 1000 schools nationwide — 600 in Gauteng, 200 in KwaZulu-Natal and 200 in the Western Cape. For schools that aren’t part of the official schools programme, but would like to have access to the educational material, it can be downloaded at: www.danone.co.za/?q=con,93,NutriDay+is+going+to+school.

Louise MarslandShelf Life by Louise Marsland is a weekly column on MarkLives. Tweet new product, packaging and design launches to @louise_marsland or email her at louise.marsland at gmail.com. Want to sponsor Shelf Life? Contact us here.

Louise has written about the FMCG, media, marketing and advertising industry for 18 years of her 25-year media career as a former editor of magazines AdVantage, Marketing Mix and Progressive Retailing, as well as websites Bizcommunity.com and FMCGFiles. She currently edits the weekly Wednesday Media & Marketing Page for The New Age newspaper; and is the co-founder and publishing editor of South Africa’s industry trendwatching portal, TREND. at www.trendlives.info, in partnership with MarkLives.com.

The Ad Contrarian: Big data and marketing bull

by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian), San Francisco Bay  In journalism there is a phenomenon called “burying the lead.” It happens when an incompetent reporter doesn’t understand the essential point of a story, and buries it beneath secondary points.

In the advertising business, we also bury the lead. But mostly, we do it intentionally.

adcontra“Our click rate was .042% which is about 22% above the category norm of .035%. Our re-targeting really helped with a .7% rate. By using behavioral scoring we achieved… and our optimization matrix…this lead to an uplift rate of… and a year-over-year ROI increase of almost 33%.”

I have been at a few too many of these “bury the lead” meetings.

The meeting will continue on to discuss how the re-targeting was implemented and how we optimized and what behavioural elements were included in our plan and how we can continue to increase our year-over-year ROI, and will never get around to the real story.

The real story is this: For every 10 000 ads that were delivered we got 4 clicks. And we don’t know how many of those clicks were fraudulent and how many were accidental.

The era of “big data” is quickly becoming the era of “big bullshit” — bullshit on a grander scale than ever before. We’ve always had ability to bullshit with words. Now we have the ability to bullshit with math. We’ve always had bullshit artists. Now we have bullshit scientists.

For a wonderful analysis of how we are raising irrelevancy and obfuscation to new heights, I highly recommend this post by Doc Searls. Doc is a brilliant guy who was one of the writers of The Cluetrain Manifesto, one of the foundational documents of the digital era. I have, at times, poked fun at it. But I have great regard for Doc and his intellect. Here’s a snippet from his post:

When I was doing research for The Intention Economy, the most important input I got came from Doug Rauch, the retired president of Trader Joe’s. One big reason for Trader Joe’s success, he told me, is…that it minimizes marketing bullshit. It has no loyalty program, no coupons, no discounts and none of the expenses any of those involve, including the cost of running a big data mill. …By avoiding this kind of thing, Trader Joe’s spares itself the cognitive overhead required to rationalize complicating the living shit out of everything, which is what marketing tends to do—and does now, more than ever, with Big Data.

Here’s a pretty good rule of thumb for understanding what’s really going on at the next online advertising presentation you attend: The deeper the dive, the more calculatedly they’re burying the lead.

The Ad Contrarian is Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian), the author of The Ad Contrarian and 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising. Reprinted from his blog The Ad Contrarian.

Fair Exchange: Reap rewards through inter-agency collaboration

by Erna George Every now and then I cast my mind back to the days when I was a brand manager, and we worked with probably two partner agencies — one handling above-the-line work and the other our below-the-line activities. It was only every now and then that we made use of a specialist, such as a promotions or public relations agency.

Essentially, we would invest a massive amount of time and money to make that impactful television campaign, and all other elements flowed from this.

World has changed

Fast forward to 2013 and the world has changed. Between social media, PVRs and many other distractions and channels, making that impact erna georgehas become tougher. And the buzz in the marketing corridors is the need to move (quickly) towards greater collaboration and exchange across agencies.

Today, clients are looking for agency partners that can synergise with other partners. The new exchange is cross-collaboration, and the days of one agency as the only — or the core — partner is over. As an analogy, think back to when Daewoo was selling cars, washing machines and air-conditioners; consumers found it tough to believe one brand could be great at it all. Similarly, it is difficult for clients to believe that one agency can be specialists in every area.

Clients are determined to use the best-of-breed from a spread of agencies, and are bringing in several to contribute to the creative process. Even though some of the bigger traditional above-the-line organisations have developed and stretched into multiple capabilities, even they will from time-to-time bring in other external specialists, such as space or stage designers or PR specialists.

Best poised to win

And, when it comes to pitches, there’s a move towards different agencies with different areas of expertise work-shopping a platform that can act as a springboard for any media. The idea that wins is then activated across the channels that fit the idea. And, it seems that those agencies collaborating and building their ideas beyond their area of expertise are best poised to win.

In the past two weeks, I have been working closely with an ad agency, providing the pitch team with market and consumer insights and strategies, to inform the central idea for a campaign that will take a brand into several markets beyond South Africa’s borders.

Yes, you read that correctly: a qualitative insight consultant collaborating with an ad agency. In the past, this has not been a natural partnership for many. Why?

Testing before investing

A good few above-the-line agencies do not believe in the value of ad testing, or in how ad testing is conducted. However, we both know clients want the idea to be tested before they invest in it.

So, in working together, we bring different expertise to the table and we learn about each others’ practices. We learn to trust each other’s skills and, in this more integrated journey, the next phases will yield a more natural consulting approach and a view on how to tackle a testing process we both believe in. The success will be all of ours.

If the ad agency succeeds in the markets my client wants to conquer, my client succeeds — and I am in some way a key aid in the process (this may yield more future work).  I learn even more about my client’s brand journey and challenges, and become more entrenched. The exchange, though more complex, becomes fair and rewarding.

Lead role leads to other issues

But, many clients don’t want to co-ordinate the marketing effort that best-of-breed and collaboration demands. Instead, they require one of the agencies to take the lead role, and that leads to other issues.

Imagine being that big agency with several specialists in your stable, including digital. But, the client tasks said agency with traditional advertising and another digital specialist with digital.

Is the lead agency’s allegiance with that digital agency? As the lead agency, is it responsible for the digital agency’s delivery or any potential mistakes? Does the lead try to find a way to get its digital agency in the door? And how does it keep its digital agency MD at bay when he or she keeps demanding at board meetings that its attempts to get into that client and work are being blocked by a colleague? It is not easy but it is the new reality.

Finding the middle ground

Recently, I pitched for some work across Ghana and Kenya with a number of partners (the local agencies benefiting from fieldwork spend), plus an NGO which loaned finance for the technology being researched.

Even though we each stood to gain, it was a journey to work out what each of us would own and bring to the table. We each had our own agenda and point of view on how to approach the project. Finding the middle ground was not completely clear, so we decided to focus on winning the business first and dividing the so-called spoils afterwards. By setting the different agendas aside, we showed the client a united face … and, believe it or not, the entire process just fell into place.

H0w to manage the process

Today, and going forward, being a valuable, in-touch partner to clients will require you to integrate and collaborate with other agencies. To manage the process:

  • Define the outcome
  • Decide the lead (and co-ordinate to avoid mixed/multiple messages)
  • Specify roles and responsibilities
  • Create effective communication channels and shared operations
  • Formalise agreements on ways of working
  • Learn from each other and delight your clients.

Erna George is the business director heading up quality research at brand development and marketing insight consultancy Added Value. She works with diverse brands and categories — from FMCG, alcohol and agriculture to financial services and entertainment — in countries across many geographies, including South Africa, Mozambique, Nigeria, Kenya, India, Philippines and Brazil. She contributes the monthly “Fair Exchange” column, about business relationships and partnerships in adland, to MarkLives.

Ad of the Week: Keep calm and carry on socialising

by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki) Previous Cell C campaigns have focused on call charges, but the latest ad from Ogilvy Johannesburg is an upbeat, fun, funky and very watchable promotion of Cell C data services.

Ogilvy Johannesburg TVC for Cell C: “DATA”

Cell C continues its attack on the “Big Two” of the cellular space by offering its services at discounted rates. This price-war strategy may work in the short run, but the cellular provider needs to ensure that its network is also up to scratch.

CEO Alan Knott-Craig announced in August 2013 that 100 new base stations and 70 new indoor coverage units would be built over the following three months, to cope with increasing demand: Cell C’s subscriber base has been growing, while rival MTN reported losing 400 000 of its 25 million subscribers in the first half of the year.

Very watchable

In this ad, the lead character is the geekiest-looking person one could ever hope to meet. He walks around sticking Post-it notes with “Like” written on them, asks people to be his friend and follows them. This would be creepy, if it weren’t so funny.

“I love peas!” — and “I just had a burger” — he announces to no-one in particular. “I’m here!” he shouts at various locations. In his home, he has a whiteboard, on which he posts his photos and his status: “Feeling meh,” it reads. There’s even a cat pic.

Cell C DATA TVC screengrabObvious analogies

The analogies may seem obvious, but each scene is carefully constructed to be funny on a couple of levels — such as the guitarist who gets a “like” post-it on his glasses, because he’s covered with them everywhere else. Or the girl who is at least a head taller than him whom he ‘follows’ so closely that he almost bumps into her.

The payoff is: “Ever wondered what would happen if you ran out of data? Get two gigs peak-time and three gigs midnight data for just R99 per month… and keep socialising. Cell C, the power’s in your hands.”

I recognised some of the locations as being in Johannesburg’s trendy Maboneng precinct… which works perfectly for the message and the target market. In fact, all the characters are young, hip and trendy — which fits in with Cell C’s target demographic: tech-literate, up-and-coming, but ready to switch if there is a compelling reason — such as price — to do so.

Cell C DATA TVC screengrabConsumer champion

Alan Knott-Craig Snr is currently presenting a case to the Competition Commission against MTN and Vodacom over the cost of the interconnection rate (which makes calls between users on other networks more expensive). By doing this, he is setting up Cell C as the company as the consumer champion, the under-dog that’s looking out for the ‘little guy’.

With any luck, this strategy will help to drive prices down for the benefit of all mobile users — after all, MTN and Vodacom shareholders have been reaping the rewards of this highly profitable sector for years, and consumers are clamouring for a better deal.

Consumers like the nerdy guy in the ad, who would have to resort to behaving in the most ridiculous manner to keep his social network connections alive. Imagine all those geeks taking to the streets and being IRL — “In Real Life”?! Would the world survive?

Knows it market

Data is a growing part of the cellular landscape, and Cell C is wise to target it as well as it has. This ad shows that Cell C knows its market, with this fun, amusing and clever ad that puts across a simple message exceptionally well.

Oresti PatriciosAd of the Week, published on MarkLives every Wednesday, is penned by Oresti Patricios (@orestaki), the CEO of Ornico, a Brand Intelligence® firm that focuses on media, reputation and brand research. If you are involved in making advertising that is smart, funny and/or engaging, please let Oresti know about it at info@ornicogroup.co.za.

Grubstreet: Many agendas in City Press race row

by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) What’s eating City Press so much that its annual editorial strategy meeting last week blew up into a race row that exploded on Twitter and into the mainstream media after an  extraordinary email by editor Ferial Haffajee to staff was leaked to The Media Online?

Is it actually a race row or are there other issues at play?

Grubstreet had been aware of unhappiness in the newspaper’s newsroom for quite some time – of mutterings about an “in” group of white ferialpeople who surround the editor.  Certainly the two Twitter celebrities at the paper, political writer Carien du Plessis  and former assistant editor Adriaan Basson (made editor of Beeld recently), are as active as Haffajee on the social network in a manner that must be uncomfortable for City Press’ traditional readers: the people who loved the paper for its strong “Black Consciousness” voice – its pride in boldly being a newspaper for black Africans.

In fact, there are many issues at play in the discord at City Press such as a young news desk finding its way, reporters having to adjust to a more mainstream news agenda under Haffajee, professional jealously and a touch of trouble making.

Newsrooms are typically filled with creative, fractious people who talk and gossip and moan. What is unusual here is that it spilled into the public arena, sparked by tweets made last week by Haffajee that attracted attention from the likes of EFF leader Julius Malema and political satirist Chester Missing.

What has struck Grubstreet in conversations this week about this saga with City Press staff members, past and present, is that there is nobody in particular to blame in this newsroom: not the editor who is an accomplished journalist hired with a mandate to take on the Sunday Times; nor the newsroom staff – pre- and post-Haffajee – who are struggling with the stresses of transformation.

And by this, I mean commercial transformation.

When Haffajee took over City Press from the well regarded Mathatha Tsedu in July 2010 she was given a very clear brief to take the paper upmarket and to broaden the reader base beyond black Africans. In a 2010 interview a few months after she took over, she told me:

FERIAL HAFFAJEE: My brief from the board is very clear. They want to reposition City Press while retaining that which the readers like. So we want to move it up the market; not right into the Financial Mail/Mail & Guardian space at all – but to play in about LSM (Living Standards Measure) 7-10. At the moment we’re spread into LSM 5 and up to 10.

QUESTION: But that is into the Sunday Times’s territory, isn’t it?

ANSWER: Yes, I guess so. Together with Rapport (the Afrikaans Sunday broadsheet owned by Media24) it’s quite a clear strategy to be competitive but you’ve got to see the two working together.

QUESTION: What fascinates me as you have a hugely challenging task that, if you pull off, will be quite a thing. Can you reposition and retain the 200 000 sales that you already have. I would imagine many of the readers are quite conservative and identify with City Press’s distinct Africanist identity very strongly. At a certain point, won’t you have to kiss some of them goodbye?

ANSWER: I think that is the brief as well: knowing that we are going to lose some readers. I’d like to not lose too many of them because in various readership surveys, there’s a real love relationship between its readers and City Press. In that way, it’s the same as the M&G… something that you carry with pride and you identify with very, very closely.

But I do recognise that in pulling the paper along to where my brief needs it to be, we are going to lose some readers.”

This is a massive undertaking for any product and it’s little wonder that City Press is showing the strain – even more so because we are yet to see signs that the new strategy has found traction in the market.

Most newspapers today are suffering declining circulation and, when you reposition, you expect to lose readers before you find new ones but city pressCity Press sales are really not in a good way.

In the latest ABCs – for the second quarter of 2013 – total circulation was at 120 666 compared with 146 054 in the same period the year before. In the same period in 2011, it was at 149 568 while in 2010 it was at 167 467.

By comparison, Times Media Group’s Sunday Times was at 422 869 in the second quarter of this year compared with 452 785 a year earlier.

In the latest Amps readership figures – for July 2012 to June 2013 – there was a large gap between the Sunday Times, with  its 3.65-million readers, and City Press  with 1.98-million.

The big circulation drop from 2010 to 2011 can largely be attributed to the disastrous new Cycad distribution system introduced by Media24 for all its titles at that time while City Press’ repositioning will have also entailed the difficulties of establishing a new distribution footprint and marketing to new readers.

What is going on this week and last at City Press is that the newsroom staff – especially those that were there under Tsedu and previous editors – are questioning the new strategy and this has become  entwined with sensitivities about race, partly because of City Press’ change from a black African product to one targeting a broader audience.

We shouldn’t forget that Haffajee has done good by City Press.

The paper is an agenda setter of national news, has won big investigative awards, is one of the best-looking papers around and has a pretty cool magazine launched a couple of years back.

I do wonder though of the wisdom of taking on the Sunday Times – which is the Big Daddy of Sunday papers in SA in terms of sales and influence – by trying to be like the Sunday Times.

I think City Press needs differentiation – and by giving up its “Distinctly African” ethos (the paper’s old logo), it gave up its key differentiation.

I’m pretty sure that allegations of racism and lack of transformation will be separated from other causes of upset at City Press in the company probe announced by Media24’s head of newspapers Fergus Sampson late last week and there will be a toenadering.

I think the powerful Sampson will support his editor in defending her implementation of her mandate but I think  she’ll be censured for taking this into the public arena.

No publisher likes to see the dirty laundry aired in public – especially not Media24 on issues of race. It is sensitive about its own struggles with its transformation from the old Nasionale Pers, the Afrikaans mouthpiece of the apartheid government, to a media company of the democratic era.

GrubstreetSouth Africa’s leading media commentator Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) offers intelligence on media, old and new. Reprinted from her site Grubstreet.

Design Annotator: Music for creative ears and alternative careers

by 10and5logosmall1Uno de Waal (@Unodewaal) One of the ways that we hope to inspire people to follow their creative passions is through our Day Jobs series, where we profile interesting alternative careers for creative people. Mia Ziervogel is one such person who has taken her passion for fashion and photography and turned it into a job by publishing Dossier Magazine. Who said the magazine industry was stuffed?

We also profile Louis Minnaar, who has been one of the latest exports from Pretoria to feature prominently on 10and5. Louis’s work with agencies and brands and does his own profile work, having recently joined whatwewant as a director, too. He is definitely one of the hot talents to watch out for.

Lastly, if you are looking for some music to make the days go by, give a listen to Jordan Metcalf’s #NowPlaying submission. His tracklisting is sure to get your head nodding and feet tapping while you churn through the day’s work.

Featured: Louis Minnaar

 Louis Minnaar Vampire

Based in Pretoria, Louis Minnaar has worked as a designer, animator, illustrator, director and ‘general picture-maker’. He’s been a practicing visual artist since 2003. He makes music with Bittereinder, and with his sister in MiNNAAR. Get the picture yet? Many talents. Read on to learn more about him.

10and5: To start, tell us more about yourself and your journey so far.

Louis Minnaar: Well, I started freelancing while studying [visual communication] working on design, illustration, animation and video work. I made my first music video while in 2nd year for Yesterday’s Pupil and then my second for Van Coke Kartel in my 3rd. From there on out I was commissioned by a series of cool bands (Aking, Die Heuwels Fantasties, Jack Parow etc etc) for graphics and videos which pretty much takes care of my music graphics portfolio for now. In the meantime I started my own little graphics company in 2010 and have been working on some great projects since. I then joined a production house [whatwewant] as one of their commercials directors in 2012 and have been working with them as a director on some really exciting projects. Other than that I make electronic music as part of the Afrikaans group Bittereinder and along with my super talented sister in MiNNAAR.

Read more about Louis Minnaar.

Cool Capital Catalogue by Lize-Marie Dreyer

 Lize-Marie Dreyer Cool Capital Catalogue 7

Illustrator and graphic designer Lize-Marie Dreyer created this catalogue for the Cool Capital 2014 — a citizen-lead initiative to bring about visual, perception and actual change to Pretoria, by means of a multitude of small interventions.

See more of Lize-Marie’s work.

Killing The Streets by Shaun Oakley

 Killing the Streets by Shaun Oakley

Shaun Oakley is a graphic designer (and graffiti artist at heart) based in Durban. He has completed a three-part series of personal illustrations called Killing The Streets, which depict some of the things that “live in and ruin the streets every day”.

 Read a bit more about Shaun, AKA MrPersonality?, in a past feature here, and see more of his work on Behance.

#NowPlaying: Jordan Metcalf

 Cover art

For our #NowPlaying today, we asked Cape Town-based graphic designer Jordan Metcalf to put together a playlist. Jordan has a love for typography, black & white, things made out of wood and folk music — a few of those things you’ll find in his mix, This Winter.

Listen to the mix.

The Eagle Awards 2013 campaign

The Eagle Awards Campaign 2013

It’s time once again for the Eagle Awards, the only South African awards dedicated solely to the art of print advertising. This year’s campaign by King James calls on creatives to enter their work and make the most of their jobs which, in a parallel universe, might suck.

Since 1996, the Eagle Awards has recognised innovative, impactful and beautifully crafted print work and, as per usual, two international judges will decide who walks away empty-handed or with the coveted Black Eagle. This year’s Black Eagle winners will win an all-expenses paid trip for two to the 2014 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

See the rest of the Eagle Awards campaign.

My Day Job: Mia Ziervogel

Dpssier Magazine

Quite simply, and not so simply at all, Mia Ziervogel is the “Editor and everything at Dossier Magazine.” Mia has loved magazines since she was old enough to turn a page, and so it was only natural that she took her obsession and ventured into the business of publishing.

Sensing a gap in the market for a different title, Mia created Dossier to present SA talent in a new and beautiful way. Now seven years down the line, Mia still works each day to bring “something more timeless and lasting to the magazine world”.

Read more about Mia’s job as publisher and editor for Dossier Magazine.

Barefoot, Lost & Hungry by Pieter Vosloo

 Pieter Vosloo Day 1 Travel from OR Tambo to Bangkok

Johannesburg based photographer Pieter Vosloo has started a daily blog about his solo trip through South East Asia, which was his first trip to another continent. Pieter aims to allow viewers to experience the trip through his eyes — to be in the moments he captured and to feel what he felt while doing so.

For over two months, Pieter backpacked through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. Much of this time was spent lost and hungry, which is referenced in the name of the blog: Barefoot, Lost & Hungry.

See more of Pieter Vosloo’s pictures.

adidas Originals | Run Thru Time | 00s

adidas Originals | Run Thru Time | 00s from AREA3 on Vimeo.

For the SA launch of its limited-edition Run Thru Time range of sneakers, adidas Originals has created a trio of short films to showcase the exclusive collection. The range reintroduces three styles of sneakers from the past — the ZXZ ADV from the ’80s, the ZX 5000 Response from the ’90s and the Adizeros Adios 2 from the ’00s.

 

Uno de Waal

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) who is also a social strategist.

Industry reacts to MetropolitanRepublic Loeries scam ad scandal

As news broke late Friday that MetropolitanRepublic has been stripped of all its Loeries wins @marklives started retweeting industry reaction on our Twitter feed. We have reprinted some of those retweets here. These tweets offers an overview of industry reaction. RTs don’t represent our views.

One Club president talks about breakout video ideas

by Tim Robinson (@burningpoint) With Interactive Advertising Bureau figures showing 77% of online audiences watching online video and a consumption of 87 videos per month, it’s easy to see why more and more brands are putting money into a medium that isn’t locked into a broadcast schedule, trusting to creative content to draw audiences and using social media to promote their brands.

Kevin-SwanepoelAppealing notion

Google Analytics aside,  being able to track the popularity of your content via view counts alone makes the notion of creating OPOV (original professional online video) content an appealing one.

I recently spoke to Kevin Swanepoel, president of the One Club New York and organiser of the One Show Awards and Creative Week New York [and a South Africa expat, nogal], about the new role video is playing in the media landscape.

To give an idea of Swanepoel’s standing in the media world, The One Show is one of the biggest awards shows in the world, encompassing the One Show Awards, One Show Interactive, One Show Entertainment and Creative Week New York. In 2013, The One Show Interactive was judged to have almost twice as many entries than the Cannes Cyber Lions.

Tim Robinson: Kevin, a few years back we saw great use of video strategy by Wieden + Kennedy with their Old Spice live-response videos. What are the best breakout video ideas you’ve seen recently?

Kevin Swanepoel: That’s fairly interesting as, if we look at what the team from Weiden + Kennedy were doing, they reinvented the game then and they’re at it again. This time, as you’ll be aware, the Mayans predicted the end of the world in December 2012. Old Spice saved the day by creating an 8-bit video game with Dikembi Mutombo, one of the NBA’s legendary stars, who used his skills each week to find new ways to stop the world from ending. Each week they released a new game level based on the popular culture of that week.

So, not only were they coding new elements to the game based on current events, but running a finely tuned production by producing new content on a weekly basis. This broke new ground on video-gaming and project turnaround.

Another interesting project was Clouds Over Cuba created by The Martin Agency in Virginia, in conjunction with Tool production house. They have a history of taking massive amounts of data and turning it into something that the audience can interact with.

Clouds over Cuba is an interactive documentary which was created for the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile crisis. They combined real footage and voice to create an alternative reality showing how the scenario could have played out if the negotiations between the John F Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev weren’t successful. The content was featured online and at the JFK Museum in Boston.

Geox is a great interactive wanderlust exploration video that allows the user to take a journey along a timeline through the streets of the wettest places in the world. It includes clickable hotspots with additional journey and product content.

TR: As someone who travels a lot, which cities/countries are making clever use of out-of-home video and have you seen evidence of it impacting culture beyond marketing?

KS: There is currently a huge movement in China to beautify the city through creativity and I know of a conversation that is happening with [the] Chinese government to change the facades of buildings to incorporate more large-format screens that will be interactive and support video. A lot of people in the US would see that as noise and clutter but even places like Times Square have their own beauty, which leads me to a piece that makes interesting use of the billboard video screens in Times Square.

Forever 21 created an amazing interactive billboard which had a model lean out into the street (in the video) and pick up a passerby and drop them into the billboard video so that they became a part of the billboard. While the model’s actions were preprogrammed, the people she was picking up were walking around below the billboard — so it was prerecorded content interacting with live content.

Original credit for the idea goes to Digital Artist Chris O’Shea.

Another unique way I saw a brand making use of screens in windows for retail is the experience TBWA created for Adidas by bringing the window shopping experience to life and allowing windows shoppers to interact with the digital items in the shop window and make purchases — this is a great use of alternative screen estate that would otherwise not be engaging the user in the same manner, as it happened at night when the shop was closed.

I was recently in Atlanta and met with the Razorfish innovation lab. They were showing me an update on the traditional showroom they’re working on. Because big cities don’t have the retail environment to have an actual car in-store, they’ve replaced the car with big screens that allow people to interact with the car — spin them around, tour through the car etc and companies like Audi take this content seriously — they sent Audi technicians to Atlanta to measure the gaps in the doors of the cars on screen to ensure that the measurement and scale was one-for-one between the digitally recreated cars and actual product.

TR: Branded content is a field that the One Club has supported and promoted for many years (One Show Entertainment Awards is in its sixth year now). With apps such as Vine and Instagram, and users easily being able to draw large audiences through original creative ideas, user-generated content has captured a new audience — how are you seeing this influence the branded-content space?

KS: I’ll come back to micro video [Vine and Instagram] shortly. Firstly, regarding branded storytelling, there is a piece that did really well in One Show, One Show Interactive and One Entertainment by Peirera & O’Dell for Intel and Toshiba — they are an incredible boutique shop that have their roots in digital but are kicking ass in the traditional media space.

This particular piece is called ‘The Beauty Inside’. It’s a branded-content film that was created by a traditional director and a cast of actors but, because of the nature of the story, it was handed over to the actual viewers of the story. Peirera & O’Dell created a storyline about someone who falls in love with a girl but she never knows who [he] is because his appearance changes every day — but the beauty inside remains the same.

They then got the audience involved by asking them to write a part of the script and send them a video of it being acted out. These performances were then added into the film and viewers became a part of the story.

What we’re also seeing in the ad industry is a massive growth of channels in which brands now need to be showing their product on. The demand of the dollar is now spread across so many more media channels. So what we’re seeing is brands creating content that consumers want to interact with because the next generation is not only watching Cable TV — I’ve got two sons and, if I look at the time they’re spending watching TV, I think its about one or two hours a week but they are glued to their mobile devices iPad or interacting with their Apple TV.

If brands want to engage with this audience, they need to make sure they’re getting involved in these [media].

Regarding micro video — Vine took off early this year, so at the One Show Interactive we gave the audience a chance to give a six-second Vine acceptance speech. We got some great results from this. I think that, as we see the micro video medium growing, brands that engage relevantly will start to win.

For example, there was an interesting piece recently from BBDO New York for Home Depot which featured Vine videos giving helpful tips on DIY, such a how to use a rubber band on a stripped screw head. This went viral very quickly and suddenly brands are seeing many new opportunities for their products in a more-targeted media space.

TR: The One Club has recently launched the Emerging Directors Showcase… Can you tell us a bit about that?

KS: We’ve started up a platform for emerging directors who [are] in their early years with a couple of projects under the belt and are looking to be discovered. Our jury consists of directors, chief creative officers and executive creative directors from the leading creative houses within the industry — these guys are looking to reward creative standards with jobs at Caviar, Radical Media or RSA films, for example.

TR: Who should we be watching in the field of content strategy/marketing departments, who get bold ideas right? Who is getting interactive/video right at the moment?

KS: Definitely Carero Dell for the stuff they’re doing with Intel and Toshiba, and another group is 180 LA. Their ECD, William Gelner, has done some amazing work for the Sony Vaio.

Vice Magazine is doing some amazing work for the Intel Creators Project. We’re seeing a lot of video around that and, next Year, One Show will be doing an interesting collaboration with Vice and reinventing the way the traditional awards show is seen.

For more on how video and video strategy are being used, visit the One Show archives.

Tim Robinson — Tim Robinson has spent 14 years in the marketing, design, digital and TV industry, and currently works with brands wanting to produce content in the convergent media space of digital and video. Robinson contributes the new monthly “Visual Sip” column to MarkLives.com, in which he talks to industry leaders about their stories, technologies and trends in the industry — a coffee-break-length conversation about the emerging industry of broadcast on the web and video strategy.

What MetroR, MTN should know about education in Uganda

by Anton Crone (@antoncrone) There is a primary school in Uganda at the foot of a dormant volcanic crater. It is not unlike many schools in this country. It has no electricity. The classroom walls are mud.

A third classroom is in the process of being built but it’s already in use. The kids like it because the unfinished walls let in plenty of light so they can copy from the small blackboard; the lesson today is Malaria.

Ndali Kasenda SchoolNo electricity

They write in examination pads, their ballpoint pens making lazy circles in the air as they copy the chalked diagramme of a mosquito. Some use pencils — black and red Staedtlers, the ends shaved to fine points. One boy secures his pencil in the cords of his hoodie wearing it like a jewel.

By 3pm, school is over. The kids have been here the whole day but it’s hard to tear them away from the blackboard. After end-of-day assembly, some rush back to continue their work and, when they are done, they slip their examination pads into plastic shopping bags and begin the walk home. They skirt the rims of crater lakes in the Ndali-Kasenda Crater Field and weave between banana trees.

They join older kids from a secondary school, who study under better conditions. Their classrooms are brick and they have desks that they share, but they have no electricity, either.

They simply don’t have them

They chat and play games as they head home to what will commonly be a mud hut lit by kerosene lamps. Not one of them glances at a cellphone. They simply don’t have them.

A teacher in the district capital, Fort Portal, put the number of scholars owning phones at 10%. Another teacher who gives computer training to three schools in this district, Nicholas Ategeka, reckons only about 20% of Uganda scholars even have access to phones.

Ad agency MetropolitanRepublic claimed in its recent Loerie award entry that its client, MTN, had implemented a cellphone-based learning programme which eliminated the need to build and maintain expensive libraries, an incredibly bold claim in any country. It turned out the programme itself is only in concept stage and it was compelled to withdraw the awards it’d won.

Ndali Kasenda SchoolEven if all kids had access to phones, Ategeka is not convinced they have a role in education and points out an important factor. “Phones make lazy,” he says, “They use them in different purposes. They don’t concentrate because of these cellphones.”

Outside of class, left alone with the means to talk or text with friends, play games or surf the web, it would be difficult for a scholar to concentrate with these distractions, never mind focus on school work on a screen not much larger than a matchbox. A phone would have to remain charged under such intensive use, difficult in a home with little or no electricity, or far from a recharge station. And who would pay for that charge?

Obvious considerations

These are obvious considerations for such a project, making it all the more surprising that the judges and the majority of the audience at the Loeries swallowed it.

Even more surprising were the books supposed to represent the Ugandan school syllabus, books such as “Trip Advisor” and “Guide to 50 Best Restaurants.” Stranger still were a range of South African books on “Gumboot Dancing”, “Maskandi”, “Kwaito” and “South African Braai.”

There were other clues, such as the superimposed phone screens on the award-entry video and a blackboard with the name Zuma scrawled on it, placing the film in South Africa.

Ultimately, there was a complete lack of substantiation for the agency’s claim of eliminating the need for libraries, as well as statements such as: “Students did most of their reading and researching off their phones.”

Exaggeration in the extreme

At face value, it is exaggeration in the extreme, with absolutely no foundation. A little more thought and one must wonder about the feasibility of encapsulating an entire school syllabus in text form so that it is intelligible, practical and constructive. It would need indexes, categories and a means whereby scrolling through the text of books, hundreds of pages long, would not be painfully time-consuming.

A scholar at a high school in the regionFeature phones, constituting the great majority of phones in this region, would not even be able to display essential diagrams.

So why was it not thrown out during the judging process? Perhaps the ad industry is conditioned to believe its own hype.

Most of us have scammed

Most of us have scammed; I certainly have. All of us exaggerate for effect. Or perhaps we are so far removed from the realities of Africa that we would rather believe the hype instead of facing the grueling challenges?

If we were to believe MetropolitanRepublic’s spin, then education in Uganda is in good hands and we could move on to something else. But it’s not in good hands — far from it.

By claiming to be actively doing something about education, one is reminded of the inept claims of our own government. Perhaps we are far too used to this hype as well.

Driven blind

The advertising industry is full of well-educated, extremely talented people, but it is driven blind by awards and the creative egos that chase them. Awards are vital; they raise the bar.

Ndali Kasenda SchoolBut with the brains that the industry has, far more concerted effort could be put into making a positive difference. The Loerie Awards body can encourage this like it has with the Ubuntu award, and it can and should do more.

Its decision following the withdrawal of MetropolitanRepublic’s entries is the right one in the circumstances, and let’s hope it sends a clear message to the industry and encourages agencies to follow through with their initiatives and prove themselves with results.

Probably best served

When it comes to education in Uganda and most of Africa, an improvement can probably be best served by the means people have succeeded with right up until now, in the best circumstances, in the richest countries: With good teachers, with blackboards, with books and pens. [Or how about this approach, as reported by Wired.com? “How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses” — ed-at-large]

Perhaps it is there where we should put our effort. My conviction is that education depends on teachers who are, in turn, well-taught and well-paid by a government that is not afraid of the power of an educated youth; teachers who are passionate, imaginative and completely dedicated to their task.

If we must play such a role, then we, too, must be completely dedicated to the task, not to the award.

Anton CroneAnton Crone (@antoncrone) is a freelance writer and photographer who travels extensively in Africa. Read more on www.brightcontinent.co.za.

Tech Law: How POPI will change your direct marketing activities

by Paul Jacobson (@pauljacobson) The Protection of Personal Information Act has particular interest for direct marketers because of the likely substantial impact the legislation will have on consumer-facing initiatives when it goes into effect. POPI has a section that deals specifically with and introduces a consent model designed for direct marketing.

Paul JacobsonInteresting model

It is an interesting model and I’ll explain why in a moment. In the meantime, it is worth reading the following posts if you haven’t already:

Protection of Personal Information Act’s section 69 is titled “Direct marketing by means of unsolicited electronic communications”. It begins with the following general prohibition on

[t]he processing of personal information of a data subject for the purpose of direct marketing by means of any form of electronic communication, including automatic calling machines, facsimile machines, SMSs or e-mail …

unless the data subject[1] either consents[2] or, importantly, is the “responsible party’s[3]” customer.

If, on the other hand, the consumer (or data subject) is not the provider’s (responsible party) customer and if the consumer has not “previously withheld” consent, the provider has a once-off opportunity to send the consumer a request for the consumer’s consent to allow his or her personal information to be used for direct marketing purposes.

Shoulds and shouldn’ts

In practice, this is usually a message simply informing the consumer about the products or services the provider would like to market to the consumer and requesting consent. This once-off message shouldn’t be a marketing message because that would violate the general prohibition; it should be an information message, and its specific format may be prescribed in regulations supporting the Protection of Personal Information Act in due course.

If the consumer consents, then the provider will be entitled to use the consumer’s personal information for direct marketing purposes within the consent’s parameters. This may sound obvious but this can be a little tricky.

The best way to obtain the quality consent the Protection of Personal Information Act contemplates (take another look at the consent definition[2]) is through a sufficiently detailed privacy policy document. This is the role of a privacy policy. It is the foundation of a compliant direct marketing campaign, so do it properly!

If the consumer doesn’t give express consent through a privacy policy but is a provider’s customer[4] already, the consumer’s consent is essentially implied by virtue of the consumer being a customer who is already interested in learning more about the provider’s products or services.

Can use for marketing purposes

In this scenario, the provider can use the consumer’s personal information for marketing purposes where

  1. the provider obtained the consumer’s personal information in the context of a sale of a product or service;
  2. “for the purpose of direct marketing of the [provider’s] own similar products or services”; and
  3. the consumer has been given “a reasonable opportunity to object, free of charge and in a manner free of unnecessary formality, to such use of his, her or its electronic details” both at the time the consumer’s personal information was first collected and each time the provider communicates with the consumer for marketing purposes (and assuming the consumer didn’t refuse to consent the first time he or she was asked).

Then, lastly, the each communication for the purpose of direct marketing must contain both the provider’s identity, as well as contact details which the consumer can use to opt-out of further marketing communications.

This basic model isn’t totally new. It has existed for some time in other regulatory frameworks such as the WASPA Code of Conduct (mobile service providers will be familiar with this mechanism). It does represent a broader shift in South African law because the Protection of Personal Information Act will establish minimum requirements for practically all direct marketing communications, particularly from a consent perspective.

If you are engaged in direct marketing, this is a pretty important aspect of the Protection of Personal Information Act for you.

Not the only legislation

This isn’t the only legislation dealing with direct marketing, though, just arguably the most important from a privacy perspective.

The Consumer Protection Act, for example, deals with other issues relating specifically to direct marketing such as cooling off periods for sales made through direct marketing (there is some overlap with the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, which also deals with cooling off periods and which Act applies will depend on what was sold and how).

In the meantime, it is worth taking some time to explore how your direct marketing activities may need to change to accommodate the Protection of Personal Information Act’s compliance requirements. You may not need to make substantial changes; only make sure you have an adequate privacy policy framework and the back-end systems to properly process opt-ins and opt-outs.

Time is running out

Whatever your particular requirements may be, time is running out. The Protection of Personal Information Act has been passed by Parliament and is likely before the President waiting for his signature and then it will be implemented.

— Paul Jacobson (@pauljacobson) is the founder and director of Web•Tech•Law/CC BY-SA 2.5

  1. ‘‘data subject’’ means the person to whom personal information relates. ↩
  2. “consent” means any voluntary, specific and informed expression of will in terms of which permission is given for the processing of personal information. ↩
  3. ‘‘responsible party’’ means a public or private body or any other person which, alone or in conjunction with others, determines the purpose of and means for processing personal information. ↩

  4. Express consent would be required where a consumer is approached for the first time by a provider’s representative and asked to consent to direct marketing. On the one hand, an example could be a consumer who completes a feedback form at a bookstore which includes a section requesting permission to send the consumer marketing information about book sales and specials. On the other hand, a consumer who has already bought books from the bookstore is, obviously, already a customer and the rules change somewhat.

Online CPD Courses Psychology Online CPD Courses Marketing analytics software Marketing analytics software for small business Business management software Business accounting software Gearbox repair company Makeup artist