TEDActive 2013: The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.

by James Yeats Smith, filed from TEDActive 2013, Palm Springs. Monday, 25 February

After an epic 26 hour voyage I finally arrived at the La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs where the annual TEDActive conference takes place. To describe it as a hive of activity would be a gross understatement; name tags, gift bags and margaritas were being flung around fast and loose as 700 strangers engaged each other with reckless abandon.

First on my agenda was a poolside briefing and brainstorm on the future of mobile hosted by Intel. The group of twenty international technologists gathered around the breakfast buffet and swiftly got acquainted over fruit skewers and sticky buns before the session got underway at breakneck speed. What began as a series of “How might we’s” quickly escalated into a full blown group brainstorm and four key areas were agreed on and pursued. I slotted in with a small and diverse team of five, our mandate; How do we take our dependency on the mobile handset out of the equation? An excellent topic because, if like me, you’ve fantasized about a world where you can leave the house with nothing and still have access to, well…everything, a paradigm shift in this arena would be most welcome.

Listening in on the conversation one would be forgiven for thinking that we were brainstorming props for Prometheus or Total Recall as we played out scenarios involving implanted chips and smart contact lenses. Nevertheless, the consensus was that sci-fi will soon become science fact and that handsets and pda’s will be succeeded by smart micro devices, a fraction the size of your iPhone. The take away idea from our discussion; ‘No Devices – Just Context’ implies a future where we can activate ubiquitous public screens via a small inconspicuous device on your person, as opposed to carrying a clunky interface around in your pocket. With the help of Intel we’ll be doing a deeper dive over the course of the week and hopefully arrive at something practical and useful to take forward.

After lunch the TEDLab was opened, an impressive work/hangout space with a myriad of interactive exhibits from PaperPunk, Intel, Bing and Hit&Run that saw attendees collaborating on installations and sitting down to a presentation on the inner-workings of the TED organization. What is really astounding is the rapid growth of the global TEDx events. At least half the people I’ve met in the short time I’ve been here are TEDx organizers and with over 6000 global TEDx events taking place in 2012 alone, the X movement is only set to grow.

Session one of the main TED conference kicks off tomorrow and my number one pick is not going to be Bono, but the lesser known musical anomaly, Beardy Man. I’ll keep you posted on how the day unfolds as it takes quite a while for these talks to make it onto the TED website, if they ever do.

Time to sign off and head out to the welcome home party for campfire discussions and abstract futures. Eat. Sleep. Have visions. JYS.

– For more stories for TEDActive 2013 be sure to check back tomorrow

– James Yeats Smith is an award winning Creative Director and writer focused on the convergence of marketing, entertainment and technology. He is based between New York, Cape Town & Johannesburg.

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Aki Anastasiou on Pistorius, Twitter and what social networks mean for media

by Gill Moodie (@GrubstreetSA) If, like me, you’ve been mesmerised by the explosion of tweets on the “Oscar Pistorius” hashtag around the Paralympian’s bail application hearing, then you’re just as fascinated with Twitter – and how it is changing how we cover and consume news – as myself.

Last Friday – the day after Pistorius was arrested after shooting dead his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, I wrote this piece about Beeld being the first to tweet the breaking news and wondering about the role of Talk Radio 702 tech expert Aki Anastasiou in how the news went viral in the Twitterverse.

To recap, the Beeld_Nuus account was the first to tweet the breaking news at at 8.03am with this tweet:

Oscar Pistorius skiet sy vriendin in sy huis dood omdat hy glo dink sy is ‘n inbreker.

— Beeld (@Beeld_Nuus) February 14, 2013

The newspaper got this story up by crime reporter Fanie van Rooyen on their website at 8.04am but the news on Twitter only really seemed to go viral when Anastasiou tweeted this at 8.08am:

Hectic News @beeld_nuus is reporting that Oscar Pistorius shot & killed his girlfriend this morning thinking she was a burglar.

— Aki Anastasiou (@AkiAnastasiou) February 14, 2013

Although Anastasiou has more followers than the Beeld_Nuus account – 40 358 compared with 36 135 this morning – it’s not that much more. So, I wondered, why was his tweet amplified to such a degree?

Is it because Anastasiou tweeted in English or is it because of the power of being a popular radio personality?

Curiously, this is not the first time that he has played such a big role in how a big story got out across social media. When the news of Eugene Terre’Blanche’s death in 2010 was broken on Twitter by blogger FromTheOld, it only went viral when Anastasiou and Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes tweeted about it.

To help us drill more into this fascinating phenomenon, I spoke to Anastasiou this morning to get his insights.

Now on both these occasions – for Pistorius and Terre’Blanche – you knew of the breaking news before you saw the first tweet.

Ja. With the Terre’Blanche story a friend of my cousin was a policeman in Ventersdorp and he told me about it (before Anastasiou saw the blogger’s tweet). But you need to hold on to it, as with Oscar Pistorius.

With Pistorius we had the information in the newsroom from 7am in the morning but the police hadn’t confirmed anything yet and we felt we had to check with the sources again because of the sensitivity of this and how sensational it was. And that’s the scary part. If you get it wrong, then you’re really in big trouble. You really have to trust the person you’re getting the information from. Kudos to Beeld. They got it and, ja, I think they beat us by seconds.

It’s all very well to break a story on Twitter. But the thing on social networks is how to carry that story forward. How do you keep it going? You start rolling out your resources, your journalists at the scene. We’ve got a quite a powerful news team on our social network. We’ve got Mandy Wiener and Barry Bateman – seasoned journalists who have really been focusing on tweeting from live occasions.

And that’s where the story starts changing and how you differentiate yourself from other news media. How you cover the story after you’ve broken it. I think this is where Eyewitness is very strong compared with traditional print media and even television to a degree – because radio is so immediate. Radio dovetails with Twitter because of the immediacy of it… Although other media is catching up very quickly.

Do you think the fact that Beeld tweeted in Afrikaans and you tweeted in English made a difference in the Pistorius case?

You know, somebody said Beeld should have tweeted in English as well. And I think: ‘No. Their language is Afrikaans and that’s their audience’.

But you know Twitter is fascinating. About two years ago I was at Microsoft TechEd in Durban, which is Microsoft’s big tech conference for Africa. We all knew that they were developing this mobile operating system called Windows 7, which is now called Windows 8, and they hadn’t announced what the strategy was, etc.

Anyway, I happened to bump into someone from Microsoft – I think from the US –and I asked who were their partners. Was Nokia a good partner to have?

He basically leaked out to me that Microsoft was working with Nokia and I tweeted about this. At that time nobody in the world knew this and the tweet went completely viral around the world and I had people from Finland phoning me. (Nokia denied the partnership but then confirmed it later). I was just amazed how my one tweet went around the world.

Partly that would be because you’re followed by people in tech, who will naturally be keen watchers of Twitter and they are big tweeters.

Yes, although I try keep my Twitter account generic, whether it’s about economics or Discovery magazines best photographs of the year. But I also have a strong focus on tech but not the high-end stuff – rather the stuff that people are going to use and consumers are going to understand.

Beeld news editor Pieter du Toit told me that he felt Twitter has taken print journalists into the realm of radio.

Yes, absolutely. And the thing is how do you bring a print journalist – who is really just a name in a story – alive on Twitter? It’s a whole new realm of journalism – on how you report a story. On Twitter, you’re almost giving a commentary on what’s going on.

I think Phillip de Wet (at the Mail & Gaurdian) is very good at that.

Yes, he does it so well. At live events, he really has set the standard… Also, the tools that you use are critical in this whole thing because you cannot tweet at that speed using a cellphone and you can’t use the actual traditional Twitter online account. You’ve got to use proper tools like TweetDeck, which make a big difference in the speed of getting the story out.

What do you use at a live event. A tablet?

No. I use a MacBook Air. Tablet doesn’t allow you to type fast enough. It restricts you in the speed and you’ve got to be able to move between application easily. Although you are able to tweet reasonably fast on a smart phone if you really know what you’re doing (and use predictive text).

Isn’t amazing that about two or three years ago everybody was asking: “Where is Twitter taking us?” And now we’re really getting hints and starting to understand it.

Ja, it’s mainstream. I’ve got 38 000 followers and all those people are potential leads. It’s a spider-web network. A journalist would never have had that spider web five or six years ago.

I can tweet something and ask a question and somebody is bound to be near an area where a specific incident has taken place and that’s how you hear all these things. You could never have had that kind of amplification before. It’s a game changer.

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

Design Indaba: A Ten Year Creative Retrospective

Joanne Thomas, Creative Director – Design at The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town, gives MarkLives an exclusive retrospective on design work and campaigns produced by The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town over the past 10 years for one of the worlds’ premier design events, the Design Indaba.

“Interactive Africa has partnered with The Jupiter Drawing Room (Cape Town) for 10 years on the creation of the Design Indaba identity and creative elements. It’s been such a ride – we have seen the conference grow from the initial flagship conference to become a globally acclaimed multidisciplinary experience encompassing the best of the world’s creativity. It’s fascinating to look back and see how the design elements that we have created have evolved with this process – not only to reflect the way that that Design Indaba has grown to become a globally recognized initiative, but also how it has grown to encompass additional elements such as the Film Fest, music festivals and community initiatives. Here’s to the next ten years!”. – Ravi Naidoo, Founder, Design Indaba

2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013

Design Indaba 2004 – Who’s a designer?

This was our first campaign for Design Indaba It was also the first time we questioned whether design is only the domain of those who have studied it. Or is it possible that everyone has creativity within them?

We asked a broad range of ‘non-creative’ people, and members of the industry, to design the logo for the conference and then used the results within the campaign.

Particularly interesting, and rather sad, were the suggestions from the design industry themselves – which led us to question whether the passion was lost from the designers

MarkLives is an official Media Supporter of Design Indaba 2013. Sign up for our free newsletter!

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EXCLUSIVE: Rob Mclennan, Graeme Jenner and King James team up to launch new Jozi agency

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Rob Mclennan, Graeme Jenner and King James Group have teamed up to launch a new full service start-up ad agency in Johannesburg. The new agency will be known as King James II.

Mclennan and Jenner will provide the creative muscle while King James Group will provide financial backing, infrastructure, some early business and a great brand. King James II will officially launch March 2nd (but be in business from March 1st) and a new premises is currently being secured. The new agency is actively seeking a black empowerment partner to manage its business side. The BEE deal will extend to involvement in the larger King James Group.

Alistair King, Group Creative Director at King James Group, says the agency has been looking for a catalyst to relaunch a full service offering in Johannesburg and had always thought the opportunity would come through a piece of business. Instead, it would be Mclennan and Jenner coming into the job market that focussed their attention on building a new agency in that city.

King James has run a Johannesburg client service office for many years but it saw all creative and strategic work originate from Cape Town. According to King it had lost a string of Johannesburg based pitches last year because some clients still see it in geographical terms as a Cape Town agency. King is adamant they are not simply rebuilding the Johannesburg office of King James. King James II launches as a start-up and it is foreseen that the new agency will break the dominant position of the Cape Town agency in the group in the not so distant future.

Both Mclennan and Jenner both recently left Net#work BBDO after that agency lost the Nedbank account to Joe Public. Mclennan says he and Jenner were dipping their toes in the water for advice on the best way to launch an independent agency into the Johannesburg market soon after the Nedbank account loss was announced. They wanted autonomy and purposely did not want to be part of an international agency network. After talking to King in mid-January a deal was swiftly signed and a pitch ready agency will be hitting the ground running March 1.

King believes the King James name and backing will give the start-up the boost to drive early growth but ultimately Mclennan and Jenner will build an agency in their own identity. Charles Matterson, currently in charge of the Johannesburg operations of King James, will join the new King James II management team, and Johannesburg serviced clients of King James will have the option of moving to King James II or staying with King James.

James Barty, Group Managing Director: King James Group, says the new agency will initially tap into King James on an operational level. A team is already being assembled to support Mclennan and Jenner both of whom will be minority equity partners in King James II.

Barty says the launch of King James II is reinvigorating the entire group after a year of flat revenue at the Cape Town agency. The group has been keen to fulfil its potential in the Johannesburg market and believes it is now perfectly positioned to do so. James adds that King James Group is self funding King James II.

Mclennan says the agency will be looking for blue-chip clients early on – between him and Jenner they had worked across various sectors including banking, cars, FMCG etc.

King James II is bound to shake up the Johannesburg agency scene. Coupled with the huge strides made by Joe Public over the past two years, and the rapid rise of M&C Saatchi Abel in that market, the competitive energy that has been infusing Cape Town over the past few years seems finally to be hitting Johannesburg in a big way.

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heat South Africa publishes last (known) Reeva Steenkamp interview

by Herman Manson (@marklives) heat South Africa has published the last (known) interview with Oscar Pistorius’ deceased girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, conducted 7 days before her death.

Andre Neveling, editor of heat South Africa, was a boarding a flight to Johannesburg from Cape Town when he received the news of the shooting death of Steenkamp. His reaction was one of utter shock – his team had a good relationship with both Pistorius and Steenkamp and the couple had agreed to an exclusive photo shoot together scheduled for later in the year.

It was only well into the flight that he realised his magazine might well be sitting on a global scoop. It had secured and conducted an exclusive interview with Steenkamp several days before her death.

According to Neveling, the magazine did not up their print run for this issue given the short lead time of the story. The interview hasn’t been made available for international syndication either. Instead, the team have sent out a media statement containing some quotes from the interview.

It has since turned into a bit of a global media sensation – at the time of this interview Neveling was waiting to be interviewed on CNN International. Numerous newspapers have also picked up on the content of the heat magazine interview.

News of the interview didn’t leak to other media before publication. It was a conscious decision by heat South Africa to keep a low profile in the run-up to publication. Neveling says he has a small and professional team and they managed to keep news quiet until they were ready for it to be released.

The cover was put together last week and Neveling spent the weekend staring at it trying to decide what changes he needed to make. In the end he changed the photo. It was important for Neveling that the cover showed his teams respect for Steenkamp. Bikini shots, he says, was never an option they even considered.

Buy the single copy issue on Zinio for R17 (1.91 USD).

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Letter from NY: Ode to joy

Letter from NY, a MarkLives column, by Matthew Bull, The Bull-White House, New York. I recently attended the One Show Hall of Fame ceremony in New York. John Webster, Steve Hayden, Jim Riswold, Martin Puris and the ace educator Richard Wilde were elected into it. It was a night I found to be humbling, motivating and meaningful. I sat alongside the late John Webster’s children as well as the wonderful Dave Trott and the One Show chairman Kevin Roddy. As we sat in the impressive Gotham Hall, we wondered aloud just how much the business has changed since the days when the five above mentioned luminaries began their careers.

Quite simply, it’s got complicated. On every level. On the pure running-an-agency level, most big agencies now no longer have to worry about making a buck, they also have to make a buck for guys who have invested in them to make a buck. So they have to make two bucks. Then there’s research, a process in which you are presumed guilty and have to prove your innocence. And, finally, now you don’t simply have to execute your wonderful idea in tv, print and radio, we have to do bloody digital as well. And we know digital isn’t just one thing, it’s a myriad of things all loosely defined by the word digital. Complicated right?

Which inevitably leads to less joy – ask anyone in a “complicated” relationship.

What the five celebrated men did though, throughout their careers, was to find that joy in their work. They pushed themselves into creating stuff that others either didn’t think about, or didn’t think was possible. I always love it when I present work to clients and they say to me: “Well, this is a stretch”. That’s right, that’s exactly what it is, it’s exactly what it’s suppose to be. Because if we are to create something, if we are to change the status quo, if we are to be elected into Halls of Fame, that’s what we have to do – stretch ourselves.

Too often of late I have found myself bending not stretching. Ideas that are intellectually compelling, that make sense, but are emotionally barren, that don’t stretch people’s imaginations nor feelings. And that means I’ve been creating bad advertising. Because we all know that emotion is more powerful than logic. Why else would we have believed Lance Armstrong all these years?

So last night I recommitted myself. I promised myself that I would once again stretch rather than bend, that I would once again seek joy in the excellence of my work, not in the completion of it. That’s not complicated is it?

I am wise enough to know now that I won’t always find that joy. Steve Hayden himself said that, on reflection, 99% of his work was “utter rubbish”. There are, have always been, obstacles in the way of excellence. Finding the skill, resilience and determination to overcome those obstacles is what separates those in the Hall of Joy, from those in hell.

– Matthew Bull is a Partner at The Bull-White House in New York. Before that he served as Chief Creative Officer/Chairman of Lowe & Partners/Lowe Bull and Chief Creative Officer at Lowe Worldwide. Letter from New York is a regular column on MarkLives.

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Magazine covers we love (this week): sex in London & win R500 in iTunes vouchers

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

British Airways High Life, February 2013

This style of ‘writing’ cover lines on the cover isn’t new, but for an airline magazine to be this cool and creative, is worth a mention. I think it’s just stunning.

Time Out (London), 12 February 2013

Boy, is this naughty!? But I love it! Simple colours, simple graphics, and you can view and portray it as you wish…

The Village Voice, 13 February 2013

This cover really made me look, and think, and want to know more. You can read this unique story behind the cover here.

LOCAL

AdVantage, February 2013

Every so often AdVantage magazines comes up with a really creative concept! And February 2013 is one of those covers. But there’s more to the cover that what just meets the eye… “We see Harold, a hapless businessman who can’t see what Durban has to offer. Right behind him Durban lies bursting at the seams with business opportunities. He’s blinded by his entrenched attitudes, which tell him Durban is a backwater, not fit for serious business”, says Kevin Power from Conversation Lab, the agency that created the cover. (Hint – we counted 17).

WIN! R500 worth of vouchers (from iTunes, Amazon or Exclusive Books). Just tell us how many KZN businesses you can identify in the illustration. The answer with the largest number of correct answers win. Email your answers to 2mark at marklives.com. Pu ‘Durban’ in the cover line. Entries close on 28 Feb 2012 at 5pm.

My Tyd (Rapport), 17 February 2013

For some reason this cover just spoke to me. Possibly it’s because I’m Afrikaans and know the history and beautiful work of Johannes Kerkorrel. The photo montage of Kerkorrel and the Ponte Towe in Hillbrow works beautifully.

– 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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Tech Law: Your Oscar Pistorius conjecture could get you sued

by Paul Jacobson (@pauljacobson) The Oscar Pistorius case has enthralled South Africans who are torn between supporting their hero and their disappointment at seemingly being let down by a South African icon. The discussion has practically overwhelmed my Twitter stream and people have expressed opinions on Pistorius’ guilt and innocence well before a court has reached any conclusions of its own.

#OscarPistorius Today’s lesson: Don’t rush to conclusions. Wait for both sides. Examine everything.

— Alex Eliseev (@alexeliseev) February 20, 2013

While our Bill of Rights gives us the right to express our opinions, our rights are not absolute and, in the context of defamation, the defamed person’s right to dignity often holds sway unless there are clear public policy reasons to allow the comments to stand. In this tragic case, Pistorius stands accused of murder but he hasn’t been found guilty. He is still, in our law at least, innocent. We don’t handle criminal law and leave the analysis of the criminal legal issues to the likes of David Dadic who is doing a far better job explaining some of the legal technicalities. That said, drawing conclusions about Pistorius’ guilt and publishing those conclusions online can lead to a defamation claim down the line.

In all likelihood, most of the conjecture about Pistorius’ guilt is defamatory and the question is whether those defamatory statements are justifiable and that remains to be seen. If you are engaged in a debate about the case, it may be prudent for you to be measured in your statements and avoid potentially prejudicial declarations. As William Booth, a criminal law attorney commented today for East Coast Radio –

“I can understand there [are] people that are expressing horror at what happened, there are also people who are supporting Mr. Pistorius and saying he should be released on bail,” he said.

“So everything, I feel, should be said and done in a proper and objective manner, and not that one gets carried away and say things that you may actually regret later.

“Too much has been said that has no factual basis.”

Paul Jacobson is founder and director of Web•Tech•Law. Web•Tech•Law / CC BY-SA 2.5

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Shelf Life: Ads to Bags

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

New packaging from Simonsberg cheeses; labels you can scratch, sniff and feel, add an experiential element to packaging from Pyrotec; a Samsung product promo that rewards; and BP wants your old billboards!

Sniff and scratch

Pyrotec PackMedia has launched multi-sensory labels for products to boost products at point-of-sale. GM Timothy Beattie says that research conducted in Europe recently revealed that when it comes to consumers’ purchasing decisions, sight is not the only sense that has a say. For instance, if the smell of a product (or its packaging) is appealing, it can increase sales by up to 45%. The study also cited sound (41%), taste (31%) and touch (25%) as strong factors that can also influence sales.

The Pyrotec ElastiTag range are elasticised hang tags that can be used for labelling, branding and marketing a wide variety of products, from produce to cosmetics. Brands are able to add a ‘Rub’ n Smell’ scent; a tactile varnish to create unique visual impact and texture; the ‘Scratch-Off’ ElastiTag which consists of a scratch-off tape placed over variable codes on the hang tag; the ‘UV Flexo’ which uses high-definition UV inks for a brighter, sharper graphic effect; and the ‘Special Effects’ ElastiTag incorporates a new coating process that creates tiny prisms which reflect light, adding shimmer for special occasions.

“Multi-sensory features use touch, taste, smell, sight and sound to make brands appealing and to influence buying decisions,” Beattie emphasises.

Who branded my cheese?

Simonsberg cheeses has refreshed the brand with new packaging across its cheese range, to reiterate the brand’s position as ‘masters of fine cheese’.

The brief to Fountainhead Design was to create higher on-shelf impact while clearly differentiating from competitors; create one brand look and feel across all product lines and market segments, while retaining the traditional ‘Simonsberg’ look and feel ,ensuring the design complied with latest food pack regulations.

Fountainhead conducted an audit of all brand packaging, as well as a synopsis on each of the cheese ranges. An “evolutionary approach” was chosen, with a design that complemented the existing brand with a more modern look and feel of the product on-shelf.

Fountainhead made use of bold typographic architecture to accentuate product variants. This was supported with the use of bold colour differentiation in multi-variant ranges. To maintain brand uniformity on-shelf, the team modified the dark ribbon which would be carried across the various ranges, creating a consistency within the design architecture. The agency also used subtle detailing such as pin-stripes and clean gradients to retain the essence of the Simonsberg brand.

“With the implementation of our new packaging design, Fountainhead was able to successfully retain the heritage of brand while at the same time updating the design to be more modern and contemporary. The new packaging design is still clearly recognisable as Simonsberg, allowing the brand to retain the loyalty of existing consumers while at the same time increasing the appeal of the brand to new consumers,” said Tara Swanson-Pauw, senior brand manager of Simonsberg.

Cashing in

To ensure the Samsung promotion of its Galaxy Pocket entry level smartphone stood out, Matchworld conceptualised the “It’s raining money” interactive dome activation in partnership with Primedia Unlimited’s Mall Active business.

Mall Active’s Travis Brown explains that Samsung wanted to focus on middle market users of cellphones who were looking for an entry level smartphone with all the technology features, but without a high price point.

“To achieve this we developed the Samsung Dome concept: consumers could win their share of R500 000 by simply purchasing a Samsung Pocket from any retailer in the mall on the weekend that the promotion ran in a particular mall. The purchase of the phone then qualified the customer to physically enter the dome to win instant cash prizes.”

The inflatable dome structure was set up at key malls and featured a money machine that blew money into the air when shoppers entered the dome.The more ‘Samsung bucks’ that they caught, the more prize money they won. The Samsung bucks were subsequently converted into Rands and the amount won was then transferred to all the winners’ bank accounts.

An MC and DJ created hype and various other activities drew consumers to the promotion.

Campaign with a cause

BP is calling on corporate SA to donate their old billboards for a campaign to benefit disadvantaged schools and create jobs.

The durable billboard vinyl is being transformed into much needed school products, like backpacks, chairbags and pencil cases for primary school children across South Africa.

The Ads to Bags campaign transforms the old billboards and BP has offered to meet the costs of recycling as well as donating its own old billboards. But they need more.

Chevrolet SA, Primall Media and communications company Black Brain have already stepped up and donated to the cause.
Renny Letswalo, head of BP Retail, says the campaign has had a positive impact on both job creation and the environment: “Not only are the kids getting colourful new equipment but we are benefitting the environment by recycling while also creating jobs.

“We would like to reach an even greater number of children throughout the year but we only have a limited number of old billboards available for recycling. This is why we’re asking companies to get involved by donating their old billboards to Ads for Bags and we’ll do the rest”.

– Shelf Life by Louise Marsland is a weekly column on MarkLives. Tweet new product, packaging and design launches to @louise_marsland or email her at louise.marsland at gmail.com.

– Want to sponsor Shelf Life? Contact us here.

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

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Money Is Their Leverage. Media Is Their Weapon.

by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian), San Francisco Bay Of all the silly, naive marketing notions that have accompanied the growth of the Internet, the most pervasive and foolhardy is the idea that the “consumer is now in charge.”

The truth is exactly the opposite. The consumer today has less control than ever.

The web has intensified and consolidated the hold that large media entities and large marketers have on our culture, our economy, and our purchasing habits.

Callow digital utopians believe that because we consult Yelp to find out what some fixie biker in Brooklyn thinks is good pizza, we are freeing ourselves from the power of corporate and media dominance.

For the most part, digital media and traditional media have become indistinguishable. They are driven by the same need to attract eyeballs, which means they are obsessed by the same stories and slaves to the same types of narrative.

You can take Yahoo’s top stories on any given day and be pretty certain they will be identical to the top stories on the nightly news. You can check what’s trending on Twitter and be pretty sure it will be on the evening trash magazine show.

Corporate marketers are learning very quickly how to manipulate technology to leverage the assets of the new media types. Or haven’t you heard of Facebook?

Is it a surprise to anyone that the organizations with the largest Facebook followers are also the ones that have dominated traditional media? Is anyone still shocked that almost 45% of all digital ad dollars are spent on Google?

The new digital media giants are interbreeding with old school marketing and media kingpins to create a modern kind of corporate/media sovereignty. It is stronger than ever. It is more pervasive than ever. It has not been diminished by the rise of digital media. It has been enhanced.

Money is their leverage. Media is their weapon.

Now the marketing-media complex is discovering a new way to assert itself — by absorbing show business celebrities like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, and Lady Gaga into the corporate structure. According to Ad Age…

“…brands aren’t just featuring celebs in marketing campaigns — they’re giving stars a place in the marketing suite…with lofty titles like chief creative officer (and)…chief innovator…”

Marketers have always been willing to pay celebrities for the reflected glory of their fame. But now they’re willing to pretend that these people are in the back room.

For their part, celebrities have always been willing to whore for money. Now they’re willing to pimp.

The tighter the relationship between big media, big marketing, and big entertainment, the more absurd the idea that the “consumer is now in charge.”

We are faced with a daunting prospect — a new face of marketing that is not just plastered all over TV and billboards, but is embedded in our emails, steals our identity to influence our friends, knows where we are at all times, and makes it all pretty by pretending our beautiful idols are pulling the strings.

Only the delusional and the credulous can really believe that “the consumer is now in charge.”

– The Ad Contrarian is Bob Hoffman, ceo of Hoffman/Lewis advertising in San Francisco and St. Louis. Hoffman is the author of The Ad Contrarian and 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising. Reprinted from his blog The Ad Contrarian.

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