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Ad of the Week with Oresti Patricios – King James II debut

A good ad has to achieve a simple, but almost illusive task: it has to communicate a brand’s message in a way that stays with the viewer. In doing so it more often must compete for the viewer’s attention with other messages and other media that are also vying for the audiences’ attention. Sometimes this is achieved by the massive repetition of advertising messages on a variety of channels. But the problem with that approach can be saturation – the feeling that if you see an ad just one more time it is going to drive you insane. I guess that’s throwing money at the problem – going for reach and penetration, instead of being smart.

But every now and again an advert will achieve memorability by creating clever little ads (or series of commercials) that give one that ‘warm, fuzzy feeling’. Those are the ads that make you feel good, make you smile or even have a little laugh. I’ve often talked about humour in this column because it is so often used in local advertising, and rightly so because South Africans love nothing more than having a good belly laugh. But achieving the humorous ‘sweet spot’ is a tricky balancing act. Brands can run the risk of getting things wrong and creating ads that are either cringe-worthy, sadly unfunny or horribly offensive.

Autopage, which is part of the Altech Group, is a cellular service provider that is not tied to any of the major networks. Rather, Altech Autopage Cellular acts as a ‘broker’ or agent of sorts for MTN, Vodacom and Cell-C, which—it claims—gives clients more choice. The campaign created by new kid on the block King James II (part of the King James group of companies), to promote Altech’s mobile offering consists of three ads to date, (perhaps in time they’ll produce more). Each ad contains the same basic message, but the context for each commercial puts a slightly different spin on what the promise means.

In the first ad, we see a basset hound looking out of a window, obviously waiting for its owner. The theme of the voice-over is that nobody likes to be kept waiting. This is a truism, sure, but what Autopage promises is that they have cut down on the time it takes you to get the right package, by having all the packages from the three main networks (sorry, Virgin and Telkom!) available all in one place. The simple tagline is “Less of what you don’t want, more of what you do.”

This isn’t a laugh out loud ad, but who doesn’t love dogs with droopy eyes. The basset hound in the ad is perfectly cast – his forlorn expression is endearingly cute, and the more you watch the ad, the more it grows on you. The ad is perfection from a cinematic perspective – which only adds to the watch-ability of this ‘mini movie’. And there’s something appealing about the simplicity. This is an effective ad that’s short, sharp, yet entertaining and which drives home a compelling message.

The second ad features a granny in an old-age home who uses her cell-phone to find out how to program the microwave – she simply looks up the answer online, to the amazement of the other residents crowded around her. The tagline here is, “The right package for you, whoever you are.”

It’s a charming, because everyone’s got a parent or grandparent these days whose life has been liberated by the interwebs. It also nimbly communicates the fact that internet connectivity is a major consideration when purchasing a cellular package, implying that Autopage will assist with this (even if you’re a nana).

The third spot had me smiling largely because of the casting and styling. The camera starts on a mid-shot of a petulant teenage girl sitting at the dinner table. Her arms are folded: it is clear that this girl’s rather moody and won’t be eating her food anytime soon. She is perfectly cast, as are her middle-class parents who are studiously ignoring her bad attitude. As the camera tracks back to reveal more of the scene, the voice-over explains that Charlene has ‘fomo’, because all her friends have new phones. As we all know ‘fomo’ is the ‘fear of mission out’ on everything that’s happening on social networks when one is forced to part from Facebook, Twitter et al.

“She needs a new phone. End of story. Now, we don’t pretend to have any parenting tips for you, but we can suggest some packages that may just keep your little princess happy. For now.” As with the granny ad, the tagline is “The right package for you, whoever you are.” In this case, although the slogan is the same, the overall message is targeted slightly more explicitly towards the younger demographic, which is—after all—a key SA market for mobile products and services, and especially for new technology. (Who’s teen isn’t desirous of an iPhone 5 but wondering when the iPhone 6 will make its appearance in SA?)

The Altech mobile campaign was created by King James II, the new Johannesburg agency of the Cape Town-based King James Group, formed by Rob McLennan and Graeme Jenner (who recently parted ways with Net#work BBDO). Even though the agency only opened its doors on the 2^nd of March, they snagged the Altech Autopage account within a few days. Says McLennan: “What was unusual was that that the work we produced was pretty much the work that we presented in the pitch.” This speaks volumes for the client’s trust in the agency and its understanding of the market – far too many brilliant campaigns have been destroyed by committee.

This campaign wins by keeping the message simple, while interpreting it in different ways that are endearing and on target. The casting of very ordinary people in very ordinary settings is also effective, because it’s more ‘relate-able’ and enabled South Africans to see themselves in the campaign.

In a crowded space, where cellular companies are competing with each other in what some describe as a ‘war’, Altech Autopage Cellular looks like it’s very cleverly carving a niche for itself, as a brand that’s warm, fuzzy and consumer friendly. Hats off to King James II for positioning Altech Autopage Cellular as a brand that’s all about you and me – ordinary folk looking to get a better deal from an often complex and baffling market. Perhaps for their next trick they can do something about the brand’s name, and help Altech lose its outdated ‘Autopage’ moniker.

Watch the ads on YouTube:

Basset Hound: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1OLkGzuk8Y

Internet Granny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf1IrVEXVI0

FOMO girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5J90iwVJb8

Ad of the Week archive

Ad of the Week is published on MarkLives every Wednesday. See past selections here.
Oresti Patricios is the CEO of brand and reputation analysis company Ornico.

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Fair Exchange: Comparative advertising — help or hindrance?

by Erna George I arrived home on a particularly normal day in Cape Town, grabbed the mail, and set myself up for a lazy evening in front of the box. Given the current state of the economy, my appetite for broadsheets and the bargains they herald has become avaricious, so I was thrilled to find one in the pile.

A cursory glance at the cover told me Woolworths (good news – quality and value on the same page) and I dived in only to feel a few seconds later that the contents were mismatched. Instead of shoes, clothing and delectable food items, it featured a ton of specials on fruit and veggies.

[pullquote]Imagine my surprise when later that evening a dish washing liquid TV ad popped on screen. With the sponge cutting a swath down the centre of a dirty bowl or pot, I was instantly reminded of the green giant, Sunlight. Then it happened, a voice-over saying something along the lines of ‘Maq Dishwashing liquid washes 750 plates more than the leading/other dishwashing brands’.[/pullquote]

Rewind, back to the cover. Woolworths font and iconography mimicking the stamp emblem with the following copy ‘We don’t pull the WOOL over your eyes: Great Value…; Great quality…; Great Service…’ and Fruit & Veg’s logo.

Now in that very moment I felt like I imagine many other consumers felt – confused and amused by my error, and slightly in awe of Fruit & Veg’s guts. Quick recovery and marketing consultant hat back on, I gave comparative advertising the second thought that I have not truly given it since my varsity days, or when BMW and Audi took each other head on using the cliffs of Chapman’s Peak as their duelling ground.

Comparative advertising, while well used in other parts of the globe, has not typically been used extensively in our country. The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa code contains two points: ‘6.1 Advertisements should not attack, discredit or disparage other products, services, advertisers or advertisements directly or indirectly.’ and ‘7.1 Advertisements in which factual comparisons are made between products and/or services are permitted provided …’ that a number of provisos have been met, including that claims have been substantiated and no disparagement has taken place etc’. (Source: www.asasa.org.za) Sounds onerous and perhaps why no one has truly taken on the code in many years.

More importantly, are there any merits to using this approach?

Replay the broadsheet. What went through my mind in the first instance was, why take on Woolworths directly? Then, does this message truly fit the Fruit & Veg brand proposition? Does it change my perceptions of the brand to be more favourable? Lastly, and most concerning, do I believe it? Could it really be that Fruit & Veg is better than Woolworths? Does this kind of direct comparative advertising help the brand partner consumers?

Actually, the promises looked really solid with ‘money back guarantees’ or ‘get a free special of the day meal or a Café voucher’ if the service is unsatisfactory. So why not profile the Fruit & Veg great offers proudly to target their selected market versus wasting the space promoting Woolworths?

My view is that Fruit & Veg could built a great relationship with consumers and become a stronger brand by owning a unique space, rather than playing in Woolworth’s backyard and being confined by W’s rules.

If comparative advertising builds the brand and helps the consumer navigate the category, I am open to it. It could be a great way to show consumers how much better you are and to take share from a market leader.

However, if the circumstances and execution are not perfect it could be a little like spending your first date telling the guy or girl about your ex. Risky.

Imagine my surprise when later that evening a dish washing liquid TV ad popped on screen. With the sponge cutting a swath down the centre of a dirty bowl or pot, I was instantly reminded of the green giant, Sunlight. Then it happened, a voice-over saying something along the lines of ‘Maq Dishwashing liquid washes 750 plates more than the leading/other dishwashing brands’.

There you have it, the Sunlight promise and visuals brought to you by Maq. Now Maq has successfully taken on giants in the past, but they did this by providing a different expression, a strong promise that broke through the clutter and won consumers’ interest to drive trial. I wondered if this direct comparative approach would work. (It probably helps that Sunlight now has the power of lemons and that I have not seen this ad since.)

I do believe that competition is what keeps innovation flowing, pricing honest and the consumer getting good value. But will consumers start questioning whose stats are correct, how are comparisons done and whose claims are being honest versus who is being economical with the truth? How exactly does this help the person in the street, or in the supermarket, and what does it do to brand trust?

I know a friend of mine has. She recently returned from the UK eager to share stories of a leading beauty brand that claims in its TV advertising via a voice-over that its cream will ‘make you look younger in just two weeks’ while text appears at the bottom of the screen saying something like ‘76% of 225 women agree’. Or the shampoo will ‘enhance shine and strengthen with just five washes’ and ‘82% of 97 women agree’.

Her words, not mine: ‘Do they think I have the word “stoopid” written on my forehead?’

There is a role for comparative advertising – it is the direct and antagonistic nature of some that bothers me because, when the war or the laughs are over, we hope that the reputation of the world of marketing, advertising and brands will be intact.

Perhaps your brand does need to take on the biggest competitor to break in but I would suggest you consider the following first if you want to build a relationship with your consumer, that is, your transactional partner:

–          Are you building your brand or your competitors?
–          Does the message help consumers decide or confuse?
–          Can you deliver the promise and not disappoint consumers?

If not, perhaps reconsider.

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

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Creative Effectiveness, Direct Lions, Promo & Activation and PR Winners Announced #canneslions

The Creative Effectiveness, Direct, PR and Promo & Activation Lions category winners have been announced at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

McCann Melbourne, Australia, took both the PR and Direct Grands Prix for their entry ‘Dumb Ways to Die‘ for Metro Trains. The Promo & Activation Grand Prix was taken by Ogilvy Brasil, for their entry ‘Immortal Fans‘, created for football club Sport Club Recife. Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam took the Grand Prix for ‘Heineken’s Legendary Journey: Justifying a Premium the World Over‘ in the Creative Effectiveness category.

South African winners

Creative Effectiveness: None

Direct: None

PR: None

Promo & Activations:

Silver

Best Use of Guerilla Marketing in a Promotional Campaign
SAFETY LAB AND BLIKKIESDORP 4 HOPE
HOPE SOAP
Y&R SOUTH AFRICA
Cape Town SOUTH AFRICA

Public Health & Safety, Pubic Awareness Messages

HOPE SOAP

SAFETY LAB AND BLIKKIESDORP 4 HOPE

HOPE SOAP

Y&R SOUTH AFRICA
Cape Town SOUTH AFRICA

Bronze

Best Temporary In-Store Displays in a Promotional Campaign

THE WORLD’S SMALLEST IDEA

VITAL HEALTH FOODS

VITAL: VIRAL BOOST

DRAFTFCB CAPE TOWN
SOUTH AFRICA

Design Annotator: a Photography Trio, Young Illustrators and a new Allan Gray TVC

Design Annotator with Uno de Waal is a new column featuring the top design work from South Africa’s biggest online creative showcase, Between 10 and 5, curated by Publisher Uno de Waal @Unodewaal.

At 10and5 we are still continuing with our Young South Africa series – our feature on young people in South Africa doing some really interesting and creative projects. We’ve featured the guys from I See A Different You a few times in the past, but we couldn’t pass them up for a feature this month. Alexander’s Band is a new illustration representation studio that aims to promote the best of the best – they would definitely be a useful resource for agencies looking for brilliant illustration work. The new moving billboards by King James for Allan Gray has evoked some controversial discussion on the site – have a look and weigh in your opinion.

Young South Africa: I See A Different You

Our Young South Africa series is all about highlighting projects that document local youth culture and putting a spotlight on exceptional young, creative South Africans. The annual series runs throughout June to coincide with national Youth Month. Today’s showcase is a trio of swag-dressing young guys who’ve shown the world how to see the world differently. They are Justice, Innocent and Vuyo of I See A Different You.

Give us the back-story: How did I See A Different You (ISADY) come into being?

It started with a Skype chat from Kenya when Innocent travelled there for an ad campaign for work. He sent us a picture of a guy on a motorbike at a carwash, everywhere there were happy people smiling. We saw such cool in it. It wasn’t what we expected from Kenya. Because every time you saw pictures of Kenya it was poverty or tall people. Sow we decided to show the world how our Africa is: Beautiful.

View more of I See A Different You’s pictures.

Young South Africa: Alphabet Zoo

Today’s Youth South Africa post showcases Alphabet Zoo, a grassroots, Jozi-rooted street culture zine. This project is the work of printmakers Mini and Isaac, who work out of the NewARC studios in Newtown.

Where did the idea for Alphabet Zoo come from?
We were sitting in Joubert Park opposite Johannesburg Art Gallery, when we suddenly thought there are not enough Jo’burg art collectives, collective that don’t only focus on art but also on culture.

View the rest of the work from Alphabet Zoo.

Young South Africa: Lize-Marie Dreyer – Portfolio Night All-Stars Winner

Lize-Marie Dreyer is a creative star off to a very bright start. Having just been announced the winner of the Portfolio Night Creative All-Stars competition, she’ll be jetting off to join students from 35 cities from around the world at the famous Art Directors Club (ADC) in New York. There she’ll compete on a real creative challenge for Ford whilst being coached by members of the ADC community.

Check out the rest of Lize-Marie Dreyers work

Allan Gray | You Wait Because It’s Worth It

KingJames created this series of moving billboards for Allan Gray that appeared at major intersections in Johannesburg. While the tagline, “You Wait Because It’s Worth It”, remained static, the visuals behind were short clips of footage showing fans waiting to catch a glimpse of The Beatles to a soldier dad returning home. Being silent, the clips used had to speak volumes.

Read the comments about Allan Gray new TV ad.

Introducing: Alexander’s Band

We’re really excited to introduce Alexander’s Band, a brand new independent illustration representation service.

Alexander’s Band was started by illustrator (with a love for the business side if things), Emma Cook. She says, “ I’ve been in illustration for the last 6 years. For the last 3 I have been freelancing while building up the knowledge base to launch Alexander’s Band. I have a unique perspective when it comes to illustration representation in SA because, hey, I’m one of you. I know and understand every step of what we do and the challenges that face us. I also respect the challenges that face art buyers and production folks whom I have always enjoyed working with.”

Find out more about Alexander’s Band

Uni-ball Pens | Write It In Your Own Voice

This campaign by TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris for Uni-ball pens makes a case for hand-written letters by imagining the voices of well-known fonts. This is an extension of their current radio campaign also flighting at the moment.
Have a look at the rest of the campaign.

– Uno de Waal is the publisher of creative showcase 10and5.com.

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eNCA.com – Late to the party but streetwise

by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) TV and online seem to be such a happy fit so it has always perplexed me that eNews Channel Africa – or eNCA (previously eNews) – went for so long without a proper website. In fact, eNCA only launched its site – under GM Tim Spira – in April this year.

But even with eNCA still in the process of establishing its brand (the change was necessitated by the launch of a UK channel on the Sky pay-TV platform in August last year), the site’s numbers are exceeding its own expectations: at more than 270 000 domestic users in May, which was its first full month of in existence.

Grubstreet spoke to Spira last week to find out more about why it took so long for eNCA to establish an online presence and what mistakes they hope to avoid by coming to the party so late.

Grubstreet: So it’s weird that it took eNCA so long to get online but I guess the great thing for you is that you’re starting from a position of knowledge. You can set up and run online with the benefit of lots of past digital learning.

Tim Spira: Yes, absolutely. Coming in this late in the game is a double-edged sword.

There are a lot of entrenched players out there that are doing very well so you need to effectively take market share away from them. But, at the same time, one can approach it with a very contemporary mind set and with a better view of current realities of online media than some of the competitor sites – because they were developed a while ago and have had to adapt to the innovations like the prevalence of social media and the increasing appeal of multimedia content…

I think we’re trying to take the lessons where we can and I’d like to think that in certain areas we’ve been able to leapfrog.

Grubstreet: Which areas are those?

Spira: Well, the one thing we’ve been very conscious of is social-media integration so we draw quite a bit of content from social media. We try to integrate our content as much as we can into social platforms.

Having said that, I wouldn’t necessarily say that we’re the best in the market. We’re also just feeling our way. But certainly I would say we have a greater understanding of the importance of it than maybe some of the other players do.

That’s one aspect. The other one – and it goes back to your original point, which is: ‘Why has it taken us so long to launch any kind of online presence?’ – and I think it really goes to the fact that as a broadcaster we see our strength as being in video content. Up until this point – and, quite frankly, if we’ve even reached this point is questionable – there have been constraints in terms of broadband penetration in South Africa.

And while this is changing, the fact is that the market would have been so niche that it wouldn’t have made commercial sense for us to launch a video-rich online presence (before now).

Grubstreet: Ja, one still encounters buffering while viewing video. You can’t really believe this can still be happening in 2013.

Spira: One encounters buffering a lot. And not only is the access slow but it’s expensive in comparison with more developed markets.

Also, it’s not only the end-user bandwidth but the bandwidth from ISPs (internet service providers) is very expensive. So that’s another thing that we’ve done a little different to how we might have approached things a couple of years ago: we’re actually hosting on an international CDN both for video and for the rest of the site.

We’re using Amazon Web Services for our website and a business called Kaltura to deliver video because we couldn’t really find a suitable scalable solution in the current South African ISP market – and it was also very expensive (in SA).

Our CMS (content-management system) is an area we thought long and hard about and we ultimately decided to go with an open-source CMS. That would have been unheard of a few years ago (for a large operation) .

Grubstreet: Absolutely. What are using?

Spira: Drupal. There have been great advances in open-source web technologies and so far we’ve been very happy.

Grubstreet: So you must be customising Drupal to your heart’s content then?

Spira: Yes. We’ve built a lot of custom modules, which we give back and share with the Drupal community, which is how it works in the spirit of open source. What it means as well is that we get the benefit of a broad distributed group of developers that are making improvement to the system all the time.

Grubstreet: And is eNCA online integrated with the newsroom?

Spira: Well, we’ve grown very quickly – not that we didn’t plan to grow very quickly – but sometimes the space planning and the business planning don’t converge.

But I’m really happy now that we’ve put our editorial team right in the heart of the TV editorial team so there’s very close integration between channel and online, which is wonderful.

I’ve come out of environments where that hasn’t been the case. And it was something I was very conscious of going into this process: that if we didn’t take full advantage of integration with TV – both from a content and skills perspective and using TV as a marketing platform – we’d be wasting our time.

Grubstreet: It must help a lot that (eNCA group head) Patrick Conroy gets online.

Spira: It makes the job much easier. If there isn’t that kind of buy-in from the top, it’s natural that different business units are going to clash. And while there is some healthy competition between online and TV, we’ve already seen countless examples where the one has really assisted the other.

Television and online are very complementary operations – much more so than with print and online in my experience. The one phenomenon we’ve been seeing a lot of is that the effect of mentioning online on TV has an immediate impact on (web) traffic.

Also, because the time constraints on TV are so tight, there is often an opportunity from a TV perspective to add value for the audience. So if you’re running a 15-second clip from an interview on TV, we can run the entire interview online. It’s a fabulous opportunity to mention: ‘If you want to see the full interview, go to eNCA.com’ – and we see the impact of that.

But we have to be careful not to overdo it. We have to be sure that when we refer people to web, that there’s real value to what they’ll find there.

But it’s a win for both platforms – and similarly we can promote upcoming programming on the website and provide what is at the moment a very basic catch-up service, which we’re hoping to develop into something more comprehensive.

Grubstreet: This isn’t just a website you’ve launched. This is also about taking the eNCA brand forward, isn’t it?

Tim Spira: You know, we’re in an interesting phase in our development in terms of eNCA more broadly. We’re going through a review of our brand and our sub-brands at the moment.

Because the business has grown extremely quickly, there have been a lot of changes that we’ve had to embrace on a tactical rather than a strategic level.

Last year, for example, we launched in the UK and that was what necessitated the change in name to eNCA. We couldn’t be eNews internationally because there’s E! Entertainment and E! News among others.

Even though the eNews channel was around for about five years, eNCA is still a very new and relatively unknown brand. As much as we (at online) are piggybacking on the brand equity that TV has built, we’re also doing an important job in terms of broadening the awareness of the eNCA brand.

Grubstreet: So who are eNCA’s main competitors? News24?

Spira: Look, in terms of online news in South Africa, News24 is way ahead of everybody else.

Grubstreet: They haven’t left many gaps in the markets.

Spira: Yes, they really do dominate and they have a presence in all of the niche content areas, which does make it a very strong competitor and I think they will remain very strong.

But I think what we’re trying to do is very different from what they’re doing. News24 has an important place and they’re really fast with the news and really comprehensive. They have a very broad offering.

Where we, perhaps, differ is that I think we place greater store in generating original content and breaking stories. I think we’re probably a lot less reliant on the wires than they are and also we have a wealth of our own video content.

I know News24 is doing a very good job at aggregating video content but, ultimately, we’re slightly higher up on the supply chain on that one.

Grubstreet: What are your stats like at the moment, Tim?

Spira: Well, they’re not bad actually. We’ve got our (Effective Measure) numbers for May, which was the first full month of being tracked by Effective Measure because we launched on the 10th of April.

In May we had 273 000 unique browsers – and that’s domestic. Worldwide, we had the 443 000 unique browsers and about 1.8-million page views. Local page views was 1.4-million.

Grubstreet: That’s excellent for a two-month-old site and a new brand.

Spira: I’m really happy. It’s way ahead of what we had in our business plan.

There are some areas we need to work on. We need to increase the frequency of usage. We need to make sure people come back and spend more time on the site but we’re thrilled about the number of people we’re reaching – and it’s a good basis for growth.

Grubstreet: You said earlier that you went for international hosting so you’d have scalability. I’m presuming you’re planning on lots more multimedia and more video?

Spira: Yes, absolutely. It’s our key point of differentiation. We’ll definitely be very focused on that and more so as the market matures.

Grubstreet: And that will certainly increase time on site.

Spira: Definitely. We use a live-streaming service, for example, called Livestation which we don’t make available in South Africa (so that it doesn’t compete with the 24-hour eNCA satellite news channel) and one of the things we’ve noticed is that the time on site for a live-streaming service is just way beyond anything you’d expect from an on-demand news offering.

But certainly, we playing around with longer-form on-demand video and we’ll also be trying out new ways of delivering video in the future.

– SA’s leading media commentator, Gill Moodie, offers intelligence on media – old and new. Reprinted from her site Grubstreet.

Not a boom, real growth

By Herman Manson (@marklives) The African continent isn’t quite the growth honeypot ad agencies had been hoping for. That said – it’s certainly a growth market. While it doesn’t match the growth rates in Asia or even Latin America, listed agency networks seem to have decided any growth is good growth given the state of especially their European operations. North Africa remains fragile – ZenithOptimedia forecast only

1% growth in ad revenue in the Middle East & North Africa as political turmoil post the Arab Spring continues to rock the region. The company expects 2%-3% annual growth from 2013 to 2015.

Growth in adspend globally is predicted by ZenithOptimedia to hit 4.1% in 2013 and 5.6% in 2015. South Africa will be one of the top ten ornicocontributors to that growth between 2012 and 2015.
South Africa in the South, Kenya in the East and either Nigeria or Ghana in the West of Africa generally gets the most buzz from agencies seeking investment in the region.

It’s not all great headlines though. Publicis, one of the world’s major holding companies of agency networks (including Leo Burnett, Publicis Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi), generated only 4% of its revenue in the Africa & Middle East region in 2012 and the continent barely gets a nod it its 2012 results report.

Others, like M&C Saatchi, are seeing their African investments booming. It reported revenue growth of 121% in the Middle East and Africa in 2012. Revenue from Cape Town and Johannesburg more than doubled from £3.0m to £6.6m and it’s actively looking to expand its African network with affiliate offices in Nigeria and Kenya. The South African business is the fastest growing in the M&C Saatchi network.

WPP (and its associates) collectively employs over 24,000 people across the continent, generating revenues of over US$600 million. Globally it had £10.3bn (as at 31 December 2012) in revenue. WPP owns agency networks such as Grey, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather and Y&R (and in South Africa it also holds stakes in The Jupiter Drawing Room and Ireland/Davenport).

The agency networks have accelerated their investment into the continent as they follow the big brands, especially in the cellular, alcohol and retails space, into new markets.

The smart networks are empowering local partners as shareholders – the consensus seem to have been reached that partnerships are the best way to gain traction in new markets. Increased competition amongst agencies are good news for brands and stimulates more money to flow into the marketing economy, which in turn will be good news for independent start-ups, a mini-boom of which we are seeing in South Africa.

– Ornico and MarkLives have teamed up to present our first ‘The Africa Annual‘, a compilation of some of Africa’s remarkable stories and resources for businesses; and media, marketing and branding enthusiasts. (Article reprinted from The Africa Annual)

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The 2013 APEX winners

The 2013 APEX winners are:

Award	Category	Submission	Client	Agency
Gold	Launch	Cadbury Dairy Milk – Bubbly	Kraft Foods	Ogilvy Johannesburg
Gold	Change	Reinventing Clover’s Brand to Gain Market Share	Clover Industries	Joe Public
Silver	Sustain	Carling Black Label	South African Breweries	Ogilvy Cape Town
Silver	Change	SARS Personal Income Tax 2012	South African Revenue Service	Draftfcb Johannesburg
Bronze & Special Award*	Sustain	Gender Norms	Johns Hopkins Health & Education SA	Joe Public and Mediology
Bronze	Sustain	Castle Lager Superfans	South African Breweries	Ogilvy Johannesburg
Bronze	Sustain	Toyota Hilux Tough	Toyota South Africa	Draftfcb Johannesburg
Bronze	Change	Redefining Short-term Insurance	Santam	King James
Bronze	Change	KFC Krushers	Yum! Restaurants International	Ogilvy Johannesburg

*Special Award: For the most successful submission for non-profit or charity organisation or cause

How to grow a magazine cover

MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them. By media blogger MediaSlut.

INTERNATIONAL

Advertising Age, 10 June 2013

Simple concept, and uncluttered cover, illustrating perfectly the Advertising Age “Creativity Issue”.

STYLIST, 12 June 2013

I take my hat off to publications that don’t take themselves too seriously, and who have FUN! And this STYLIST cover is the perfectly example, where they feature the “Fifty Best Box Sets”, and in true FRIENDS-fashion (FRIENDS is of course THE ultimate box set…); from the noticeable colour bullets between the letters, to the headline that is written in true FRIENDS-style (each episodes name starts with “The One With/Where…”). Classic.

M Magazine (LeMonde), 8 June 2013

I’m not clued up with the French Politics, but I am clued up on a good cover (or should we say ‘poster’, in this case…).

Idealog, Issue 46

The New Zealand title is right when they promote Issue 46 of Idealog as their “dirtiest cover yet”… They took “how to grow a brand” quite literally and here’s the behind-the-scenes video to show how it was done.

LOCAL

DESTINY, July 2013

DESTINY magazine has always featured some of the ‘strongest’ women in South Africa on their cover (you can view their archive of covers right here), and they’ve done it again with this celebratory issue featuring “25 of the most Inspirational Entrepreneurs”. On the cover, they have 17 of these talented women, and they are:

Top row: Carol Bouwer, Sarah Thabethe, Kurisani Maswanganyi, Nana Magomola, Ipeleng Mkhari
Second row: Joanne Strauss, Dr Bridgette Gasa, Deborah Calmeyer, Dr Anna Mokgokong, Nkhensani Nkosi
Third row: Leila Janah, Olga Goodman, Dr Ndileka Shuenyane
Fourth row: Lynette Magasa, Nelia Annandale, Sibongile Manganyi, Carmen Tal

– 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 South African magazines might fail, but most importantly, succeed. If you’re looking for a library about South African magazines and news, your one-stop pitstop is MediaSlut. #MagazinesForTheWin

– Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us @marklives and @mediaslut
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Media Future: Tablet war erupts with choice

A quality low-end tablet from ASUS and the imminent arrival of Sony’s flagship Tablet Z brings compelling new choices to the market, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).

The war for the South African tablet market took a new turn last week with the unveiling of two major new contendors.

On Wednesday night, Taipei-based ASUS made their biggest foray yet into this market, unveiling not only a compelling new tablet, but also announcing distribution and marketing partnerships that signal its intentions as loudly as do its devices.

To start with, it officially launched the ASUS Fonepad, a 7” tablet designed to be used as much for apps as for making voice and video calls. Yes, you do look silly holding a 7” tablet to your ear, but ASUS has spotted a trend that silly-watchers missed: younger users are increasingly using their tablets for communication, and that communication is increasingly visual.

It means not only that they are more open to video calls than the older generation, but also that they like to look at their device and continue playing with it while making voice calls. And because music is such an integral element of the way a younger user engages with a tablet, headphones are standard gear.

Enter the Fonepad. It’s lightweight, at 340g and a mere 10,4mm thick. It runs on Android 4.1, offers a 1.2MP front camera for video conferencing and 3MP rear camera for 720p video recording, and a microSD slot for extra storage beyond the 8GB or 16GB on-board options.

The big difference under the hood, however, is the chip. It is the first Android tablet to run on an Intel chip, with an Atom 1.2GHz processor. That’s not only important for performance, but also for marketing. It means Intel will also put its weight behind the push to get this device into consumers’ hands.

At the launch, ASUS also shared the stage with distributors Tarsus and Mustek, two South African powerhouses in getting high-tech products into stores.

Pricing starts at around R3000, making it highly competitive with most name-brand 7” tablets, although still well above that of the entry-level device from ASUS’s Taiwanese neighbour Acer. The Acer Iconia Tab B1 sells for R1700 upward in South Africa, and is the device to beat on price.

Across the East China Sea from Taiwan, Japanese electronic giant Sony has been sweating over a convincing device to compete in the tablet market. Its first attempt, the dual-screen Tablet P, vanished so fast it is now a museum piece.

Since then, it has embraced CEO Kazuo Hirai’s vision of “One Sony” to integrate the expertise of its laptop, smartphone, sound, camera and TV teams into the creation of a market-leading tablet. The result is the new Xperia Tablet Z, which goes far beyond the obligatory ticking of performance and feature boxes.

It is the thinnest 10.1” tablet on the market, at an almost ridiculous 6.9mm, as well as the lightest, weighing in at 495g. Aside from being dustproof and water resistant – using the same sealing techniques as the Xperia Z smartphone – it also offers the Walkman app’s music integration and Sony’s S-Force Front Surround 3D, which adds a new sensory dimension to music and games.

The one drawback of the Tablet Z will be its price. At a launch event on Thursday, it was announced that the device would be available in South Africa in the first week of July, but pricing had not yet been confirmed beyond a “R7000 to R10 000” range. That compares with high-end iPads, but Sony believes it has enough differentiators to set it apart.

It will ship with a charging dock, both LTE and Wi-Fi connectivity, Android 4.1.2 upgradeable to 4.2, an 8MP rear camera with 1080p HD video capture and a 2MP front camera. It runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon quad-core 1.5GHz chip, giving it one of the most powerful engines currently available in the tablet world.

Along with the successful launch of the Xperia Z phone, which places Sony alongside Samsung and HTC as smartphone technology leaders, the Tablet Z solidifies the company’s return as a mobile force.

However, it is entering a tablet market of around 1.3-million devices, dominated by Apple and Samsung at the high end, and with quality brands entering at the low-end.

With both Sony and ASUS bringing highly desirable new devices to the market, the winner here is consumer choice.

* 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.

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EXCLUSIVE: Ogilvy Cape Town MD to leave agency, country

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Ogilvy Cape Town MD Gavin Levinsohn is resigning his position at the end of the year to emigrate to Australia, MarkLives has confirmed. The news was announced to Cape Town staff earlier this week.

Levinsohn joined Ogilvy Cape Town as MD in late 2008. Levinsohn is also a member of Ogilvy South Africa Group EXCO and a Board Director of Ogilvy & Mather South Africa. According to Ogilvy & Mather South Africa Group Marketing Director Lauren Woolf a succession plan is in place, details of which has not yet been released. It has not yet been decided if Levinsohn is leaving the group as a whole or only his position as MD in Cape Town, according to Woolf.

In a statement released to MarkLives the company says that “Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town Managing Director Gavin Levinsohn is moving to Australia at the end of 2013 for personal reasons after five very successful years at the helm of the agency. During Levinsohn’s time as MD, Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town has become the country’s top-ranked creative agency and has transformed itself into a genuine digitally-led, integrated agency.”

In the same statement Ogilvy & Mather SA CEO Abey Mokgwatsane said that he was “sorry to be losing a leader of Gavin’s undeniable calibre but the agency already has a robust succession plan in place and would be announcing a new management structure shortly.”

Levinsohn started his career at The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town as a Junior Account Executive and worked his way up to become Client Service Director. In 2006 he became MD and co-founder of agency singh&sons before joining Ogilvy Cape Town in late 2008.

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