by Sabrina Forbes. By definition, a flume is an artificial channel created to direct the flow of water in a particular direction. The objective of digital marketing and PR agency, Flume, is to make people aware of its clients’ brands and guide them in the direction that should lead to intended actions.
The agency was founded six-and-a-half years ago by Jacques du Bruyn (ex-Cerebra) and Ruan Oosthuizen, two friends at the same phase in their lives but in very different industries, who decided to create something of their own. As the agency has grown over the past six years, Oosthuizen has stepped into a stronger process-and business-management role and to let Du Bruyn run the leadership from the sales and creative point — a “deadly combo” they believe is often missing in most founder-managed agencies.
“Ruan is super-switched-on — he’s got his CFA level three — so he’s fully qualified from a financials perspective and Jacques has been in advertising for a long time,” says Garren Coetzee, who met the two six months after launch, became their first employee and is now general manager and head strategist. He has qualifications in accounting and taxation.
The Flume team, split across Johannesburg and Cape Town, is currently numbers 48. Joburg still has the larger workforce, it being the founding office, but the strategy going forward is to keep growing Cape Town while hunting for new business in the Western Cape.
In the past year, the agency has signed up Orlando Pirates, Hyundai, World Leisure Holidays, Ascendis Health, BASF, Hitachi, Warner Music, Yamaha, Red Bull, Tsogo Sun, CTM, Regent and Astron Energy; it offers a mixture of retainer and project work.
“Ruan is super-anal when it comes to maximising your resources, so we’re very careful not to hire just for the sake of hiring and that is testament to when we started Cape Town. We won’t just bring on a designer here; we will first maximise the resources in Johannesburg,” says Coetzee. He believes it’s the flat, open, and transparent culture which keeps people at the agency; to date, only three people have left, two who emigrated and one to pursue something new.
A recent win at the time of the interview was Caltex. “One of the things that we normally do, when it comes to pitches, is sell the culture more than anything else. That’s how we won Caltex,” says Oosthuizen.
Comments Coetzee, “It was a six-month [pitch process], going through agencies and agencies. It was the vibe and the energy that came from us — they could see that we were excited and passionate about what we were talking about [and] this is what they bought into.”
The majority of the services on offer, from development and media buying to copywriting and animation, is all done in-house, with Oosthuizen constantly updating his checklist on new offerings he wants to incorporate. He likes to have everyone under one roof, working together on creating the best solution for client problems.
When asked about pricing models and how costs are presented to different clients, Oosthuizen says it’s something he constantly works on. He gauges each client individually. Coetzee adds that one can’t really look at pricing in isolation and that when one’s pricing any client, it’s about the opportunity that will be unlocked; don’t exploit a client for a once-off job but rather look at a long-term solution that’s fair on both parties.
Going into 2020, the focus is to continue doing an amazing job with current clients, instead of constantly hunting for new business. As an agency and a team, the mentality is not to take over the world but enjoy what they do and do it very well —enjoying the ride is more important than only getting to the destination.
Key clients: Caltex, Tsogo Sun, Nedbank, Canon, Orlando Pirates, Red Bull, Yamaha, Warner Music, CTM, World Leisure Holidays, Old Mutual, Ascendis Health
Services: Full-service digital agency
“#Agency/BrandFocus” is an ongoing weekly series updating the market on ad agency performance, including business performance, innovation, initiatives, the work, awards and people.
Sabrina Forbes (IG) is an experienced writer covering the food, health, lifestyle, beverage, marketing and media industries. She runs her own full-stack web/app development and digital-first content creation company. For more, go to moonwrench.com. She is a contributing writer to MarkLives.com.
by Jason Harrison. The world has truly gone mad. A potent mix of shock politics, global insulation and extremist rhetoric has left many economies in free fall and disposable income beyond tight for consumers and the companies that want to continue to sell them things, especially in South Africa. CEOs are being forced to focus on the extreme near-term, when it comes to the decisions they are making, and this myopic view has meant a micro view on every single business expense, especially marketing and, more directly, the brand that you are currently working on.
So, as a suit, how do you deal with these gargantuan challenges to build business advantage for your clients?
Start by getting alignment with your client on three simple things:
1. Creativity is a decision
As our world trends towards a zero-sum game with the amount of information at our disposal, the strategies, tactics and thinking are becoming homogenous. We are too comfortable dealing in increments and true innovation is very rare. Great CEOs, marketers and suits know the innate power of creativity to make unprecedented leaps to solve complex business problems. They have simply decided that creativity is a business advantage and pursue it relentlessly.
As a suit, you need to sit with your clients and have the most important conversation of your life: you and your client need to agree that creativity is the most powerful business tool at your disposal right now. You need to agree that creativity can solve things in unexpected ways. You need to agree that creativity needs to have the permission to work its magic, without restrictions, guard rails or “what we did last year”.
It’s only once you get that alignment that you will start to see seismic shifts in your combined efforts and business results.
2. Big insights, not big data
Everyone is talking about big data; we’re positively swimming in the stuff. But, somehow, it doesn’t seem to be getting anyone anywhere. So, while the boffins figure out what to do, you can focus your attention on unlocking big insights for your clients. Big insights have two simple things:
Big insights tap into a deep and motivating understanding of the consumer’s cultural context. They come from leaving the comfy confines of the one-way glass focus groups, packing away the Google-searched desktop reports and actually getting out into the real world to feel, see, speak and think like normal human beings.
Big insights also have a nice, juicy tension in them that your brand’s role is to resolve with purpose and flair. How many ‘insights’ have you seen that are just simple observations? If the insight is not making you excited about the possibility that your brand can really play in the consumer’s life, then it’s not going to make them excited, either.
I think it was Abe Lincoln who said, “If I had three hours to chop down a tree, I would spend two hours sharpening the axe.” As a suit, distilling the big insights that fundamentally solve a real consumer need is the best form of sharpening the axe in the client’s world right now.
3. Moments of impact, not integration
With so much media proliferation and consumer fragmentation, it’s becoming near impossible to get any bang for our buck. So, everyone is chasing the holy grail of “integration”. The problem is that integration has fooled everyone into doing lots more, very superficially. Integration has made customer acquisition expensive and the results variable. The truth is we’re ticking a lot of boxes out of guilt, fear and to appease a diverse set of internal stakeholders. Time to be brave. Time to actively decide what we are NOT going to do. Strategy is sacrifice, after all.
Remember the elephant-carving story I told in a previous column? What are you going to carve away with your client? Your brand plans can’t be about all the available options; they now have to be about where you and your client are going to create the most-significant impact on a tight consumer journey that surprises and delights the person taking it. Then it’s about doing truly unexpected and world-class work in those few clearly defined spaces. The effect will be disproportionate.
Agree to stop talking about integrated touchpoints and start talking about moments of impact instead and let all your efforts actually change something fundamentally, rather than superficially.
~•~•~
In the end, this marketing game is one of the easiest professions to master but, somehow, we all seem to make it one of the hardest. The amount of stress, anxiety, fear and panic that we willfully inject into our system every day is neither useful nor healthy. So, call it.
In a world gone mad, complete clarity of thought and an aligned ambition around these three things with your client will steer you both to calmer waters and towards new, unexplored shores, filled with disproportionate potential.
Jason Harrison started as a 23-year-old account executive at Ogilvy & Mather before moving to London five years later to run three agency teams in three different European countries. He joined his old mates again in 2011 as one of the founding partners of the M&C Saatchi Group at 33. He believes that creating beautifully simple solutions for an increasingly complex world will, in fact, save the world. His MarkLives column, “The Suit” is about inspiring and helping up-and-coming suits to be better at their craft. He is no longer on Twitter.
by MarkLives (@marklives) How successful have local ad agencies been in creating positive employer reputations? What do they consider best practice, how do they measure their reputations among employees and what impact has positive employer reputation had on their ability to attract star talent? Next in our panel to tackle this Big Q is The Brave Group‘s Karabo Songo.
Karabo Songo
Karabo Songo (@Mr_K_S) is group CEO of The Brave Group, which includes House of Brave, Rogue, Whippet, Motherboard and Bravado. He is a qualified brand specialist and a serial marketing entrepreneur with business interests that focus on the advertising and marketing industry. He sits on various industry boards, including the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA) and IAB South Africa, and has also judged various awards shows.
The title of this piece implies two things: 1) we as an ad industry aren’t great at managing talent, and 2) that an unintended consequence of bad talent management is a major risk to the industry. If we had a magic wand to solve the problem, I doubt we’d be compelled to start a conversation about this, but we believe our experiences (warts and all) as a small independent agency may inform a way of thinking that allows us to approach talent differently.
Starts at home
We decided to run our employee survey this year concurrently with a mental wellbeing intervention that we’ve used in the past. The latter assessed the psychological health of our employees who participated in the survey and, knowing how crucial mental health is in our day and age, I was thoroughly disturbed by the results. I believe they’re not an isolated image of our agency but a stark reflection of our advertising industry — and we all need to do something more tangible than reminding employees of a helpline or person they can call. Mental wellbeing starts at home, and for many of our employees, especially millennials, work is an extension of that.
The industry has moved quite successfully from the days of old where constant partying and casualness were the norm to the running of solid, respectable businesses now. I would hate to believe that the industry narrative we still hold dates back two decades and yet, sadly, I think it does.
We bring people into our businesses with promises of magnificence on all fronts: creating beautiful ads, allowing them to chase their passion, following their purpose, contributing to many exciting brands and, most importantly, having fun while at it. This is where you can make your mark, we say. This is where you truly can see the results of your work through social impact, community conversations, awards, and excited clients.
The other reality
Although this is a fair view of what our industry offers externally, it doesn’t reflect the other reality of what we’re about: running successful businesses which, at their very core, have been formed to build outputs and profits. Everything that we do — our operating systems, our strategic approaches, our creative output, and our relationships with our clients — impact lives, and that’s very personal. We’ve somehow forgotten that.
In a recent article that I read, I received confirmation concerning the relationship that expectation has on disappointment. The research shows that people are incapable of predicting how they will realistically feel in varied situations and, when their expectations do not match the reality, disappointment sets in — the depth of which is dependent on the gap between the expectation and current reality.
I can’t help but think that many young people, who excitedly walk into our industry and soon realise that the ‘realities’ of what we’ve sold them, experience far less than they’d expect. A disappointment sets in that, unfortunately, many of our young staff can’t handle. Nor do we give them the tools to manage it. Perhaps we’re busy having too much fun, following our own passion, or perhaps the industry has focused far too much on individual achievement instead of the ability to manage people and talent as a working collective?
Revolving door
I then started thinking about the notorious revolving door which exists in every agency in our industry. Although we have accepted that people come, and people go, do we fully understand the reasons for these departures and whether there’s merit to the trends that encourage us to focus on psychological safety to keep employees fully engaged? A Gallup poll of more than 1m workers concluded that the no. 1 reason people quit their jobs is a bad boss or immediate manager.
The acceptance of this behaviour doesn’t call us out, as business leaders, to keep prioritising the creation of environments which are conducive to healthy mental wellness within an organisation. We keep adoring and applauding the work and it tends to happen at the expense of broader mental wellness — praising the lead singer and choosing to forget about the band.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines mental wellness as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.”
Imbalanced mental health
When we talk of imbalanced mental health, I’m looking at conditions such as anger, depression, stress, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), eating, and substance-abuse disorders. Many of these are not foreign to us. Weve either experienced them ourselves; seen and/or heard about our peers who are struggling with them; or been part of a person’s recovery process and support systems. This list of conditions is growing, and society and business, too, are getting better at hiding it and sweeping it under the rug. “Is the work being done?” managers will say. “Then where is the worry because this is the nature of the job…” And therein lies the greatest risk: accepting that strenuous working environments, especially in our industry, are a justifiable means to an end. We talk about intuitive human capital for the creative industry yet expect people to commit to tough conditions like machines.
Risk factors
Mental-wellness risk factors that may be present in the working environment include, but are not limited to, behaviours such as:
Poor communication and poor management practices: These may lead to lack of team cohesion, unclear messaging, wasted time and resources, damaged relationships, low employee morale, higher turnover rates and lost revenue. It’s crucial that communication becomes a priority in the day-to-day running of the business.
Inflexible working hours and no work-life balance: Working excessive hours with no opportunities for recovery may lead to severe health issues. It puts employees at a significantly increased risk of experiencing depressive episodes. Too much work also reduces time available for healthy activities like physical exercise, resulting in physical conditions that could’ve been prevented. We need to remember that talent-retention strategies have a lot to do with reminding and supporting employees’ rights to have a life. Centred people with a broader sense of purpose and participation outside the working environment are great producers.
Unclear tasks or objectives: Clear objectives are meaningful, measurable and eliminate confusion and anxiety. When you have unclear tasks and objectives, employees may spend valuable time and energy on meaningless work which eventually doesn’t connect with the client’s expectations.
Little support for employees: Programmes that support employees in their workplaces help them to adopt and maintain healthy behaviours. Healthy behaviors lead to lower health risks, and lower health risks lead to less chronic disease. With less chronic disease, employees have fewer healthcare costs and absenteeism. Employees also need the right resources to deliver on their work; proper trust and decision-making ability over their area of work; and good relationships with their leaders and peers.
High and unrelenting workload: We generally expect our employees to work overtime as and when we require. Overworked employees often face higher degrees of stress, which may impact output and lead to physical and mental health problems. An employee tasked with a high workload may feel increasing pressure to perform huge tasks, resulting in emotional stressors including depression and physical symptoms like increased blood pressure. Burnout is also a reality in our world.
The above-mentioned leads to poor outputs and poor customer experience, with little value-add to the overall business. We need to do better.
Maybe managing our employees’ expectations before they enter the industry would help curb some of these mental conditions. Maybe changing some of our people and client practices supporting our employees would go a long way also. I know that teaching our leaders people-management skills is half the battle won. A proper wellness programme should also be a welcome addition.
The decision starts with us to build a better workforce across the industry. A better workforce equals a safe space for expression and creative decision-making; people will be comfortable taking the brave and smart risks that clients want to stand out; and a win is an achievement that will be owned by the entire pride — not just team leads and management.
Launched in 2016, “The Big Q” is a regular column on MarkLives in which we ask key advertising and marketing industry execs for their thoughts on relevant issues facing the industry. If you’d like to be part of our pool of panellists, please contact editor Herman Manson via email (2mark at marklives dot com) or Twitter (@marklives). Suggestions for questions are also welcomed.
The Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (BRCSA) is a non-profit, industry body that was incorporated in 2015 to cater to the audience research needs of the radio and television industry in South Africa. In 2016, it changed its policy about giving away TAMS and now only monthly reports, highlighting the top 20 or 30 primetime shows on several popular channels, are available.
by Veli Ngubane (@TheNduna) Mimi Kalinda (@MKalinda), group CEO and co-founder of Africa Communications Media Group (ACG), has juggled crisis comms in Nigeria, airline work in Ethiopia and B2B work in Zambia; she’s also an author and has led workshops on telling stories and narrative in leadership locally and internationally. Get a taste of this powerhouse storyteller here.
Veli Ngubane: Tell us more about yourself: where did you grow up and what did you want to be when you were growing up? Mimi Kalinda: I grew up in South Africa, and I have Rwandan and Congolese roots. I always had a special fascination for storytelling, so I knew I would either end up in media or be a lawyer. Both careers depend on being able to tell great stories.
VN: What is it like doing business in so many countries across the African continent? MK: It’s exciting most of the time, frustrating sometimes, and rewarding all the time. It’s a great time to be African and to be working in Africa. The continent exudes confidence more than ever before. We see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel and we’re making steady progress towards reaching it. I love Africa deeply, so I really can’t imagine doing business anywhere else. With all of its challenges, the opportunities for success are ripe if you have a vision, are willing to take risks and adopt a long-term lens.
VN: Tell us what you do and what does a typical day look like for you? MK: I am the group CEO of Africa Communications Media Group (ACG), a company that I co-founded and lead. I am also a mom, a partner, a friend, a sister, and so much more. On a typical day, I wear all of the hats, some of which I chose, others that were assigned to me. I’m an early riser and I like to wake up before the sun comes up and before my household begins to buzz with the sound of my children getting ready for school. I meditate, pray, and clear my inbox so that I begin the day stress-free. After doing schools runs, I usually take a yoga class or run, then go straight to the office, where I split my day between spending time with my team and ensuring we’re on track with our business and client objectives, meeting with clients and potential clients, and working on a strategy, pitch or whatever else required of me at ACG on that day. Evenings are spent with my family. I like routine and thrive in it so, unless I am travelling, I try to stick to it daily. It keeps me sane.
VN: Tell us more about your company, Africa Communications Group, and its future plans. MK: We are a communications and public relations company that prides itself on its network in Africa and our tangible understanding of the continent’s nuances. We innovate on the bread-and-butter PR model by doing two things well: 1) Understand[ing] the sociopolitical, economic and cultural context of the countries where our clients want to communicate and apply[ing] these insights to the development of their communications strategies. 2. Think[ing] outside the box about how we tell our clients stories with compelling content, which is increasingly visual. We plan to continue growing our business both vertically and horizontally, by increasing our reach into Africa and integrating complementary services into the work we offer clients.
VN: There is a buzz word, “culture”, in referring to the youth market; what is “culture” and how can brands align with the “culture” ? MK: For me, culture encompasses the behaviours, perceptions, ideas, concepts and attitudes we collectively agree to use as a reference of what’s acceptable in terms of how we relate to each other in our society (or, to be more accurate, various factions of our societies). To align, brands need to be observant of these factors, as well as lead, facilitate and/or be part of the conversations we have to reach those agreements.
VN: What are some lessons you can share with black female business owners, lessons you’ve learnt in your journey? MK: Be clear about the intentions that drive your decision-making processes. Are you building a company you want to run forever or do you envision selling it one day if the offer came your way? The way you build your company for these different eventualities will differ. Also, it is never too early or too late to start thinking about company culture, processes and structures. Lastly, make peace very early on with the fact that you cannot be a leader to everyone, everywhere, in everything. Women tend to feel too much self-imposed pressure to be overachievers.
VN: How can the creative industry attract and keep more black female creatives? MK: The same way you would attract anyone else whom you think can bring tremendous value and ROI: by speaking directly to their personal as well as professional aspirations. People generally want the same thing, which is to be heard and to feel valued.
VN: Why do you think the advertising industry is struggling to transform and what do you think should be done to fast track transformation in the advertising and events industry? MK: I don’t know about advertising but the PR industry is very female-dominated, not just in South Africa but globally. I think it’s time we had a conversation about where all the men are and why they’re not choosing PR as a career. It is also quite a diverse industry in terms of race in SA. However, the diversity needs to filter up to management and ownership level, where you begin to see a completely different picture, which is more reflective of the challenges we face with transformation across all industries in the country.
VN: What is your career highlight thus far in your business journey? MK: Landing our first airline and telco accounts, as well as our first client from China. We love new challenges, especially ones that allow us to learn from our clients and push our boundaries. Because I am a content producer at heart, I also love every piece of work where we get to tell stories through films, short- or long-format. But I think my biggest career highlight was moving from pen and paper to action, and starting the company in the first place. It was the hardest, most-rewarding decision I have ever made.
VN: What advice would you give someone completing their high-school education this year and looking to follow a career in the PR or creative industry? MK: Find a great mentor who will teach you the ropes and push you to your limits. You will hate the process sometimes, but it will be worth it if you stick it through. Also, you don’t know much. Be comfortable with and humble enough to seize every opportunity to learn. Finally, be flexible. You don’t need to have a plan for every single step of the journey. It’s perfectly fine to go with the flow, as long as you let excellence be the guiding value of everything you do.
VN: What do you feel is missing in the PR industry today and what should the future look like in SA and the rest of the continent? MK: More honest conversations about the fact that global is not necessarily better. Big, international PR agencies working in Africa are not always better placed to understand how the continent works, the uniqueness of each market, and how client stories can be tied to the realities of the companies where they work. I also think we need to speak about gender equity and how to groom more male PR professionals.
VN: Where and when do you have your best ideas? MK: In the morning, in the shower
VN: If you had a superpower, what would you want it to be? MK: The ability to know people’s real intentions, beyond what they say they are.
VN: Tell us something about yourself not generally known? MK: I only learned to speak English when I was 13/14 years old, so I find it difficult and awkward to count in English. I usually count in French in my head and translate.
VN: What exciting projects are you working on at the moment? MK: A book about storytelling and branding.
VN: Please would you supply two or three pieces of work you have been involved in? MK: ACG was involved in the recent MTN crisis in Nigeria; we work with Ethiopian Airlines and also j, who are embarking on CSI initiatives around the communities in which they work.
Veli Ngubane (@TheNduna) entered the world of advertising with a passion after completing his BSocSci (law, politics and economics) at UCT and a post-graduate marketing diploma at Red & Yellow, where he’s currently advisory board chairman. He also sits on the IAB’s Transformation & Education Council, is a DMA board member and Loeries, APEX, Pendoring, Bookmarks and AdFocus. He is the group MD of AVATAR and co-founder of M&N Brands, which is building an African network of agencies to rival the global giants. In his monthly column “Young, Gifted & Killing It”, he profiles award-winning, kick-ass black creative talent in South Africa.
by Megan Power (@Power_Report)The concept of being accountable to the people that pay you isn’t lost only on uncooperative civil servants — dismissal of the very people who keep things afloat is as prevalent in business as in government. Just ask anyone with a bank account, car insurance, or a cellphone.
It’s easy to think of a “customer” as the stereotype: the cash-strapped shopper at the checkout till, the disgruntled restaurant patron with a fly in their soup. And, because consumers have various labels in different industries — clients, guests and parents to patients, parents and members — we tend to forget they are first and foremost customers who simply don’t want a fly in their soup. Or in their ointment.
Respect and understanding
A healthcare company, operating in a particularly complex and cutthroat sector, uses the term “customer” to refer to all its B2B clients (in both government and private sectors). It comes from a deep-rooted respect for, and understanding of, the people they take money from. Here, customers are not a just a significant part of the business; they’re everything to the business. This recognition fuels an internal culture of excellence, of respect and accountability, and it becomes a two-way street. Pretty obvious stuff.
Clearly not. There’s seldom a day that passes when some public or private organisation selling a product, service or idea leaves you in no doubt that it just doesn’t get it. Social media means the blunders potentially reach millions.
Examples
A recent gem came from a social media exchange between British low-cost airline easyJet and one of its customers. The passenger posted a pic on Twitter of a fellow passenger sitting awkwardly before takeoff on a seat that was missing its back. This quickly went viral, more so when EasyJet’s immediate response was to ask the complaining customer to take the picture down.
Not surprisingly, furious Twitter followers responded by deliberately reposting the image; the original tweet got 50 000 likes and 24 000 retweets. It was a rookie mistake by the airline, and one which was ‘fixed’ by another EasyJet staffer very speedily. The second agent took over the ‘conversation’ and offering a far more conciliatory tone, later confirming that the seats had been inoperative awaiting repair and that no passenger had actually used them.
Closer to home was the Department of Basic Education spokesman’s ill-considered tweets in August 2019 to promote the Read to Lead campaign that couldn’t have been more out of touch with its customer base if it’d tried. Accusations of misogyny aside, the pictures of semi-naked women were totally off-brand. After the expected outcry, the minister distanced herself from the posts and the spokesman apologised.
Then there are the customer service agents who appear to have no clue that they’re employed to serve. A colleague recently sent a basic query via Facebook Messenger to fashion retailer Cotton On: “Hello! Do Rosebank Mall and Sandton City branches stock maternity wear, please?”
She received an astonishing (albeit too common) response: “Thanks for contacting us. We do stock maternity wear and it can be found online and in some stores. Unfortunately, we do not have a list of the stores that stock maternity wear, therefore, it would be best to get in touch with the stores near to you to check if they stock it. Thanks.”
Not long after, this same colleague contacted a property auction house in Johannesburg, also via Facebook Messenger, after she spotted a gardener watering the verge at one of the offices during Level 1 water restrictions. The response? “Thanks, we will advise the gardener. Would you mind letting us know when restriction is over pls?”
Then there was the Amazon agent I was ‘chatting’ with online, who told me to contact the seller myself to answer my query. I had to remind her that it was her job to do that on my behalf.
Disconnect
The disconnect over the concept of “customer” is often more glaring where a service, instead of a product, is offered. Think fee-paying schools. With increased competition in the race for bums-on-seats in a tight economy, certainly more and more independent schools are beefing up their marketing efforts and realising that parents need to be courted. They’re mothers and fathers, for sure but, when they’re forking out thousands a year for a top-notch education, they become very special customers who deserve respect. Treating them casually is a big mistake.
When the bells and whistles fade and the slick taglines get tired, it’s the focus on customer wants that ultimately grows a business and builds its culture. It’s about remembering who pays the salary.
Megan Power (@Power_Report) has nearly 30 years’ experience working in South African media, including investigative journalism and news editing; she now runs Power LAB, a strategic communications and customer experience agency focusing on customer journey audits, crisis readiness and brand reputation. Megan’s consumer column, The Power Report, ran weekly in the Sunday Times for six years and has now found a new home on MarkLives.
by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Founder and chief growth officer at marketing and strategy consultancy, SugaSpice, Kirsten “Kirsty” Dugmore (@kirstydugmore) unpacks the concept for evidence-based marketing for us, adding behavioural economics and neuromarketing to the mix.
Q5: What exactly is evidence-based marketing? Kirsty Dugmore: The marketing world is awash with myths and misconceptions that have little relation to our actual buying behaviour. Over the last decade, there have been significant advances in the field of marketing theory and practice. This is largely due to:
The application of advanced research techniques grounded in scientific methodology
The application of “science-based” disciplines such as behavioural economics (BE) and neuroscience to the field of marketing
These advances in scientific research techniques, coupled with a much-deeper understanding of cognitive psychology (BE) and brain function (neuroscience), have converged to provide us with the knowledge to do much better marketing — enter evidence-based marketing. [This] allows us to use science to increase marketing effectiveness and continues to gain traction around the world and in South Africa. In a nutshell, we’re talking about the importance of using the latest fact-based marketing thinking to do a better job.
I believe evidence-based marketing will continue to grow within our industry and, before long, will be considered normal marketing practice.
Q5: You talk about “marketing myths”. What are the top two you’d like to bust? KD: First, that brand loyalty / love is the path to brand growth. For many years, it has been believed that the holy grail of marketing is to create a brand that consumers are 100% loyal to. Above that, marketing’s aim is to make consumers fall in LOVE with your brand. The truth is we have lives, families, jobs and are time-starved. We hardly have the time to sit and deliberate and think about brands deeply. It’s just not how most people think about brands in the real world. In general, consumers are happy to switch between a repertoire of brands that they believe are good enough examples of the category.
You may have a favourite toothpaste that you buy seven times out of 10, but you may buy a competing brand for the other 30%. As consumers, we are polygamously loyal. Instead of trying to get consumers to think of you all the time (a difficult and expensive exercise), rather make sure your brand is easy to think of when it matters, ie when they come into the market for your category, eg, I am thirsty — Coke. This concept is called mental availability.
Secondly, the idea that we (consumers, aka humans) make fully reasoned, rational and objective decisions. The traditional marketing belief is that consumers spend a lot of time, energy and thought making brand decisions. However, when we make a decision:
We do it based on reason, analysis, and intellect
We deliberate over purchasing decisions
We as consumers make brand choices based on a logical, persuasive marketing argument
We think very deeply about brands when we buy them
The traditional models show linear steps that consumers take for each and every brand choice. This is not the reality; consumers use “system instinct and intuition” (also known as System 1) to make brand/shopping decisions. In reality, we don’t spend much time evaluating our brand choices; we try get through the aisle as swiftly and effortlessly as possible (remember, we have better things to do with our time). This means that brands play an incredibly important role in decision making — familiar brands, or brands with high mental availability, make it easier for a consumer to buy.
Q5: How may brands apply principles from behavioural economics without making consumers feel weird or exploited? KD: I don’t think it’s about exploiting or making consumers feel weird. BE gives us, as marketers, a much better understanding about how people make decisions. Once we understand “consumer behaviour”/“decision making”, we are equipped to create better communication and media strategies. Ultimately, marketing is about influencing consumer decisions. BE gives us the latest, proven insights on human decision-making:
BE is based on the premise that we use instinct, intuition and emotion to make decisions — known as System 1
System 1 makes decisions based on a variety of perceptive factors from System 1 tools or shortcuts — these are called heuristics
Heuristics is the mental ability that allows people to decide and think quickly without being weighed down by overwhelming information
We as humans are built for efficiency (to stay alive and make sure we can move through life as effectively as possible) — our heuristics serve us well; however, sometimes they can make mistakes
These heuristics or biases are predictable and often irrational. Marketers have been using BE tactics for many years. Behavioural economics gives us insight into why and how these tactics work.
The famous IBM ad “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM”, published over 20 years ago, taps into the BE “loss-aversions” bias or heuristic. The loss-aversion bias refers to people’s tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains. Everything we do involves an assessment of what we have to lose (it’s a survival tactic). You see this tactic all over advertising — only five tickets left/two days only.
By understanding System 1 and why and how heuristics/biases work, as marketers we can work with a consumer’s brain, not against it. Companies now have the ability to use BE tools in a systematic way. We will be equipped to develop “brain-friendly” communication and marketing strategies.
Q5: How does cognitive neuroscience tie into all of this? KD: Marketers are fascinated with cognitive neuroscience, and understandably so. New brain-imaging techniques seem to promise access to deeper insights into how people think about brands and what motivates their purchases. But more valuable to marketers than any brain-imaging tools are the advances neuroscience has provided in our understanding of how the brain works. In light of this new knowledge, they may choose to reconsider and refine their approaches to advertising and brand building.
Neuromarketing is certainly a buzzword and one of the fastest-growing industries in the world of marketing. Hundreds of books, conferences and neuromarketing companies are popping up all around the world and in SA.
Q5: Can you give us a few examples of brands that are already using evidence-based marketing? KD: I don’t want to name specific brands; however, many of the big global brands, if not all, are applying certain elements of evidence-based marketing. One of the major contributors of evidence-based marketing is the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. Some of its global clients (corporate sponsors) include: P&G, Nestle, Mars, Uber, MediaCom, Facebook, SA’s very own SPARK Media[note: Dugmore used to work at SPARK Media], and many more. One thing that is for sure: brands applying evidence-based marketing will have a competitive advantage against those who do not.
Carey Finn (@carey_finn) is a writer and editor with a decade and a half of industry experience, having covered everything from ethical sushi in Japan to the technicalities of roofing, agriculture, medical stuff and more. She’s also taught English and journalism, and dabbled in various other communications ventures along the way, including risk reporting. As a contributing writer to MarkLives.com, her regular column “Q5”hones in on strategic insights, analysis and data through punchy interviews with inspiring professionals in diversive fields.
by Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA) Market pundits are forecasting a recession and South Africa, with its almost junk status and socio-political problems, is not expected to fare well. Yet it’s not all doom and gloom; some entrepreneurial types are making the best of it, creating products in SA for export to the rest of the world. One such success story is Veldskoen, a startup that attracted Mark Cuban and Ashton Kutcher as investors. We speak to Veldskoen co-founder, Nic Latouf, about ecommerce and going global.
Full podcast transcript
Bradley Elliott: Welcome to Episode Six of Only Connect, a MarkLives.com podcast. I’m your host, Bradley Elliott, founder of Platinum seed and Continuon. This month I’m chatting to Nic Latouf, co-founder of Veldskoen. Veldskoen is fast becoming one of SA’s most globally recognised brands, which is actually Veldskoen’s north star [personal mission statement]. I chat to Nic about retail, how they built and scaled the brand from SA and the power of community enabling them to do that. Enjoy this month’s episode.
So, for those who don’t know Veldskoen, can you just give me a bit of background about how you guys started? I’ve been watching your journey quite closely [and you’ve had] some really big successes in the last year or two — Ashton Kutcher, I think was one of those pivotal moments. And now having gone into Woolworths, which is where I’d really like to focus a bit on, given that our topic is retail and recessions. Nic Latouf: 100%, and there’s a couple of other exciting things that have happened as well that I’ll tell you about. So, I also come from the digital online space, [and] a friend of mine and I used to have an agency in Joburg — it was a little PPC agency and I saw that the trends, probably about two-and-a-half years ago, were really moving into video so I decided to pack up and move to Cape Town with my family. For a variety of reasons but also one specifically, because a lot of the creative talent sits in Cape Town and I thought it would be a great space to build out an agency focused on video at that time. I landed in Cape Town and two old mates from school, literally within the first month, get hold of me and tell me that they’ve come up with this idea for a shoe.
Their story is just absolutely fascinating as to how they came up about this. They were both driving, two separate sides of the country, and having a conversation — literally a four-hour conversation — about how terrible the South African team looked when they walked out of the tunnel at the Olympics. Nick [Dreyer] said to Ross [Zondagh], “But you know there’s nothing that’s truly South Africans that they could be wearing.” And the other one said, “But there is; there’s veldskoen.”
And he said, “But veldskoen is really ugly.”
And the other one said, “Well why don’t we make it, like, not ugly?” And literally what they did was they phoned the designer, while they were chatting about this, and got them to pull a picture of a pair of veldskoen online and literally colour in the soles, and send it to them to them in a bunch of colours. By the end of that journey, they had a whole bunch of designs and they put in the trademark for the word “veldskoen”. So when I landed in Cape Town, Ross got hold of me on LinkedIn and said to me, “Listen here, we’ve got this shoe that we’d love to chat to you about,” etc. Apparently, everybody up until then, they’d been laughing at them about this shoe — wives, friends, like everybody. What is interesting to me was the way I felt when I saw it, ’cos you mention veldskoen to me and I’m white, English, liberal background. I’m not interested. I mean, that’s not something that I’d ever wear. Until I saw how, whether they knew what they were doing or not, whether it was by accident or whether it was well thought-out, they had reimagined the shoe that was so close to our heritage — and we all know the veldskoen, we all have a specific lens that we look at veldskoen through — and the way I felt when I saw the shoe fascinated me and I thought, you know, if I feel this way, others must as well. And I loved that idea of how I felt and I thought, I want to get involved with this. We formed a partnership. We started an ecommerce space, we started building it out and we started doing really well.
Now I come from a big storytelling background. Really key to the success of the business is how we positioned the story, how we told the story, how we collaborated with people to tell the story, how we built audiences, etc. And it wasn’t long after that that Brian Joffe of Bidvest fame — I don’t know if you know that part of our story?
BE: No, I don’t. NL: So, Mark Cuban and Ashton Kutcher weren’t our first investors. What happened was Brian Joffe’s team knocked on our door — and Brian Joffe’s out of Bidvest now, he started up a new company called Long4Life and they own Sportsman’s Warehouse, they own Outdoor Warehouse, they own Sorbet Group, they own a whole bunch of really exciting businesses here in South Africa — and they got hold of us and they really loved what we were doing. They bought a big chunk of our business, which was really interesting because it position[ed] us in an interesting space where we were able to then talk to the Sportsman’s Warehouse [people], talk to the Outdoor Warehouse [people] and start looking at that retail aspect, which we would never have thought of in the beginning,
BE: Yeah. Because it gives you access to retail.
NL: Yeah, 100%. So that gave us access to retail locally. The brand just did really well, and people continued to get excited about it; people continued to purchase; we moved into Outdoor Warehouse; over a period of time it became the best-selling shoe. We always set out to build and it’s still very much our vision and our north star within this business to build South Africa’s most-recognisable brand globally. ’Cos there really isn’t one. There’s Nando’s, there’s Mrs Ball’s Chutney. There’s a couple but not truly recognisable globally. Wfeel like we’ve got the opportunity to really do that and for everybody to be a part of that story. We always say that we’re not the owners of Veldskoen; we’re just the custodians of this great, this great brand.
We were sitting in our boardroom and we were literally discussing how we’re going to tackle America. We’re already live in the UK, doing pretty well in the UK. We were sitting there and, all of a sudden, we got an email from somebody who is this ex-surfer guy called Steve Watts— ex-Durban surfer who had moved to California and started a little surf brand over there and done pretty well. He came to visit his family and everywhere he went he saw people wearing shoes, and got hold of us and said, “Is any opportunity to have a discussion about America?” We said, “Absolutely,” and flew down and met him and later found out that he’s got a company called Slyde Handboards. What he had done, or he and his wife, who is American, [they’d] actually gotten themselves onto Shark Tank America and [gotten] funded by Mark Cuban and Ashton Kutcher. So, when we started doing the business deal with them, they obviously had to do due diligence etc. They had to disclose to Mark Cuban and Ashton Kutcher, because they were in business with them, that they were getting involved with us. Mark and Ashton were quite interested as to what it was. We sent them a pair of shoes each and they absolutely loved [them], and asked if they could get involved. We said, “Absolutely.” Ashton is interesting, because he’s not allowed to just wear any brand. [People] pay up to like US$500 000 for him to wear something or tweet something or whatnot. But he absolutely fell in love with the shoes. And we just saw, for weeks and weeks on end, every time he was in the news, he was wearing our shoes, so that definitely helped the American side of the business.
BE: Did that actually help with driving an effect on sales and the bottom line — did you see up-tick?
NL: Here’s the interesting thing: the story of us building the brand out globally is what people love here. In the States, it’s a very different world right now. I’ll give you an example. Steve and I were having [a] discussion the other day that he was at a wedding in San Francisco. He was talking to a bunch of people a little bit younger than us and was talking about how Ashton Kutcher was invested in the company, etc. They all looked at him and said, “Ashton who?” So. I think that that landscape with that type of celebrity is changing, when you talk about the influencers, etc. We go back to this discussion that we have often at the office: there was a study that was done in the UK not too long ago, where they asked all these 14-year-olds: what is it that you want to be when you grow up? 80% of them came back and said I want to be a YouTuber or an influencer.
BE: Amazing. What an awesome world we live in!
NL: The guy who wins Fortnite is way more popular than Kanye West. In America, it doesn’t have as much weight; locally, it does. Because I think people find it really exciting. I think if you want to tell a really good brand story, it all boils down to how you tap into people’s inner narratives. I think a lot of what’s happening in the country is [that] there’s a lot of uncertainty, people are worried, people are scared. A lot of why we tell our story that way is because we really believe and we’ve proven that anybody can do it. We started the business with no money and we built it into a really, really, really successful brand that is 100% going global and becoming very recognisable around the world. Digital and the internet has changed that. This wasn’t possible 10–15 years ago, but it is very possible now. That wasn’t the only story that had a huge effect locally. Another one was our Prince Harry story. I don’t know if you’ve heard that one?
BE: Nope
NL: So, a couple of months ago, with my partners in London at the time, I get an email from the editor of The Times of London who says to me, “I was at a dinner party last night and I saw Prince Harry wearing a pair of your Red Pinotage Veldskoen.” He says, “Do you have a picture?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing — do you have a picture? You know, because we don’t.”
He says, “No problem.” [He] and Nick had a couple of discussions and he says he’s seen it and that’s good enough to run a story. The first week he runs a little story about Veldskoen in general and about the history of the shoe, etc. Then the following Saturday he runs a little piece in the lifestyle section that has a picture of our Red Pinotage shoe, and it has the words, “Prince Harry is a fan.” If you want to talk about influence having a direct impact on sales, we did in about three hours about R400 000 turnover. But it carried on like that for days, and the impact it had was unbelievable. If you’ve got the Shopify app, you get a little ding-ding every time there’s a sale, and we woke up and our phone was literally going, “Ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding, ding-ding,” and it carried on like that for days. With that tiny, tiny, tiny little piece with the words “Prince Harry is a fan”.
BE: OK, let’s touch on ecommerce quickly because that’s always an interesting one. [It’s a] really small ecommerce environment in South Africa. This year, I believe — just so you know, last year we did an online retail or the biggest ecommerce report with Arthur Goldstuck and this year we’re doing that again and we just surveyed all the retailers. Not that we weren’t interested but we weren’t looking at consumers; we were looking at retailers, what sort of revenues and profits they do out of online and ecommerce etc. It was still a relatively small market. This year, I think we’re going to hit that magic, like 2% of total retail will be from online, which is a really critical number, because that’s when —
NL: Still small compared, but great.
BE: But when you you hit over that 2% mark, we’ve seen it globally, that’s when the magic starts to happen. I’ll give you an example. Some of the biggest, let’s call them daily-deal sites, because I’m not sure you can put two and two together, they’ve actually just become really, really profitable this year. For the last nine years, they haven’t been turning a profit and, this year, they’re turning a mega profit, so I think there’s great growth in the space. You said you grew through ecommerce originally; can you just tell me a little bit more around that strategy and whether it was local or global? Evidently, you still sell a lot through ecommerce by the sounds of things.
NL: We still do incredibly well with ecommerce. I come from an interesting ecommerce background and I’m really concerned about the space. We never actually wanted to get into retail, into physical brick-and-mortar retail; we wanted to continue to grow our business through ecommerce and we were doing it successfully until the time we got investment from a listed partner, and they opened those doors for us. It became very exciting. We saw a whole new avenue to grow the brand. Part of our north star was that we wanted to get the shoes on as many South Africans as possible. So that allows us to do that. We’re not just in Woolies [Woolworths]; we’re in Outdoor Warehouse; we’re in about 17 smaller retailers; and we’re also in Tekkie Town. All those partnerships have allowed us to really reach areas around South Africa that aren’t as online or ecommerce savvy. But, back to the ecommerce side, our strategy has been simple; our strategy has been we still live in an age where, at the moment, Facebook ads are incredibly, incredibly, incredibly effective. It has changed over the last two years a lot; I think it was a lot easier two years ago with the way that you could set up ads and target and build audiences etc — it is getting harder. The space is becoming crowded and there’s less ability from the actual platform to run as-effective ads. But we spend no money on Google; we spend all our money on Facebook and Instagram. We do that very, very, very well. That side of the business still accounts for a huge portion of our turnover in South Africa and continues to grow.
BE: I think you can dominate —Google doesn’t necessarily make sense for a branded term like “veldskoen” because you would dominate that anyway through natural sort of organic ranking. That’s the thing that I heard many years ago, in London in 2012, when ecommerce was really blowing up there, [a] guy said to do well in ecommerce you either need to be super, super niche, have a really super niche product, or be absolutely generalist. If you’re sitting in between, you don’t win, and I think that that may be part of your success, that it is just so niche. You don’t have a huge range, but you’re selling one thing; you’re the only [people] that do it. You do it well and I think that’s why it’s working. So, just in terms of your international strategy, and thinking about that, do you have distributors in other countries now for physical retail?
NL: We always considered ourselves a media and storytelling company first and a shoe company second — that’s how we like to think of ourselves, it’s always story first. Part of the story that we’re telling is how we’re building this brand out globally with South Africans around the world. In all our travels, everywhere we go, we meet the most-incredible South Africans doing the most-incredible things in the strangest places around the world. No matter where you go, you’re always going to find a South African doing something really, really amazing in some town or country around the world. So, what we set out to do is to partner with South Africans around the world to build out this brand. We got an old school friend, who’s done really well in Canada, who reached out to us recently and said that he’d love to handle Canada for us; we’re in discussions with a distribution agreement over there. We’ve got Jeremy out in Asia, who’s a South African from Durban as well, who’s well-known in Asia for taking rooibos tea and being very successful with rooibos tea there. What he did was he positioned it as the drink to drink when you’re pregnant and has absolutely killed it over there, so he’s our partner in Asia. In America, it’s a little bit different. We were a 50% shareholder in an entity over there, because it’s a really, really, really big play and it also allows us to drive more product into the space. We don’t only own Veldskoen; we also own a really cool flip-flop brand that we’re building out, which we’re going to take a little bit more time with, called Plakkie. The same thing in Australia and the same thing throughout Europe is we have distribution over there. The tricky thing is — which we’re also trying to figure out — how do you tell the story globally? The things that people care about in Asia are very different to the things people care about in the States, are very different to things people care about in Australia. So, those are the things we’re trying to figure out. Do we have one Instagram account globally? Or do we have one Instagram account for each region? It’s a little bit of trial and error at the moment but I think we’ve started to figure it out. In a year from now, if we had this conversation, I’ll have a lot more insight into how, from a platform perspective and from a social media perspective, to build out a global brand.
BE: My instinct or gut tells me that you’d probably need to have separate accounts for each of them.
NL: I agree. That is the way that it’s currently going.
BE: But you do have a great really single narrative and that is your story. Everyone loves a story of success and it’s really great to hear that not only are you telling the story but you’re actually living it. What I mean by that is you choose South African expats living overseas to go do your distribution; you don’t just partner with the biggest distribution company. You actually are authentic in your story — authenticity, trust, success are all great threads for a good story
NL: You know, to make the shoe here in South Africa, is not cheap.
BE: Especially clothing and shoes, it’s not competitive because of labour laws.
NL: 100%. It’s easy for us to go to China and do this, but we’ll never. That’s where we’ve positioned our company, and we’ll 100% always stay true to that, and will only work with South Africans around the world in building out this brand.
BE: Now, having gone into the sort of traditional retail space like Woolworths and those sorts of things, we understand that all of these [companies] are under massive pressure, globally, right? Retail is changing; I don’t think brick and mortar will ever die. But it’s definitely changing and shifting.
NL: No, it’s not going to die; it’s evolving.
BE: In terms of the volumes of sales coming out of traditional vs ecommerce retail, in different countries — you did build your brand on ecommerce in South Africa but now having gone into Woolworths and in Tekkie Town — what sort of volumes are you starting to see?I’m assuming the volumes are going to be massive, compared to your ecommerce play, but maybe I’m wrong?
NL: I’m not gonna go into specific numbers but, from an ecommerce perspective, like I said earlier, we do very, very, very well. From a retail perspective, we also do very well but there’s three sides to our business. There’s online retail; there’s brick and mortar retail; and then there’s B2B, which is also a massive side to the business: Investec, for example, who want to do a collaboration with a thousand or 2000 pairs of shoes. That’s also a massive business for us, so that side of the business also does really well. Getting back to Outdoor Warehouse, we are their best-selling shoes, and they’re a big retailer around the country. We’ve only been in Woolworths for the last round about three weeks [at the time of the interview in late September 2019], and you know, they’ve placed their second, I think, up to their third order already. Looking [at] international, there’s no reason for us to even think about brick and mortar retail in the States. The online play is big enough and so that conversation’s not going to happen. We are entertaining the idea in the UK, because it’s a very, very, very different landscape to the States, and we’ll be entertaining that idea in Australia. Let’s have another conversation in a couple of months’ time, and I’ll let you know how all of that plays out.
BE: Just two more things from my side, Nic. The one is what you mentioned is the importance of community. You strike me as the type of person who’s probably read the book called The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and you might remember early, early on in that book, it talks about Hush Puppies, which I’m sure you’ll know as a brand, and how Hush Puppies was dying in the early ’90s. All of a sudden, there’s just a small sort of community of — I think in those days they didn’t term [them] as such — but hipsters in New York effectively started wearing Hush Puppies again. Then it just blew up. It sounds kind of similar to what you’re telling me here. Like you’ve got these communities that are so invested in the brand, and so invested in the story, and they’re just influencing the bigger market? And is that a purposeful strategy that someone can do? Or is that just by luck? You talk about your mate in San Fran—
NL: Let me tell you what the secret is: it’s 100% thought out, and the secret is openness. We’ve never ever turned down a collaboration — we probably won’t post every collaboration on our pages or talk about every collaboration — but we’ve never ever turned down a collaboration. We’ve never turned down a meeting. We’ve built out a story lab, which you’re welcome to come and visit out in Paarden Island, where it’s literally open to the public, and we have people working there for free, as long as everybody collaborates with each other. So, a real key to this is openness. I think that brands and people and companies still need to learn that; when people approach us, we’re always available and, as a brand, the same thing. So, everybody who’s reached out to us to collaborate or to do something, we always said, “100%, sounds amazing.” This would be men’s shoes, this is all about shoes, and let’s do it. And that’s 100% the reason why we’ve been able to build such community and become so influential.
BE: When you talk about openness, I’ll tie that through to authenticity, values of honesty, trust, all those sorts of things. Because that’s what big brands are struggling with, right? They just want to push message and then they try and create these authentic stories about sustainability. People will see through it, but they also just don’t practice it.
NL: We live in a society now that is so exposed because of social media, whether it’s a good thing or not; [it] is what it is. You need to use it to your advantage, in the sense that people are so protective, over their brands, so protective over their ideas, so protective over their IP; we decided a long time ago to not be like that at all. We’re not protective over our ideas. We’re not particular over our IP etc. I mean, the amount of veldskoen brands that have popped up that have coloured soles and coloured laces, even though we trademarked it — there’s new ones popping up all the time. That excites us and we’re never going to go after them maliciously. It’s never about that. We really, really, really believe and want everybody to be successful and everybody to be a part of the story and us to be part of other people’s stories. As an example, we got this guy [who] started working out of our space recently, and he started this really cool little cork-sneaker company. He also, very much like us knew nothing about shoes all the shoe world or whatnot, and it started to do really, really, really well — just kind of like being around the people that we’re around. And that really excites us and that really makes us happy and it’s not easy, so kinda counterintuitive to a lot of people, but that’s the new world. We’re all exposed and we’re all open and, yeah, you either be with it or not.
BE: People can copy what you’re doing but that’s flattery, right? That actually does your brand better at the end of the day. It ‘haloes’ the Veldskoen brand. Nic, I’m not gonna take any more of your time; I really appreciate you chatting to me on a public holiday. Although, having been an entrepreneur, there’s no such thing as a public holiday. I appreciate it. anyway. Yeah, I’m definitely gonna pop into Paarden Island — our offices are in Zonnebloem — so I’m just around the corner.
NL: Fantastic, please do. Just pop me a message and pop around.
BE: I really appreciate your time and have a lekker day. Thanks for listening to Episode Six of Only Connect, a MarkLives.com podcast. Once again, I’m your host, Bradley Elliott, founder of Platinum Seed and Continuon… Until next time, keep connecting!
Transcribed using otter.ai and then edited lightly.
The founder of Continuon and Platinum Seed, Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA)has created a number of businesses in the digital and technology sectors. He believes that marketing needs to be reinvented so that it becomes more useful to humans and brands. He’s also a collector of fine whisky. Bradley contributes “Only Connect”, exclusively to MarkLives.com. In this podcast, he chats to custodians of the world’s top brands about what matters most to them.
by MarkLives (@marklives) Is adland embracing an African narrative? Are South African advertising agencies and brands embracing an authentically African narrative and aesthetic or do they continue to imitate American and European work? What can agencies, and brands, do to shift the paradigm towards embracing a unique creative identity that speaks to our African roots? Next in our panel to tackle this question is M&C Saatchi Abel‘s Nomaswazi Phumo.
Nomaswazi Phumo
Nomaswazi Phumo (@NomaswaziPhumo) is an insight-driven strategist at M&C Saatchi Abel Johannesburg who enjoys analysing complex consumer environments and is passionate about challenging the current African narrative.
Is adland championing African creativity?
I’ve asked myself this question many times over the past five years and my answer has changed of late.
Previously, as an industry, we weren’t doing a great job at championing African creativity, if much at all. We took what was being said about Africa, accepted those view points and just went along with it. What this ultimately manifested as is a misrepresentation of the continent, its people and their capabilities. However, a new dawn is upon us, and I truly do believe we’re starting to make strides in changing the creative African narrative as an industry.
The notion of imitating America and Europe isn’t as attractive as it was a couple of years ago. There’s a deep love and pride for our continent and a great desire to put it on the map creatively. Africa has a creative voice, and there’s a determination to have it heard.
Beyond South Africa
First things first, we need to cross borders. It’s important to understand the African landscape and come to the realisation that South Africa is just a portion of it. There is a total of 54 countries in Africa, but not even half of those countries are represented when it comes to creative communication.
The expectation that countries outside of the African borders must know and say more about us needs to stop. Creatively, we communicate to Africa as a city, not even a country. There’s a certain narrative we push which ‘heroes’ certain parts of Africa and almost starts framing them as “the face” of the continent.
There are many moments in which we become our own enemy. No place in the world is as rich and textured as our continent. Before everything else, we must believe and understand this.
Our role
In its simplest form, our role as a creative collective is to break perceptions, both in how we see ourselves as a people and in how the rest of the world sees us. These need to be challenged. It’s not so much about highlighting the pain points but rather identifying them and solving them for the greater good of society.
As the incredible Thebe Ikalafeng, brand-builder extraordinaire, puts it, “African design has always been authentic because we have been needs-driven, and that’s the way design should be. Design must solve business and society’s problems.”
Endless opportunities
The biggest predicament we find ourselves in is having to add African nuances to existing global brands/entities. It’s not only difficult but limiting, and we don’t nearly address it often as we should. However, the silver lining is that this puts us in a beautiful position to start creating our own brands — brands and entities that we have creative licence over.
There is truly something special in conceptualising a brand, getting to build it and play with it and, ultimately, seeing it to launch and bettering the lives of people in society. We have all these untapped resources, minds and talents which we must start use to create creative solutions in Africa for Africans. Also, previous disadvantages when it comes to access and avenues are no longer there or, at least, there are fewer now than ever before. We have plenty of knowledge and tools at our disposable, definitely fewer barriers than we had in the past.
As the old proverb says, “charity begins at home”. We must defend our own interests; the onus is on us.
The awakening
Amidst it all, this is truly an exciting time to be young, creative and African. There’s so much to celebrate. We’re aware of the untapped creative potential we have and we’re also actively working towards changing the narrative. The world is finally taking heed. Across all creative categories, we’re being well-represented:
It’s the realisation of the gift and power we possess as a creative collective that will allow us and is allowing us to own our place on the world stage.
Hello, world, scoot over — we’re African, we’re creative and we’ve arrived.
Launched in 2016, “The Big Q” is a regular column on MarkLives in which we ask key advertising and marketing industry execs for their thoughts on relevant issues facing the industry. If you’d like to be part of our pool of panellists, please contact editor Herman Manson via email (2mark at marklives dot com) or Twitter (@marklives). Suggestions for questions are also welcomed.
by Sabrina Forbes.KFC has been in South Africa for almost 50 years, has 960 stores nationwide currently and a top-five seat on almost every top-brand awards, so it’s not surprising that a large portion of local consumers believe the American fast-food restaurant chain is South African. This is according to Suhayl Limbada, KFC South Africa marketing director: innovation (@suhayl7).
Synonymous with SA
KFC has also been an integral part of SA’s colourful history, he says, making it synonymous with the country and its people, and this may be due to the freedom given to the brand: “One of the reasons I work for KFC is that it’s a completely decentralised organisation, which means we basically run our own marketing based off local consumer insights and needs.”
For Limbada, because KFC is considered a SA brand by most, it needs to stay true to that. He recalls previous employers having a very top-down approach when it came to consumer communication, and he often asked what they truly knew about his own market from their offices in New York.
KFC SA isn’t instructed to follow any work or strategy but does share best-practice with the rest of the world’s markets. Every year, 300 KFC marketers worldwide meet in Dallas, Texas, to share ideas and insights. The opportunity here, he says, is to pick and choose what they want to take home but also to fuse different ideas together into something that would work in their markets. Much of his role entails spending time and energy on understanding local consumers, and developing products and ideas that are completely in line with them.
Proudly SA innovation
An example of a proudly SA innovation is the mid-2019 launch of Hot & Crispy. For many years, KFC locally had one type of flavour for its chicken-on-the-bone option, with zinger wings being the only relatively spicy choice. Chicken on the bone is a massive part of the business and, for the first time, an alternative to the world-famous crispy chicken flavour is now on offer.
The TVC that’s launched this sees Detective Duma single-mindedly trying to figure out where all the heat in his city is coming from. The strategy behind the ad is comparing the sweat we generate when eating hot food to the way we sweat when being questioned or feeling guilty. Duma doesn’t end up finding the heat source but it’s clear to viewers that it’s coming from a local KFC.
In terms of KFC’s main competition, Limbada agrees that one would immediately think of Chicken Licken or Hungry Lion but this isn’t so. “If you had to ask me what KFC is in SA, it’s chicken and chips. What we’re seeing from a general competition perspective in the QSR [quick-service restaurant] industry is it’s heating up and… we’re seeing the growth of pizza as significant enough for us to sit up and take notice. So, if you had to ask me specifically who I think our competitors are, it would be McDonalds and Debonairs,” he says, adding that while Nando’s may also be viewed as one, it’s not a primary competitor as the two don’t play in the same price bracket.
Challenges
When it comes to challenges, Limbada says it has much to do with the current economy: “From a general QSR perspective, I’d say [in] the day in the life of any marketer, here in SA, the challenges that we face are around the [ones] the economy brings us, which is increasing costs — things are getting more expensive, therefore the cost of making one piece of chicken and getting it to the consumer is becoming more and more expensive. Yet the consumer is squeezed and they want to get more value for their money. So, [what] keeps me up at night is figuring out how to still deliver that awesome value they have come to expect.”
He’s also seen the rising growth of interest in meal-sharing. From a QSR point of view, this works well in the favour of pizza brands like Debonairs. For Limbada, the definition of value is not always price but that, if people are to part with their hard-earned money, a physical or emotional experience is expected in return. Sharing a meal with your family is one example.
The brand also takes this into consideration when designing and communicating new offers to people who know exactly what they want and return for the same style of meal, over and over. An example of this is the Streetwise Bucket for 1: for R29.90, you get two pieces of chicken and a small portion of chips. Limbada believes that leveraging the equity of Streetwise and offering a smaller option just makes sense.
This year, KFC has also launched the Zinger Chutney Burger in partnership with Mrs Balls, creating a brand narrative that speaks to a love story between Mrs Balls and the Colonel, and Twitter came out to play on this one.
The sweetness of Mrs Balls + The Fiery flavour of the Zinger = A Finger Lickin' love saga that our friends can't help but get in on. Join in the fun by treating yourself to a #NowTogether Zinger Chutney Burger and let us know if you're loving it. pic.twitter.com/Vt5DLUIcST
Staying ahead of the curve is a core focus for Limbada; from an innovation perspective, the brand launches a new product at least once every six weeks. The combination of value and innovation has seen very-successful products created over the past year, such as the Dunked Burger. This is a chicken fillet dunked in a honey, soya, and ginger sauce, and placed on a bun. It was so popular that, when it was removed from the menu, people even starting tweeting the president of SA to get him to bring it back, and a couple of international markets are looking into launching their own versions. Luckily for consumers, KFC launched its newest smoky Dunked Burger last month.
It wouldn’t be 2019 without discussing the environment, plastic, and veganism. KFC globally has committed to using 100% recoverable and reusable plastic packaging by 2025. Locally, small steps are being taken to follow this commitment: plastic straws are no longer offered and KFC’s HQ doesn’t allow the use of plastic cups anymore.
“We have the biggest QSR brand in the country,” says Limbada. “We have a responsibility to lead. We all want to leave a better world for our children and it would be irresponsible of us to not take the first steps of making changes the entire world needs to make. From our perspective, not only doing it in our offices but forming part of our longer-term strategy is to remove or, at least, have significantly less reliance on plastic. I personally believe that great brands are built internally and, if you have a really honest intention, it must start from home. It’s a long-term commitment. We hope that others treat it with as much care as we do; it’s an honest and real intention.”
This year, KFC in Atlanta trialed a vegan version of its chicken burger; in June 2017, in the UK, the Imposter Burger replaced the chicken fillet with one made from Quorn. The burger soon sold out.
Core agencies
KFC has three core agencies: Ogilvy South Africa, which has worked on the creative account for 22 years; MindShare, which has had the media business for 12 years, and Edelman South Africa, which took over the PR account four months ago. Limbada is grateful for the relationships he has with them, adding that KFC SA has only been so immensely successful as a brand because of its partnerships. When it comes to Ogilvy, both the Johannesburg and Cape Town teams work together and are given creative freedom while being responsible for the brand.
As Limbada travels so much and sees a lot of global work, he knows that SA creative truly is world-class. He’s seen that the best work is because clients give freedom to their creative partners but say no to mediocre work. He believes that, if we all push for this excellence as an industry, we won’t only be elevating it but also the talent within it. “Be braver in what you do and trust your creative partner to deliver magic,” he concludes.
“#Agency/BrandFocus” is an ongoing weekly series updating the market on ad agency performance, including business performance, innovation, initiatives, the work, awards and people.
Sabrina Forbes (IG) is an experienced writer covering the food, health, lifestyle, beverage, marketing and media industries. She runs her own full-stack web/app development and digital-first content creation company. For more, go to moonwrench.com. She is a contributing writer to MarkLives.com.
The Flume team, split across Johannesburg and Cape Town, is currently numbers 48. Joburg still has the larger workforce, it being the founding office, but the strategy going forward is to keep growing Cape Town while hunting for new business in the Western Cape.
A recent win at the time of the interview was Caltex. “One of the things that we normally do, when it comes to pitches, is sell the culture more than anything else. That’s how we won Caltex,” says Oosthuizen.
When asked about pricing models and how costs are presented to different clients, Oosthuizen says it’s something he constantly works on. He gauges each client individually. Coetzee adds that one can’t really look at pricing in isolation and that when one’s pricing any client, it’s about the opportunity that will be unlocked; don’t exploit a client for a once-off job but rather look at a long-term solution that’s fair on both parties.
“#Agency/BrandFocus” is an ongoing weekly series updating the market on ad agency performance, including business performance, innovation, initiatives, the work, awards and people.
