by Mimi Nicklin (@MimiNicklin) So, here it is: working motherhood in the ad industry is tough. Really tough. But not in the way the media makes out it to be. At least, not for me.
It’s not tough because of the time juggle, or the split attention, or any of that other stereotypical stuff out there; it’s tough because, when you have a baby, something changes in you forever. It’s emotional but also deeper than that — it’s how you see the world and how you feel about your industry.
No longer acceptable
It’s imperceptible at first but then you realise, time after time, that there are things you accepted before that you just don’t connect with anymore. Scrap that. There are things you accepted before are just no longer acceptable and you have a daily burning need to change the focus entirely to the work and the reason you are at work, instead of the ridiculous baggage our industry creates around it.
There, I said it.
Share some examples, you say? Approvals from creative directors that make the work late, because the hierarchy says so; impressive account managers who aren’t ‘allowed’ to write copy because their contracted title isn’t “copywriter”; and meetings where people are supposed to speak in order of their position. It’s utter rubbish. If you hired them because they are talented then, dear gosh, just let them do their thing.
Waste of time
The mum in me says it’s an unnecessary waste of time. When there’s the wonder of a two-year-old learning to ‘scoot’ alone for the first time on a Saturday, or the miracle of a first step to be watched, who gives a toss about who spoke first, or who claimed the winning line? Surely we did it together? Surely, in the grand scheme of work and life, it’s the end result — and not the ego — that really counts? After all, the sum total is a monumental effort from all of us.
Motherhood teaches you about being a team, about focusing on the fact that only together can you progress as a unit. Because children are innately the most-curious, -creative and -unguarded little things we have the honour of learning from and, if they could critically assess our working environments we would, for sure, be better off.
So yes, motherhood is tough, but mainly because you can no longer fathom the level of wasted time and energy that we all lose daily.
Based in Dubai, Mimi Nicklin (@miminicklin) is managing director of RAPP MEA, an Omnicom company. An experienced leader — she’s led global and regional brands from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa on both agency- and client side — she believes in the systemisation of empathetic leadership and influence. Mimi considers leadership to be 100% about serving her team, rather than the other way around, and is avidly committed to creating change for good in the industry. She is also a keynote speaker and thought leader. Her new MarkLives column, “Frank”, focuses on being frank and open about issues in adland.
by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Cape Town-based animation studio Sea Monster’s commercial head, Lebo Lekoma, and creative director, Jade Duckitt, talk about the potential of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), gaming and more for local brands.
Q5: What are the key potential applications of AR for brands in South Africa? Jade Duckitt: The potential for AR and brands lies in taking existing media and making it more engaging. So, for example, Pick n Pay’s Super Cards are fairly known [Sea Monster is involved with this PnP project — ed-at-large]. How do you add another level and get people to engage over time? You add an interactive AR game element that sustains their interest. The overriding idea is about how you create the link between physical marketing collateral and digital collateral and, by definition, that’s what AR is.
AR can be used as a gimmick, or you can design an experience that people engage with and spend time on. You can’t force that; it’s them inviting you into their free time. Take Super Cards again, where parents are trying to connect with kids and kids are glued to phones; this technology can help parents have a conversation — whether it’s on cricket, money, animals (like Super Animals), it’s something shared that customers really appreciate.
Something few brands have explored is the utility use of AR. For example, if I’m browsing an interior-design catalogue, or décor spread in a magazine, and see a couch I like, why can’t I scan it, see it life-size in my living room, and, if it fits and looks good, order it immediately online? In this way, AR also gives longevity to print, giving it more meaning and a sense of utility beyond paging through it once. AR allows brands to measure and report on engagement in print media, for example, being able to see which couches readers engaged with and for how long and what actions they took as a result.
Q5: How about VR — where do you see that going in advertising and marketing over the next few years? JD: On the one side, VR is not fully utilised in the activation space. All we’re seeing is people doing static, seated VR experiences where you look around as a passive observer in the VR space. There is a great opportunity for brands to be the first to bring room-scale VR to local consumers. It allows you to create a virtual, interactive space just using boxes and packing tape; add a VR element and that space becomes an interactive arcade game, or virtual exhibition, or an immersive world where you can play games with other people. It will be a while before consumers own the devices that enable this, so brands have an opportunity to use them and introduce consumers to them.
Lebo Lekoma: If marketing is about the brand experience, this is a way to create a new experience at scale very cost-effectively. Activations aren’t really scalable; VR can take them to another world and allow consumers to live the brand/the intangibles, and can take it down and build it everywhere.
Q5: How does the concept of gaming apply to brands and communication? JD: Do you want people to be passively listening while you shout at them, or invite them into a conversation where you can involve them in a challenge, entertain them, and/or educate them? People are bored; they’re increasingly scrolling past/skipping content. We need to consider what kind of experiences are people trying to skip through to. Is it sponsored meaningful content? A game with a learning experience? We need to look at what people are engaging with and see how we can give it them. Like YouTube sponsored content, for example, it needs to be more than an ad slapped on to each side of a piece of content; it should add content that is relevant and applicable to what the consumer is interested in and trying to do with their lives.
Q5: What current trends in animation should we know about? JD: Bite-size, visual, cutting across cultures and literacy levels. If your brand is about story, how are you telling yours?
LL: We’re seeing animation starting to become reflective of the diversity in our society. If you look, everywhere [we’re] seeing gender fluidity, queerness, androgyny in animation. We think it’s exciting, because it helps animation to have resonance and show a true reflection of reality in the stories people see.
We custom-design an animation style for each of our clients to reflect the brand and the society they’re talking to — their heritage and people — so the animation becomes as recognisable a part of a brand as other visual CI elements.
JD: Anyone familiar with the Old Mutual brand who’s watched Moneyversity videos will agree it looks like Old Mutual’s branding without explicitly being able to go “green animation, watermark logo etc”. This is an advantage, because the animation can be tailored to reflect the brand, its CI and its personality — serious, playful, and so on. It’s almost natural, now, for animation to be part of a brand CI.
Q5: What advice would you give to young people keen on a career in gaming and or animation in South Africa? JD: Be interested in everything — storytelling, science, mathematics, art, business — all of these will help you succeed. If, like us, you are living in a developing country, you’ll need all the help you can get, because it’s tough to make a living in emerging technology. But, if you succeed, you’ll be able to bring that technology to people around you who often need it the most.
LL: The career or journey in these disciplines requires one to have a craft approach to things. You need [to be] willing to devote time, effort and practice to become better. The other important thing is to find the time to practise while you are still a student. You need to have a diversity of experience to succeed; diversity exposes you to people, which exposes you to story. If art is about reflecting the human condition and human story, we’re not sure how you can do that very well without exposure to diversity.
Lastly, if you’re going to be a commercial artist, realise what you have can’t exist for its own sake — it has to have a purpose, so get comfortable with that.
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” aims to hone in on strategic insights, analysis and data through punchy interviews with experts in media, marketing and design.
by Kirsten Dewar.The latest research I’m reading paints a worrying picture of how consumers think about brands.
Traci R has had it with Capitec. In a post titled “Capitec service is terrible” on the customer service site, HelloPeter.com, she writes, “A week ago n in for the to a reversal on my account and they said they can’t and that I should call the company that debited. I’ve been emailing and calling this company and no one responds.. So wha t do I do in this situation. How can my bank not assist me. This is ridiculous.” [sic]
This is just one of many complaints on the consumer-service site that takes issue with South Africa’s second-largest retail bank. Capitec doesn’t fare well on the complaints and accolades site, where it gets an average score of 2.8 out of 10. But most big banks get rated pretty mediocrely when it comes to service — as seen by the screengrab from Hellopeter.
In stark contrast, insurance companies are nailing great service. MiWay Insurance comes in with a strong 9.9 for service.
Not happy with brands
Should Capitec be worried? Absolutely! The Cross-Generational Customer Experience Report reveals that today’s consumers share one thing in common — they’re not happy with brands. The just-out study, undertaken by software giant Oracle and customer experience expert Jeanne Bliss, reveals that 82% of consumers surveyed is disappointed in brands.
“Consumers have high expectations, and companies aren’t always passing muster,” the survey authors write. “Over the last few decades, technology has empowered consumers to become the innovators. Brands are no longer in charge of the buying journey — their customers are. And consumers have taken the reins, fearlessly experimenting and reimagining ways to interact with companies every day.”
The survey comes with a strong warning: “As customer experience (CX) professionals across marketing, commerce, sales and service departments, our goal is to adapt to this evolving relationship between consumer and brand. We must unite our efforts to meet our customers’ diverse expectations — even exceed them — or risk extinction.”
Wedded to survival
Customer experience is so strongly wedded to survival in any brand’s future that future-fit companies are reinventing how they approach every aspect of the consumer’s journey to ensure their brands remain relevant and resonant with today’s humans.
So how may influencers help? Take a look at how Lego is mashing influencer marketing with relationship-building and crowd-sourcing to create a remarkable innovation community. Run by Chaordix and The Lego Group, Lego Ideas is a site that enables users to submit their concepts for Lego products. The best ideas are turned into Lego sets that are sold by the toy group. Each original designer gets 1% of the royalties from these Lego sales.
Lego is a brand that has built massive brand loyalty and an almost cult-like following among its customers, and this is one of the reasons why. The Danish toy company is all about innovation, and this unique use of influencers enables Lego’s own customers to participate in the brand’s commercial processes and value chains.
Relationship-building
Not only does the plastic-block maker show it understands digital and demonstrate how progressive it is, but this innovation in influencer marketing also ‘leans into’ relationship-building. It offers consumers an opportunity to shine and connect with each other by showcasing their amazing Lego pieces. It’s an incredibly smart play that must be building massive consumer support for the brand. Certainly, it’s a viral, self-marketing machine because customers love showcasing their new Lego creations.
The big thinking breakthrough in this clever Lego campaign is that not all influencer marketing efforts need to look the same or operate in the same way. By reimagining influencer marketing and collaborating with your customers, you will not only build brand better loyalty but brands can create marketing virality. And if there’s one thing we know for sure. it’s that humans trust other humans a whole lot more than they do brands. This means this type of influencer innovation will drive brand loyalties that will benefit your business from a bottom-line perspective.
Influencer marketing is a winning strategy — but that doesn’t mean we should stop striving to make it even better, just as Lego has done.
Kirsten Dewar started her career in data and research, before moving into technology, which took her to Platinum Seed; today, she is the managing director of the digital specialist company. She contributes the monthly MarkLives column, Always Learning, which aims to teach marketers more about digital marketing, from how to conquer Facebook’s algorithms to what LinkedIn’s new company pages mean for B2B brands.
by Warren Moss (@warrenmoss) If you walk into a bank and ask for information on its business-banking offering, you’ll get a brochure. Ask a telco about its B2B offering, you’ll get a brochure. Even on the premium end of the scale, put in a query about McKinsey’s management consulting capabilities and it’ll email you a pdf brochure. In the B2B world, the brochure is the common denominator when it comes to sales collateral — but so many brochures don’t do the job the company expects them to.
How buyers evaluate
There’s very little consideration about how the potential client is evaluating those brochures for information — most brochures are designed from an inside-out perspective, as opposed to an outside-in one. To be fair, most B2B buyers don’t actually know how to evaluate between brochures: if they’re evaluating a few companies, they’ll tend to look at the parts of the brochure that stand out or what the company positions as its selling point.
A potential win for a selling company is, therefore, to start the brochure by telling the potential client what to look for when buying its product or service. This will, of course, be biased in the favour of the company’s own offering (which seems obvious but so many companies don’t do it).
Firmographics are very important: tell the buyer how big your company is, who your clients are, what your experience is and who your people are. This is important because it positions the company in terms of the scale of account it’s able to service. Many smaller companies tend to inflate numbers to make themselves look bigger or more capable than they are — but that results in a twofold problem. First, it creates an unrealistic expectation for the buyer that’s hard to match once the deal is signed; suddenly, there aren’t enough resources to deliver on the promise. Secondly, many buyers are actually looking for smaller, more-boutique companies to work with, so don’t sell yourself as something you’re not and close yourself off to that kind of opportunity. Be authentic, always.
Generalist vs specialist
While many brochures trumpet varied industry expertise as a major selling point, they sometimes miss the mark as they position the company as generalist, rather than specialist. If your collateral speaks to specific experience and case study in those industries, it may give the buyer comfort that you understand its world, rather than having surface-experience in many different fields. If your experience across different fields is extensive, make different brochures that show that. An agriculture-sector brochure is going to look very different to a construction-sector brochure; the needs, the language, the nuances and the solutions are fundamentally different. One-size-fits-all isn’t going to cut it in 2019.
Case studies are also very important because they give a B2B buyer a sense of your ability to deliver results — but, again, it’s how they’re communicated that makes them more or less effective. Draw the buyer in with a couple of headlines eg say “We helped a logistics company increase sales by 15%.” That’s a case study on its own, as it demonstrates to potential buyers that you have the ability to generate success in their industry. If they want to know more, they can get in touch and you can demonstrate your skills by providing more in-depth info and showing how you can apply your skills to doing the same for their business. The brochure will never replace the salesperson, so don’t put pressure on the brochure to make the sale on its own.
FAQs are also an increasingly important element for brochures. By way of example, if you’re a marketing agency and you’ve experience working with other agencies under a client umbrella, say so. That’s a question that brands always ask, so provide an answer upfront. A good set of FAQs demonstrates your understanding of the buyer’s sector and will comfort them.
Many brochures also overexplain services. There needs to be a level of assumption that, since buyers are in the market for a specific product, you don’t have to tell them what that is. If they’re looking for overdraft services from a bank, you don’t have to explain what an overdraft is. How you deliver information at the top of the sales funnel is very different to the way you communicate it at the bottom — sales collateral, like brochures, is for buyers who are at the bottom of the funnel, and want an understanding of what exactly it is that you can sell them.
In terms of USPs, rather share what it is that you’re able to do well. Lowest price is not a USP for many companies. Great service may be a USP for a company that’s had a poor client-service experience — so, if your service is particularly great, talk about it.
What next?
The last thing is the one that companies most often forget: you’ve engaged a potential buyer with your brochure but what happens next? Technology is playing an increasingly important role in helping enable sales from well thought-out brochures. Built-in analytics to your brochures may give insights on when and how people are reading brochures, and which sections they’re spending their time on. Linking this to marketing automation technology may be potent; if a B2B buyer is reading your brochure and drops off on page 3, it can trigger a mail that serves them page 4. If they spent much time looking at the case-study section, an alert can give you the chance to offer them additional detail on case studies that could convert them.
Even if your brochure is going to look the same in 2019 as it did in 2009, the technology that underpins it has come a long way — and the company that makes the best use of that tech is going to be the one that lands the client.
Warren Moss (@warrenmoss) is the CEO and founder of Demographica, a multi-award winning full service agency that specialises in the B2B category. He has been chair of both the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa (DMASA) and the Assegai Integrated Marketing Awards (Assegais), as well as the only African to judge the B2 Awards, which recognise the top performing B2B marketers in the world. Warren contributes the monthly “Thinking B2B” column, which looks at the latest trends in B2B communications and explains why it is fundamentally different from B2C comms.
by Charlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) The new gold… the new oil… the new ‘everything’. The last few years have seen pundits trot out dozens of clichés to validate the value of data. But, increasingly, it appears that our obsession with collecting cookies is going to bite us — and I’m not just referring to the travails of Google, Facebook and other tech titans.
In late July 2019. the European Court of Justice ruled that any websites that collect data for the purposes of sharing it with third parties risk falling foul of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union (EU).
Cookie cutter
Those of us who’ve deployed the standard cookie disclaimer on our sites would be forgiven for thinking we’re in the clear. But, as with most EU policy, this one’s a bit of a bruiser: if you’ve installed the ubiquitous Facebook “like” button on your website, chances are you’re in contempt of the ruling.
While it seems bizarre that the simple act of encouraging your visitors to give your content the thumbs-up could land you in trouble, this is exactly what happened to Fashion ID, a German fashion retailer which placed Facebook’s button on its site.
The problem with social media “like” buttons is that, while they masquerade as innocent expressions of affection, their real purpose is to allow Facebook et al to track individuals across the internet and gather data even when the consumer isn’t explicitly using a social media product.
The case, which was brought by consumer-rights group, Verbraucherzentrale NRW, found that using widgets like these meant that Fashion ID was automatically surrendering its users’ data to Facebook. Because of this, it was deemed to be a data controller and thus responsible for deciding how the information collected online would be used. The controller has more responsibilities than the data processor (Facebook), which can’t change the purpose or use of the particular dataset.
Horsing around
So, the ruling essentially said that Fashion ID, as the controller, would be held accountable for any GDPR sins committed by Facebook, the processor. It seems as crazy as the EU law banning people from eating their pet horses (in Europe, it’s fine to eat a horse as long as you don’t own it!).
Anyone who’s watched The Great Hack recently will understand just how ubiquitous data collection really is. This was reaffirmed the other day by a study conducted by a New York Times writer who installed a specially adapted version of Firefox that allowed him to record all of the people recording him.
He begins his article with the words: “Like a colonoscopy, the project involved some special prep.” What followed was a trip into the bowels of the online tracking industry. After visiting just 47 sites while preparing a column on Democratic presidential candidate, Elizabeth Warren, he encountered hundreds of trackers that built up a profile of him — even pinpointing his exact location and extracting the logon credentials he used for some of his subscription services. Ironically, Google and Facebook weren’t the worst offenders. The Washington Post and his very own NYT topped the list.
Moral compass
The moral of this story? Well, data’s useful to us marketers but we’ve got to start respecting the privacy of our customers and curbing its excessive and, all too often, irresponsible collection.
For the time being, consumers seem to remain willing to trade their personal information and proclivities in exchange for free access to news sites and social platforms but, as awareness of just how widespread tracking is (and as the details of what is being tracked continue emerging), discontent will grow. I wouldn’t want to be handling the reputation management fallout when the first big brand gets nailed by the court of public opinion.
Now, more than ever, we marketers need to dig out our moral compass and think hard about how we’re using data.
Charlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) is CEO of Rogerwilco, a multi-award-winning independent digital agency best known for its expertise with Drupal, SEO and content marketing. A Scot by birth, he moved to South Africa in the early 2000s in his quest to support a winning rugby team — a search he’s reluctantly forsaken. Together with Mark Eardley, he co-authored Business to Business Marketing: A Step by Step Guide, (Penguin Random House, 2016) and may be found on LinkedIn. Charlie contributes the monthly “Clicks ‘n Tricks” column, which looks at how brands are using digital channels to engage their customers, to MarkLives.
by Sabrina Forbes. Faith & Fear is a business started by two women whom you’ve probably never heard of but have worked on almost any brand you can think of — and, according to co-founder Taryn Hunter Sharman (@tarynsharman), that’s exactly the way they like it.
Directly answerable to CEOs
Sharman and co-founder Perri King (@kingperri) will tell you that they typically go in behind the scenes and are often directly answerable to the CEOs — who’ve approached them to solve a business problem. It’s the speed and efficiency in getting the job done that Sharman believes is their true USP, and which keeps clients coming back for more.
Sharman had been MD at full-service creative agency, Ebony+Ivory, for about 10 years and had often tried to poach King to work with her, offering all sorts of incentives, but was turned down every time. Into her 10th year at the agency, Sharman decided to take a three-month sabbatical to decide on her next steps; it lasted one weekend — a weekend filled with panic on what she was going and wanted to do next. After a phone call with King that involved Sharman having even less to offer, the two discussed taking a leap and starting something with nothing. All they knew was that, even though they didn’t know yet what to call their business, if it began to resemble an agency, they’d have done it wrong and would have failed in their mission, and that it would require equal amounts of faith and fear to navigate their entrepreneurial journey.
That was September 2015. Today, Faith & Fear is a creative and strategic growth consultancy, based in Johannesburg and combining retainer- and project-based services. The majority of the briefs received are business challenges vs marketing requests and the duo believes their strength lies in their understanding and execution of solving said business problems, which will often result in a marketing solution, tactic, or channel.
Unapologetic
The belief in their abilities and knowing they can create real magic with their clients, combined with a dash of fear that keeps them on their toes and never lets them become complacent or jaded, has also stood them in good stead when it comes to client acquisition. People either get them or don’t, and it’s those who do and are willing to go on a journey, led by both faith and fear, that the duo prefer to work with. Sharman knows that not everybody is going to like them and she’s unapologetic about it.
King elaborates: “You almost don’t want to be for everybody; you want to be for those people [whom] are you perfect for. We don’t want to be vanilla or halfway; we want to be an all-the-way yes for the right clients and the right projec.
King comes from a corporate background but says that she’d always had entrepreneurial adventures, including a lucrative babysitting and childminding service, Perri Your Pal, when she was 11. Her grey matter had been deteriorating at her current corporate marketing role, she says, and that the levels of bureaucracy and red tape had been starting to get to her.
“Spread our wings”
“You can be creative, sort of — not really, actually. So Taryn and I, in joining forces, wanted to be in a space where we could create and be flipping fast and get sign off immediately from the top guy who was ready for us to roll out something, to be really dynamic, and let us spread our wings and have that sprinting feeling. I think both of us kind of thrive in that environment… where we go in, we hear a customer’s problems — whatever industry they’re in, whatever department… we go in to hear about their challenges or what cool thing they’re hoping to do, generate cool ideas and really move very quickly with a lot of trust. This comes back to this really weird name we have, which [either] a lot of people stumble over initially or they really love it.”
“We often find that, with clients, partners, and projects, they either love us and it’s so smooth and there’s an alignment of all the things. As soon as… people are like, ‘We’re not sure about your name, we’re a little risk-averse, we want a Mercedes-Benz but we’re only going to pay you for a skedonk’, we’re like, ‘You know what? It’s fine,” says Sharman.
“There’s nothing wrong with an agency; I’ve come from that, it’s what I know, it’s what we do. Why I say we don’t want to be an agency is getting stuck in ‘you have an ECD [who] goes to a CD who then goes to the AD and, if the AD hasn’t approved it, it can’t go to the client,” she continues, adding that this is what typically holds many teams back from quickly delivering great work.
‘Think like a startup’
King adds that they’ll often speak to a client about a problem and, within a few days or weeks (depending on the size of the business), they’ll deliver a full strategy and costing. Once accepted, rollout takes a couple of days or weeks. “From the day you get briefed [and] the day you put in a creative concept to the day it comes out of design [and] the day you can actually implement, the bigger the agency, the longer it takes. That’s just not cutting it anymore. We don’t have time for 3–4 week returns on a brief in this recession. More and more, we’re having to help big corporates, [which] are like submarines, to start thinking like a startup. Agencies need to start doing the same thing; you cannot take a client’s brief and take 3–4 months in order to get to execution stage, never mind a finished product,” she says.
Both Sharman and King are convinced that their marriage of conceptual ideas and a very practical implementation leg is what sets them apart from traditional consultancies, which often fall flat on execution. Without traction on the ground, a great idea remains just that. The two pride themselves that any solution they develop will be practical, not a clever piece of copy or design which never lives or breathes. For Sharman, no matter how amazing a piece of creative is, it’s never going to solve a business challenge that’s broken. The same goes for the opposite — you’re never going to have a challenge that’s solved by mediocre creative.
While the business consists of Sharman and King, the partnerships they’ve developed and the people they’re surrounded themselves with is what allows them to offer a wide range of creative and strategic services without having to to hire multitudes with varying experience. They both prefer to outsource to unconventional partners who’re ready to get their hands dirty and as hungry as they are. They’ve seen that the energy is different with salaried staff members, whereas their partners are hungry for work, dynamic, and don’t typically stick within their lanes. Also, as entrepreneurs, they prefer to support small businesses and freelancers; they deal directly with their clients and translate the challenge’s needs to the different service providers, working together on whatever needs to be done to deliver the final solution.
SWAT team
The two are also service providers to the greater creative industry and have been known to be the SWAT team behind agencies which can’t deliver on a certain project or are dealing with scope-creep and need assistance. Other times, an agency has sold an idea but didn’t really think about how it would be implemented. “That’s our favourite! And it’s already sold; it’s rolling; the client’s all keen. They’ve got their dates and everything set up. So, we go in and establish everything. We’re kind of the fixers,” says Sharman.
Both Sharman and King agree that being a women entrepreneur in an industry typically run by old white men can certainly be challenging. Sharman recalls being calls being called ‘girlie’ by a client at an event they managed and says when that same client came back the following year for a quote, they declined to participate. Sharman also remembers being asked to present their business model and prove their pricing structures because a certain client didn’t believe they knew what they were doing and looked too young to have a handle on the business side of things.
For many reasons, Sharman’s favourite “worst subject” is being asked how they began, and continue, to price their services. One of the things she hates about the agency model is charging by the hour, believing this system is highly flawed. “How do you put into an hour what’s taken 20 years to get to this kind of space in your life? Whether you came up with an idea in 15 minutes or three months, should it be cheaper?
“We base it on what the problem is and how long it’s going to take. Often, it should take three months to deliver the solution but the client needs it in a week, so there’s an expedited price tag. What do you need, by when, and how big is it? It’s one of the things we really struggled with, but we’ve had to learn [after] being burnt badly, that we also have to be unapologetic about our pricing. We’re not the cheapest, by any stretch of the imagination, but… we have repeat clients and word-of-mouth at CEO level.”
“#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 Martin MacGregor (@MartMacG) A brand’s media tactics in 2019 comes down to two simple concepts: stacking and pulsing. For once, these are not just new buzzwords but very apt descriptors.
Disrupt, gamify, holistic, ideate, integrate. Marketing meetings never fail to deliver an endless list of annoying terms. I’m never sure if everyone understands what they mean but there are always a lot of nodding heads. Nobody would never admit having no clue. And they make for a great game of meeting bingo.
Ultimate success
I managed to finish the Comrades Marathon once and the best piece of advice I received was to write something on each arm: on the left “Slow down” and on the right “Don’t stop”. It was a very long day and these slightly opposing lines were the perfect reminder of how to get to the end. Go too fast, and the inevitable crash and burn. Stop, and it was like giving precious minutes back to the race. I made it with three-and-a-half minutes to spare.
Stacking and pulsing are the media equivalent when brands are looking at their marketing year — two very simple tactics that should lead to ultimate success.
Media stacking talks to the current reality that consumers bounce around and even simultaneously consume multiple media. The old days of picking one medium and hoping that the necessary impact will be made are gone. Whatever the message is, it needs to live across whichever media the consumer is likely to engage with. It could be reality TV and Facebook; it could be talk radio and Twitter; it could be travel magazines and Instagram — or multiple combinations of these and many others.
The bottom line? For each target consumer group, there is a preferred stack of media. Brands need to understand what these are and the way they are consumed.
Consistent presence
But a stack of media needs a pulse.
In medical terms, a pulse is described as a “rhythmical throbbing of the arteries”. Brands used to think a CPR jolt every now and then would be sufficient to keep them going. Brand memory was an actual thing. No longer. Brands need a pulse, which means consistent presence.
This is often called “always on” but I think pulse is a better descriptor. Without a pulse, the brand will die.
Daily or weekly activity used to only be the territory of retailers. These days, every brand feels like a retail brand and is wanting to sell at every opportunity. The good news is that consumers’ media activity has massively increased and they never seem to switch off. Pulsing is a viable tactic for any brand.
So, next time you hear a recommendation for a brand to stack and pulse, don’t roll your eyes. Finally, here are some buzzwords that actually useful.
Martin MacGregor (@MartMacG) is managing director of Connect, an M&C Saatchi Company, with offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Martin has spent 18 years in the industry, and has previously worked at Ogilvy and was MD of MEC Nota Bene in Cape Town. He contributes the monthly “Media Redefined” column, in which he challenges norms in the media space, to MarkLives.com.
by MarkLives (@marklives) How are South African creative agencies faring in ensuring gender equity in the workplace? Are women enjoying the same opportunities and pay as their male colleagues — or are they still mired in gender bias, sexism and harassment? Without any real hard data available, Camilla Clerke of HelloFCB+ is the next key female executive to give us her assessment of the state of adland.
Camilla Clerke
Camilla Clerke (@Milz_rara) is executive creative director of HelloFCB+, the new ad agency formed by FCB Cape Town and Hellocomputer Cape Town merging earlier this year.
I can’t speak for every agency but I’d say most of them are doing all the right things — on the surface. But what interests me much more than correcting the female-to-male ratio, putting more women on judging panels and PRing a few key promotions is what agencies, and agency leaders, are doing on a deeper level to correct a wrong that isn’t just an industry condition but a global one. Not enough, I’d say.
It’s a culture thing
Now, I’m not suggesting that hiring more women isn’t the right thing to do (it absolutely is) but the culture of a company is of equal importance. Agencies need to provide a safe space for women to thrive and, after centuries of being seen as mothers, rather than moguls, it’s going to take time. Lots of it. As female leaders in the industry, we have to insist on the right workshopping, counselling and coaching — for both sexes — to empower women in a way that is sustainable. Change starts with the grand gestures but it continues with hard work and dedication to shifting the dial.
The cure for imposter syndrome
Imposter syndrome is a condition where you doubt your accomplishments and have a persistent internalised fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. I’ll say it: I suffer from it. Big time. It’s the feeling that you don’t really deserve to be there, and it’s just a matter of time before someone “outs you”.
Although this condition impacts everyone — male, female, non-binary — I do feel women find it harder to work through, and rightfully so, because for many years we weren’t considered “leadership material”. So, even though companies are putting females in positions of power, are they giving them the right tools to take on the role comfortably, with self-confidence and authority?
I do feel that this isn’t solely the role of the agency, however, but also the role of women. We need to be our own “fearless girls”. We need to take up space, demand attention, share our viewpoints and speak out, even if it’s terrifying. The more women who see other women doing it, the more we’ll feel like we belong in these positions. We’re not imposters!
Pull one another up the ladder
I read an article recently that began with the following, “Female career climbers have been urged to leave the ladder down instead of pulling it behind them after they reach the top.”
Adland is a highly competitive industry and, as females have fought tooth and nail for top positions, instinct kicks in: we want to protect our turf, and this may be from other women. As female leaders, we have a much-larger responsibility than individual success; we have to nurture and grow other female leaders.
A recent Australian survey stated that women prefer to have male bosses, as we can, to quote, “push aside possible competitors by undermining their self-confidence and professional standing”. But there’s no way we’ll get ahead in the industry if we don’t want to work for one another. So, female leaders need to work hard to mentor the younger generation, give them courage and find opportunities for them to achieve.
Close the gap
South African agencies have made an effort to close the gap — both in pay and in equality. But more needs to be done in that invisible layer to help prepare women and businesses for this necessary change. As advertisers, we all know the huge effort it takes to change consumer behaviour. Let’s make sure the results of this case study are as good ;)
But, for now, some tips for women out there:
Find your wolfpack — women who inspire you, women you can lean on, women you can bounce things off of, and women who can have a sense of humour about it all. To mine (you all know who you are), I couldn’t survive this industry without you.
Reach out — find support in the great organisations and conversations already happening out there. SheSays is a safe space where women can have honest, hearty debates about topics such as mental health and female toxicity in the workplace. The podcast, The Guilty Feminist, hosted by Deborah Frances-White, is a supportive forum that discusses big topics, while confessing our “buts” — the insecurities, hypocrisies and fears that undermine our lofty principles.
Be honest and open — don’t be afraid to show your vulnerability. With vulnerability comes huge respect and admiration.
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 Jason Harrison. “YOU are the strategist,” responded the strategist when I asked him who’d be doing the strategy for the launch of a new financial services brand that was supposed to challenge some of the biggest and most-established players in the market.
“But I’m just an account manager,” I stammered, “and I’ve never written a strategy before, let alone one to launch a new brand.”
“You are not an account manager; you are a creative thinker, so go do some reading on challenger brands for inspiration and get ready to present to the client next week,” he responded and then walked off.
That evening, I hit Exclusive Books and asked one of the staff members if they could point me towards any new marketing books on “challenger brands”. He typed into his computer, looked up and responded quizzically, “You’re in luck — there is one bizarrely called ‘Eating the Big Fish’ by Adam Morgan. Follow me.”
At some obscure aisle, he pulled it off the shelf and passed it to me. I can still remember that cover like it was yesterday: a shark speared on a table fork. “I’m doomed,” I muttered to the chap.
Complete and utter fear
Over the next few nights, what started as a read fueled by a complete and utter fear of losing my job turned into a complete fascination of how brands could actually act in the minds of consumers. When I was finished, the book was covered in highlighted headings and furiously scribbled notes to help commit the main topics and themes to memory.
I’m still ashamed to admit that I regurgitated the key points in that book, pretty much word for word as my own in the client presentation. “You see, Mr. Client, if you are to be a true challenger brand (which you absolutely are, by the way) we need to create a ‘Lighthouse Identity’ for you to be a beacon of attraction to a new kind of consumer.”
The strategist stared at me.
I followed with, “And, of course, in the process of this launch we need to create ‘Symbols of Re-evaluation’ for the category if we are to highjack the core from these established players.”
My boss stared at me.
I concluded with, “Look, given your budget, our strategy absolutely needs to be about ‘Sacrifice and Over-Commitment’, otherwise we might as well not do it, in my view.”
The client stared at me.
Click. Thank you. Silence. More silence. Applause. More applause. Very excited chatter.
They. Lapped. It. Up.
As they all walked out, the strategist walked out last and whispered to me, “Perhaps some more original thought next time?” He knew. He had read the book. #stillashamed
The core skills of a creative strategist
That was over 15 years ago but his advice still rings true. I’ve seen many job descriptions for suits since, and most of them are total rubbish for one simple reason: They don’t demand an absolute intolerance for mediocre thinking. However, recently I came across a skills matrix for the different levels of “creative strategists” and what would be required of them in their careers. I realised that this isn’t the job spec for strategy; it’s the job spec for great suits. It’s the job spec for you.
At its essence, it highlights seven common themes:
Clarify the problem: Distinguish between what we have been asked to do, what we can do and what we should do
Insight creation: Find things out, filter them and rethink them laterally to inspire
Set the path: Give inspiration, clarity and confidence to the team about what needs to be done
Creative ideation: Help creative and other disciplines come up with better ideas, faster
Powerful storytelling: Define the idea, prove, communicate and sell it
Manifesting the work: Craft the experience journey and delivery detail that brings the idea to life
Measurement & effectiveness: Prove if, how and why the work created real value for the business and consumer
Do you do these seven things as a suit?
It’s absolutely the suit’s job to be “creative strategists” in the agency and own the thinking in all its shapes and forms. It will reshape how you, your peers and your client see your role and value.
As the foreword in the revised edition of “Eating the Big Fish” says, “For overexposed, overinformed and overwhelmed audiences, a Lighthouse Identity can truly be more relevant than ever. It can be an aid for navigating the storm of choice, a trusted haven to satisfy all needs within a defined space. Because the new order requires a strong and authentic emotional connection, inspired by a true sense of mission in the world.”
Be that lighthouse.
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.
Based in Dubai, Mimi Nicklin (@miminicklin) is managing director of RAPP MEA, an Omnicom company. An experienced leader — she’s led global and regional brands from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa on both agency- and client side — she believes in the systemisation of empathetic leadership and influence. Mimi considers leadership to be 100% about serving her team, rather than the other way around, and is avidly committed to creating change for good in the industry. She is also a keynote speaker and thought leader. Her new MarkLives column, “Frank”, focuses on being frank and open about issues in adland.
