Backtrack: How human universals help build great brands

Backtrack pulls stories fstill relevant today rom the archives of our predecessor, media.toolbox, which published media and advertising commentary between 1998 and 2008.

The insight: By understanding what humans across the globe have in common, marketers can begin to build brands that create meaningful connections between products and people. Jan Hofmeyr highlights the four most important factors that need to be considered.

The story: How human universals help build great brands

Date first published: 10|07|2006

In 1968 Paul Ekman, a psychologist, showed that human beings the world over smile in the same way. He identified six emotions – happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise – that show in people’s faces in identical ways, no matter who they are or where they come from.

At the time, it was fashionable to believe that people are shaped almost exclusively by nurture and not by nature. Culture was thought to dominate behaviour. And since each culture had its own values and emotions – or so the argument ran – each culture was unique in special ways. Evidence to the contrary was treated as profoundly threatening.

We know better now; none of us is quite as unique as we like to think. We share something like 95% of our DNA with Macaque monkeys, fully 98% with chimpanzees, and more than 99% of our DNA with each other. This doesn’t mean there aren’t sometimes wild differences across people and cultures; it does mean that human beings the world over have an awful lot of stuff in common. And it is this “stuff” that makes global branding possible.

In  The Blank Slate,  Steven Pinker reproduces anthropologist Donald Brown’s ever-growing list of traits that are found in all documented cultures in history. The implications of human universals for global branding are clear: If the purpose of branding is to create connections between products and people, then these universals are what make global branding possible. To establish a global brand, we need to know what humans have in common, and understand how these influence behaviour. To this end, four important universals and associated behaviours should be considered to see how they impact on branding:

1. Six most basic needs motivate people in all cultures and help to give meaning and purpose to our lives. Pinker’s succinct summary of life encapsulates the six basic needs that cut across all cultures and times: food, shelter, friends, mating, meaningful work, and social success.

The relevance of all this for branding is to understand that products only become brands when they connect to things that are important to people. These six needs provide the deepest foundations for marketers’ ability to create brand connections. In fact, let’s pay homage to just three – friendship, mating, and social success. I hardly need elaborate on the extent to which marketers use these three passions to create space for their brands in our hearts and minds. Here is just one example from Samsung.

2. To meet those needs, a global cultural convergence is taking place as people look for wealth and opportunity in cities. As much as we have in common, it is not hard to identify variations across people and cultures. We may all smile in the same way, but we can easily disagree about when it is appropriate to smile. Within our differences, however, our universal tendency is to strengthen our common bonds. Consider this in the context of urbanization: Worldwide, people are moving to cities in search of wealth and opportunity. And in the city they find a new culture. Cities break down rural patterns of life and extended family structures. They iron out the differences that exist across countries. And so cities combine with our universal aspiration to strengthen the things that we have in common.

There is no environment that is more tailored to the needs of contemporary global branding than modern cities. In the posters Apple used to launch the iPod, the second picture was probably taken in a city in Europe, but it’s impossible to say where was the first picture taken. It could be Shanghai or San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro or Melbourne. Furthermore, you can’t tell what the ethnic background is of the people in the visuals, where they live, or what language they speak. Yet, they are instantly recognizable as members of the young, modern urban elite. Their lifestyle trumps historical and linguistic differences.

3. We are making great strides in learning about how the mind works, both in terms of its social psychology and its brain structure.  Pinker’s elegant definition of intelligence says it is the successful pursuit of goals in the face of obstacles. It is not just about knowledge; it’s about making a success of life. Creating a picture of what the world is like, and working out what we want from it, are two fundamental activities of intelligent minds, and are the context in which brand building takes place.

It takes time to develop a sense of what the world is like. We do so gradually over time as layers of information accumulate and our beliefs and images become firmer. The greater the accumulation of information and the longer the time it takes for an image to develop, the more intractable that image will be.

As for working out what we want, nature has given us a complex motivational system which constantly finds itself wanting to go in different directions. For example, our personal lives involve a balancing act between what we’d like to do as individuals and what we ought to do as members of a family or social group.

From the branding point of view:

  • It takes time to create a strong image
  •  It may take even longer to change an image that’s already developed.
  • It may be easier to change what people think they want from a brand, than to change what they believe about the brand.

At the time the Volkswagen Beetle was launched in the US in the late 1950s, many people would probably have wanted a car described as “big”, “powerful”, and “fast”. There was no way that VW could attach these attributes to the Beetle. Fortunately, they didn’t have to. Doyle, Dayne, Burnbach successfully took advantage of the capacity humans have to change what they think the want. By the mid-1960s, the distinctly un-fast and un-powerful Beetle had become the car of choice for the younger generation.

But, if you insist on changing your brand’s image, what are the requirements for an image-building campaign? Look at Marlboro, once regarded as a woman’s brand. The creative geniuses at Leo Burnett in Chicago came up with the obvious idea that, to give the brand a more masculine image, they should show pictures of masculine men smoking it. Endless repetition of engaging imagery was the key, but we also learn that, if you have to change an image, you have to give yourself time. Few people know that it took Leo Burnett five years to work out that the best masculine image for the brand was the cowboy, and 18 years for it to become the USA’s number one brand – 18 years of relentless use of the desired image in an engaging way.

How much time are marketers given these days to create brands? Embarrassingly little.

4. The processes by which we become attached to things – or withdraw, as the case may be. The key to understanding the way people become attached to brands is to recognize that it’s no different from the way we become attached to anything. People usually use brands with functional purposes in mind: laundry detergent brands to clean their clothes; cool-drinks for refreshment and for pleasure, cars to go places, etc… But what takes us to the next level of attachment – when we become so attached to something that we are willing to be forgiving when it lets us down? What causes this willingness to forgive? Involvement. When a relationship – human or brand – matters to a person, they will be willing to put up with a certain amount of disappointment. And the more the relationship matters, the more dissatisfaction they will tolerate.

Marketers know that people can become almost irrationally attached to brands, but only recently have we been able to see the brain mechanisms that cause this. These show that by repeatedly embedding brand consumption in contexts that resonate with meaning to people, marketers link the functional aspects of brand performance to the emotional contexts that give brands a deeper relevance. These links become involuntary.

In closing, having developed some insight into human universals and behaviour, it’s important to note that there is still plenty of room for variety and conflict. People differ as a function of their gender, their levels of education, and their generational cohort. Our common values are no guarantee that we will share the same social space peacefully. I’ll pay more attention to some of our differences in future articles.

— This article is an edited extract of the full version published in Synovate’s international journal. Jan Hofmeyr is developer or co-developer of measurement systems for marketing research including: The Conversion Modeltm; Brand Value Creator; Connections; True Customer View. He is also co-developer of the Intellection Reporting Platform.

The myth of the ‘digital born’

Are children really “digital born”? ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK argues that this fondly held belief is a myth. He suggests a tool used by kids that adults can also embrace to become “digital made”.

How is it possible that the typical child is so much more adept at using gadgets than the typical adult? How did we come to stereotype the neighbour’s 12-year-old son as the expert who will sort out our computers, cellphones and TV programming? And why are teachers terrified of exposing their ignorance to their hyper-connected students?

The answer, we are told, is that this generation of children came into the world already adept at using technology. They were “digital born” or “digital natives”. The rest of us are “digital immigrants”, who have had to learn the art, science and reality of gadgets through blood, sweat and embarrassment.

It only takes a few moments of vigorous application of common sense to lay waste to this myth. A child is born today in much the same manner as a hundred years ago, before the concept of consumer technology had been imagined. Some may be surrounded, at birth, by machines that go ‘Ping’, but the sound of electronics does not imbue a comfort with electronics.

A child today grows up surrounded by consumer technology, but that is the technology that we adults placed in their environment. We didn’t buy the computer when the child was born in the hope that it would wean them off the breast. We were already using those devices.

So where do we find the answer to this most puzzling generation gap of our times?

We found one explanation in a research project conducted among school children at both private city schools and township government schools in South Africa. We asked the children how skilled they believed they were in the use of various computer, Internet and cellular applications.

You might expect the children to exaggerate their abilities and rate themselves highly across the board. Instead, we found they were happy to give an honest account of themselves, as they themselves wanted to know where they fitted into the bigger picture. When it came to business applications, they were clueless. When it came to gaming and social applications, their scores shot through the roof.

The most fascinating aspect of all was how familiar children across the board were with spocial networks like MXit and Facebook, with cellphone features like e-mail and Internet browsing, and with specialist tools like advanced searching.

We asked teachers the same questions and, in most of these areas, they were way behind the children.

We then, informally, watched children and teachers using computers and cellphones. It became clear, almost instantly, how the kids pick it up so fast, and why teachers remain so far behind.

On the one hand, the kids are both fearless and curious. The idea of being scared of technology strikes them as absurd. They have a deep curiosity about the way things work. Probably the same as kids did a century ago.

The teachers, on the other hand, have a deep fear that they may not be able to work out how things work. As a result, they seem to imagine, they will show themselves up to their colleagues and students. Moreover, their own self-confidence will take a massive knock. For adults, all of those are serious consequences.  The result: they would rather shy away from the new technology.

On the other hand – and this is the big discovery – children naturally do something that adults tend to avoid. They share their discoveries, and they ask each other about the tipis, tricks, shortcuts and workarounds they have found. Adults – teachers and parents alike – tend to keep the good and the bad to themselves.

Children are in effect engaging in good, old-fashioned peer group learning. We can call this 21st century version Digital Peer Group Learning.

That is the key to the digital age, and the tool that teachers can embrace to bring themselves up to digital speed. It’s unlikely to happen by itself, so schools could introduce programmes and processes that not only encourage, but rely on sharing knowledge.

Teachers may not be digital born but, as with children, they too can become digital made.

* Arthur Goldstuck heads up the World Wide Worx market research organisation and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. You can follow him on Twitter on @art2gee. Reprinted from Gadget.

Free to air broadcaster ‘not blowing all its budget on content’

New South African free-to-air player Breeze TV has released its broadcasting strategy to the investor community. According to the broadcaster, the strategy is closely modelled on those developed by local (if un-named) free to air stations.

‘The strategic essence is simple, yet powerful economically,’ writes Breeze Pty Ltd Chairman Harold Kingmaker in the station’s investor update. ‘The brand has licensed six movies, all made within the last fifteen years, and will repeat them over a sustained period, thereby slashing running costs. The strategy has proved very successful for local broadcasters – in all important aspects Breeze TV is following South African best practice.’

The movies to be shown by Breeze are:

•    The Fast and the Furious I
•    Pride and Prejudice
•    I, Robot
•    Anaconda
•    The Fast and the Furious II
•    Oh Shucks its Shuster

To augment its movie selection the new station has secured the rights to all the worst games of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

‘We’ll show every game between the worst teams at the tournament, and that’s guaranteed,’ says Kingmaker. ‘We know our viewers are really looking forward to Namibia vs Canada. Russia vs Brazil is another highlight. In addition, we’re delighted to say we’ve secured the rights to a quarter final as well, but we won’t be able to reveal which game that is until moments before the match.’

Breeze is mandated to broadcast a high percentage of local entertainment content. Here, the station will follow the local model strictly.

‘Our entertainment producer has got a lot of friends in music PR,’ explained Kingmaker in an interview with this reporter. ‘This is very fortunate as it aligns with the local formula, which relies on not buying  material at all.  Instead we’ll rely on our producer’s friends giving him free content on their acts that they shot themselves. This creates the opportunity to run two or three local ‘making of’ music documentaries on repeat for stretches of six months or more. Providing we select a twelve year girl star and a rapidly ageing bunch of country-western has beens, we expect similar returns as achieved by other local players in terms of a reduction operational costs.’

And cost, ultimately, appears to be the name of the game. ‘Look, we want to make money,’ concludes Kingmaker. ‘So there’s no point blowing all our budget on content – that’s proved to be the road to bankruptcy. If we don’t spend a cent and cynically ride the public’s willingness to watch any old garbage again and again we’re confident we’ll have a sustainable – and even profitable – business on our hands within year one.’

– Andrew Miller has been a media and corporate ghost writer for the last 13 years. He used to write marketing satire under the John Doe pseudonym for Brand Magazine and Media Toolbox. When not releasing communications bile, Andrew runs Newtown’s Unity Design, a socially orientated arts and media company. Catch up with Unity on Facebook and Twitter.

Stuff magazine: “like lipstick and shoes for men”

Billed as the world’s best-selling gadget magazine, Stuff is known for its laddish tone and accessible take on all things technological. The South African edition, launched in November 2007 by Avusa Media under the editorship of Toby Shapshak, has seen excellent circulation growth, thanks to its editorial mix of gadgets, gear, technology and scantily clad cover models.

Toby ShapshakShapshak is a widely respected journalist and editor. Apart from editing Stuff, he is also a columnist for The Times newspaper and a contributing editor for Business Day’s Wanted magazine. He has also written for the Mail & Guardian, Sunday Times, Sunday Independent, Financial Mail, ThisDay, The Observer in London and various local magazines including GQ, GQ Cars, Maverick, Empire, Best Life, Elle Decoration, Visi, Marie Claire, FairLady, Cosmopolitan and SA Sports Illustrated.

Shapshak is also taking over from Kevin Fine as host of the Biz Takeouts, the weekly Bizcommunity/Chai FM Marketing & Media radio show, on air every Wednesday evening 6pm-7pm (101.9 Chai FM in Johannesburg or via live audio streaming) and then made available as a podcast later during the week.

Herman Manson: Can you share some stats on the growth curve the magazine has been experiencing the past couple of years?

Toby Shapshak: Stuff’s circulation has grown 25% year-on-year for the last two years running, even in periods when magazine sales have declined. In the ABC report for Q2 2010, Gordon Patterson commented that Stuff had driven the growth of the entire male consumer category.

According to the most recent ABCs, for the April-June 2011 quarter, Stuff’s circulation is 23 215. It grew 17.7% quarter-on-quarter and 29% year-on-year. With ABC-audited sales of 19 728 for July-December 2010, we were expecting to exceed the 20 000 barrier. Our May-June issue sold 25 140 copies (as yet unaudited).

Manson: What makes Stuff such a successful gadget magazine?

Shapshak: “Stuff is the iPhone of magazines…” as our mercurial deputy editor Charles Boffard once said. I think people love technology and love reading about it. Stuff does it in a reader-friendly way that isn’t too techie or too complex. We’re not afraid of using white space in our layouts. We’re not afraid of using white space in our layouts and showing off the technology beautifully. Gadgets are increasingly design objects themselves and we like to give them their due.

When I first launched it [Stuff] some of Elle’s staff asked me what it was and I called it “lipstick and shoes for men”.

Manson: Can you describe the editorial tone?

Shapshak: Witty, a little cheeky, and well-informed. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We pride ourselves on making tech easy to understand and use.

Manson: Is it really where FHM and Popular Mechanics meet?

Shapshak: Not a bad description of Stuff’s tone, but the difference is that Stuff is used much more as a buyer’s guide by readers.

Manson: Does those scantily clad cover models on your covers really sell more copies? What was the strategy there?

Shapshak: It’s a publishing formula that is pretty well-established around the world. You’d be surprised at how often I find myself answering this question.

Manson: Tell us about your typical reader?

Shapshak: Predominantly but not exclusively male, LSM 8-10, interested in technology and how he can have fun with it. And there’s usually a particular gadget he’s planning to buy.

Manson: For a gadget mag, you have a rather non-functioning website. Any plans in the works?

Shapshak: Don’t mention the war.

Manson: Will an iPad version (like the one out of the UK) affect local sales as tablets make headway in the SA marketplace and become easily accessible to locals?

Shapshak: I don’t think so. Tablet owners are still in the minority in South Africa. The most reliable figures I have are 60 000 iPads and a total of 80 000 tablets.

Manson: When you look at the local competition, does it come from print or online?

Shapshak: The local competition is primarily print. There’s certainly nobody local online who even attempts Stuff’s editorial mix and informal relationship with readers.

Manson: You are taking over the Biz Takeouts radio show from Kevin Fine – what plans do you have for it?

Shapshak: I’m excited, if not a little apprehensive. It’s a long way from covering politics and sport. What I’ve seen in the world is how intricately marketing and the business of marketing permeates everything. I’m also a big fan of radio as a medium. I think it’s still the killer app in Africa.

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

What to do about the ‘Why’ – Joe Public’s journey to purpose

A radical rock star wannabe, Pepe Marais, executive creative director of Joe Public, describes how, in retrospect, he sees himself in the early days of his advertising career. Over the past five years he has come to redefine himself, cleaning up his act, in his words, in step with the transformation of the agency he co-founded with business partner Gareth Leck.

Marais – and Joe Public – has gone looking for purpose, and he believes he and the Joe Public team has found it, by asking why. Why live life like we do, why do business as we do and, once an answer is found, what to do about the why?

Marais doesn’t give much away as to what initiated his personal quest for transformation – but a drive to find substance in life is a universal need, no matter what the trigger – and this may well have brought Marais to a point of introspection. Once found, of course, that quest for substance will permeate all aspects of life we deem significant. The business you helped found would definitely count in that category.

Leck and Marais initially launched Joe Public in Cape Town off the ‘take-away’ advertising concept – clients picked and paid standard rates for services from a menu – and, while successful, Marais says it wasn’t sustainable over the long run as the agency grew. Joe Public was later bought by FCB which merged it and its ‘second-agency brand’ sibling Azaguys in 2004. It also closed the Cape Town office.

Joe Public finally went independent again in 2009. Marais says the company could not be owned by others if it were really going to flourish. Being a ‘second-agency brand’ of another business was contradictory to where he and Leck wanted to go with the business, and they needed to lift the heavy hand that comes with being a subsidiary off the tiller to move ahead.

Two years of negotiations preceded the buy-out but, ultimately, it was decided by Leck and Marais that they would leave if negotiations were not going to succeed. That pretty much decided it. The duo got their wish. And they won’t be selling again, asserts Marais, who says they have refused two big networks already. At last week’s office-warming, Leck described the process as “taking our destiny into our own hands again’ and credits the move for creating ‘a great sense of possibility again’ at the agency.

As they took back control of the business, Team Joe Public started to ask serious questions about the purpose of their business. A series of staff workshops over the course of six months resulted in Joe Public defining three core purposes for the business: to grow the people that worked there, the people around them and their clients’ brands. So growth in many guises and not just financial.

It would form the foundation for their new positioning, Growthn (growth to the power of n), with n standing for a growth mindset that sees every opportunity and sees every setback as an opportunity to grow.

Today, Joe Public facilitates a process, ‘why digging’, with every willing client who looks for the core purpose of that business. It’s a process that helps brands step up to define what they really stand for. It is a process that contributed to helping vehicle tracking company Tracker transform from a product company to a service company, with a communication strategy aligned to the new business purpose, says Marais.

Marais ascribes Joe Public’s recent growth spurt to executives seeing the value of its Growthn strategic business proposition. Over the past three months, the company has added billings of over R90 million to the business after signing up Foodcorp (ATL), Cobra Taps and Incolabs (owners of Lipice and a host of other brands). The three companies own numerous FMCG brands between them.

Marais says his own and Leck’s hands on-approach and active engagement with clients have helped create the best work they have ever done, citing their work for Clover as an example of this. Their newfound financial responsibility (buying back an agency would do that to you) also translates to how they work with client budgets, says Marais.

Joe Public believes in building long-term relationships with clients; Marais says the strategies that Joe Public puts in place takes several years to work through, in any case. He questions the long-term objective of much of the work the industry produces – and clients buy into.

Much of the profit growth Joe Public is experiencing comes from work traditionally considered below the line, followed by retail and digital.

Leck says it’s a business he wants to keep on building; like Marais, he isn’t looking to sell again. He’s building a business he wants to leave to his kids someday – how many agency execs have you heard admit to that?

So Joe Public, and its founders, have asked themselves some tough questions, and found some real answers. For them, the journey to purpose equals Growthn. It’s personal, it’s business, it’s the basis, they hope, for something substantial, of purpose. In adland – how great is that?

“Growthn explained by Gareth Leck: ‘Growth to the power of n: where ‘n’ is the leverage; where ‘n’ captures the sense of possibilities we want to promote, not just normal growth, but growth to the power of n; and where ‘n’ ultimately stands for the growth mindset – the mindset that makes you see every opportunity, every single day, and every temporary setback as opportunities to learn and grow. The mindset that is required to create powerful ideas – ideas that will make a meaningful difference to our brands.'”

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

Radio enjoys a healthy second life online

In the second of a series of columns (see part 1 here)  on the future of music, ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK explores the impact the Internet’s Audio streams have had on radio.

As one traditional delivery channel for music, namely the record store, faces its demise, another is thriving. Radio was meant to be an early victim of the Internet revolution, given how easy it is to deliver an audio stream online. Instead, it remains the most pervasive mass medium in the world, reinventing itself again and again as it migrates onto cellphones, and uses the Internet to intensify its engagement with listeners.

Even in the United States, where online advertising has overtaken radio advertising, the former has failed to kill off the latter, and radio advertising holds its own year after year. The surprising trend lurking beneath radio’s survival, however, is that time spent listening to conventional radio has plummeted in the past decade.

According to Edison research, in 2000 around three quarters (74%) of American teenagers and young adults regularly listened to radio. By 2010, that had dropped to 41%. At the same time, listening to audio on the Internet had grown from 16% to 42% – overtaking conventional radio in this segment. And what happens among young adults now, migrates to older adults before long.

According to eMarketer, the total Internet weekly listening audience reached no less than 29% of the US market last year, and will rise to 68% by 2015. At the heart of this growth is a company called Pandora Media, which is responsible for the Pandora Radio app, one of the most popular in the world of smartphones and tablet computers. They claim 100-million users, and made $67-million from advertising in the last financial quarter.

We are seeing nothing like those kind of numbers in South Africa, where radio is still largely confined to comparatively archaic stand-alone devices. But the emergence of apps in the South African phone and tablet user’s awareness has brought with it exposure to the best of global radio. From the customisable radio of Last.fm to stand-alone stations like BBC Online Radio, there is little audio broadcast content that cannot be accessed online.

The TuneIn app even includes among its hundreds of radio stations numerous stations from across Africa and most in South Africa. Appropriately, Radio Sonder Grense (“radio without borders”) is in there. So are Ukhozi FM, Metro FM and Chai FM. This is cross-cultural content at its broadest.

However, the Web browser remains the key tool for accessing Internet radio in South Africa. Aside from most conventional radio stations offering an audio stream off their web sites, new Internet-only radio stations are popping up on browsers everywhere.

A few years from now, you will need the equivalent of an in-depth TV guide to navigate the online audio streams. Meanwhile, try these on your browser:

  • Hip2B2 Radio – education station from Mark Shuttleworth’s Foundation
  • Mutha FM – “listen to your mutha and get on your dancing shoes”
  • Rock Out Radio – for listeners who long for the days of rock radio
  • Voice of Rock – yet another contendor for filling the rock gap abandoned by commercial radio

We are seeing nothing less than the rebirth of radio, as it enjoys a healthy second life online. Aside from a few exceptions, in South Africa advertising revenue is not yet following the audience online. In the USA, it is one of the most powerful trends in media. For an obvious reason: it is possible to measure and track listenership precisely. That has never been possible in traditional radio.

Digital radio – via the Web, cell phone or apps – also makes the listening experience customisable beyond the volume switch.

Of course, this is not radio in its strictest definition, which entails broadcasting over the air. For this reason, we hear more and more about an Audio rather than Radio market. We will also hear far more about audio-on-demand – customising your own station.

When that becomes a standard demand, online will become the dog wagging the tail that will be conventional radio.

* Arthur Goldstuck heads up the World Wide Worx market research organisation and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. You can follow him on Twitter on @art2gee. Reprinted from Gadget.

NewsNow misses chance for print/digital integration

The launch issue of NewsNow/NuusNou has hit the newsstands. The new weekly, published by Media24 Magazines, publishes on Fridays and retails at R20.

Any new weekly print product means serious money invested, even if, as in the case of NewsNow, content gets aggregated from various sources by a handful of editors, minimising investment in content.

The concept, its editors say, is to adapt the way people access and digest news online for print. That means short snippets containing the thrust of a story before you flip to the next item of interest.

The problem, for NewsNow at least, is that news stories accessed in this manner online is usually current, whereas in printed form and a week later, skimming over the basic facts seems pointless and a waste of time, especially if your target market is probably well-informed.

The publishers of NewsNow argue that the lack of time in the lives of modern consumers is exactly why they are publishing this magazine. But they assume that their target market has happily waited for this digest of news to arrive at the week’s end. Those in the know, with apologies to the magazines strap line (‘Keeping you in the know’), in all likelihood access several local and international news sites daily, watch SKY, BBC News, CNN or Al Jazeera (or just as likely flips between them) and sift through several print news products a week.

Yes, even those short on time find time for news, and they are the ones most likely to take an interest in a publication such as NewsNow.

Let’s do a short analysis of the launch issue’s cover story on the 10th anniversary of 9/11:

Hijacked jetliners smash into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, while another goes down in a field outside Pennsylvania. Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda become household names. Events on the day eventually result in the invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq, while new legislation rolls back civil liberties in the United States (well, everywhere), while the relationship between Muslim communities and the US is compromised. The US doesn’t yet feel any safer 10 years on and the use of 9/11 as a basis for the attack on Iraq has been thoroughly discredited. The US is only now withdrawing troops from the countries it invaded. The end.

Would the story work in a general interest title such as Huisgenoot or You, two of NewsNow’s stable mates? Yes, it would, it’s a good overview of what happened – kids are sure to take clippings to school for class discussions. Does it offer any key insights or analysis – yes, even of the aggregated kind – to somebody who might typically pick up a news magazine? I think not.

The story reflects a number of missed opportunities. It offers no integration with digital media, and this is a print product that really is well-suited to be leveraged online, eg, by offering the research links online on every story published.

Instead of a rehash of events, what about aggregating some of the best insight and analysis on 9/11’s impact on our personal freedoms (RICA, FICA, rendition), business (hospitality and travel, a new class of security companies that seem to make up their own rules with impunity) or convenience (mothers drinking their own breast milk before being allowed to take on on-board airlines)?

There is 10 years’ worth of thinking out there on how the events of 9/11 have transformed the world – much of it online – so aggregate away. Just aim to shoot a little above average.

I’m also not sure that the bitty nature of the shorter pieces translates into print. Online news content, the reading model the publishers of NewsNow claim to be adapting into print, offers the opportunity to click through to a page that contains only the text you want to read, after having scanned short headlines and blurbs. In print, it’s a mash-up of headlines and copy that doesn’t really allow the reader to focus on any one item.

It’s a major beef I also have with iMaverick, the new daily tablet newspaper currently available as free beta edition active pdfs while the iPad app is awaiting iTunes approval, in that where newspaper meets magazine with a dollop of online, I’m simply not tuned into this kind of reading experience, and find no real joy in it.

Overall, NewsNow’s grid-like layout seems rigid and conservative, with limited use of photos or colour, and no infographics to tell stories visually (although it does offer two pages of infographics in the Pick of the Week section). Maybe it’s an indicator of a weakness in journalism; our inability to grasp that images and graphics extend and enhance the written word means often we fail our readers on this count. Again, I also point a finger at iMaverick.

Even the ‘Powerful pictures’ in NewsNow picks which aims to highlight some of the best news photography around has four images shovelled onto a single page, breaking their power.

The magazine’s strength lies in its ability to pick out the best global content and aggregate it, as its Pick of the Week segment shows, and this section makes the title for me, rather than the news content. Great columns, cartoons, letters from readers, magazine covers, pictures, blogs, and graphics take up only six of its 48 pages (including covers), when really I would have been happy for this to take up the entire magazine.

Imagine picking up a copy of NewsNow/NuusNou every Friday, and reading up on the best analysis and insight available in the international and local news media, while surfing to the actual, full text content via links on the websites of the stories and images that really caught your attention. A less conservative design could be used to effectively draw readers into stories while making the product feel premium (design does that – just ask Apple).

News24 was made to be read online, in the moment, with breaking news. It’s not a model that translates into print; at least, not for me. NewsNow can be made relevant to the modern media consumer with a little more strategic thinking and less old news content.

For now, I prefer my news now, and online.

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

Asus expected to shake up tablet market with eee Pad Transformer

The WiFI version of the Asus eee Pad Transformer sneaked into South African stores in July with little fanfare. But the high-end 3G unit arrives this month, and Asus expects it to shake up the market. ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK assesses its chances.

Four years ago, Asus was one of the earliest and most aggressive players in the Netbook market with its Eee PC. It practically invented the format.

So, when Apple redefined portability with the iPad in 2010, Asus was expected to be one of the first challengers. And, indeed, it hit the market mere weeks after the iPad, confusingly announcing an e-reader it called a Tablet, and a tablet it called a Pad. The fact that Apple didn’t immediately take them to court may well have been an indication that these devices posed little challenge to the iPad at the time. Fast-forward a year, and Asus has a device on the market that goes beyond the iPad.

It’s called the eee Pad Transformer, a 10.1” tablet running Android 3.0 or Honeycomb, and offers an optional docking keyboard that also boosts battery life from 9 hours to 16 hours. Well-priced at $399, its first production runs – estimated at about 100,000 – reportedly sold out immediately in some markets, and in June it shipped a further 300,000 units.

That it remained in short supply is an indication that, with more aggressive and courageous marketing, it could join the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 as the main challenger to the iPad.

The first version of the eee Pad (pronounced “e-pad”) was WiFi only, and that’s the version that arrived quietly in South Africa in early July. September sees the 3G version arrive in South Africa, around mid-month.

“We have some significant retail developments to be announced in September which will boost our unit sales,” says Tyrone Grüner, Asus product manager at Platinum Micro.

He points out that the Asus eee Pad Transformer has quickly become the number one-selling “open” tablet in a number of international markets. Its success, he says, is a design which delivers against the demands of a market spoilt for choice.

“While a number of Android tablets are emerging, the eee Pad is winning market share owing to its battery life, performance and design. It is on these criteria that it is unbeatable,” he says.

Asus also makes much of the fact that, in July, it was reported that Asus has assumed the mantle of the world’s biggest non-iPad tablet maker.

“This is significant,” says Grüner, “as there is no shortage of competition in this segment of the market. With over 400 000 units shipped, and with the Asus device listed as the number one selling tablet on Amazon.com in April this year, consumer demand is strong.”

It’s not the tablet alone that is selling, he adds.

“What is particularly noteworthy is that the bundle including the keyboard is the top-selling configuration. This tells us that tablet users want more than touchscreen input from their device. That’s especially true as the tablet is seen not as a ‘play’ device, but one which is at home in the office or after-hours.”

In the light of criticism that Sony’s newly unveiled Tablet P is “plasticky”, it is also significant that the eee Pad uses high-quality materials that include brushed aluminum. It takes on the iPad with dual front and rear cameras, the Galaxy Tab with an SD and MicroSD card slot, and delivers on the now standard tablet expectations of embedded GPS, Bluetooth and  WiFi connectivity.

Since it uses the Google Android operating system, says Grüner, “it represents an ecosystem which is delivering hundreds of thousands of apps to the user. Easy interoperability with compatible mobile phones is assured, which, when tethered, create a WiFi hotspot. With support for Flash and supplied with the Polaris Office suite, the versatility of the device is clear.”

At $399 in the USA, the eee Pad is the most affordable Android Honeycomb tablet on the market. However, this price advantage is not carried over to South Africa. The official prices announced in June start at R4499 for the 16GB version, which at first site appears to compare directly with the iPad 2’s R4 399 for its own 16GB version.

But comparing Apples with Asuses, this is plain poor strategy. The comparable US prices being $399 and $499 for the Pad and iPad respectively, the South African cost for the eee Pad should be around R3600. That would make it far and away the cheapest major name brand large format tablet in South Africa (with only Huawei’s 7” Slim at the same price point), and give it an unbeatable advantage in this market.

Perhaps we will see more competitive pricing when the 3G version arrives in bulk. Meanwhile, the reseller channel – Hirsch’s, Look & Listen, Computer Mania and Chaos are lined up to stock the device – should expect customers to demand that it be better than the iPad if they are expected to pay the same price.

Grüner is confident the customer will make the right choice: “Consumer demand is there; it’s hard to describe the appeal of this product without seeing it for yourself, so we believe that as word of mouth gains momentum, there will be plenty of people who are looking for the advantages of great hardware design combined with Android’s appeal who will choose the Asus tablet above any other. We’ve seen it internationally; we’ll see it in South Africa, too.”

* Pricing for the Asus eee Pad Transformer is estimated at R4499 (16GB), R5499 (32GB) and R6499 (32GB dock bundle). Final pricing is reseller-determined. For more, including specifications and demonstrations, click here. For more information on Platinum Micro, visit www.platinummicro.co.za

* Arthur Goldstuck is the Editor-in-Chief of Gadget. Follow Arthur on Twitter on @art2gee. Reprinted from Gadget.

New business focus, units build a braver RamsayMedia

RamsayMedia has been undergoing a strategic transformation over the last three years under the management team lead by MD Stuart Lowe.

While the closure of three titles in recent years, including Afrikaans travel lifestyle magazine Mooiloop (in late 2008), Afrikaans motoring title Wiel (in late 2010) and the wine-focused consumer monthly Wine magazine (in mid-2011), leaves the impression that the publisher is struggling, Lowe says closing the titles were a brave move to shift focus and energy to a new 360-degree multimedia strategy built around sound and profitable brands.

RamsayMedia had previously supported Wine magazine over the course of 20 years, even though the magazine had only turned an annual profit three times in its existence. Obviously, the status quo was no longer sustainable at Ramsay – the name of the new game is playing to its strengths and investing in businesses with real potential.

Lowe says the company has just emerged from a strategic alignment session looking back over the past three years since the current management team took charge. The process involved the entire staff providing insight and feedback relating to how RamsayMedia has been responding to industry change, including on what the business been doing right and what it’s been doing wrong, as well as the way forward.

It has allowed the business to define its metrics for success, says Lowe. It’s also allowed the company to take its 360-degree multimedia thinking beyond the senior management team to every member of the RamsayMedia team.

Lowe says the company is adapting its structure to allow younger, digital savvy people a voice in the strategic direction of its brands, which still includes Car, Getaway, Compleat Golfer, Leisure Wheels, Popular Mechanics and business-to-business (B2B) title Hotel & Restaurant.

Apart from pushing a multimedia strategy for all its existing brands, RamsayMedia has launched a number of new divisions, including an already successful content marketing arm and a research business. It is also looking for acquisitions in the B2B space, including individual titles and B2B publishing houses, a digital agency and an events and experiential marketing firm.

Lowe insists the core pillar of Ramsay’s business model remains magazines – it’s simply the shape and size of the magazines that are morphing. Magazine output growth has doubled over the past years despite the closure of certain titles, while advertising revenue for its digital products are experiencing growth of between 70 and 80% a year.

When you talk about digital publishing in South Africa, you still talk cents as opposed to rands in print, says Lowe, since local online ad spend lags international norms dramatically. RamsayMedia has seen zero media inflation on the CPM model since it first ventured into online years ago.

Instead, it will be focusing on landing in the transactional space, as well as getting paid-for content to consumers (using apps is a significant part of this strategy). The first three serious app builds are close to launch – including two in the car space and one in the travel and lifestyle space.

One app – called ‘Car Dealer’ – adopts a Gumtree model for the auto space, and is a volume play into the car transactional market.

RamsayMedia is leveraging its relationships in the vehicle market to aggregate offers and information from virtually every major car dealer in the market. It has also teamed up with Samsung for the app to be shipped on all Galaxy tablets. Listing will be free but consumers will be able to purchase content such as rating, road tests and car guide data via the app.

A number of other revenue streams have been identified and will be rolled out in due course. Lowe expects the project to be profitable within six months from launch.

The digital division used to be centralised within RamsayMedia but has gradually been undergoing a gradual process of decentralising. Online editors have moved on to the brands themselves, as have sales, design and increasingly campaign management duties. Only strategy, innovation and tech still reside apart.

Meanwhile, the content marketing division has landed a consumer title under contract – something division publisher Neal Farrell says he believes will happen more and more as smaller independent titles seek expert help in a tough market.

The title is Ride, a cycling magazine launched in 1997 and well-established in the market, but which has had to go up against internationally licensed title Bicycling magazine in recent years, published in SA by Media24 Health Magazines. RamsayMedia takes on the title from the November 2011 issue.

Farrell says the content marketing landscape is shifting, with more risk (for the publisher/content marketer) written into contracts. Similarly, the upside is potentially so much more rewarding. Farrell says his division has grown from one title three years ago to five contracts today and he expects this to rise to 10 titles within 12 months.

The objective of content marketing is for clients to attract consumers through content – and content is what RamsayMedia is great at, says Farrell. The group currently holds contracts for Ride, Sanlam, Toyota, the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI) and the Herschel Girls School annual. Offerings include the full spectrum of media, covering print, apps, online, events and more.

The custom division has achieved 100% revenue growth over the past two years and Farrell is targeting blue-chip brands and is looking for clients in the airline, retail, car hire and banking business.

Ramsay Media has also launched a logistics business handling, end-to-end subscription fulfilment for magazine publishers. It currently manages subscriptions for, among others, Associated Media and Condé Nast Magazines.

Finally, a new research division is set to become one of the most profitable units in the business: a joint venture with Bateleur. RamsayMedia Research Solutions conducted the SA Lifestyle Survey focused on the rich and super rich’s consumer attitudes, opinions and brand preferences.

Lowe says their figures on this market, with R350 billion in spending power, differ substantially from what AMPS produces on this segment, as the research arm has ‘managed to get inside the fence’ of these people’s lives through the range of Ramsay products.

The research arm now produces three reports – including the SA AutoBrand Survey, the SA Travel & Lifestyle Survey and now TopEnd analysing the SA Lifestyle Survey results. Sales of the SA AutoBrand Survey is expected to reach R3.5 million within the next six months.

The content business, it turns out, is bigger than magazine publishing. As RamsayMedia refocuses on expanding the reach and leverage of its core brands, it is playing to its strengths and reputation in content generation built up over decades. In the process, a much more modern, braver and more sustainable company is emerging.

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

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