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MagLove: Sex and nudity sell

by MediaSlut (@MediaSlut) Sex and nudity sell. Sex and nudity make people talk. Sex and nudity are what it’s all about in this week’s selection of my favourite international and local magazine covers…

GQ Italia
L’Officiel Hommes
Variety
VOGUE Turkey, and
Wonderland.

Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us at @Marklives and @MediaSlut.

INTERNATIONAL

GQ Italia, October 2013

Miley Cyrus knows how to market herself, and get people to talk about her. She also made our list of favourite covers with her October 2013 Rolling Stone US cover, but this week it’s her ‘dimples’ and teasing that got me… She’s so cheeky…!

L’Officiel Hommes, Fall 2013

Fall 2013 has never looked so good to me… So many clothing items just ‘falling off’, as well! Oh, almost forgot… the design, colour used, and typography is also sexy.

Variety, No.2 October 2013

The cover line reads, “THE HARD SELL — Explicit sex is the new normal for pay-TV series. Where do programmers draw the line?”. Very valid question! And a great cover that makes me want to take the microphone… and also debate about it (and read about it, of course)…

VOGUE Turkey, October 2013

So Turkey can have naked breasts on their covers and for all to see, but when our local title De Kat does it, it has difficulty with stores being allowed to sell it… Well, the photography, the cover, the simple typography, and the beautiful model in all her glory is, in one word, just “astonishing”!

Wonderland., September/October 2013

No nudity to see here, but the sex-appeal of actor Kit Harington (better known and perved about as Jon Snow from Game of Thrones) on this cover is enough to get me through any winter, and another season of Game of Thrones…

PS Interesting that this is its Fashion Issue, but no fashion to be seen…

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. #MagazinesForTheWin

Grubstreet: Social Media Landscape 2014 study

by Gill Moodie (@grubstreetSA) Social networking is truly on the rise in South Africa, the recent “Social Media Landscape 2014” study tells us, and the top brands of South Africa are intensifying their social-media activity.

Benchmark for research

The study, which has become the benchmark for research on consumer and corporate use of social networks in SA, was released last week by World Wide Worx and Fuseware, although the headline findings were made public last month.

Grubstreet was given a copy of the research report (it is not given away for free; but sold) and our main take-home insights — with an interest in what the research means for SA’s media companies — include the following.

Of the 57 large South African brands surveyed in the study, 53% are planning to invest in training in-house staff in social media (fewer are considering using specialist agencies to manage social media), while 44% of the brands have increased their social-media budget allocation in 2013, compared with 2012.

The survey also revealed that 93% of the big brands use Facebook, 79% use Twitter, 58% YouTube, 46% Linked In and 28% Pinterest.

“The primary reason brands use social media is that it is a core part of the marketing campaign (67%),” the study says. “In 2012, the primary reason was that it is an effective PR channel, as voted by 70% of respondents.”

Another stand-out finding is that of the 57 brands surveyed, 67% are planning on creating mobile apps in 2014.

Traditional ad spend to decline?

Does this mean that we can expect to see advertising budgets for traditional media decline due to this, I wonder? Why spend money on print ads, for instance, when you can use your own channels to deliver your message to your market?

World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck told Grubstreet: “You may be correct [on ad spend being diverted from traditional media to new media] but it is also likely that many brands are increasing their budgets specifically to allow for greater social-media spend. That said, the ideal is to have an integrated strategy that includes social media as part of the mix. That means that it’s not a case of shifting budget but rather integrating budget.”

The big South African media brands and companies themselves do not feature very highly on the lists of top-performing brands on social networks. (The top 50 companies were selected based on the official brand value index published by Brand Africa for August 2013 — and this year’s posts to the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts of the respective companies were surveyed.)

In fact, only Media24 made the list for the top 50 “most valuable” brands across the social networks — at Number 22. When it came to the “Top 50 YouTubers” list, only FHM (Number 29), Uhkozi FM (Number 39) and eNews Channel (Number 46) of our established media brands put in a showing.

Quite telling

I think this is quite telling — and says how slow some of our traditional media companies have been in harnessing social networks to project their own brands. Media companies, after all, should be on top of social media.

Boy, is mobile big in every way in this country, the study tells us, and social networking in inextricably linked with cellphone use.

The study found, for instance, that 87% of Facebook users and 85% of Twitter users are accessing these networks on their phones.

“At the end of June 2013, no less than 14.3-million smartphones were in use on South African mobile networks,” says World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck in his introduction to the study. “That figure is expected to pass the 16-million mark during 2014. Ultimately, most of these phones will be using some form of social network or instant messaging platform, suggesting social network penetration passing the 33% mark during 2014. If all of these were adult users, it would represent 50% of the adult population.”

Wow. Mobile is surely a crucial platform for news media in SA in the near future.

Eyewitness News, that serves Primedia radio stations 702 Talk Radio, 567 Cape Talk and 94.7 Highveld Stereo, launched its free mobile app last week, for instance, and it is promoting it heavily on the radio stations

Fascinating

Other fascinating findings and insights in the study include:

There were 55 000 people on Twitter in SA at the start of 2010 compared with more than 5-million today while Facebook now has 9.4-million active users in South Africa, up from 6.8-million users a year ago.

The use of social bookmarking sites such as De.licio.us and DIGG has fallen while Linked In remains on a slow but steady growth curve, with a 20% growth from 2012. Google+ has failed to gain real traction in South Africa.

SA has the biggest LinkedIn user base in Africa, even though it does not have the biggest online audience or the most online penetration. SA’s 2.7-million LinkedIn membership is more than double that of the network’s second biggest African market, Nigeria (1.19-million) and Egypt (971 000).

The Oscar Pistorius bail-application hearing in February was a tipping point for Twitter growth in this country. The study says: “During the bail hearings, [Pistorius’s Twitter following] doubled to 289 000, and reached 310 000 by August 2013, making him the 15th most followed South African. The global attention on the Pistorius case also propelled Eyewitness News journalist Barry Bateman into the Twitter limelight, with his following rising from around 10 000 to more than 130 000. The key moment in the growth of his following was a tweet by former soccer star turned commentator Gary Lineker, who has more than a million followers, saying that Barry Bateman was the person to follow on the trial.”

“As South Africans have become used to social media, it has become the go-to source to discuss topics being discussed in radio, TV and print, in real time,” says the study. “South Africa’s most popular TV shows all become top trending topics in the country for the broadcast duration.”

Most Twitter activity takes place between 6pm and 10pm in South Africa on an average day, while Wednesday is the top tweeting day and Saturday is the lowest in any given week.

Employees who are active social networkers often out-perform the brands themselves on social media.

“A social-media analysis of the top 25 SA brands discovered that their average response time to comments on Facebook stands at an uninspiring 645 minutes, while the Twitter response time of the same set of brands is 271 minutes,” says the study, while also noting: “Competitions, although seemingly outdated, are still highly effective. The top retweets and Facebook posts across 25 top SA brands have a large proportion of competitions and giveaways in exchange for tweets, likes and similar engagement.”

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

Media Future: Mobile money transforming Africa

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) A new study reveals just how different e-commerce is in Africa compared to global trends.

It is 11 years since the first mobile payment service was launched in Africa, and it is now transforming economies across the continent. However, in the first five years or so, it was a solution in search of problems, with a scattering of case studies showing how it could make a difference.

Most people associate mobile payments with M-PESA in Kenya, but it was Zambia that really got the ball rolling, when Celpay was launched there by Fundamo, a South African payment technology company now owned by Visa. Celpay was most famous for one thing: it allowed SAB truck drivers to receive payment for their beer deliveries directly on their phones.

That was great as case studies go, but it didn’t fire up the rest of the continent. When M-PESA was launched in Kenya in 2007, it was also without expectations for a market-shifting service. It was originally conceived as a micro-financing offering. The banking regulator allowed it to be piloted without formal approval. When the pilot revealed the service’s potential for money-transfer, the first foot was placed on the financial racetrack.

Tragically, it was Kenya’s post-election violence in early 2008 that got M-PESA firmly on track. Thousands of people were displaced or prevented from moving out of their home districts, and M-PESA became the lifesaver that allowed friends, families and employers to get money to those who had no other access.

This was the catalyst, and within two years, Kenya had more than 10-million users of this mobile money service. The M-PESA platform was rolled out across Africa, but tended to flop in most countries, as the specific needs changed with every border change.

Today, the time for experimentation is over, and numerous success stories are emerging that do not depend on one specific platform. According to a new report by World Wide Worx, The Digital Savannah: Africa’s e-commerce promise, “the differences in preferences, cultural tendencies and priorities are a hallmark of the e-commerce landscape”. The report, commissioned by Amadeus, the technology solutions provider for the travel industry, reveals that e-commerce is growing in Africa, but not in exactly the same mould as developed economies.

It’s obvious that infrastructure and capacity constraints would change the picture; not so obvious that the concept would develop its own personality that speaks to the way Africans wish to purchase goods and services.

The mobile device is core to this personality. As the report puts it, “lacking conventional online access, millions of Africans have turned to their phones to take advantage of increasingly sophisticated mobile payment and banking services”.

The result is that, in 40 African countries, there are now at least two mobile payment providers per country.

And no less than five distinct forms of mobile commerce are in use: Mobile at the point of sale, using mobile wallets to transfer funds, like the FNB e-wallet; Mobile as the point of sale, where the phone becomes a cash register using an add-on device like Absa’s pebble; Mobile payment platforms like M-PESA, where money is sent using a menu on any phone; Direct carrier billing, where the payment charged to the cellphone bill; and Closed loop mobile payments, where merchants use their own proprietary mobile wallet.

This doesn’t mean millions are shopping for retail goods on their phones yet, but the report reveals a growing trend towards ticket purchases on phones. Here, Kenya was indeed first: a partnership between Kenya Airways and M-PESA resulted in the world’s first air tickets being sold via a mobile payment service.

— 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. Reprinted from Gadget.

Millennial Ad-Grad: Africa is rising

by Faheem Chaudhry (@FaheemChaudhry) Growing up, the ‘brain drain’ was a phenomenon often talked about and highlighted in conversations around struggling emerging markets, particularly in South Africa. But the tides have indeed turned, and as the next generation of marketers in Africa, we find ourselves in a rather exciting place.

Rise of the emerging markets

On a recent trip overseas, an HSBC campaign titled “The Future Is Emerging” caught my attention. The essence of the campaign is highlighting the rise of emerging markets and their increasing importance on the world economic stage. One of Europe’s largest banks is rooting its communication in the potential of the emerging world, and placing emphasis on its critical global role for the decades ahead.

It got me thinking even more about a topic that’s been on my mind for a while now:

Africa is rising.

Greatest potential

Europe and North America provide little opportunity for large growth for well-established multinationals — and Africa holds the greatest potential for business opportunity and expansion.

Jonathan Berman, author of Success in Africa: CEO Insights from a Continent on the Rise highlighted this potential recently. He said: “Africa’s economy is growing faster than the economies of all other continents. About a third of the 54 African countries are seeing annual GDP growth of more than 6%”

For young marketers building their careers on the continent today, there are several dynamics that make Africa just the place to be. Here are my thoughts on what makes the next few decades in Africa so very exciting and why we, as the next generation, are exactly where we’re meant to be.

1. Local market knowledge

Currently, there’s a large surge of interest in Africa coming from the world’s dominant organisations. One of the largest buildings in the Sandton business district is that of the Chinese development bank. Companies such as Google, Microsoft, Tata, Sahara, Walmart and the like are all investing heavily in their infrastructure in Africa.

However, as any African business person will tell you, we do things a little differently out here. We have a multitude of cultures, languages and social and political nuances that Western entrepreneurs just aren’t used to. This leaves the door wide open for the next generation of marketers to help steer and navigate multinational interest in Africa.

Local market knowledge is absolutely critical to the success of global brands wanting to come and play. As the next generation, there’s an important role for us here.

We need to be the crop who understands how to balance the proven expertise of global organisations with the wants and needs of the African consumer. With the ever-changing consumer environment created by a rising middle class, those who can master this dynamic will have large organisations actively seeking out their guidance and steer.

It’s a great position to be in; best we start practising our juggling.

2. Building for tomorrow, today

Two of Africa’s greatest assets are its untapped natural resources and space.

There are various developments currently in planning that will see the world’s most modern cities being built on the continent. Let’s take the Kenyan techno city of Konza, for example.

Often referred to as the ‘Silicon Savannah’, Konza started construction in September this year, and will be finished in 2020. The city is a 2000-hectare development, focused on creating a world-class hub for technology and development.

Like many similar cities in planning across the continent, Konza will be built from scratch, providing an extraordinary canvas for innovation, the application of modern design and the establishment of Africa’s position as the place to do business in the future. Whereas many of the world’s current economic hubs are decades, if not centuries old, Africa is getting ready for business of the future.

These cities are of real significance to the next generation of marketers on the continent. Never before has so much emphasis and investment been given to technology, education, retail and industrial infrastructure on the continent.

The growing capabilities of businesses in Africa will only lead to increased opportunities for African marketers to start playing on the world stage. With each year that passes, the continent will continue to grow in global business presence, with more multinationals starting to take advantage of African cities built for the future.

3. Technology and mobile penetration

Mobile penetration in Africa was 2% in 2000, is 78% today and will reach 84% by 2015.

As much as 25% of Kenya’s GDP moves through M-Pesa, a mobile money solution developed for Safaricom to help facilitate the transfer of money and micro-financing.

Mobile phones and technology are, and will continue to fundamentally change the way Africans are doing business. Never before has the continent been so connected.

Whereas previous generations of marketing may have struggled to communicate and engage with a large part of the continent, young marketers now have the ability to spark and deepen conversations with consumers on all parts of the continent. This trend will continue to grow from strength to strength, as penetration moves closer to 100%.

The fundamental ability of marketing on the African continent is moving at a rate like never before. As the next generation of marketers, the increasing role of technology in connecting the African continent places us in a position of possibility like no generation before us has had. Distance and geographical barriers are no longer constraints to creating conversations between consumers and brands.

No better place to be

Africa is at an important time in its journey. Growing business interest, as well as development of modern infrastructure and technology, makes Africa an incredibly dynamic business environment for the next crop of marketers to operate in. There’s no better place to be than where we are right now. Just watch the next 10 years — Africa is rising.

Faheem Chaudry (@FaheemChaudhry) is a passionate marketer at M&C Saatchi Abel. With a focus on the future, his aim is to better entrench the importance of creative thinking to solving critical business problems. Faheem contributes the monthly “Millennial Ad-grad” column to MarkLives.

Shelf Life: Escape to Mainstay

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

Escape to Mainstay;
Your chocolates now in ‘3D’ from Lunch Bar;
Moving Tactics gets the Revlon account in store; and
Continental Ignites the market.

Don’t stay the way you are

When I was a teenager in the ’80s, Mainstay was considered so cool that there were branded Mainstay T-shirts and shorts everywhere. I even confess to having had a Mainstay beach bag *cough*. And to put it into context for all the Millennials – this was way before it was de rigueur for brands to brand fashion!

And the jingle! ‘You can stay as you are for the rest of your life, or you can change to Mainstay’… As much a part of the fabric of our summer days as the old Peter Stuyvesant ‘beautiful people on holiday’ commercials!

Mainstay has two new releases debuting in time for summer and the holiday season: Mainstay 54 Island Vodka and Mainstay Fusion.

Mainstay 54 Island Vodka is made using a five-column distillation process. Sun-ripened molasses and island fruits are selected. These contain the simplest sugar that allows for a clean conversion to alcohol, allowing no impurities to remain.

And here’s the marketing spiel: “This purity translates onto the palate, where the viscosity and flavour work together in harmony, to enhance the experience as being something out of the ordinary.”

The press release goes on, punting escapism and beautiful people… as it did 30 years ago!

The Mainstay Fusion range has three variants: Mainstay Exotic Fusion — a blend of coconut, coffee and vanilla; Mainstay Tropical Fusion — a blend of mango and other tropical fruits; and Mainstay Island Fusion — a hint of hazelnuts and spices.

I must say that the bottles are that fabulous blue that will make great organic middle-class patio candlestick holders when you’ve drunk the contents!

Chocolates in 3D

Cadbury’s marketing team is clearly working overtime this summer season. It has now launched the Lunch Bar in triplicate. Oh sorry, that’s the Lunch Bar triple choc 3D. What other kind of chocolate is there?

Anyway, the 3D Lunch Bar is a Limited Edition release, “crammed with chocolate wafer biscuit, chocolate-crisped rice, thick Cadbury milk chocolate, plus caramel and peanuts”.

Says Stuart Knott, Mondelez South Africa’s senior brand manager chocolate bars: “While Lunch Bar has a loyal following, adding limited editions to the range is our way of giving fans of SA’s favourite chocolate bar something we’ve always promised — much, much more.”

It’s on shelves from October — while stocks last. Don’t all rush out at once.

Revlon launches digital network

Digital media in store is growing in popularity after a rather rocky start in the last few years. New players are getting it right and pricing it right as the technology improves and becomes more accessible.

Moving Tactics, which develops customised digital signage, is working with Revlon South Africa in rolling out in-store digital signage inside Edgars and Woolworths stores. The aim is to drive brand awareness and sales.

Moving Tactics, which has the sole rights within Africa to real-time visual communications software, X2O Media, will be using this digital-media platform to operate and manage Revlon’s content throughout its network.

The use of in-store digital media in the cosmetics industry is growing worldwide and retailers have seen the benefits of implementing these systems in the retail environment first-hand. Research conducted by FGI (2012) on Edgars’ digital signage system confirm that 41% of shoppers were influenced to purchase something in-store, based purely upon the advertising on in-store digital screens. This increase in purchasing has led to a 70% increase in sales in those stores employing digital signage.

Nikki Fletcher, merchandising manager at Revlon, comments: “Our experience with digital signage proved to us that in-store digital media really works to create and increase brand and product awareness amongst our customers, and we could see a direct correlation between products advertised through this medium and our sales turnover.”

Continental’s new digital billboards

Billboards can never be described as attractive additions to the urban landscape, but Continental’s new digital network is pretty snazzy.

It has launched seven new digital roadside billboards in Sandton as part of its new Ignite network, comprising Daktronics screens with what it describes as “eye-popping” image quality.

Here’s how it works: the screens offer the widest colour palette (144 quadrillion colours), ensuring content creators have the ability to digitally duplicate ad copy reproductions. Increased contrast with zero perceived tiling, minimised lines between modules, blacker blacks, richer colours, and bolder images. This technology also encourages energy efficiency.

And this is seriously cool: proof-of-play webcams which have been installed on each screen to provide advertisers with real-time reassurance that their ad is being flighted.

“This brand new network reaches up to 6.7 million people per month (JRA) and offers advertisers tactical messaging, day-part message management and real-time updates. This allows for strategic, location-based multiple impacts throughout the consumer’s day, creating seamless conversations with consumers,” says Lelanie Butler, sales director of Continental Outdoor Media (SA).

Samsung, in fact, became its first client, launching the new Galaxy Note 3.

“The advancement of technology and its ability to personalise and encourage interactive behaviour is redefining outdoor advertising’s role. This reinforces many of out-of-home’s (OOH) inherent strengths, providing new opportunities and further flexibility for brands to converse with consumers,” states Bazil Lauryssen, Continental Outdoor Media CEO.

Shelf 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: Agencies are selling clients the wrong kind of miracles

by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian), San Francisco Bay With the exceptions of pop music and fashion, there is probably no more trendy business than advertising.

Every few years we invent a trendy new miracle and everyone immediately jumps on it.

Sometimes it’s a media miracle like social media. Sometimes it’s a process miracle like account planning. Sometimes it’s a technical miracle like “big data.”

Whatever shape the miracle takes, one thing is for sure: it’s going to change everything.

Every agency in the known universe jumps all over the new miracle and it becomes the centerpiece of their website and their new business pitch.

Every agency also becomes expert in this new miracle, and starts up a department to specialize in it. They “brand” it (i.e., give it a stupid name) and develop a pseudo-proprietary flavour of this miracle.

Although what they do is exactly the same as what every other agency does, their flavour usually contains some kind of highly-evolved methodology with circles and arrows and dotted lines and feedback loops.

In other words, it’s a muy grande bullshit burrito.

Amazingly, clients believe in these miracles. The way it happens is that the agency usually trots out the example of the company that has been wildly successful implementing the miracle. The fact that this example is two or three standard deviations from normal is never discussed. All that anyone needs to know is that Zappos was a huge social media success, or “got milk” utilized account planning, or, I don’t know, someone had a million hits on their QR code, and naive clients start salivating and wanting a piece of the miracle.

The truly sad part is that there really is an advertising miracle. It’s called an idea — a great creative idea. Unfortunately, it’s hard to come by and there are very few who can perform it.

The ad business has adopted a very dangerous and short-sighted habit: selling the wrong kind of miracles.

The only real miracle we have in our bag of tricks is the creative one. It’s the only one we’ve ever had.

The most appropriate phrase ever written about chasing the latest trendy advertising miracle was written by someone you’ve never heard of named Herman Hupfeld.

Herman wrote, “the fundamental things apply, as time goes by.”

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.

Ad of the Week with Oresti Patricios — Absa: “Prosper”

Ad of the Week with Oresti Patricios (@orestaki) — Absa: “Prosper”

Personal banks operate in a highly competitive environment, a mass-consumer market where there is not much fat that enables one financial brand to differentiate itself from another.

Banks have tried to pare down prices to keep in step with upstarts such as Capitec, but a cheque account is a cheque account is a cheque account.

The problem most banks have is that there is a lot of parity between products and services, and financial brands have to invest heavily in innovation to differentiate (as with FNB), or go the dreaded route of cutting costs (how Capitec garnered market share).

Another aspect

Branding is another aspect where banks can successfully try to set themselves apart, in this tough retail-banking sector. Absa is certainly trying to do this with a broader effort that speaks to the self and the human spirit.

The latest campaign is based on the word “prosper”. It starts with a shot of a girl on a surfboard at sunrise, and the voice-over asks, “What does that word ‘prosper’ mean to you?”

The montage takes the viewer through various stages in people’s lives, with a simple but powerful narrative driven by the word “prosper”. The commentary expands on the theme: “It’s an ‘action word’ — like ‘dance’, ‘win’, ‘grow’, ‘care’, ‘hope’, ‘dream’ — the copy cleverly brings in a sextet of powerful words revolving around human aspiration.

Each word is supported by images that support the message: two people dancing in a field, an executive type being applauded by his peers, a farmer driving into his field, a young couple in the mud at an outdoor concert, a man cradling a baby, a scuba diver swimming under a whale. Images that demonstrate people in happy/triumphant situations that evoke an emotion, with interesting juxtapositions, such as a scene of a father and son dirt-biking on a beach, which then cuts to a small group of musicians. Each visual avoids cliché by being a little unusual — a lateral rather than literal interpretation of the copy.

Winning campaign needed

Absa needs a winning campaign now, more than ever before.

A Moneyweb article recently pointed out that Standard Bank may be this country’s biggest bank by market capitalisation, but it plays second fiddle to Absa in terms of customer numbers. But, says the report, Absa has been losing ground. In 2012 it stood at some 12.2 million customers but had lost 100 000 clients in the previous year, while Standard Bank was growing its numbers.

FNB’s numbers have been going through the roof, thanks to all that clever marketing and those smart promotions. The Moneyweb article states that, from May 2011 to May 2012, FNB opened 1.7 million new accounts.

Overall message

But back to that ad. Overall, the message is uplifting and inspirational, and it does this by appealing to our ideal selves: positioning the bank as a partner in life, with the narrator intoning the copy/brand promise: “And we’ll be there, standing beside you, shoulder to shoulder. Knowing you can.”

Some images recur throughout, creating a thread, such as the little boy, being prepared for school by his mother, who reappears for the final image as he walks away and turns to smile at the camera for the final line — “Believing you will prosper”.

The colour-grade is in the desaturated, blue end of the spectrum, almost black-and-white: moody and evocative.

Similar level

Absa’s “Human Spirit” ads from earlier this year worked on a similar level, promoting the ‘warm, fuzzy’ aspect of the bank, rather than selling any particular service or product.

This campaign is beautifully shot and produced, with powerful copy. It tells a story of human aspiration that sets it apart from the rest and is inspiring without being sentimental.

Will it do the work it needs to do for Absa and increase the numbers? While the ad is beautifully done and powerful, there’s only so much marketing can do. For Absa, the real challenge will live in how it innovates its products and tries to differentiate with winning service.

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.

The Sell: What retailers could learn about fan creation from Lady Gaga

by Mimi Nicklin (@MimiNicklin) I try to write as much as possible about South African retail and shopping but some months I find myself lacking in inspiration on the ground — a sad state of affairs when the rest of the world is flying ahead in the innovation and experience stakes.

This year’s Loerie Awards was heavy with inspiring work, design and consumer engagement but still very light when it comes to shopper or retail examples. In fact, iKineo’s after-hours shopping work for Loom de Nimes was probably the only work that verged towards any type of engaging retail experience. The good news? The floor is wide open for next year!

Rules are changing

In the meantime, globally, the rules are changing all the time and what one might have once thought were experiences to be owned by the music and entertainment brands are now creeping into retail. The realisation is that, if the retail brands don’t move into other shopper passion points (music, digital, film, social), the consumers’ attention may quickly be stolen into eCommerce , digital and social purchasing — stopping their shopping in the bricks and mortar all together.

My feeling is this is a long way off, regardless of what the sceptics say; however, I do believe there is a demand from shoppers for more. More experience, more innovation and more enjoyment from the retail experience. A reason to become a fan versus just a transactional shopper.

When the choice to shop is more complex than ever and the traditional ‘shopper funnel’ is scrutinised, even bypassed, retailers are realising that the decision to shop is no longer simply linear and that people don’t buy only because they need to, but because they want to.

Retail fans

Entertainment and experience at the point of purchase is interrupting shopper choice and the definition of shoppers as ‘fans’ is now no longer a concept reserved only for the big music brands and artists. The question I pose is whether retail should be looking more closely at the music brands as they build these new ‘immersive’ models and create retail fans.

Where the music industry has already worked out how to take fandom into loyalty, retailers are still struggling. People often reference the iStore as the leader in experience and incentivised buying, and indeed it is leading the pack in terms of experiential retail, but it is still based in product performance and capability, so arguably doing little to take retail beyond the functional.

Perhaps we should be looking to retailers to move beyond the product to provide new levels of experience in store? Music recognition services such as Shazam and SoundCloud acknowledge the shoppers’ need for music by taking it into recognition and prediction to make shopping more easy. Surely there is space for image-recognition apps which could recognise a pair of takkies or a piece of furniture, tell you where to get it and at what price? Brands such as Spotify tapped into a demand for ‘loantail’ (loaning rather than buying), which is surely not limited to music alone?

Engaged shoppers

Shopping for music has become not only experiential but social. Sharing is made easy and social media provides content that is follow-worthy. So, while it is harder for PnP that it ever would be for Lady Gaga, there are many lessons it can learn from her fan creation, brand interaction and her provision for entertainment when purchasing her ‘product’.

Where pop music is continually moving forward, retail can learn to follow — with a goal of creating engaged shoppers who enter the store and get much more than they bargained for!

— 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.

Design Annotator: SA’s best photographers, child illustrations and Soweto’s renegade masters

by Uno de Waal (@Unodewaal) This week, we’re quite excited to bring you three of our favourite South African photographers. Kope | Figgings has consistently amazed us with its work produced for the likes of David West and Peaches, and Ross Garrett continues to produce amazing work both locally and in international publications.

The South African Post Office campaign is also pretty interesting. We’ve rounded up the collection of work from Si Mclennan; finally, the South African needs no new introductions. The new video from Friend Within features pantsula dance crews from Soweto in a video that reminds me of the days we started watching MTV.

Have a look at the great creative work produced this past week, and remember to submit your own creative work.

KOPE | FIGGINS Photography Duo

Photographers Jonathan Kope and Jarred Figgins make up the prolific double-act that is known as KOPE | FIGGINS. The duo tends to gravitate towards fashion photography and have worked together for about three years. In the realm of video, KOPE | FIGGINS have shot for David West, Peaches and Moullinex, as well as a soon-to-be-released music video for Beatenberg’s single, Chelsea Blakemore.

Here, we chat to them to find out more.

See the rest of the work by Kope and Figgins.

Toy Kingdom ‘It’s Great To Be A Kid’ Print

Eight children played art director for this print campaign by Canvas for Toy Kingdom.

The agency says, “There’s something quite thought-provoking in the juxtaposition of the innocent, joyful, playful mind of a four-year-old and the harsh reality of grown-up life. We wanted to highlight this classic comparison in an interesting way and leverage it for Toy Kingdom.

“We took the most stark representations of mundane, boring and harsh adult life — bureaucratic paperwork and forms — and gave them to children, to see what they made of them.”

See the entire body of work from Canvas and Toy Kingdom.

Featured: Ross Garrett

You will most likely know Ross Garrett, portrait and fashion photographer, for the work he’s created with Die Antwoord, or for his photographs which have graced the pages of local and international magazines including Numéro, Dazed & Confused, V Man and Elle.

Barely in need of an introduction at all, it only takes one look at his work to see that Ross is undeniably one of the most talented South African photographers out there. And, to top it off, he loves riding Vespas.

See the rest of the body of work from Ross Garrett.

Prudential TVC by Lowe Cape Town

This new TV commercial, by Lowe Cape Town for Prudential Portfolio Managers, dramatises the power of consistency by telling the story of Robert Scott’s and Roald Amundsen’s epic race to the South Pole in 1911.

For the past 25 years, Prudential has been producing consistently good results for its clients but, apart from those in the know, little consumer-facing communication has been made regarding Prudential’s consistency.

Update: Gerhard van Wyk

Gerhard van Wyk, an illustrator based in Pretoria, is the head honcho of the design studio Thispencil. Among other things, its focus is on producing sublime work, melting faces, drinking coffee, riding bicycles and doing air guitar solos.

It’s been a while since we last featured Gerhard’s work, so we decided to do an update and asked him some questions to go with it.

See more illustration work from Gerhard van Wyk.

Art gallery openings this week

We’ve rounded up the best exhibitions happening in the Cape Town and Joburg art scene. Catch a quick update on Pieter Hugo’s new exhibition coming to Cape Town, or the young film photographers in Joburg. Either way, there’s a lot happening.

View the exhibitions opening in Cape Town.
View the exhibitions opening in Johannesburg.

Wessa Solar Lamp

The Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa’s Annual Review/ Solar Lamp 2013 from Human.Kind on Vimeo.

The Wildlife and Environmental Society of South Africa (Wessa) decided to present its annual report a little differently this year. It came up with a booklet that folds into a solar-powered lamp, and back again. It’s self-sustainable, re-usable, and functional, reflecting everything that Wessa stands for.

WDC 2014 Postage Stamps by Si Maclennan

Building up to the World Design Capital 2014, the South African Post Office held a postage stamp design competition, asking local designers to conceptualise and design stamps around the five WDC 2014 themes:

Live Design. Transform Life;
African Innovation. Global Conversation;
Bridging The Divide;
Today for Tomorrow; and
Beautiful Spaces. Beautiful Things.

See the rest of the amazing stamps that Si designed for the SA Post Office.

Friend Within’s ‘The Renegade’ music video shot in Soweto

Ministry of Sound DJ from the UK, Friend Within, visited SA recently to shoot the music video for his track ‘The Renegade’ with local dance talent Pantsula Crew, Shakers and Movers and the 021 B Boys.

The video is co-produced by We Are Familia from the UK and local production company Robot.

Kit-Kat ‘Internet’ & ‘Gravity’ TVCs

KIT KAT “GRAVITY” from EyeMagnet on Vimeo.

Even for Kit-Ka,t there are certain things that should never take a break. In this new TV campaign for the brand, JWT and Fresh Eye Films explore the bizarre consequences that would ensue if two necessities — gravity and the internet — took a break.

See the other Kit-Kat TV Commercial on 10and5.

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.

Do social media conversations about your brand convert to sales?

by Mike Abel (@abelmike) & Sean Bonthuys (@privatesale) There is almost no self-respecting communication and/or media strategy today that excludes social media — and certainly one that would exclude Facebook and Twitter. But what many plans still fail to distinguish is the difference between social media as a network, a channel or a tool. Or any combination thereof.

Let us explain…

Social media networks merely describe the act of people connecting and communicating with each other on the Internet, as in the obvious examples of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but also on any other platforms that facilitates peer-to-peer communication.

Social media channels are hubs where content is consumed, interacted with and shared, such as YouTube, Instagram, and SlideShare. These channels make it easy for people to comment on and share different kinds of content across their networks. The content covers virtually anything: a song, video, animation, photo, graphic, presentation, podcast, article, map, game, app or tool. The purpose is to inform, entertain or be useful in some way.

Social media tools enable interaction with these types of content by encouraging sharing, bookmarking, downloading, rating, signing up, commenting, etc. Examples include curating tools such as Pinterest, bookmarking tools such as StumbleUpon, sharing functionality such as AddThis, rating systems such as Facebook’s like button, high-score tables, challenge-a-friend mechanisms and easy ways to embed content. The key to these tools is the minimal effort required to use them.

Only powerful when integrated

Social media only becomes powerful when using these three elements in an integrated way to deliver defined objectives in which, typically, valuable content is created that sits on social channels and is willingly shared across social networks through the use of social tools.

To get it right, the upfront distinction of roles is critical.

YouTube as an example

For example: uploading your ad to YouTube. Why?

YouTube is being treated as just another channel to see your ad. We would hazard that almost all ads uploaded to YouTube are simply the TV ad on your computer/tablet/mobile screen, with the failure to realise that you are not watching the ad on a static device but a dynamic one where a specific and relevant call to action at the end of the ad may well lead your customer somewhere that just ‘reflighting’ the uploaded TV ad wont.

Now, we’re not talking about all the amazing and innovative things you can do with YouTube in addition to uploading the ad; we’re simply talking about the basic first step of “tailoring” – even just the end of the ad to understand that you have a dynamic and transactional tool in the customers’ hands at this point.

Critical question

So, when discussing social media as part of your strategy, the most critical question to answer before embarking on any work is: What do I want to achieve through its use ie what is the specific role of social media in my marketing plan — and what do I want my potential or existing customer to do?

Many clients measure the success of their activities on likes. Well, it’s a great first step as you then open the door on your Facebook page to start receiving content. But then what?

A like will deliver very little unless it is simply the first step to unlock a more relevant series of conversations. It’s a door opener — but now you need to step into the ‘home’ and stay there because you are useful, charming and engaging. Eg, we currently have a challenger brand client that has fewer likes than the market leader yet far greater engagement and conversations with its community.

LinkedIn as an example

Another example: Linkedin. We have seen so many car banners that, again, are brochures or links to the commercial but don’t allow you to book a test drive. This is a business environment, where people are usually quite focused when in this ‘world’ — why not invite them to book a test (it can be linked to a promotion, eg test-drive and win)?

The number one objective for a car launch is usually to get people into the dealership and relevant “bums in seats”. So why just upload your TV ad or run a “rich media banner”? What do you want your customer to DO? The viewer’s IP address can easily serve you the closest dealership/s to where you are viewing the “ad”, so it all becomes a little easier to take the next step.

Financial services

Most people online are not “unbanked”, as is the jargon. So either you want them to a) switch to you b) to get a greater share of current wallet through new offers c) to get a portion of a potential customer’s wallet eg home loan, car finance etc. So why run just an ad or a banner on Linkedin? Has anyone asked the question “What is the optimal use of Linkedin in helping me to sell?”

It seems traditional viewership is currently the overriding objective versus managing behaviour.

Many reading this piece at first glance may think we are teaching ‘Grandma to suck eggs’ but we are not. Most of the activity we see on the social media platforms is simply regurgitating the above-the-line work or is designed to get views, likes or even competition entries. It is unfortunately not being practiced as digital commercial psychology ie how am I going to get the desired behaviour towards a sale — overtly or covertly?

Define the exact roles

So, before you embark on exciting conversations around social media, put defining the exact role of it at the very centre of the conversation, clearly defining the role that each network, channel and tool plays in pointing people to pieces of branded content. Once people have engaged with this content, they can be guided toward wherever the sale is made.

Only once consumers are on your branded website or inside your physical store, have they effectively stepped into the shop and given you permission to sell to them. The secret is to move people gently, with their permission, from social media to branded channels and websites, building trust at every touch point.

To do this, marketers must rethink the purpose of these categories of social networks, channels and tools, because their marketing purpose is different from their social purpose:

	Social purpose	Marketing purpose
Social networks	Connect and communicate	Point to content
Social channels	Entertain and inform	Stimulate a positive response
Social tools	Rate and share	Self-filter and promote

Mike Abel (@abelmike) is founder and chief executive of M&C Saatchi Abel; Sean Bonthuys (@privatesale) is a strategist at the same agency. This article has been republished with permission from Mike’s blog, Mike & Friends.