The rise of Machine

by Herman Manson (@marklives) So there is this online media sales house right, small fry really, just one guy selling space on a website at a time when internet advertising was fairly undeveloped in the South African market. It’s not really even a sales house, more like a sales guy with a bit of ambition.

He’s selling ad space on the MSN portal from his lounge, but it drives him crazy working from home so he begs a desk at another digital outfit and sets forth to build one of South Africa’s biggest independent ad agencies. Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

Meet Adrian Hewlett, founder of Habari Group, jack of all digital trades, and his latest, most ambitious venture to date, the new ad agency named Machine.

Machine, South Africa’s latest ad agency launch, and probably the most significant since Mike Abel launched M&C Saatchi Abel two years ago, brings together four of Hewlett’s current businesses, namely his current through-the line ad agency Big Wednesday, staffed with former big agency people who know their way around advertising, and which holds Motorola as a key client, Domino, the digital and social agency with some Tiger Brands business in its stable, Habari Direct, the Below-the-Line (BTL) focused activation business whose clients include Nedbank, Appletiser, and Habari Research, his digital market research tool.

Combined they create one of the largest independent agencies in the country, staffed with 80 people, and around R45 million in revenue, with strong BTL and digital competencies, now combined with traditional agency expertise.

It’s a new breed of agency. Some of its competitors, like Native, combined assets with other digital players for scale, to create significant and influential digital agencies, while more traditional agencies like King James have been jacking up their digital offerings and focused on breaking down internal silos to find the digital/traditional sweet spot in the middle.

Machine comes from BTL and digital, the two areas where budget has been flowing to and which its traditional rivals have for years disdained in favour of the more ‘glamorous’ Above-the-Line (ATL) work. In fact, the agency is purposefully positioning itself as ‘a broadly integrated BTL agency with a core digital competency’ according to Hewlett.

Hewlett is splitting up the Habari Group with the sales component; Habari Media and the mass market focused Habari XL on one side and Machine on the other. Wayne Bischoff is the newly appointed MD of the media business with its 30 staff. The company offers media solutions to advertisers via the digital brands it represents and sells media space in the South African and African markets, including social giant Facebook, LinkedIn, MTV and the BBC.

Zambian born, Hewlett also lived in Mozambique before coming to South Africa where he studied at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Hewlett, a rugby player himself (for the UCT rugby team – the UCT Ikey Tigers), married his love of the sport with his interest in marketing and after varsity he started in his first job at online publisher Rugby365, first as marketing manager and later as head of marketing and sales. A stint in London as 365 Group head of e-commerce convinced him Cape Town is where his heart lies.

Hewlett convinced his board to move all editorial and technical roles to South Africa. He soon went from sales to joint MD, at the ripe old age of 24, growing the business from a head count of 10 to one with 60 in only six months. When the group was bought out by a sports betting company Hewlett decided to go on his own. As the sales guy for MSN. It was February 2004.

The business grew slowly and organically as Hewlett added more premium online properties to his sales portfolio. Habari’s evolution into a fully-fledged sales house had begun.

In a bid to reduce the risk of being solely reliant for survival on the whims of a single major client, Hewlett launched a BTL marketing and promotions business (Habari Direct which will now fold into Machine as a division called ‘Creature’). Clients include Nedbank, BMW, Simba, Sanlam and Triumph to name a few. It’s been in business nearly as long as Habari Media and is a cornerstone of the Machine offering.

More divisions were added over the next eight years expanding the business into various new niches. A research business, Habari Answered, launched as an online market research tool. The database of nearly 13 000 South Africans, segmented into specific demographic target audiences and contacted via email and mobile, has a turn-around time of 24 hours. Another sales business that reaches the mass market by selling media space on virtual and physical prepaid airtime vouchers was launched in Habari XL. It has over 40 million bulk airtime recharge vouchers on its books per month and campaigns can be targeted nationally, provincially, by network operator and by voucher denomination. XL also sells space on around five million virtual vouchers (this includes till slips) every month.

Through-the-line agency Big Wednesday launched in 2009. Under the creative direction of Jake Bester (who steps up as group creative director for Machine), the agency has won Motorola, Marmite, Triumph, Sloggi, the Good Food & Wine Show and Hurley. Domino, the groups’ digital and social media division, counts Jeep, Nivea and MySpar amongst its clients.

Each business launched as part of the Habari Group, gained traction and became a worthwhile entity in its own right, with Hewlett at the helm. Hewlett opened offices in Johannesburg and Durban and established an affiliate office in Lagos (and much later launched a new office in Nairobi).

He would only stumble when the company he founded his business on, MSN, decided on a new publishing and sales partner in Kagiso Media after seven years with Habari. Habari saw 30% of its revenue disappear.

Hewlett refused to retrench any staff, believing that in his industry replacing digital talent is a difficult proposition, and it turned out well for Habari because pretty soon it was signed up by Facebook as its South African sales partner, and as interest in social media platforms exploded locally, he would need every hand he had.

Hewlett had been in contact with Facebook for three years at that point without managing to hammer out a concrete deal to represent them in African markets. The Facebook site had been selling skyscraper ads and wasn’t nearly as successful in generating revenue as it is today. But Facebook was about to launch its push of engagement ads – a concept that would change its fortunes, and those of its partners, for the better.

Following a three way pitch Habari Media was appointed in 2010, and in spite of some private reservations as to how engagement ads would be received in the local market, Hewlett and his team haven’t looked back.

With Bischoff in charge, Hewlett expects the business to grow further, relying on Bischoff’s experience in operating large sales teams and budgets. Bischoff was previously employed at amongst others RadMark, Mediamark, the SABC and e.tv, where he helped set up the then new TV stations commercial sales department.

Hewlett describes Bischoff’s appointment at Habari Media as a coming of age for the company. It’s the next brave step beyond where Hewlett could take the business. Habari Media will also be looking for opportunities to expand beyond digital media with Hewlett saying he foresees the company selling on independent TV and radio within the next five years.

Digital revenues are also growing quickly. Hewlett says since 2008 many markets have seen revenues double or even triple annually, but this has not been the case in South Africa, instead the local market is just hitting the tipping point where marketers realise that they have to engage with this space. Giants like Unilever suddenly have significant digital budgets especially as multi-nationals negotiate bulk deals with social networks like Facebook and pass along those discounted rates to local offices. The next three years will be rapid growth years for digital Hewlett predicts.

With Habari Media in the hands of Bischoff, Hewlett can focus on splitting the Group business between Habari Media and Machine, with him taking responsibility for Machine as CEO. Each of the two businesses will be a Pty in its own right although they will continue to share offices. Hewlett says this is to take advantage of the great skill crossover that exists between the two businesses, with Habari’s knowledge of Facebook especially counting in the favour of Machine.

Hewlett envisions that Machine will roll out some of its services, especially on the digital side, at the Lagos and Nairobi offices. Structurally Machine will have a senior client service team working across different business units while project teams work in specialist niches. It will be beefing up its creative offering – a much easier task than building digital competencies into an existing agency – as many of Machine’s competitors are finding out.

Machine is a new agency built on the foundations of multiple successful businesses. They are businesses that already share a group culture, management team and offices. The creation of Machine promises to bind them strategically together to the benefit of clients while also rejuvenating the business internally. It looks like a recipe for success.

Reprinted from the March 2012 edition of AdVantage magazine.

Right of reply:

by Adrian Hewlett, MD, Machine (added 14:52 on 12/05/03) There has been some recent confusion in the market regarding the breadth of service at Machine, particularly the agency’s approach to media. In order to ensure the on-going integrity of the relationships Habari Media has with its clients and to ensure no conflict of interest with those relationships arises,  Machine will not undertake any media bookings for clients or offer any form of media agency solution. In most cases clients who work with Machine will have existing media agency relationships in place and those will remain in place. However, in cases where there is a request for a media service offering, Machine will work with the client to identify a reputable third party agency to work with on that client’s business who will define the media strategy and buying process.

Mobile device brands that are gaining in Africa

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) A flood of new smartphones is arriving on the market in the coming weeks, and all have one thing in common: each appeals to a very specific target market, carefully tailoring its features, attractions and differentiators to the wallet of the target audience.

The flagship phones from the big brands will capture most media attention, while the low-cost phones will truly transform the market.

Exhibit A: The Mi-fone range of smartphones. Billed as the first African mobile device brand, most of its models sell at well under R1000, and target the mass market in African and the Middle East. At the top of the range, a series of smartphones run on the Android operating system.

The entry-level Android model, the Mi-A100, includes two killer features that are rare on high-end smartphones: FM radio, and dual-SIM capacity, which allows users to have SIM cards from rival networks in the same phone. FM is one of the most common requirements among buyers of low-end phones; dual-SIM meets a demand that has largely been ignored by manufacturers over the years, for fear of offending mobile operators who take a dim view of sharing space with competitors.

The Mi-A100 does not have the most responsive touchscreen around, and including Angry Birds is probably a waste, given the game’s demands on responsiveness. However, the Android 2.2 or Froyo operating system and built-in WiFi offers the mass market entrée into the world of apps, web-based e-mail and social networks. Shop around, and you can find this one at well under R1000.

Exhibit B: The Nokia Lumia 710, the baby brother of the Lumia 900 launched in South Africa earlier this year. Not as elegant or sleek as the high-end phone, this is a mid-market device that comes in at under R3000, but packs in a range of content offerings, like Nokia Drive, with Turn-by-turn navigation; Nokia Music, giving access to the Nokia Music Store through the cool Windows Phone interface; and the Xbox Live gaming interface. It runs on Windows Phone 7.5, offering a taste of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system that will run on phones, tablets and computers.

Exhibit C: Somewhat further along the cost spectrum – expected to hit the shelves at around the R4000-R5000 mark – is the new Sony Experia S, due in South Africa in the coming month. It is the first Sony phone to drop the partner Ericsson brand, and it is a thing of beauty. Running on Android 2.3 or Gingerbread, it is the design of the phone and Sony’s customized user interface, rather than the features, that will sell it.

Resting on its side, it resembles nothing less than a miniature flat-screen TV set. The impression is emphasized by a sharp LCD HD Reality display on a 4.3” screen that rivals anything produced by Apple or Samsung. The screen, along with a 12MP camera, allows for 1080p HD video recording and playback – i.e. as sharp as anything you can see on a high-definition TV screen. A 1.3MP front facing camera enables 720p HD video chat. Add 16x digital zoom, autofocus and 3D Sweep Panorama to the main camera, and it begins to sound like something you would buy in an audio-visual store rather than from a phone outlet.

A transparent strip at the bottom of the phone lights up to show off the three main control buttons – similar to those on any other Android phone, but never before housed in such a dazzling setting. In design appeal, the Experia S knocks the spots off the iPhone.

Exhibit D: The Samsung Galaxy S3 will be launched in London on May 3, and is already creating an iPhone-type buzz – a first for a non-Apple phone. Rumour sites have been set up to track market predictions. Key among these, and almost obviously: it will be a 4G phone with a 4.6” screen, run on Android 4.0, better known as Ice Cream Sandwich, and sell at more than R8000. Such is the hype, every expectation is that it will be the high-end phone of the year, even at a high-end price to match.

* 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.

Press freedom, the commission and you

by Herman Manson (@marklives) How wonderful that, in South Africa’s high-volume politics, the chance to step back from the abyss still presents itself.

The Press Freedom Commission report on media regulation seems to have created an opportunity for politicians to jump the puddle that would have sucked them and the rest of us down an acrimonious path to the Constitutional CoPress Freedom Commissionurt and a bareknuckle fight on our hard-fought right to know (the truth – and not just Jimmy Manyi‘s).

The commission, put together by the South African National Editors’ Forum and Print Media South Africa in a bid to creative alternatives to the ANC’s much-reviled proposals for government intervention in the media business (apart from, and on top of, government ownership of three of the four national free-to-air channels, loads of radio stations, a newspaper, various internet platforms and a centralised R1 billion advertising budget).

The commission proposes “independent co-regulation for the print media industry of South Africa” that involves public and press participation in media regulation (skewed towards the public) without state or government participation.

The new system proposes stronger public participation in the Press Council of South Africa (PCSA) and will draw the majority (seven of the 12, in fact) of its members from outside of media circles. The first chairperson will be elected by the council from the press members and the deputy chair from the public members, the positions alternating at mid-term.

The waiver clause in the complaints procedure will be withdrawn and the process will not be classified as “arbitration”, meaning those who those who follow this process maintain all their legal rights. The public advocate may also initiate complaints in the public interest.

The right of reply will be expanded. The commission recommends that “[t]he exceptions to the right of reply to serious criticism in news be limited to non-availability to respond or unwillingness to respond.” Right to reply will also be explicitly included in cases where privacy, dignity and reputation are concerned.

The commissioners would also expand the protection of children going so far as to recommend a clause that “drug and substance abuse by children not be under-reported.” This part of the report seems designed, it might be cynically said, to get the broader public behind its findings.

It would also remove the public interest exemption on the publication of explicit sexual material, in the name of the children, of course (as it stands, there is already no public interest defence when it comes to child pornography).

Numerous ways of bringing the importance of the Press Code to bear on journalists and news rooms are also explored. So it is proposed that “[j]ournalists be tested regularly on their knowledge of the Press Code.”

How this will translate practically is not discussed.

The commission would also encourage the public to “visit newsrooms to acquaint themselves with press publishing processes”. (Can you imagine the internal memos going around on this one? “We’ll have to beef up on HR and the PR dept. Find budget. The sports desk is overstaffed, in any case.”)

A hierarchy of sanctions will be developed by the PCSA, according to a scale of seriousness of infractions. These will take the form of ‘space fines’ – no, editors will not be made stand in the corner of the newsroom – referring to the amount and placing of space to be dedicated to correcting/retracting/apologising for journalistic wrong-doing.

Monetary fines will not be imposed except in cases of non-compliance to PCSA findings.

Digital publishing, the commission rightly found (although it does not state this explicitly) is ungovernable, and so it moves responsibility for regulation to the Digital Media and Marketing Association (DMMA), a body for the broader digital media and advertising industry.

The commission also reiterated the need to develop measurement tools “for the analysis of content diversity and transformation targets.” It called on the Big Four print media owners (Media24, Avusa, Caxton and Independent Newspapers) to “pro-actively address the core issues as raised in the transformation debate, prioritising issues, giving views on poor performance on some B-BBEE scorecard targets and developing core action plans and targets.” Another commission, anyone?

In terms of the actual process, the commission proposes the following process:

Negotiation stage: The public advocate negotiates on behalf of the complaint in the hope of obtaining a speedy settlement with the publication concerned.
Should phase one fail the complaint escalates to the arbitration stage: the ombudsman undertakes “private arbitration” and may decide to make a ruling, or to convene a full hearing.
Appeals stage: The appeals committee is the final arbiter of the complaint. If leave to appeal is granted, two members of the panel of adjudicators will sit with the chair as an appeals committee.

The entire process is subject to review in the High Court but the grounds of review are limited to (a) misconduct on the part of members of the committee; (b) gross irregularity in the conduct of the proceedings; and (c) a review on the basis of an award that was improperly obtained.

In its introduction on its proposal for regulatory governance of the press, the commission states that “[f]reedom of the press implies limited or no State involvement and that is why there is an expectation that an organisation such as the PCSA should be proactive and effective in its efforts to maintain and improve journalistic standards of print media.” It calls for adequate financial, technical and human resourcing of the PCSA.

It warns that “the test of durability and independence of the independent co-regulatory system, as an alternative to courts, is going to be the level of satisfaction that complainants receive in how their issues are handled both at adjudication and appeals levels.”

The founding bodies of the PCSA are PMSA (which includes the Newspaper Association of South Africa (NASA); the Magazine Publishers Association of South Africa [MPASA] and the Association of Independent Publishers [AIP]), the Forum of Community Journalists (FCJ) and SANEF. Only member publications of the associations listed here are subject to the Press Code and to the jurisdiction of the PCSA’s complaints mechanism.

Members of the Press Freedom Commission included the former chief justice of SA Pius Langa as chair, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba , Dr Phil Mtimkulu (academia), Adv Anshal Bodasing (law), Adv Kobus van Rooyen SC (law), Futhi Mtoba (business), Derick Elbrecht (labour), Santie Botha (business and marketing) and Prof Kwame Karikari (international-Ghana).

The report was released yesterday, Wednesday, 25 April 2012, in Johannesburg.

Bizcommunity Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.

Rocket Internet enters SA market with Zando, numerous ecommerce plays

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Zando, a new online fashion ecommerce play funded by Germany-based Rocket Internet, launched three months ago and is literally aiming to rocket through the online retail market to be in the same league like services such as Kalahari.net and Takelot.com.

The offices in the Black River Park office complex in Cape Town seem threadbare but are bustling with people – they number well over a 100 Eugen Petersenalready, according to Eugen Petersen, MD and co-founder at Zando.

Zando’s co-founders include Petersen (Germany), Emilian Popa (France), Manuel Koser (Germany) and Peter Allerstorfer (Austria).

Petersen says the site has its own photo studio and warehouse, and uses a private courier company with branded vehicles and uniforms to deliver merchandise. The couriers also wait at doors while customers fit their purchases – so they can return them if they don’t.

Zando is a South African company, Petersen insists, but with the backing of a global network of knowledge (and cash) via its German backers, giving it access to blueprints and best practice to quickly set up an online retail business. Rocket Internet are investors on several German and French online retailers, including German online shoe retailer Zalando, and fashion portal 7trends, and the template for Zando seems to have been taken from these sites.

Petersen says they researched the local retail market, infrastructure and ecommerce environment and all signs pointed towards a rapid uptake in ecommerce in the local market. The ecommerce market is already growing at 30-40% a year, he says. SA also represented a relatively empty playing field – in Germany there are over 80 000 ecommerce companies – while South Africans like their fashion as much as anyplace else in the world.

SA, says Petersen, needs a fashion supermarket, and Zando aims to establish this.

Petersen and his team wants to build a ‘local Asos‘ – a reference to the online fashion and beauty retailer that attracts 18.5 million unique visitors a month and had 4.0 million active customers in 2011.

At the moment, the local/international product brand ratio on the site stands at 50/50, with the share of international brands expected to grow, according to Petersen. Zando currently has connections with around 200 product brands.

Fashion is aimed at the broader market. Shipping is free if the basket is worth R150 or more. Quality control is a major focus, says Petersen, and there have been few complaints so far. The store competes on convenience and service, Petersen continues, though the price might be a little cheaper than in regular stores, but Zando is not a discount shop. If your product is a day late on delivery you will get a 50% discount – two days late and it’s free – says Petersen.

Innovations include a cash-on-delivery payment option in main centres and the already-mentioned option of trying products on at home while the delivery van waits for you, and returning them if it doesn’t fit.

A marketing campaign is being launched that includes radio spots and magazine advertising in targeted titles such as Cosmo and Elle, with the assistance of the Cape Town agency 60layersofcake. Petersen says the agency won the business because of constant engagement during the pitch process – it kept coming back with questions and requests for more information – something some bigger agencies could not be bothered to do.

Convincing consumers that online fashion retailing is a no-risk proposition will be a major marketing focus.

Rocket Internet is known for bringing ‘cloned’ companies to market in different territories. It also uses infrastructure established for one online retailer to launch others in quick succession. In SA it has already launched, with various degrees of publicity, furniture retailer 5rooms.com; Glossybox which delivers a monthly box of beauty products to your door; and accommodation site Wimdu. Social gift card store DropGifts is reportedly on its way.

Petersen says there are a number of misconceptions around Zando’s launch in SA that need to be cleared up. First, the management team (average age of 28) is here to stay; they intend building a business, and the idea isn’t to jet in and then jet out again. And while it might have a famous backer in Rocket, Zando is an independent entity and not associated with existing online retailers.

Petersen promises a transparent and open culture at Zando – quite different from Rocket, which is infamously loathe to talk to tech blogs, for example. The start-up atmosphere and a low hierarchy will enable quick decision making, Petersen promises, to the ultimate benefit of consumers.

Bizcommunity Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.

Is there such a thing as too much bandwidth?

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Is there such a thing as too much bandwidth? Yes, if you’re trying to sell yet another undersea cable connecting Africa.

Can you have enough bandwidth? Not if you are ultra-connected and hyper-networked. But for the first time, it looks as if Africa may soon have too much international bandwidth.

Until a year ago, it was expected that the total international capacity on undersea cables for sub-Saharan Africa would peak at around 22 Terabits per second (Tbps) – more than ten times what was available just two years ago.  Even at that stage, large question marks were placed over the role, use and impact of this capacity.

Since then, several more cables have been announced, this time connecting Africa to South America, and potentially doubling the already unprecedented capacity available. Of the newly proposed cables, only one has declared its capacity intentions, which has been put at 12Tbps, while one of the others has been claimed could go as high as 40Tbps. Even with only the smaller cable, it takes total capacity to 35Tbps.

Right now, eight undersea cables serve sub-Saharan Africa. Until 2008, there were only two: the SAT3-SAFE cable managed by Telkom, serving West and Southern Africa, and the Atlantis 2 cable, linking Cape Verde to Brazil.

Then came the great cable roll-out of 2009-2011, which has resulted in five new cables switched on by this year, namely the MainOne, Glo1 and ACE (Africa Coast to Europe) cables in West Africa, the TEAMS cable on the East Coast, and the EASSy cable down the East Coast to South Africa.

May 2012 sees the switch-on of the massive 5.12Tbps West Africa Cable System (WACS), which runs down the West coast of Africa and lands at Yzerfontein near Cape Town. The ACE cable was initially intended to be around 2.6Tbps, but plans were quickly upgraded to 5.12Tbps when WACS announced its intentions.

Is that enough capacity for you? Not for some.

In April 2011, eFive Telecoms announced they would build a South Atlantic Express Cable (SAex) cable linking South Africa to Angola, and from there to Brazil and the United States. A mere R3-billion is required for a cable proposed to have a 12.8Tbps capacity.

Then, in November 2011, an almost identical cable route was announced by WASACE Cable Company Worldwide Holding, but with even greater ambitions. The cable would link South Africa, Angola and Nigeria, to Brazil, then on to North America, and finally to Europe.

The proposed cost, $2-billion, will create a cable with a claimed capacity of 40Tbps, and is due for completion ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Not surprisingly, many question whether it will ever evolve from its initial incarnation as a mere PowerPoint presentation.

Even if it does, however, it will not take Africa into a new era of connectivity, nor of unlimited access and capacity.

To start with, total capacity should not be confused with capacity in use. The industry term for used capacity is lit fibre, as opposed to dark fibre, which is unused capacity that has not been switched on. At this stage, well under 1Tb of the potential 22Tb capacity serving Sub-Saharan Africa is in use.

The real benefits of this massive capacity do not lie in the capacity itself, but in the fact that it provides competition, which in turn forces down prices; it provides redundancy, which means we are not at the mercy of the elements or criminal activity when one line breaks; it improves latency, which means less of a signal delay for applications that need instant interactivity; and it entirely removes the traditional bottleneck of lack of international options.

Author Geoffrey Moore, in a groundbreaking analysis of technology life cycles, warned about a chasm that products and services have to cross from early adopters to the mass market before they enter a true growth phase. Many fall into the chasm because they cannot meet expectations.

Cable capacity in Africa is in the process of crossing that chasm, and there should be no surprises when some of the operators, consortia or projects suddenly vanish without a trace.

* 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.

140 BBDO finds new relevance, success

by Herman Manson (@marklives) One year on and 140 BBDO, the agency formerly known as Net#work BBDO Cape Town, has found that its identity change and internal organisational behaviour shift is paying dividends. Of the three pitches it undertook in 2011, it won the two in which it was the incumbent and then scored one of the biggest accounts in Cape Town when it bagged the third in Metropolitan.

The agency also took two awards at the 2011 Creative Circle Ad of the Year Awards for its Mercedes-Benz ‘Test Drive’ work in the print category, 140bbdoand shared the top digital spot for its Good Hope FM mobile band campaign.

Revenue for 2011 grew by 25% and now falls in the R25-R35 million revenue band (yup, that’s rather broad).

“Over the past year, we have gained a sense of our identity and our worth as an agency,” says 140 BBDO MD Eric D’Oliveira. It’s been shaped by the new thinking and behaviour being ingrained into the agency, with its focus on communication that suits the modern age by being sharp, focused and concentrated (also the agency’ mantra).

It now has the reel, the new business, growth in revenue and talent to prove it is back in the game. The agency is also focused on incubating talent internally and has a staff count of 52, which should jump to 60 over the coming months.

D’Oliveira says 95% of first-time sells on new campaigns to clients are successful, which speaks to the quality of the ideas and strategy that goes into the work right from the get-go.

Matt Riley (@mattmanland), head of communications planning at 140 BBDO, says the style of the agency’s award-winning work is fully integrated, as is the studio.

So, when ECD Ivan Johnson quotes from feedback the agency (@140BBDO) received during a Twitter interview with Bizcommunity.com shortly after the rebrand, in which one smart tweep said “al kry ‘n aap ‘n ander naam brei hy nog steeds ‘n lelike trui” (“even if you give a monkey a new name he will still knit an ugly jersey”), he can laugh about it.

Johnson says the strategy was to transform the agency over a two-year period but the results have already been dramatic – as have the business results for clients such as Hunters and Oude Meester. The agency is credited with helping Oude Meester, a rather staid brandy brand, rejuvenate in a campaign which featured American actor Jamie Foxx.

Johnson credits the close team effort between himself as ECD, Riley and D’Oliveira with the successful transformation of the agency, while saying it was less about change and more about focus and instilling a code of conduct and behaviour among staff.

Staff are constantly reminded of ‘the 140 way’ – so, for example, there’s a standing-room only meeting space to ensure things are kept (you guessed it) sharp, focused and concentrated. All sorts of internal communication – such as leave approval forms – have been adapted to 140 characters.

As a journalist, I appreciated the Twitter message which served as its PR for an awards win late last year, while rivals paid good moola for paragraphs of copy quoting the MD on how great his or her agency really is. Theirs got retweeted. The rest got trashed.

Johnson notes an increase in CVs from ad schools where’s he talked about the core principles of 140 BBDO; they indicate that the agency has once again become a cool place to work for.

According to D’Oliveira, 90% of the agency business runs on a retainer model; it’s not money paid automatically but is reliant on output – a new reality in adland. While he expects the overall business environment to remain tough and a squeeze on margins as clients clamour for optimal value, he believes the agency is well-positioned to forge ahead.

The world – people, business, adland – has changed and 140 BBDO is simply keeping pace, says Johnson. Successfully so, it seems.

Bizcommunity Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.

SA agencies take four Yellow Pencils

The 50th annual D&AD Awards has resulted in four Yellow Pencil wins for South African ad agencies. Ogilvy Johannesburg took two awards while Grey Advertising and Net#Work BBDO took one each.  The full list of D&AD winners from South Africa including the breakdown for which categories they were awarded are included below.
 

AGENCY

CATEGORY

PRODUCT
& TITLE

YELLOW
PENCIL

 

 

Grey Advertising

Radio
– Sound Design &Use of Music

Nelson
Mandela Foundation “Martin Luther King Jnr/Nelson Mandela”

Net#Work
BBDO

Radio
– Writing

Mercedes-Benz
“Attention Assist Campaign”

Ogilvy Jhb

TV
– Branding

DStv/Multichoice “MK is”

Ogilvy Jhb

TV
– Promotion

DStv/Multichoice “MK is”

NOMINATION

 

 

Ireland
Davenport

Direct
Response/Digital

Free Zimbabwe “Friend Request”

Lowe
Bull

TV
– 41-60 Sec

Organ Donor “Leila”

Ogilvy CT

Mobile Camp

SAB “Be the Coach”

TBWA Hunt Lascaris Jhb

Poster

Wildlife Endangered “The Last one Left”

IN BOOK

 

 

DDB SA

Press

McDonalds “Kids Birthday Parties”

FoxP2

Radio Camp

Frank.net “What is’nt coming in
2012/Mall/Star Jumps”

Grey Advertising

Radio – over 30 Seconds

Nelson Mandela Fund “Martin Luther King Jnr”

Grey Advertising

Radio – over 30 Seconds

Nelson Mandela Fund “Nelson Mandela”

JWT CT

Direct Mail

Kalahari.net “Textbook Beef burger Shoe”

Net#Work BBDO

Radio – Camp

Mercedes-Benz “Attention Assist Camp.

MetropolitanRepublic/Velocity

TV-Direction

FNB “Dog”

Ogilvy Jhb

Photography

DStv/Multichoice “Nothing’s
Put on”

TBWA Hunt Lascaris Jhb

Press

Wildlife Endangered “The Last One’s Left”

TBWA Hunt Lascaris Jhb

Poster

Wildlife Endangered “White Rhino”

TBWA Hunt Lascaris Jhb

Poster

Wildlife Endangered “Riverine Rabbit”

TBWA Hunt Lascaris Jhb

Press – Art Direction

Wildlife Endangered “The Last One’s Left”

The Jupiter Drawing Room (South Africa) Jhb

Press – Inserts

ABSA “Team of Millions”

The Jupiter Drawing Room (South Africa) Utopia

Graphic Design – Poster

Birdlife “SOS Festival Camp

Y&R

Ambient

LG “Rugby Tunnel”

Velocity Films – Direction for Film Advertising – First National Bank ‘Dog’

Orange Films – Cinematography for Music Videos – Spoek Mathambo_Control

Reputation boost for Ogilvy as ODMA shows success

by Herman Manson (@marklives) The Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy (ODMA), an educational initiative between Ogilvy and lecturer and digital strategist Dave Duarte, has celebrated its first year of contributing to the “geekification of the ad industry,” as Duarte had joked it would do when the academy in its current form was first launched in early 2011.

Initially developed as an in-house course for Ogilvy in Cape Town, the academy has grown into a separate business, with its own offices in Sea Point from where it co-ordinates training in digital marketing to Ogilvy offices around the country.

Although ODMA is open to training staff at any agency or client, the demand from Ogilvy offices has been such that it has not had Odmacapacity to deal with these requests, admits Duarte (@daveduarte), who says the academy has also generated intense interest within the global Ogilvy network.

A solution to capacity problems might be e-learning, which is a radically different course to the current intensive seven three-hour workshops across seven weeks, held face-to-face with batches of agency and client staff.

Duarte believes the success of ODMA is apparent in the transformation of Ogilvy Cape Town’s digital reputation – primarily due to the engagement of staff, often former ODMA students, with digital platforms through Twitter feeds, blogs and entrepreneurial enterprises which launched as course projects but managed to take on a life of their own.

Students are encouraged to launch and conceptualise projects in what Duarte refers to as ‘whitespace thinking’ – where learners are encouraged to think beyond their fields of expertise or knowledge. The course has become a platform allowing peoples’ creativity to emerge, says Duarte.

Former students that have achieved success here include Ivan Colic with his infographic site Afrographique and gaming community 2upGamers. The ‘Heart Gingers‘ campaign for Stimorol gum also originated through the ODMA.

Duarte says the focus of the course is on building internal soft digital skills (rather than hard coding for example) that boosts digital awareness throughout the agency and client organisations. This has already resulted in multiple digital award wins for Ogilvy. Hard skills will be brought on board next, as required.

Duarte says discussion in class, around injecting more innovation into advertising, suggests marketing in safe forms of media should today probably take up 70% of an agency’s resources, while 20% goes into edgy marketing and around 10% goes to digital and transmedia storytelling.

Duarte admits that, as a digital evangelist, he believed digital media was displacing other forms of media, but he has since tempered this view and concluded successful marketing communications rely rather on harmonising media to work together as seamlessly as possible.

The focus of ODMA is to acknowledge that the place of individuals is in the centre of their own world, from where they can access advertising on demand and explore as deeply as they care to.

Initiatives such as “How To Friday” – which is run internally at Ogilvy Cape Town and invites guest speakers to talk about what is happening in communication – make an agency less self-contained and move it closer to broader collaborations, says Duarte, while revealing the potential for resourcefulness, skills and abilities amongst participants.

Duarte says ODMA’s mission to increase digital expertise in the ad industry will hold positive outcomes for media freedom as advertising moves towards this medium.

Clients and agencies need to collaborate closer than ever for their communication strategies to succeed, says Duarte, and the ODMA courses, with their mix of agency and client staff, aim to build a solid platform for these partnerships in the future.

Bizcommunity Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.

Mobile games – the next big thing (expect 71% of South African cellphone users to be playing them)

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) The classic arcade games are making a comeback – on smartphones. We unpack the new era in gaming.

Who remembers playing Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac-man, or Galaxian at games arcades and in the back of corner cafes? That would be a sign of a mis-spent youth somewhere between the late 1970s and early 1990s, before the Internet began its own great invasion.

I blame those games for the extra year or two it took to finish my university degree, but also for guiding me down the path to a fascination with computers. And they were a pointer to what social networking would become a few decades later: immersive, interactive and addictive.

And now, even as new games arrive to offer just that terrible trio of attractions, the old games are back, this time in the form of mini-applications, or apps, for phones.

You can blame Wayne Irving II, who labels himself “Chief Gamer and Pinball Wizard” at an app developer called Iconosys.

He still bears the scars of his own misspent childhood: “My first real date was at an arcade in the bowling alley in Kissimmee, Florida. I guess my plan to impress my date with my arcade gaming skills backfired; I was so nervous that all I could do was play Centepede and Galaxian to show off my stuff, and the girl I was with ended feeling ignored and left out.”

Decades later, Irving has found closure. His company has created versions of Galaxian, Space Invaders and Asteroids for the mobile phone. The versions of the latter two created for Android phones and tablets are called Android Invaders and Anderoids (See gameplay samples at http://www.youtube.com/iconosysgames). However, the games have also been repurposed for the iPhone and iPad.

The significance of these three games lies in the fact that they sparked the global video game industry when they were launched in 1978 and 1979 by Atari and Namco. While pinball machines survived the onslaught, they were never able to match the popularity of those games. In Japan, they caused a shortage of 100-yen coins. In my university residence, you could sell 20c coins at a rate of four for a Rand.

We may not see that kind of frenzy physically today, as the gaming model has moved from per-play to per-download and to buying virtual goods inside games. But that means far more people playing the games, and a far larger population of gamers than at any time in history.

Angry Birds, possibly the most popular game in history, is played by an estimated 30-million people a day. The latest episode in the tale of the annoyed avians, Angry Birds Space, was downloaded 10-million times in the three days following its release last month. In total, the franchise has had more than 700-million downloads.

That dwarfs the popularity of Farmville, the Facebook game that at its height probably destroyed more productivity than real-world traffic. Farmville’s creator, Zynga, raised $1-billion when it went public late last year, valuing the company at $9-billion. It makes four of the five most popular games on Facebook, including CityVille and Texas HoldEm Poker. Around 200-million people play their games a month.

So, when they saw a new gaming app called Draw Something catch fire in the Apple App Store, with 35-million downloads in its first six weeks – not to mention a billion drawings made with the app in one week – the were quick on the draw. They bought the game’s creator, OMGPOP, for $200-million.

Facebook doesn’t buy games, but took Zynga’s lead barely two weeks later. They bought the photo-sharing app, Instagram, for $1-billion. There is little doubt they were spurred on by the fact that Instagram had 30-million users at a time when it was only available for iPhones, and that it had just been released for Android phones. That made it a potential threat on Facebook’s home turf, photo sharing. Instagram also strengthens their position in the mobile arena, where they already have a massive presence with mobile apps for chat and general usage. For them, gaming is more of an add-on, to keep the anti-social coming back to the social network.

Last year, in South Africa, 59% of cellphone users said they played games on their phone, a figure expected to grow to 71% this year. Those were mostly basic, free games, and they were hardly as addictive as the new generation making its way onto phones. So we can expect the figure to rise, especially when the newcomers are also the games that started it all a generation ago.

* 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.

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