Creativity is at the centre of our universe. We believe in the magic of ideas. It’s what drives our team of anti-usualists who love what they do.
So What Have The Loeries Done For You Lately?
by Justin Gomes Charl Thom* recently wrote a piece on advertising awards that got me thinking about the role the Loerie Awards have played in my career – not only from a creative’s perspective, but from the viewpoint of someone who started an agency seven years ago. It made for some interesting reminiscing.
As a young writer in my first year of advertising, I’d heard about the fabled Loerie Awards, but didn’t know much about them. I’d heard they 
were held at Sun City and involved a lot of drinking. My first year at the Sun City Loeries I remember there being lots and lots of drinking. And someone’s hotel room being raided by the police. But the thing I remember most was sitting at the ceremony that night looking up at a winning Levi’s campaign on the big screen, thinking, “I want to make work like that.” It was Porky Hefer’s “New Old Jeans” Levi’s campaign and it inspired me to get into a creative environment where I might be able to do something half as good.
A few years later, I was fortunate enough to taste Loerie success with the Dulux “Any Colour You Can Think Of” campaign Andrew Whitehouse and I created while working at what was then Lowe Bull Jhb. The agency was struggling to forge its own identity after what was essentially a take-over of Lowe Lintas. The ceremony at Sun City helped unite the agency in a way no other award show could. At one point, I remember looking over and seeing the agency’s drivers, Morris Monhoe and Edwin Maselesele, dancing on stage next to our MD Gilllian Rightford. It was a beautiful thing.
Suddenly, based on that Loerie success, every creative in town wanted to work at Lowe Bull Jhb, a place I had been warned against joining because of its Lintas washing-powder heritage. Suddenly Lowe Bull Jhb could cherry-pick the country’s top creatives. Talents like Gareth Lessing, Matthew Brink and Adam Livesy soon passed through the agency’s doors and Lowe’s clients, in turn, benefited from the most creative minds in the country trying to solve their marketing challenges.
Speaking of marketing challenges, that self-same Loerie winning Dulux campaign reversed a 20 % loss into a 20% profit for the company. For every R1 they spent on advertising, they gained an extra R6.60 in sales. It was a great early lesson for Andrew and myself that creativity sells and a lesson that would later inform how our future agency operated.
Based on the Loerie success, Matthew Bull sent us to Cannes a few months later. Fortunately the campaign also did well at Cannes where we were congratulated by Chris Moerdyk, the advertising industry’s premier journalist at the time, who wrote in a subsequent piece, “Remember their names, they’re going to go far.” I still remember the exact place Chris congratulated us at two in the morning and whenever I go back to Cannes, I make sure I visit that little bar he gave us those words of encouragement.
During the next five years working overseas, I referred back to those words of encouragement a lot. I also longed for an award show like the Loeries to bring local industry folk together. To get inspired again, to be surrounded by the creative people responsible for the work on screen, the kind of work we were used to creating in South Africa.
Disillusioned with the lack of appetite to get creative work in front of decision makers, Andrew and I decided to return to South Africa to start FoxP2, an agency named after the creativity gene, founded in the belief that creative work is the best way for clients to get a competitive edge.
Our first stop after touching back down in South Africa? The Margate Loeries. I remember it being wet. I remember it being muddy. And someone threw their underpants at the mayor. But I also remember seeing the Axe “Get A Girlfriend” campaign up on the big screen and thinking, “We’d better get going. And fast.”
But how do you get an agency with no international backing off the ground when all the partners have spent the last five years overseas out of local client contact? You make the most of every creative opportunity with the few clients you do have – and enter the Loerie Awards.
Our first Loeries, we had a smattering of success with a few bronzes and a silver, but it was enough to get the name FoxP2 noticed. And luckily for us, it was noticed by a businessman named Charl Thom. He joined us shortly afterwards, and today I am proud to say he resides over the FoxP2 name and its various businesses.
Those same bronze and silver Loerie awards contributed to us winning Finweek’s Newcomer Agency Of The Year. Based on this award, the marketing department at Coronation Fund Managers invited us to pitch on their business. We won the pitch and suddenly larger clients with established brands felt more comfortable awarding us their business and set us on the path to securing the client list we have today.
The following year we cracked the Loerie Top Five and suddenly, just like at Lowe Bull Jhb five years earlier, FoxP2 became an agency where the country’s top creative talent wanted to work. If you want to see what this talent has done for our clients’ bottom line, you can refer to Charl’s article, but needless to say, our clients are richer for it.
So will there be drunken misbehaviour at the Loeries this year? No doubt. Will there be things to complain about? Most likely. Will there be someone in the crowd who feels inspired to be a better creative or eventually start their own agency one day? Just maybe.
* Thom and Gomes are owner managers of independent ad agency FoxP2. Thom serves Group MD and is a regular contributor to MarkLives.
** Justin Gomes is co-founder and ECD of FoxP2. He worked overseas at TBWA Paris and Lowe NY before founding FoxP2 in 2005.
Awards & Rewards: The Loerie debate
Charl Thom on the role of industry awards
Why “it’s only advertising” doesn’t cut it by Herman Manson
MarkLives refused media accreditation to The Loerie Award shows (again)
The Value Of Creativity by Charl Thom
The Creative Circle needs to manage relevance, says Chris Gotz
Ad award success no longer sole arbiter of agency and industry respect by Herman Manson
The waning influence of ad award shows by Herman Manson
Finding Cape Town’s Design Voice by Herman Manson
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The Gate Keeper: Chapter 15 (In which people think about life)
by Andrew Miller TBW Smith Jones Wallace Broadbent and Ndimande is an agency in crisis. Their ‘basket of boutique services’ strategy has bombed. Only a massive new project can keep the doors open – all eyes are now on the corporate tent at Mangaung. Far in the background, an emergency replacement executive PA with decades of experience makes important decisions. Interns rise, board members take unexpected steps and things begin to change…
The copywriter gets jealous while the boss fretts about the potential for success at Mangaung…
Chapter 15
In which people think about life
Now that Simon Shone had decided he was going to extract revenge – of some sort – on Vati, she had completely disappeared. It was like she worked at a different company. It made him think back to when he had first arrived. It took months – six, eight, ten? – for him to realise that those young black okes who kept coming and going on the side of the commons weren’t interns, as he had naturally presumed – that they were in fact the strat team. They dressed young, walked young, talked easily in seven different languages and listened to hip hop, so naturally he had presumed they were fresh out of Vega, or WITS or something.
Simon pondered again exactly what it took to get into the strat team. What had Vati done to get there so fast? And what did the strat team even do anyway? They definitely didn’t work on advertising accounts, like he did. Currently the Mangaung mission was well known across the agency, but what happened before and after Mangaung? He had to admit he had no idea. He let the back of his leather office chair push him slowly forward. He thought he had seen the top of Vati’s head moving past on the strat side, but he couldn’t be sure.
Simon Shone refocused on his monitor and adjusted the three lines of copy he’d had open all morning.
Everfresh
It’s about life
And that’s all you need to know
It was bad. He knew that much. But no matter how he fiddled, it refused to come right. His mind drifted to the image of Phil and Vati hooking up last week. He glanced over at his graphics colleague, who was locked firmly into his screen, as usual. He wondered what it had been like between them, then berated himself for letting his mind slip in that direction. Some things should not be thought about.
At around about the same time Mama E was peering anxiously through the keyhole of His office, her kneecaps screaming in protest at the shock of contact with the ground. There had been no movement the whole morning, which was very unusual. He wasn’t picking up the phone, and the door to His domain was actually locked. She could see a single foot through the constricted space, wrapped in an expensive leather shoe, and it appeared to have some movement. There was, she was sure, a regular tapping motion. Mama E hoisted her very large to frame to its feet and acknowledged to herself that she would probably never again sink so low, if only for purely practical reasons.
He heard faint scuffling at his door. It was probably Melinda. She was efficient, granted, but it would be typical of her generally invasive nature to be fretting about Him. She was, He was sure, constitutionally unable to leave well enough alone.
He swallowed the last of his morning whiskey and sighed. Obvious perks of the job aside, He wasn’t sure that this kind of high profile pressure was really His thing. Not as a lifestyle. Not as the rest of His life. He was struggling, to be honest, to pull it all together. His father was being even more evasive than usual and, He would never admit this to anyone, of course, things were by no means set for Mangaung. Yes, His father and the EFT guy were thick, and yes, in theory the pitch and the tender were rock solid, but one could never tell with politics. The first sign of things going south was too much silence. And His father had been particularly quiet of late.
He sighed heavily and considered pouring another shot. It was 10:00am, and every strategic bone in His body shouted no. He was tempted – very – to overrule his bones, but eventually he decided better of it. There were always consequences. One needed to know where to set the horizon. Instead, He buzzed Melinda, ordered a coffee and asked her to send that fresh young girl with the rural Hip Hop strategy to Him as soon as possible.
Part 1 -15. Part 16: September 19.
Author: Andrew Miller Illustrator: Lebohang Goge
Marikana: Watershed moment for online journalism in SA as Daily Maverick sets ed agenda
by Herman Manson (@marklives) In the immediate wake of the Marikana massacre, where police shot dead 34 miners on August 16th and wounded dozens more, newspaper and TV news crews were reporting on the casualty lists, the views of union bosses and politicians.
Yet one of the first stories on (August 17th) by Greg Marinovich and filed for the Daily Maverick (DM), a website becoming known for its 
quality journalism and opinion, was quick to recognise the broader scope of the conflict, not just at Marikana where initial reports were putting the death toll at just over a dozen, but also the impact on the mining industry, which despite its declining output and influence on the economy remains a political minefield, a major employer, and closely association with what foreign investors take for the South African economy. Marinovich set the scene; “It looks like war. It is a war. A war of survival, certainly for the miners, and perhaps for the future of Rustenburg’s platinum mines too.”
By August 20th Ranjeni Munusamy, also writing for DM, went well beyond reporting the spluttering defence Cosatu bosses were still offering the police service. “We might never know what was in the minds of mineworkers who advanced on police before the first blast of gunfire was heard at Marikana or how it felt for officers to squeeze the triggers of their R5s, raining down live rounds on other human beings. What we do know now is that they should never have had to encounter each other on that dusty field where mindless horror reigned,” wrote Munusamy. “Questions need to be asked of those who failed both the dead and those who killed them.”
Public and international outrage at what had happened on the killing fields of Marikana had been gradually rising – a point politicians and sections of the mainstream press failed to recognise. An exception would be DM – it had recognised Marikana as potentially the biggest news story in South Africa leading up to the ANC elective conference at Mangaung and was pushing its editorial resources (by last week as many as five members of its twenty strong editorial team) into the field to report on and investigate events. Although the reportage had been impressive in its scope and quality it was a story filed by DM journalist Mandy de Waal* which would set the publication on course to change the narrative of unfolding events dramatically.
De Waal filed a story on the August 23rd reporting that “a theory is emerging that the police manoeuvre at Marikana that left so many miners dead was a deliberate and deadly act” and that “activists and rights officials at the scene of Lonmin’s killing fields are accusing the police of tampering with evidence.”
De Waal had quoted Peter Alexander, a professor from the University of Johannesburg and a special interest in industrial conflict, that in geographic terms, the killings at Marikana was “more extensive than it has been portrayed in the media to date.”
“What was apparent to me on both Saturday and Monday, when the ministerial group was there, was that journalists just stand around but don’t really investigate or speak to any of the workers,” Alexander told de Waal, and also mentioned a place locals have started referring to as ‘killing koppie.’ Suddenly evidence suggested more than one killing field at Marikana.
“Media coverage of the Marikana shootings showed one killing point close to a gap in the razor wire that was rolled out by the SAPS to contain strikers,” wrote de Waal in her report which would run to 2500 words. “Television footage of the protest area shows most of the action from this vantage point. Tear gas is fired. One sees miners charging towards the police. Then there’s the volley of police fire. As dust clears one sees a number of corpses and injured bodies, but nowhere near the police figure for the dead which is set at 34.”
The more realistic view of what had happened at Marikana was emerging and being reported on on the pages of the Daily Maverick. Everything the media and the public knew was about to be upended. Not by the (very well regarded and paid) investigative journalism teams of Media24 or Avusa. But by the Daily Maverick. Newsroom: twenty.
It was de Waal’s story that set Marinovich (a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and co-author of The Bang Bang Club) to write and publish, on September 3, a report which would now set the editorial agenda on the Marikana massacre. “Some of the miners killed in the 16 August massacre at Marikana appear to have been shot at close range or crushed by police vehicles,” wrote Marinovich. They were not caught in a fusillade of gunfire from police defending themselves, as the official account would have it.”
“It is becoming clear to this reporter that heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood,” wrote Marinovich. “A minority were killed in the filmed event where police claim they acted in self-defence. The rest was murder on a massive scale.”
“The facts have been fed by the police, various state entities and by the media that the strikers provoked their own deaths by charging and shooting at the forces of law and order,” Marinovich continued. “Indeed, the various images and footage can be read to support this claim.
“The contrary view is that the striking miners were trying to escape police rubber bullets and tear gas when they ran at the heavily armed police task team (our version of SWAT). The result was the horrific images of a dozen or so men gunned down in a fusillade of automatic fire.”
The Daily Maverick articles helped change the dynamics of the public debate around the massacre. This directly affected the public and media response round the subsequent attempt by the National Prosecuting Authority to charge 270 miners arrested at Marikana with the murder of those shot and killed by the police force (the charges has since been dropped following a public outcry).
Injustice is often followed by injustice. Through its investigative efforts the Daily Maverick has, directly and indirectly, served the cause of justice, and in spite of a sometimes lukewarm response from some of their print rivals, seemingly forever spinning downwards towards the lowest common denominator, reminded us of the role journalism should and can play in holding (political) power accountable. At least in as much as the public institutions set up to protect the public are prepared to act on the information presented to them in spite of the best efforts of those tasked with wiping away and hiding that deemed politically inconvenient.
* Mandy de Waal is a contributing editor to MarkLives.
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Weekly Top 10: Fastest rising search terms from South Africans on Google
With the help of Google Insights for Research we are publishing the top 10 searched for phrases (minus the sexy stuff of course) by South Africans on Google over the previous seven days.
The fastest rising web search term on Google by South Africans last week was for ‘Michael Clarke Duncan’ following the death of the actor best known for his role in the movie The Green Mile. The Woolworths BEE furore placed it second, followed by check-ups on the weather. The 2012 Paralympics also featured in the top 10 as did Multichoice which relaunched a number of satellite TV channels and expanded its HD offering.
(For past data click here)
Fast Rising searches
| 1. | michael clarke duncan | Breakout |
| 2. | woolworths | +170% |
| 3. | weather durban | +160% |
| 4. | weather 24 | +110% |
| 5. | olx | +90% |
| 6. | sa weather | +90% |
| 7. | paralympics 2012 | +80% |
| 8. | multichoice | +70% |
| 9. | weather | +60% |
| 10. | sa idols | +50% |
Top 25 search terms
1. facebook
2. south africa
3. youtube
4. login facebook
5. gmail
6. google
7. gumtree
8. absa
9. weather
10. news
11. fnb
12. yahoo
13. games
14. standard bank
15. game
16. music
17. sars
18. news24
19. yahoo mail
20. www.facebook.com
21. maps
22. nedbank
23. unisa
24. twitter
25. blackberry
Source: Google Insights for Search
* The Insights for Search map is intended for general analysis of volume patterns.
* When you see Breakout listed instead of an actual percentage, it means that the search term has experienced a change in growth greater than 5000%.
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Pendoring Awards more competitive than ever
by Herman Manson (@marklives) The Pendoring Awards, established in 1994 to promote and award Afrikaans language advertising, is coming to the Western Cape, one of the two provinces in South Africa where die taal is spoken by the majority of residents. It’s been warmly embraced by the city and its ad agencies.
The Pendorings have joined Cape Town’s Creative Week and the award ceremony takes place the Friday September 21 – before the Loerie Award ceremonies (which take place on the Sat & Sun evenings of Sept 22 & 23).
Pendoring General Manager Franette Klerck says the move to Cape Town has reenergised the award show which has been run as a Section 21 (not-for-profit) company since 2010. This year saw over 500 entries – a jump of 40% on 2011. Entries from ad schools increased from 62 to 94 this year while entries from agencies jumped from 283 to 384.
Most categories saw increased entry levels although numbers for Outdoor were disappointing, Klerck admits. Digital entries grew well and, in a 
departure from judges comments on the crop reviewed in 2011, were commended for a dramatic increase in quality.
Klerck says the Pendoring Awards remain independent and is not ‘part of the Loerie awards’ – it’s simply part of Creative Week, a legacy event for Cape Town’s World Design Capital 2014 bid that aims to ‘strengthen the local creative community by providing a platform on which local creative and innovative industries can showcase their work.’
The award show received strong sponsor support, especially from brands with Afrikaans language roots or a stake in the Afrikaans constituency, including Ads24, Beeld, Die Burger, kykNet, Toyota, Rapport and Media24 as well as cultural organisations such as Die Dagbreek Trust and the ATKV. Sanlam, OFM, Klipdrift and eNuus (which will replace the SABC as a sponsor this year) are also on board.*
Traditionally agencies such as Draftfcb and Joe Public have dominated the event. They happen to have clients prepared to spend significant budgets on creating Afrikaans language advertising. That said, it is not a given that they will dominate again this year, given the spike in entries from a much more diverse group of agencies, says Klerck.
This year the agency with the most finalists are Ogilvy Johannesburg (12) followed by Joe Public (10), Draftfcb Johannesburg (8), House of Brave (7) and The Jupiter Drawing Room (Johannesburg and Cape Town) with 5. TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Johannesburg and Black River F.C. has four each, and Net#work BBDO and Dojo115 three each.
Etiket, human.kind advertising, MetropolitanRepublic, ninety9cents and The Suits Communications each have two finalists, while BesterBurke, DDB South Africa, Gloo, EURO RSCG, Marchand, 60 layers of cake, Studio Zoo and Trigger have one finalist each.`
Klerck points out that Draftfcb Cape Town, traditionally a strong contender and winner last year of the Prestige Award, delivered no finalists this year. The AAA School of Advertising delivered no finalists in the student category.
* Book your seat at the Pendoring Awards.
* MarkLives is an official Partner of the Pendoring Awards 2013. The partnership respects our editorial integrity and right to report critically and independently on the awards.
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Magazine covers we love (now get us the T-shirt)
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
M, Le magazine du Monde, 25 August 2012
There’s just something calming, but at the same time humorous, about this cover featuring our very own Nelson Mandela drawn as a super hero with the likes of Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter. (Where can I order a t-shirt?) The cover line reads something in the lines of “Are they too old to save the world?”
Harper’s Magazine, September 2012
Clean. Simple. Back to basics. All the Harper’s (not to be confused with Harper’s Bazaar…) covers follow this recipé, but there’s just something about this drawn image of President Barack Obama that draws me in.
Forbes (India), 31 August 2012
Great colourful image. Just like India. And clever play on words with “Incredible India!” chancing into “Credible India?”.
LOCAL
Mango Juice, September 2012
The only South Africa cover jumping out at me this week, and one that deserves some recognition, is that of Mango Juice’s in-flight magazine, with their September / Spring issue. How can you not miss that they are celebrating Spring!? This great image, and even the masthead/logo of brand and title, is all drawn by South African artist Eloise Timmis. Readers/flyers are also asked to count the number of planes they can spot on the cover, with the chance to win a prize.
– 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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Tom Fels new deputy MD at MACHINE
by Herman Manson (@marklives) MACHINE, the agency with strong BTL and digital competencies launched last year by Adrian Hewlett, 
has announced the appointment of a new Deputy MD , Tom Fels.
Fels joins MACHINE from BTL agency 34 where he was previously Business Unit Director responsible for handling SAB and Foodcorp. Fels had also spent time in Dubai as a Senior Project Manager at global design consultancy FITCH.
According to Hewlett Fels will drive the integration of the specialist business divisions within MACHINE. These include online market research and consumer insights specialist Answered; full-service ATL agency Big Wednesday; digital & social media agency Domino and full-service BTL agency Creature.
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SANEF statement on Loerie media accreditation issue
MarkLives doesn’t normally publish press releases in its main content feed but since this joint statement by SANEF and the Loerie Award relates, at least in part, to the issue of limited media accreditation that was initially raised on these pages, we are making an exception.
The statement, reprinted in full below, follows a complaint to SANEF by BizCommunity.com on the matter of media accreditation to the Loerie Awards, and the terms and conditions attached to it.
MarkLives had previously raised the issue of the partial accreditation of its editor, Herman Manson, which we felt was the result of an unfair and biased accreditation system that was applied with no consistently (some journalists had to submit a ‘media plan’ others did not), and was open to abuse to discriminate against specific journalists. Our case is set out here and we stand by it.
MarkLives welcomes the announcement that the Loerie Awards will be revamping their media accreditation procedures for the 2013 event. We have serious reservations about how the process was handled this year and any improvement that makes the current opaque procedure more transparent is positive news and a step in the right direction.
Of course this matter should and could have been resolved in 2010 when the South African Media Interest Group (SAMIG), a gathering of representatives from the SANEF, Print Media SA and others wrote to the Loerie board requesting an opportunity “to meet with your representatives as soon as possible to take further the discussion around media access to your events.”
It was an invitation repeated by BizCommunity.com Editor-at-Large Simone Puterman who at the time wrote to the Loerie organisers and board of the Creative Circle requesting that ” The Loeries Awards, stakeholders in the Loeries and relevant media should get together soon, in our common interest, to workout acceptable procedures for accreditation, embargoed results and other general rules of engagement with the media.”
In the joint statement Loerie Chairperson Boniswa Pezisa is quoted as saying that the Loerie organisers would “recognise the need to accommodate editorial journalists separately from writers of special contracted features and media partners within our media accreditation procedures” will hopefully put to rest any process of accrediting journalists based on past critical coverage of the event.
The following sentence in the joint press release also caught our eye: “It was agreed that important common ground had been found and that The Loerie Awards organisers had no intention of limiting or dictating independent news coverage, and The Loerie Awards at no time “banned” any media representatives.”
Of course in 2010, when Samig had invited the Loerie Award organisers to meet with it, they had also written the following: “Samig has learned with concern that Mr Herman Manson, a journalist specialising in coverage of the advertising industry, has had his media accreditation to cover the upcoming Loerie Awards unilaterally withdrawn as punishment for critical reports and refusal to submit his stories to organisers for pre-publication vetting.
“On the face of it, this is clearly a serious breach of media freedom in regard to access to a notable public event.
As Samig, our request is that you urgently reconsider the matter and reinstate Mr Manson’s accreditation to report freely and without pre-conditions on the awards ceremony. Your assurance that other journalists covering the awards have not been similarly treated will be appreciated.”
We need intention to marry reality. Once you’ve granted accreditation you cannot revoke it again because you disliked the coverage you received. Implement a fair and transparent accreditation system, and apply it consistently, preferably one that doesn’t penalise journalists because, in the words of Loerie CEO Andrew Human, “they have gone negative.” Finally, you have had offers of substantial engagement on the issue of media accreditation and media relations for over two years, if you take it up now, take it seriously. It will make the Loerie Awards better. Our community deserves that.
Let’s see the change. That would really be turning the page.
Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Joint Press Statement
SANEF meeting with The Loerie Awards on its Media Accreditation Terms and Conditions
A South African National Editors’ Forum delegation met on Monday, 3 September 2012, with the organisers of the brand communication industry’s prestigious annual Loerie Awards to discuss concerns that terms and conditions of media accreditation and access to the event were in conflict with the Constitutional principle of freedom of the press and the public’s right to information.
The Loerie Awards organisers were represented by Chairperson Boniswa Pezisa and CEO Andrew Human, while the SANEF delegation was led by Media Freedom sub-committee Chairperson Mpumelelo Mkhabela.
Both sides welcomed as constructive the opportunity to discuss the various issues directly and to gain insights into each other’s positions. It was agreed that important common ground had been found and that The Loerie Awards organisers had no intention of limiting or dictating independent news coverage, and The Loerie Awards at no time “banned” any media representatives.
While it was too late to make any major changes to the structures put in place for this year’s Loeries, as these were less than a fortnight away, it was agreed in principle that the media accreditation procedure would be revised from 2013 onwards, and in partnership with SANEF. A draft set of terms and conditions was tabled and accepted as a starting point for refinement to be ready for 2013.
Both the SANEF and the Loeries delegations agreed that the core issue was mutual agreement of unfettered access to coverage by general news media reporters. SANEF has no intention of speaking for any media organisation which has opted for various forms of contractual, commercialised agreements recognising them as “media partners” or “sponsors” of The Loerie Awards.
“After discussion with SANEF, we recognise the need to accommodate editorial journalists separately from writers of special contracted features and media partners within our media accreditation procedures. Most importantly, we want to ensure that media freedom is in no way curtailed through our accreditation procedures and value the input of SANEF,” said Pezisa.
Said Mkhabela: “Sanef had previously held such fruitful discussions with sporting bodies. We look forward to the finalisation of the new accreditation agreement for the Loerie Awards.”
In the meantime, The Loerie Awards organisers undertook to take all reasonably possible steps at short notice to accommodate bone fide editorial journalists who may not yet have been able to obtain unrestricted media accreditation to this month’s awards ceremonies and related open events.
The delegations agreed to meet again soon to finalise the media accreditation framework for future awards.
Issued by the SA National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) and The Loerie Awards
EXCLUSIVE: Former Draftfcb MD to head Jupiter Drawing Room Joburg
by Herman Manson (@marklives) MarkLives has confirmed that the former Managing Director of Draftfcb Johannesburg, Jerry Mpufane, has joined The Jupiter 
Drawing Room Johannesburg as its new CEO. He replaces Alison Deeb who recently moved to MetropolitanRepublic as Group CEO. The Jupiter Drawing Room is currently in the process of making an official announcement to staff and clients.
Mpufane resigned from Draftfcb in August but stayed on to help find his replacement. No announcement has yet been made on who will take his place at Draftfcb. Apparently the interviewing process is still ongoing.
At the time John Dixon, Group CEO at Draftfcb South Africa, said the notice of his then pending resignation gave Mpufane an opportunity to seek “his next adventure openly and transparently.”
Mpufane joined Draftfcb in 2008. He had previously been group marketing director at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and had held positions at South African Tourism and McDonald’s.
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