by Herman Manson (@marklives)Owenkessel, the fast growing Johannesburg agency founded by Felix Kessel and Vaughn Owen, has appointed Sizwe Salimane as its new General Manager, just a year after appointing Donovan Bryan as its executive creative director.
Salimane knew Bryan from their time together at Grey where Bryan was Creative Director and Salimane Strategic Planning Manager. Salimane says Bryan’s presence at Owenkessel was a major contributing factor to his decision to move to the agency from FNB where he was the marketing manager for FNB EasyPlan – an affordable paperless bank offering.
As GM Salimane is responsible for ensuring processes are put in place to facilitate business growth, protecting both shareholders and clients, and ensuring internal efficiencies. Salimane says he aims to improve the briefing processes and the traffic system inside the agency.
Salimane tells how from an early age he was involved in entrepreneurial family businesses – his mother’s family ran a taxi business and while still in high school he hatched plans for a Slow jam taxi brand. It offered an alternative to the ‘nightclubs on wheels’ feel of many Durban taxis, played soulful ballads and featured uniformed taxi drivers.
His wife and he still run a solar product company while he is also in business with an uncle in running a printing factory. It’s a culture of innovation and entrepreneurism that inspires him and that takes him to Owenkessel.
Salimane has a Bachelor of Social Sciences (Marketing & Management majors) degree from the University of Natal. He got into advertising after following a girl to Cape Town who worked in media production and then got recommended to TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris Durban via a contact he made in Cape Town. He joined the agency as a research analyst after he completed his degree. He moved quickly up the ladder and left to run his own brand consultancy HotMojo Strategic Brand Consultancy in 2005. Then followed stints at Y&R in Johannesburg, Grey, Synovate and The Jupiter Drawing Room before he joined FNB in 2010.
Owenkessel launched in 2008 and currently employs a full time team of 40. Clients include Amstel Lager and Tanqueray gin (brandhouse), Aspen Pharmacare, Zodiac Pool Care, Entyce Beverages: Five Roses (BTL) and House of Coffees as well as Diageo Scotland on their Reserve Brands Portfolio: Johnny Walker Super-deluxe range, Ciroc Vodka, and the classic malts whisky range for South Africa and the Africa region (Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Reunion, Angola, Cameroon, Uganda and Ghana).
by Herman Manson (@marklives) While her rivals are seeing circulation declines Kate Wilson, editor of Women’s Health SA, just saw the title’s total paid circulation rise 8.4% year-on-year to reach 78 791. Women’s Health has now overtaken both Cosmopolitan and Glamour’s total paid circulation figures.
But Wilson isn’t building a magazine brand, she says, instead she is building a multi-platform content brand. In fact Women’s Health SA launched a website in the country before the physical magazine arrived and has built various digital content modules into the Women’s Health brand strategy. Extensions like DVD and booklet cover mounts often draw from other aspects of the business (so a booklet might contain extracts from a book you get to order from the publisher). Next year will see events placed into the mix.
Of course the brand could also draw on the visibility of sibling Men’s Health which Wilson says helps double the facings of for her magazine.
But ultimately it is the service journalism in the health and wellness field particularly that has near universal appeal. Wilson says she won’t apologise for the ‘layer of superficiality’ in women (or anybody else) wanting to look their best. For Wilson looking your best translates into feeling your best and health, nutrition and weight-loss are all issues we have some control over in a time of great economic uncertainty.
Women’s Health also encourages its resident experts and columnists to maintain media visibility and this network keeps reinforcing the Women’s Health brand where-ever they go.
Content is skewed 60-40 in favour of local contributions and its 60% black audience means most of the fashion shoots are done locally rather than sourced from the States. Sex and beauty content is approached from a more scientific angle than you will find in most women’s magazines says Wilson. The food pages also tend to be local to ensure they cater to local tastes. It helps the magazine feel authentically South African and Wilson argues it should discourage (cheaper) digital subscriptions to the parent title in the States.
Wilson reveals she works quite closely with the Women’s Health editor in Australia – the global brand allows her to tap in experience and best practice in any number of countries. At the moment Women’s Health is launching three to four new international editions every year. Apparently Oz picks ups quite a bit of syndicated content from Women’s Health South Africa.
The brand is still in a growth phase says Wilson and the title generally do better in summer though she is working on extending the content offering into a suitable winter read as well. So don’t expect similar growth rates in winter months as the magazine has seen this past summer, says Wilson, at least for now.
More digital offerings are in the pipeline including a possible app around Women’s Health Food – a section which focuses on nutritional advice with a South African flavour.
Sex of course remains a selling point and is in line with the brand positioning as a women’s interest title rather than purely a health and fitness title. Its approach to sex is more candid than that of the US magazine partly because its audience tend to be younger and Joburg based and therefore more open to sexual health dialogue says Wilson. The focus is also less on pleasing your partner – the staple for many a magazine story – and more on the self.
Wilson acknowledges the tough economic climate and says consumers are becoming more price sensitive – something to consider when deciding whether to adjust cover pricing up or down with the announcement that 5c coins will no longer be minted.
The market is also heavily traded and Wilson will be keeping an eye out on newly launched Grazia (also by parent company Media24). Fair Lady recently dropped its cover price while Elle and Glamour are making increasing use of gifts bagged with the mag to drive sales.
Ad pages hover at around 30% of the book depending on what supplements the magazine carries. Wilson expects circulation to settle at the 80 000 mark over the long term. Subscriptions are close to 9000 and are something the title will keep pushing through deals with partners like Discovery Vitality and others.
The multi-platform nature of the Women’s Health product offering coupled with investment in South African flavoured content bodes well for its future as it taps into the global health zeitgeist that shows no signs of slowing down and is firmly establishing itself in the South African consciousness. As magazine brands decline content brands are proving their value and relevance in a changed market environment.
Vodacom issued a trading statement yesterday morning that shows smartphones active on the network surging by 40,9% in South Africa in the last quarter, even as local revenue growth remains flat, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee)..
Smartphones active on the Vodacom network in South Africa surged by 40,9% in the quarter ended 30 June 2012, according to a trading statement issued by the Group yesterday morning.
Highlights of the Vodacom Group Limited trading statement for the quarter ended 30 June 2012 included:
– Group service revenue growth up 8.7% (5.7%*)
– Group revenue up 9.3% (6.5%*)
– Customers up 29.2%, to 50.0 million
Vodacom said that group service revenue growth was boosted by performance in key growth areas, including robust data demand and international revenue.
“Overall this was a good quarter with a particularly strong performance from our International operations supporting Group service revenue growth of 8.7%,” said Pieter Uys, Vodacom Group CEO. “The connectivity revolution is well underway with close to 16 million customers actively using data, up 43% from the prior year.”
Group data revenue was up 16.6%, contributing 15.4% to service revenue, while Group active data customers grew 43.3% to 15.7 million.
In South Africa, however, service revenue was up only 1.8%, with the impact of lower mobile termination rates – or interconnection fees – making themselves felt: growth outside of those fees was 4.6%.This low growth is despite the number of customers in South Africa increasing by 29.1% to 31.0 million, and active smartphones up 40.9%. Vodacom noted that it was making continued investment in network leadership in South Africa.
Said Uys: “In South Africa, one of our key advantages is the size and reach of our network. Given the increasingly competitive environment, quality and capacity both set Vodacom apart and give us the means to compete with targeted value promotions. As an example Vodacom4Less, NightShift and more recently Power Hour tap into excess capacity on our network during slack periods and translate this into very competitive prices for our customers.
“Other customer groups are driven by entirely different things such as compelling data promotions and have benefitted from the reduction in the average effective price per megabyte of 26%.
International operations’ contribution to Group service revenue increased to 20.5%, with service revenue up 46.7% (23.4% if based on constant currency values), and customers up 29.4% to 19.0 million. The M-Pesa success story in Tanzania continues, with active users of the mobile money transfer service increasing 120,7% to 3.6 million.
“I’m particularly pleased with the sustained high growth delivered by the International operations,” Uys noted. “The primary driver has been solid commercial execution, supported by a healthy macroeconomic environment. Service revenue from these businesses now accounts for 21% of Group service revenue, compared to 14.5% two years ago. Data demand in this segment is accelerating, with active data customers increasing 152% and data revenue up 150%.”
* Arthur Goldstuck heads up World Wide Worx (www.worldwideworx.com) and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee. Reprinted from Gadget.
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 MediaSlutZA.
Some supermarkets use these fonts to display special deals. Desktop magazine has taken it out of the store and onto its cover for a special Typography Issue.
Not sure if Russians celebrate Valentine’s Day in July but I’m waiting for a South African title to pick up this striking and smart concept for February 2013!
VISI has undertaken a comprehensive redesign and this is the first issue back under the firm hand of Sumien Brink (as Content Director). Not only does the cover have absolutely no coverlines on it, but it’s also interesting to note that at 17.7 x 11cm, the current VISI logo/masthead is the biggest masthead of any South African title. (For more on the changes at VISI and what you can expect from the latest issue visit my blog.)
I know I feature SA Rugby quite a lot, but when a cover is good, it’s good. And this Green-and-Gold cover with Jean de Villiers, with its great use of typography, means they deserve a mention once again. Someone in their Art Department is doing something right.
– The (for now anonymous) blogger behind MediaSlutZA 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 MediaSlutZA. #MagazinesForTheWin
At New Media, we create content that starts beautiful conversations with your customers, in whichever channel they choose – from print to web to mobile to video to plasma.
Kodak may be dead as a camera and film company, but it is coming back to life in the “post-capture” world of printing, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee).
The Kodak moment is back. When the company that invented popular photography filed for bankruptcy protection five months ago, it provoked a tut-tut that was heard around the world. The company had been undone by the advent of digital photography – a technology it pioneered, but never managed to turn to its own advantage.
The “portable all-electronic still camera”, invented by Steve Sasson in 1975, was awarded US patent number 4,131,919, but that wasn’t enough to convince Kodak executives. As Sasson would write many years later, they could not understand why people would ever want to view their pictures on a TV.
The insensitive title of Sasson’s presentations to internal Kodak audiences didn’t help either: “Film-less Photography”. In a company that had 90% market share of all film sold in the USA.
As a result, the project was not mentioned again until 2001, when the world was already changing. But Sasson’s technical report from 1975 was prophetic: “The camera described in this report represents a first attempt demonstrating a photographic system which may, with improvements in technology, substantially impact the way pictures will be taken in the future.”
Over the next two decades, both Sony and Nikon would lead the way with professional digital cameras, followed grudgingly by Kodak. The consumer digital camera revolution began in 2000 with a device by Fuji – Kodak’s mortal enemy in the film business. The evolution of devices was then as rapid as the disappearance of film from the shelves. This month, Canon announced the first digital SLR camera with a touchscreen.
In the meantime, Kodak has laid off 47,000 workers and closed 13 film-manufacturing factories in the past nine years. “The Kodak moment” – the slogan given to the concept of capturing a great memory in one image – became a mere memory for the company that had invented it and earlier this year Kodak built its last digital camera.
But filing for bankruptcy protection is not the same thing as going out of business. While the lawyers and accountants restructure the company’s debts and focus on preserving it as an operating entity, the researchers, marketers and strategists have set about reinventing the business.
Taking advantage of the area where it has been strongest in recent years, printing technology, it has abandoned the image “capture” market, and embraced the “post capture” market: everything you do with images after they’ve been captured.
This is best demonstrated with its wireless all-in-one printers, and a mini-application for mobile phones called the Pic Flick App. It is available for BlackBerry, Android phones and the iPhone, and allows you to select a pic, and send it directly from the phone to a printer.
This is where things get really interesting. Kodak has quietly become an innovator in printer ink. Where most other printer ink is either pigment-based (lasts long, but not so bright) or dye-based (super-bright, but doesn’t last), Kodak has come up with a combination of the two that looks good and lasts.
It’s also addressed the single biggest complaint the entire world has about inkjet printers: the cost of cartridges. Most printer companies produce a bewildering array of cartridges at insane prices – typically, a cheap inkjet printer costs less than its replacement ink cartridges.
Kodak has standardised on a couple of low-cost cartridge ranges, under the easy-to-remember labels Series 10 and Series 30. Standardisation also makes them cheaper to mass produce, and suddenly makes it cost-effective to print out photos at home. For example, a black and white Series 30 cartridge, used in Kodak’s HERO and ESP all-in-one printers, costs R99.
The printers take photographic paper and, when an image is sent from a phone to the device, it prints almost instantly – in vivid colour. The look, feel and format is indistinguishable from what you used to collect after handing in your film at the 1-hour photo kiosk.
If Kodak survives the lawyers, it may well be able to define a new Kodak moment: the moment your photo emerges from your home printer.
* Arthur Goldstuck heads up World Wide Worx (www.worldwideworx.com) and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee. Reprinted from Gadget.
A viral video tracking the life path of Nelson Mandela through modern communication channels such as Facebook and Twitter was developed by Prezence Digital.
In the #MandelaStory the producers wonder “Would our nation’s father, Nelson Mandela have spent 27 years in prison if he had access to the same technology, social media platforms, instant sharing apps and global monitoring tools as we do today? Watch the video to find out.”
Happy birthday Madiba! #MandelaStory
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by Andrew MillerTBW 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 agency regrets its past strategy and lays plans for a miracle Mangaung escape. The Gatekeeper moves an important piece across the board…
Chapter 7
In which the bottom line buckles
“Look, there’s nothing for it, we need to cut the living hell out of everything if we’re going to survive. Viral was just the start.” Isaac Ndimande tapped the living hell out of his gold plated pen as he spoke. The board sat meekly and accepted the lashing. “We have to admit we made some big mistakes. We got suckered by the whole boutique basket thing and now we don’t even know who the f*#!k we are any more save for a crèche for little pimply post grads with smart phones. As someone who has managed and watched over the finances of this company for 15 years my view is that we need to kill it all and go back to making adverts for people who want to advertise.”
Anxiety splashed audibly across the room.
Nonhlanhla Mofokeng cleared her throat carefully. “Well, we still don’t know what will happen with the Mangaung thing. He is very well placed to pull something off for us.”
“Oh please. That’s the kind of delusional hope that got us into this kak in the first place.” Isaac Ndimande threw his gold pen onto the table. “We all know He has a brain the size of a pea and disturbingly inappropriate tendencies. Yes, He could pull something off, but He could just as easily end up under the cocktail table with the waitress. If we rely on Him we’ll all be out on the street in our G strings by the end of the year..”
Mama E took off her stenography headphones and clicked the audio feed from the boardroom off. She had heard enough. As she suspected, things were not peachy on the TBWSJWBN front lines. She felt overcome by a powerful need to help, but was unsure exactly how. Clearly a lot rested on His shoulders, and that, of course, was most of the problem. Still, as they always said, behind every great man is a designing woman, or something like that. She may only be a secretary, Mama E thought to herself, but she was a secretary in the right place, at the right time.
She rifled through the presentation notes handed in by the Mangaung strat team and settled on Vati’s submission, entitled Hip Hop and Oral Tradition as Drivers of Social Entrepreneurship – a micro financing proposal for South Africa’s rural areas. As titles went, it had the right kind of bluster to it – this was the kind of thing you could sail up the river without bothering about a rudder. Mama E called up the power point presentation and clicked Begin Slideshow.
Later, in his Hyde Park home office, Tim Broadbent stared at the wall. He had missed most of the early lives of his children, the majority of his relationship with his wife, the 1995 World Cup final, the 2007 World Cup Final, the funerals of both his grandparents and the better part of his own late middle age – supposedly the years when executives wield their power, money and influence.
Tim Broadbent wondered what the hell had happened.
He also wondered why, even though he had three holiday homes and more family vehicles than any one family should ever come onto contact with, even though his wife smiled frequently and all three kids were breeding their own sets of brats, he felt like the loneliest man in the world. Like the only man drowning in paper work; in spreadsheets and retrenchment packages and these stupid, inane, and, yes, now, after all these years he finally had the balls to say it, sinister, communications strategies.
by Mandy de Waal (@mandyldewaal) Take a look at how angry consumers are getting in banks and what’s gone down in Wall Street. Seen a consumer revolution on Facebook or insurgence on Twitter lately? If you’re a big brand that’s been manipulating consumers for longer than you can remember, perhaps now’s the time to be nervous. Mandy de Waal speaks to Martin Lindstrom, author of ‘Brandwashed’ – a book in which the marketing guru turns the heat on his own industry, drawing on all he has witnessed behind closed doors to expose the psychological tricks and traps that companies use to get consumers’ hard earned cash.
Mandy de Waal: Consumers are taking action against greed and what they see as the perversion of capitalism. What does this mean for brands and branding? Martin Lindstrom: Brands should get their ‘house in order’ soon, rather than later. I’m convinced that we’ll soon see a Wikileaks of brands – some independent organisation that will disclose trade secrets and marketing programs from companies across the world without their permission. Many companies will “survive” this as there’s simply nothing to disclose – but some will be hurt greatly because they’ve crossed the line.
MdW: What was the motivation for ‘Brandwashed’? ML: I’ve worked in advertising since I founded my own advertising agency at the age of 12. I’ve seen a lot – and at times become disturbed about what’s going on. Admittedly I’ve been part of this, and feel the time is right to put a line in the sand and push back on some of the techniques used. Had I written a book about ethics I’m sure no-one would ever read or write about it – so I had to write a provocative, thought provoking, edgy book which grabs people attention on both sides of the table. My hope is that the consumer gets a “wake up call” and realizes that they’re probably not as “immune” as they think they are. I also hope they’ll push back on some of the topics I’m raising in the book – like privacy – which (when you read about it) is rather shocking.
In terms of companies I hope the same – over the past months I’ve been on a road tour presenting for them a new set of 10 ethical standards. These are developed by the consumers not by me – but outlines what the “future” consumer hopes / expects from brands. Here’s the good news – all companies – all belonging to the biggest in the world – have bought into these guidelines – giving me a great sense of hope that things indeed can change. I’m fine about Brandwashing people – as long as it is positive – it is when it’s negative brandwashing I start to feel uncomfortable.
MdW: How have consumer relationships with brands shifted? Are consumers becoming more powerful? ML: It all boils down to the computer and network revolution. Consumers have suddenly secured one big voice – so big that we simply can’t overhear it – and companies are increasingly becoming aware of this. In the future this will mean that consumers more and more will begin to take over the ownership of brands – this will mean that companies are giving birth to the brands but asking the consumers to grown and run them.
MdW: What are your thoughts on advertising intrusion, and why has advertising become so intrusive? ML: Because only one thing counts – and that is growth. The concept is called obsolescence – let me explain: The first light bulb invented by Thomas Edison in the late nineteenth century could burn for 1,200 hours. Further developments in the technology of incandescence led to an improved light bulb that could last indefinitely. One only need visit the fire station in Livermore, California to see a light that has glowed continuously since 1901, and still burning. Today, you would be hard-pressed to buy a light bulb anywhere in the world that will burn for more than 1,000 hours.
Obviously, a light bulb that never burns out is not good for business, and so at this fateful meeting, the notion of built-in obsolescence was born. It has been defining our lives directly and indirectly ever since. Buy a printer, for example, and it will stop after 100,000 pages. It’s controlled by a microchip, which if hacked, can at best, add another few hundred thousand pages to the clock. The same applies to fridges, vacuum cleaners, clothes dryers, cars, and of course the first iPod that hit the market in 2001. Products that run on irreplaceable lithium batteries will not last forever, and the need to replace what has become essential electronic items keeps the wheels of consumption happily turning.
All that said – as a new brand is born every second across the world, as we’re watching in average 8 hours of TV commercials 7 days a week for 6 years I don’t need to tell you that the firze competition means more aggressive methods. As growth is the engine – marketing is the fuel. Yet in the desperation to secure growth some companies are going a bit too far, forgetting the importance of ethics – and this is where I am pushing back.
MdW: You consult to brands like Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Disney, yet you’ve written this tell-all book about how brands manipulate people for market share? Isn’t there some cognitive dissonance in that? ML: If you want to change the world you have to work with and not against people. Over the past months I have with great success managed to introduce a set of new ethical standards – the good news is that all companies have bought into these. I’m sure they do this because they really believe it – but I’m also sure they do this because they feel a sense of pressure – perhaps partly fuelled by me and my book. People from outside the industry can’t say things like what I did in the same credible way – not that they’re not credible – but working ‘behind the scenes’ is an advantage. That’s not to say that I’m going against brands – I love brands – but I also know that if they don’t get their house in order there’s a major risk that they’ll soon fail due to the increase in transparency and community bonding among the consumers.
MdW: Please share one or two of the anecdotes you reveal in this book? ML: I was surprised to learn how one of the most popular lip-balm brands of all time called Carmex infuses an addictive ingredient –that eats up living tissue when used –to generate a new level of brand addiction.
Did you know that some supermarkets are designed in such way that we walk counter-clockwise – making us buy more – 6% more. Or that the latest invention is “speed bumps” making us slow down our shopping cart and … yes spend 6% more.
MdW: Fear is a strong theme in marketing. Why and how is it used. What are your views of this kind of marketing? ML: We estimate that 35% of all communication today builds on fear – and it’s grown because fear is contagious and addictive. Fear is used everywhere from the hand sanitising products to fear of being alone, fear of getting sick, fear of looking fat, thin, pale, fear of having yellow teeth…
My views – it is a fine balance – some time it is acceptable to use fear – most time it is not. It all depends on the category, the purpose, and the context.
MdW: Which brands are the most powerful in the world from a word of mouth perspective, and why? What makes them so popular or influential? ML: Apple, Google, Facebook. Google has still not advertised Gmail yet it is one of the biggest email servers in the world. I think it tells it all.
MdW: There are strong calls for reform in capitalism. Do you believe we need new models of marketing? If so what lessons do we need to learn about branding to recreate more sustainable and ethical models of marketing. ML: Yes I do think we need some new models – here’s my ethical guidelines: http://www.martinlindstrom.com/ethics/
by Herman Manson (@marklives) For many people MWEB is still the big black box, which it launched in 1997, the same year the business was established by MIH Limited (a Naspers company). The big black box, in case you don’t get it, was a box, and black, and offered wary South Africans everything they needed to connect to the Internet via dial-up modem, with the payoff line “Just like that” (I still hear the finger snap in the background).
The Big Black Box even included a (printed) book, a specially updated edition of Arthur Goldstuck’s 1995 tech guide The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Internet, helping to turn it into the best-selling IT book ever published in South Africa.
The commercial Internet was new and exciting and big business was getting in on the act. The first dot com bubble had yet to burst and MWEB was spending large swathes of money buying up rival ISPs before its 1998 listing on the JSE.
Today it is a friendly consumer brand wholly owned by Naspers. Its pay-off line has changed to Connect & You Can to reflect the growing acceptance and integration of the Internet into daily lives. It serves a user base of over 300 000 subscribers (which is not that much higher than figures available for 2005 – although it has had success in converting many of those to ADSL) of whom more than 200 000 sits on ADSL. They consume 4.5 petabytes (4,500,000,000,000,000 bytes) of bandwidth per month.
But back in the days of the early Internet it was a brand dogged by controversy, first for gobbling up rivals, its ambitious content play which then included the News24 and The Daily Mail & Guardian (now the M&G Online) operations, not to mention famously burning through R20 million a month just before its delisting in 2001.
ABSA had introduced free dial up for its client base and signed up 170 000 users, quickly closing in on MWEB, in a move that at the time seemed like a threat to MWEB whose then CEO , the late Antonie Roux, scorned the ABSA offer publicly for not being sustainable (and was proved right in the end).
Carolyn Holgate, GM and MWEB Connect, the consumer arm of the MWEB brand, and Karen Dempers, Marketing Manager at MWEB Connect, explains that in the early days of the brand – the Big Black Box days – the technology was new and MWEB needed to position itself in a way which made connecting to the Net look simple and easy. In other words, you bought the box, and MWEB did the rest, just like that.
The Jupiter Drawing Room held the MWEB account for two years before it went to Ogilvy who held it for a decade. By 2007 consumers no longer feared connecting the Net and MWEB repositioned its advertising campaigns to highlight the world of opportunity that existed online. Still – the ads were selling the Internet rather than pushing MWEB as a brand.
Holgate says they manage their pitch processes internally as she views her ad agency as integral to the business and she places a premium on the relationships between people at the agency and how they get along with the people in her marketing department.
So when FoxP2 won the account in 2010 it was because of a combination of great people and its stature as a great creative agency that won it the business. FoxP2 was also the only agency that challenged “Just like that” and came up with “Connect & you can” to showcase the innovative nature of the brand and to take its core service to a less frightened audience.
Dempers says it was important for the brand to move away from its ‘protector role’ (we will do everything for you) as the market had evolved substantially by that point. FoxP2 would create the iconic TV ad ‘Lost’ (see video below) for MWEB. At the same time as moving to FoxP2 it also appointed Vizeum as its media planning agency while Acceleration Media won the digital media planning business. Quirk took the digital account.
Holgate adds that Ogilvy managed the entire advertising process for MWEB from media planning to digital and ATL work. When the relationship ended she did not feel safe entrusting all those aspects to a single agency again, selecting best of breed agencies, although this did ultimately add work strain to the marketing team (of which there is 6 at MWEB).
2012 flipped the fixed line market on its head with the introduction of mass market uncapped ADSL. The Net would no longer be about checking email and browsing some news (ok and other stuff) – you could now stream Supersport onto your computer. This set MWEB up for the next evolution of the Net in South Africa.. As we connect more devices onto home networks and consume more varied media more intensively through the Net the need for quality uncapped bandwidth will keep growing.
FoxP2 would resign the MWEB account on the news that it had won Cell C along with King James (Cell C later cancelled the account shift). This resulted in MWEB moving its ATL, retail and CRM business to its fifth agency since its launch – M&C Saatchi Abel (their first TV work breaks in August).
Dempers says the agency won on the strength of their pitch which she describes as “very impressive,” it also understood the business and had an astute understanding of the challenges it faces, ticking all the problem boxes MWEB had identified internally.
Of course some of the faces at M&C Saatchi Abel Holgate knew from the days Ogilvy held the account, “so we knew their shortfalls and strengths” adds Holgate.
AdEX shows MWEB (this includes the MWEB Connect and MWEB Business operations) spending R67 194 595 on advertising for the year April 2011 – March 2012. Close to R3.8 million of that went online, another R15 million went into newspapers, nearly R10 million went to radio and TV got a whopping R37 million (down slightly from the previous year). Magazine got slightly less than R1 million.
Many South Africans will remember the Polka ISP brand with its seriaasly funny TV ads (see video). MWEB, positioned as a premium ISP at the time, needed an offering to compete on price in the market, and came up with Polka. Holgate helped launch that brand, and says that as ADSL pricing came down, MWEB and Polka finally reached a parity price point, and five years after its launch the brand was folded and its user base integrated into that of MWEB. Draftfcb was responsible for achieving 97% awareness of the brand within its first year.
Core challenges for MWEB include the rise of mobile data and the strength of players like Vodacom, MTN and Cell C in this market, as well as Telkom’s seeming inability to roll out ADSL extensively (it also competes with Telkom in the ADSL market even as it relies on Telkom to roll out the technology it requires to sell its core service).
As Holgate points out – uncapped ADSL still holds an advantage in cost and quality over mobile offerings. For a lot of data and decent download speeds she believes power users will shift to MWEB. Out of four million fixed lines 800 000 are on ADSL which means there is a sizeable market still out there to be converted and opportunity for MWEB to grow further.
MWEB is targeting users with high bandwidth requirements, like online gamers, of whom 50 000 have signed with the ISP. It would make sense for it to pursue other data intensive offerings and although she does not see services such as Netflix arrive on our shores in the short term (due to rights issues) Holgate does see it happening none the less. In fact Multichoice is already experimenting with Boxoffice – its video on demand rental service – online.
Ever cheaper ISPs doesn’t seem to faze Holgate much – she says new users with cheaper connections now will need to upgrade them as their quality of data requirements increase – and she believes the MWEB network would be their obvious choice. The MWEB Tier 1 national network was recently upgraded to 10Gbps with IPC in CPT, JHB and DBN.
MWEB has truly been one of the most consistently visible consumer brands in the history of home-grown Internet firms. Its legacy of helping South Africans go online helped build a broader online industry that today spans ecommerce to content publishing and social media. The big black box might be dead but the MWEB brand lives on.
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says Bryan’s presence at Owenkessel was a major contributing factor to his decision to move to the agency from FNB where he was the marketing manager for FNB EasyPlan – an affordable paperless bank offering.
