Kim Reid, diplomatically perhaps, doesn’t care what the competition of his online retail venture, Takealot.com, is up to. The ecommerce market in South Africa is so nascent that it makes more sense to focus on successfully implementing your own strategy and building your own business, rather than fretting about what other players are doing, he says.
Reid, an 11-year veteran at Naspers, where he served as CFO of MultiChoice, CEO at MWEB, CEO at MIH Mobile TV Platforms and CEO
Kim Reid, TAKEALOT.COM
Internet Africa at MIH, helped drive the buy-out of popular local online retailer Take2 in partnership with New Yorked-based hedge fund Tiger Global Management late last year.
Reid had had several interactions with Tiger in his Naspers days – Tiger had bought some of the companies he was looking after – and when it found out he had left Naspers, it approached him to see if he would want to drive a local business. Of course, he said yes.
Scouring the local marketplace, especially around e-retail, Take2 stood out as best suited to Tiger’s own strategic vision. The company had been in operation since 2002 and, in its last financial year, had managed a turnover of R75 million off a customer base of 50-60 000 active consumers (it has around 200 000 on its database).
There’s not that much out there to buy, says Reid, who is taking Takealot.com up against rival such as the Naspers-backed Kalahari.net and Loot.co.za. It means growth will come organically for the business, which has stated it wants to generate revenue of R1 billion within five years.
Currently, it’s growing at an annual compounded rate of 35% and Reid has upped its staff from 25 at the time of the acquisition to 55 today. The R1 billion target is quite achievable, says Reid, who points out that SA desperately lags other markets in the ecommerce stakes. Of our total retail market of R561 billion/year, ecommerce only constitutes 0.3-0.4% of that figure, as against offshore markets where it stands at 8-12% of the total retail market.
It leaves lots of headroom for growth. If online commerce doesn’t take off in SA, it will be an anomaly in the world. In the meantime, the market is stimulating growth itself as more SA move online thanks to cheaper and more readily available bandwidth. People are also getting used to spending time online and so becoming more likely to make purchases online.
That said, the company has launched a comprehensive online and offline marketing campaign with the help of its ad agency, M&C Saatchi Abel. Reid is happy with the results, saying sales and traffic are up, and the campaign will run through the rest of the year.
Its primary aim is to position the new brand in the market – Reid and his team had to jettison the Take2 name after it became apparent that “a prominent group” already owned the trademark in some of the classes Take2 wanted to register in.
But it’s just as well, says Reid; not only did they gain a .com domain but they could also register all the derivatives of the new brand name. Reid had worked with M&C Saatchi Abel CEO Mike Abel in the past, so the choice of an ad agency was simple for him, he says, as he trusts and admire Abel’s strategic thinking and valuable advice on the both the marketing and business sides of the business.
While Reid isn’t interested in further local EC acquisitions for the moment, he does say that he is acquiring businesses that fill out key parts of his own business, such as the unnamed logistics company he has acquired a stake in (a formal announcement will follow in the next 45 days).
Reid is driving the relaunched Takealot.com around great service, a stable platform, good logistics and a variety of products of which he wants to carry a substantial amount in his warehouses to ensure speedy turn-around times. Meanwhile, competitive pricing, a breadth of payment options and ample stock should help lure consumers to the relaunched retailer, Reid says.
While the initial focus remains on the SA market, the rest of the continent is also in Reid’s target sights over the medium term. For the moment, the broader market in Africa remains quite small, with small localised players in countries such as Nigeria and Kenya. When this changes, expect Reid to be ready and moving.
AdVantage magazine set out to discover which agencies, agency bosses and creative directors other Cape Town agency execs most admire. Twenty one of Cape Town’s agency leaders were invited to nominate their most admired agency in Cape Town, the most admired creative director in Cape Town and the most admired agency boss in Cape Town. Finally they were asked to nominate the agency with most success in integrating digital into its offering. Obviously nobody could nominate their own agency or staff. All the nominations were then tallied up to see who Cape Town’s adland most admire. @marklives did the tallying. Be sure to check out the full story in the June 2011 edition of AdVantage magazine.
• The most admired agency in Cape Town
Most Admired: King James Runner-up: FoxP2
King James is the most admired agency in Cape Town. It scored more than half of all the nominations cast and double the votes of its nearest rival FoxP2.
FoxP2 MD Charl Thom sums up the general opinion when he says King James have continued to stand for great ideas, “and whilst they’ve had their ups and downs, they have been a force to be reckoned with throughout their life.” Thom says the fact that King James has managed to stay independent plays a big part in ensuring they stay focussed on their reason for being. “Once they’re snapped up by one of the big networks the focus shifts to the numbers,” says Thom. “But if you focus on great work, the numbers take care of themselves.”
Steve Jones, MD of Bester Burke Underground, called King James’s “Legend” Cape Town’s strongest export in 2010. The agency was named the AdReview agency of the year after our poll closed.
• The most admired creative director in Cape Town
Most Admired (tie): Alistair King (King James), Justin Gomes and Andrew Whitehouse (FoxP2) Runner-up: Mike Schalit (140 BBDO)
Alistair King, King James
King James Group Creative Director Alistair King and the FoxP2 creative duo Justin Gomes and Andrew Whitehouse scored a perfect tie. Interestingly nobody nominated Gomes or Whitehouse in an individual capacity – clearly the industry views the duo as a single creative force.
Says Pete Case, MD of Gloo, of Gomes and Whitehouse; “They respect each other and don’t surround themselves with an old school shouting and screaming culture. This makes it easy to work with them and collaborate. They’re also happy to see ideas flow into any medium, which makes integrated brainstorms an easy process, where no one is clinging on to a particular medium that they favour.”
Mike Abel, MD of M&C Saatchi Abel, says he admires King for thinking in brand ideas and not purely in executions. “He likes to do ground-breaking work and his output always has a freshness about it,” says Abel. “He is a strong tactically and for brands like Kulula has been quick to take advantage of situations.” Abel also admires Kings passion for creativity outside advertising.
• The most admired agency boss in Cape Town
Most Admired: Kevan Aspoas (The Jupiter Drawing Room) Runner-up: James Barty (King James)
Kevan Aspoas, The Jupiter Drawing Room
Kevan Aspoas from The Jupiter Drawing Room is the most respected agency boss in Cape Town with James Barty of King James a close runner-up. Aspoas co-founded Jupiter Cape Town with partners Ross Chowles and Joanne Thomas. In November he handed day-day agency operations to his new MD, Claire Cobbledick, while taking the position of CEO.
Gavin Levhinson, MD of Ogilvy Cape Town, describes James Barty as authentic, real and low on spin – “And we need more of that kind of leadership in business. “
Livio Tronchin, co-founder of Derrick, sums up the Aspoas vs. Barty debate perfectly after he and his partners failed to pick one or the other. “They have both built such robust businesses without compromising on the integrity of the work of the agency, both are approachable by all in their respective agencies as well as the industry,” says Tronchin. “And both have led many clients to successes they’d never dreamed of. If KevanBarty was an agency, that agency boss would be our most admired.”
• The agency with most success in integrating digital into its offering
Most Admired: ‘Nobody is doing it right – yet’
The majority of Cape Town’s ad bosses agreed that nobody has hit the nail on the head just yet. No single agency scored a significant number of votes in this category.
This story was first published in the June 2011 edition of AdVantage magazine.
Tens of millions of South Africans registered their SIM cards before the RICA deadline to help fight crime. But the system is fatally flawed, writes ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK.
The purpose of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (known to you and I as RICA) is to help fight crime. The intention of the Act is to ensure that every SIM card in the country can be traced to an individual. The benefit of the Act is that, anytime a phone is used in the commission of a crime, the perpetrator can be identified and traced.
Only one thing is needed to make this Act work as intended: a miracle.
Consider this: if your phone is stolen, you cannot simply report it to the police. They require you to report it to your service provider, obtain something called an ITC number, and have the phone blocked. Or, at least, that is what police stations are telling victims of this most basic of cellphone crimes.
However, when you phone your service provider to have your phone blocked, they will tell you that you first need to report it stolen, and obtain a case number from the police.
Make a noise – like phoning in to radio talk shows to complain, railing against your service provider on Twitter, or complaining on an online customer complaints forum – and they will scramble to assist.
Yes, they will agree to block the phone if you can confirm just a few details. Like identity number and home address. No problem there. You gave that during the RICA process. Oh, and please confirm the date you bought the phone. A little more complicated, but with luck you kept the receipt.
Oh, and on what date did you get your cellphone number? Seriously? Yes, and on what date did you RICA your SIM card. Wha…? Who remembers that? Who keeps that kind of record? Okay, Mr Criminal, keep the phone – it’s going to be less trouble just buying another one.
Oh wait, failure to report a SIM card stolen or destroyed can render you liable to a fine or imprisonment of up to two years. I’m kidding, right? Wrong. The Act makes you a criminal if you don’t carry on jumping through those hoops to report a basic theft.
By the way, the Act specifies that a police official who receives a report of a stolen SIM card must “immediately provide the person who makes the report with written proof that the report has been made”. However, it appears “immediately” is not defined in the Act.
Now let’s imagine that we suspect a crime is actually under way. Say, a hijacking. The victim can be traced if the police act fast. But wait, they have to get a court order from a judge, then take the court order to the network, which will then assist in tracing the phone. Spot the mistake? It’s called time, and that’s clearly on the criminal’s side.
Which is why, when we hear reports of police catching a criminal through tracing a phone, we must assume a miracle has occurred.
But such things shouldn’t be left to the supernatural. With immediate effect, we need:
A procedure that allows you to report a stolen phone once, without requiring mutually contradictory proof of having reported it elsewhere;
A procedure that doesn’t demand documentation or information that is almost impossible to produce;
An amendment to the law that prevents the victim from being, by default, a criminal;
A procedure that ensures instant cooperation between police and networks, such as a permanent office within each of the networks, staffed round the clock by judicial officers with the power to issue a court order, and police officers with both the power and the skill to liaise with the networks – not to mention someone tasked with this role within the network itself.
This last procedure would need to be funded in terms of both human and physical resources, but considering the hundreds of millions spent by networks on the RICA process, that would be a pittance by comparison.
* First published in Gadget. 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
Wine magazine, the wine-focused consumer monthly published by RamsayMedia, will be publishing its last edition in September 2011, after nearly 20 years in print. The magazine has only turned an annual profit three times in its existence.
RamsayMedia MD Stuart Lowe says the group had been considering for many years now what to do about Wine magazine. For years it has been building a series of conciliary activities to extend the Wine brand, including books, wine tastings and expos. All these businesses made money, but never enough to offset the losses on the magazine side, says Lowe.
Wine struggled with a low circulation base – which tended to stay flat or in decline – that wasn’t attracting sufficient adspend. Lowe says the group felt it had reached the maximum penetration into the advertising market and saw no hope for growth in that area. The income trajectory going forward stayed negative.
The final straw has come with the proposed ban on alcohol advertising in consumer media – and even if it doesn’t become law – industry self-regulation to stave off government intervention would probably hit revenue as well.
“We simply decided to stop hitting our head against the wall,” says Lowe on the decision to cease publication. “It’s a sad time for the company and for the wine industry. But it seems that the need for a publication like Wine was never as pronounced as we had hoped.”
Apart from the print title, all conciliary businesses will also be closed down. The company will look at what is worth reviving under other brands in the RamsayMedia stable. The Best Value guide and wine map book will probably shift to Getaway magazine.
The website, winemag.co.za, is the only part of the wider Wine magazine business unit to continue, but faces substantial change.
The site will move away from the current “magazine content style” and long form journalism to service-oriented and database-driven content. It will primarily focus on offering answers to consumer questions, rather than traditional journalism. Content will cover food and wine pairings and wine rankings with a news feed or blog around the relevant data.
Lowe says once they decided not to start with a magazine format informing the “content journey”, a range of possibilities opened up. Readers need not fear paywalls – instead the site will focus on generating transactional revenue through wine sales.
Don’t expect a tablet-style magazine in the future either – the tablet edition of Wine will cease publication along with the print magazine – but relevant apps could well be developed for the site in the near future.
Lowe says currently around nine permanent staff member are affected by the closure of Wine magazine. A process has started within RamsayMedia to find space for these individuals, though some might choose to leave the business altogether. This will hopefully minimise retrenchments at the company.
Asked if the company would consider once-off special or annual print editions, as some in the wine industry has argued for on Twitter, Lowe says that the company did crunch the numbers for reduced frequencies. It looked at a bi-annual edition (winter covering red wines, summer covering white), or an annual. These, however, cannot be carried with the current monthly overhead, so would have to be outsourced to writing teams, but not firm decision has yet been taken.
Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.
Industry rumour has it that emerging fast food chain, Smaaklik, is set to launch a new ad campaign that pushes the use of the homeless in fast food advertising to new levels. Capitalising on the success of a Debonairs campaign a few years back (2004 in fact), which cunningly leveraged iconic imagery of homeless people to sell pizzas, the Smaaklik campaign will feature happy consumers scoffing hamburgers and chips in a park full of starving homeless people.
Zapiro cartoon - Copyright zapiro.com
The central device of the campaign will be the juxtaposition of glistening fast food with a homeless lady picking in the grass for scraps. Just as the lady is about to keel over through exhaustion, one of the consumers throws her a crust of his burger, pauses, and then rushes off his seat to grab it out of her mouth and eat it himself.
The pay off line will be: It’s so good, there’s NO sharing.
‘It’s a smart move by Smaaklik,’ says Tomlin Harris, strategic consultant at CBA Ford Smith Jones and Broadbent. ‘But we must recognise that Debonairs paved the way for the use of the homeless in fast food advertising. Their brilliance was to realise that it’s a highly emotional moment when you walk out of the restaurant clutching bags full of food to be faced with the hunger and poverty of a homeless person. By isolating this moment they were able to leverage it and turn it into a uniquely impactful advertising device. So if the rumours about Smaaklik’s new campaign are true, they do owe a conceptual debt to the ones who got there first.’
Some may have been surprised, even shocked, by the introduction of homeless people into the advertising of luxury food items, but Harris believes this shock factor can only benefit brands.
‘Yes, it is shocking. But isn’t that what good advertising is all about? We should also consider the relevance of the theme – homelessness is something that all South Africans face on a daily basis. All consumers know that churning feeling you get in your stomach when your wealth, relative to someone living on the street, is made clear. By bringing the issue onto our TV screens, the brands can make the whole thing easier to process and deal with in real life.’
Although the new Smaaklik campaign is being kept firmly under wraps, insiders say the sub-text of the advert is intended to ease the emotional pain many drive-through fast food consumers regularly experience. While most outlets make repeated efforts to ‘clean’ their stores of beggars, the homeless (especially young children) are markedly resilient, and prove almost impossible to shift on a long-term basis. Hence the need to address the ‘begging issue’ through humour-based advertising.
‘Again, it’s a nice move,’ says Harris. ‘By literally grabbing the burger crust out of the homeless lady’s mouth, the ad turns a tragic moment into something bizarre, and comic. There’s bound to be a trickle down of consciousness to consumers. It’s quite likely that, following the lead set by the ad, they will start to laugh at the beggars at the drive through collection window, instead of feeling all weirded out. This can only benefit growth in the short to medium term.’
If the first Smaaklik advert proves to be as successful as anticipated, it is very possible the theme will be extended to include a second and third in the series. Ideas on the drawing board for the second ad are to have the consumer characters picking (unsuccessfully) through dust bins for scraps of Smaaklik product – opening a string of polystyrene containers until advised by a professional (a real homeless person) as to the futility of their task. Another idea mooted within the company is to dress all staff in stinking rags for a month, reinforcing the messaging of the campaign in-store.
Harris, however, offers a word of caution.
‘There’s obviously a limited lifespan to the theme. I’m also not altogether sure about the staff uniforms idea – particularly the smell aspect. It could work against the appeal of the food itself if not executed carefully. The thing with homelessness is that, once you get to an olfactory level, it’s a pretty unpleasant business. One needs to be aware of the natural boundaries of the concept and work within them.’
— John Doe has enjoyed a long career as an executive assistant, working with a variety of major global brands in a clerical capacity. Long famed in the corporate sector for his legendary dictation skills, Doe has recently also gained acclaim for his incisive media journalism. Although queries have been raised as to the veracity of some of his information, Doe is adamant that he simply reports on media issues that he comes into contact with – his sources remain a closely guarded secret. Doe dismisses as ‘unsubstantiated’ and ‘possibly defamatory’ allegations that he is in fact one Andrew Miller of Unity Design.
Brianna Graves has set out to discover the true state of global advertising by packing her bags, taking her savings, and getting on a plane. Travelling to six top ad agencies in six countries, including so far South Africa (where she spent a month with Hunts at its Jozi, Cape Town and Durban offices) and Canada (where she joined TAXI), Graves is documenting her experiences online at The Saturn Return Project.
Brianna Graves
Combining a love for travel and adventure with a curiosity into how advertising and marketing is evolving across the globe, Graves is establishing an informal global network of ad execs sharing insights into global best practice and their local markets. @marklives caught up with her during the final couple of days of her stay in Canada on behalf of BizCommunity.
@marklives: You took on this project, which is quite substantial, and committed yourself to traveling to six countries and agencies to find out what makes creative agencies tick in this time of industry wide change. What drives you to do this, how are you financing it and how much work went into it before you headed off to your first destination? Brianna Graves: I sat down one day last fall and thought about what I love most and what makes me feel most alive. There were three things: advertising, travel and writing. The idea for The Saturn Return Project grew out of that acknowledgement.
To dig a little deeper, I was (and continue to be) curious about how agencies across the world compete on the same global stage, given all of the shifting underfoot, and the evolution in the digital space.
From the moment I thought of the idea, there was no turning back, but it took about six months to pull together an unyielding list of details. There is one person on my staff (me), so if she doesn’t do it, it doesn’t get done and thus, she stays very busy.
And the answer to the million-dollar question is I am funding the project with every last penny of my hard-earned life savings.
@marklives: Did you have any preconceptions about the South African agency market that got turned on its head? Graves: Not necessarily turned on its head, but placed into context. Someone could explain to me from afar the challenges of marketing and advertising in a country with such economic disparity and such diversity of language and culture. But there are no words that can compare to seeing something with your own eyes, or experiencing what I was able to experience in the month I visited.
@marklives: What key industry insights did you glean from you stay in South Africa? Graves: Those who remained in South Africa over the past 17 years (as opposed to relocating to London or other advertising hotspots) are very invested in the growth and prosperity of the country. They’ve worked hard to get the industry to where it stands today and they are ready for, and deserving of, what’s coming next. The “Big Ideas” and creativity are there. So is a drive to represent SA well on the global stage. Pairing “the Big Idea” with that SA drive creates incredibly impressive results.
For instance, who in the United States is going to climb up and wallpaper a billboard with worthless Zimbabwean money to communicate an important message?
When that kind of passion collides with technological capability two years down the road, it’s going to be phenomenal in ways that we can’t anticipate now, and I think the rest of the world is going to sit back when that happens and just say, “Wow.” SA is prepared to catapult through the next five years and I’m really excited to see that.
@marklives: As somebody from the outside looking in, how divergent do you think are the Cape Town and Johannesburg agencies scenes from one another? Graves: They were very different, and in fact, the way that individuals in both cities described themselves and each other was true to the way I experienced them.
There was a fast-paced hum of energy in Johannesburg and a lot of excitement around The Saturn Return Project and what I am doing. People were very forward in reaching out to connect with me, and I had some really inspiring conversations about the industry with professionals based in Joburg.
Cape Town was much more laid-back and easy-going, both in and out of the office, and had a very optimistic creative vibe throughout the city. I connected with fewer folks in Cape Town, but I had very valuable and meaningful conversations with those I did meet.
@marklives: Do you find that the big agencies here understand the extent to which digital (and specifically mobile) is changing people’s behaviour or do they find it hard to look past their love of TV? Graves: The big agencies absolutely understand the impact of digital and mobile, both in SA and worldwide. The problem is that the infrastructure is not currently in place to support digital initiatives to their full potential. Nor is the audience.
When you can reach at least 75% of your population via television, at least from an awareness perspective, TV is not going to lose its place in the budget or media plan any time soon. Likewise, when so little of your population is online and even fewer trust the space enough to engage, you aren’t going to throw a large portion of your budget online.
It’s a bit of chicken and egg conundrum: people need to engage for brands to put money behind the medium, but brands need to provide value and compelling reasons for people to engage in the digital space. As the infrastructure improves, so will the initiatives that leverage it.
Likewise with mobile. If projections are true, and smartphone penetration in SA reaches 80% just three years from now, you’re going to see a different level of innovation and engagement than you ever have. Mobile penetration may be greater than 100% at present, but there’s only so much you can do with SMS and MXit.
@marklives: Did you find that SA agencies are quite aware of their own brands or is this something that seems to have fallen to the wayside? Graves: I can only speak for those I was fortunate enough to interact with, and on their behalf, I’d say, yes, they are aware of their own brands. I’d also wager that across the world the last thing an agency is able to think about is [its] own brand. Client work and pitching new business always come first.
It’s nice when an agency has specific personnel in place to tend to their own brand, but it’s not always realistic. It doesn’t mean it’s forgotten or that they are unaware; it means they have bills to pay.
@marklives: You had an interesting post on the impact safety and (physical) security has on the kind of work we produce. As an observer, how you think it impacts on the work produced in SA? Graves: It makes the work in SA simultaneously more practical and more risqué. As Damon Stapleton said to me, “In places like Africa, a lot of people have problems to solve. And when you have problems to solve, you’ve got to be smart.”
It’s true. If the basics of daily life force you to be innovative, you’re already operating on a different level than someone whose everyday life is comfortable and challenge-free in comparison.
That’s not to say you need to be concerned about your personal safety on a daily basis in order to produce great advertising. It is to say that the work in SA uses simple but unorthodox solutions to address real social problems and client issues with great results.
@marklives: TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris vs TAXI – what do they have in common and where do they diverge? Graves: Both agencies share a deep passion for the industry and an understanding that no matter the new medium, the change or the evolution, the basic tenets of advertising still must apply. They share a precedence of internationally-recognised great work and a position as leaders within their own markets.
All roads led to or from “Hunts” throughout SA. Every city I visited and person I spoke with in the industry had a connection to TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris in some way– and not by design. TAXI has similarly lead the industry in Canada’s major markets and enjoyed tremendous growth over the past 10 years.
Professionals in both countries also have budget envy in common. To date, it hasn’t mattered what city or country I’m in, the budget is always greener (bigger) on the other side. When I was in Cape Town, it was bigger in Johannesburg. When I was in Johannesburg, it was bigger in North America. In Canada, it’s bigger in the States. And everyone feels handicapped by their own “lack of budget.”
Where do they differ? In their toolbelts. Canada has resources that SA doesn’t have. Though the population is smaller in Canada, [it has] an excellent broadband connection and a high smartphone penetration (higher than the US even) that allows digital ideas to come to life.
The two agencies also differ in the day-to-day reality of their environments and cultures (see previous question) and thus, the way they live their lives and approach their work.
But specifically in the realm of the advertising industry, I have found more similarities than differences in the two countries and agencies I’ve visited to date.
Am I Collective’s contribution to the Inkygoodness’ Character Totem Home coming’ exhibition. Am I Collective MD Mark van Niekerk says that for this new show, “we created ‘Maconini Abaphansi’. Our artwork shows a photograph of an African totem creature found by explorers in their quest for new tribes on the dark continent. He is made up of African masks and robotic elements from the tribe’s recurring encounters with UFO’s.” Hmmm.
Character Totem Home-Coming will run from 19th – 30th July, with a special launch night on Thursday 21st July 6pm – 9pm at the Zellig Gallery space, The Custard Factory, Birmingham, U.K. Check out www.inkygoodness.com and www.zellig.co.uk.
In the wake of the massive phone-hacking scandal playing out in Britain, its prime minister, David Cameron, has called for the scrapping of media self-regulation and for stronger press regulation by government.
Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, one of the largest circulation English newspapers in the world, was found to have hacked the phones of celebrities, politicians, sport stars, even a murdered school girl, victims of the London subway bombings – the list goes on.
In calling for the doing away of media self-regulation, Cameron joins a long line of politicians hoping to legislate away the problems they face staying in and exerting power while dodging and diving their way around a free press.
It’s gravely sad that journalists themselves are giving Cameron and his ilk the ammunition they need to justify greater government influence in the affairs of the fourth estate. And, locally, the African National Congress (ANC) is bound to point to events in London as further proof that the press need to be taken in hand so that what they publish be regulated further.
Cameron has called for an (government-appointed) inquiry to look at the culture, the practices and the ethics of the British press.
He also called the current self-regulatory body, the Press Complaints Commission, ‘ineffective and lacking in rigour’ and ‘failed.’ “There is a strong case for saying it [the Press Complaints Commission] is institutionally conflicted, because competing newspapers judge each other,” Cameron said. Sound familiar? It should.
The discussion paper prepared for the ANC National General Council 2010 (held in Durban last year), and which helped drive proposals around stronger media regulation in the form of a media appeals tribunal (MAT) and through the Protection of Information Bill (POIB), stated that “the mere fact that the press ombudsman is from the media ranks, a former journalist, and is not an independent person who looks at the media from the layman’s perspective poses an inherent bias towards the media with all interpretations favourable to the institution and the other party just have to understand and accept the media way which is grossly unfair and unjust.”
“Freedom of expression needs to be defended but freedom of expression can also be a refuge for journalist scoundrels, to hide mediocrity and glorify truly unprofessional conduct” (point 67), the ANC discussion paper continued.
Cameron also styled himself the defender of the free press, saying “Of course it is vital that our press is free. That is an essential component of our democracy and our way of life… But press freedom does not mean that the press should be above the law.”
In The Observer, Peter Preston wonders how Cameron’s version of a media tribunal might look, and describes it, in short and stripping away the niceties with which regulators will be sure to try and disguise it, as “a government-appointed judge as supreme editor of everything, with added enforcers [to serve as investigators].”
Of course, the case of the now-shuttered NoW isn’t quite as straightforward as Cameron would have the public believe. For starters, it was a rival newspaper that outed the truth, after several years off on-going investigation, rather than the British authorities, who seem to have been turning a blind eye in the interests of their political masters who have generally been close to the Murdoch clan.
Cameron, meanwhile, is keen to deflect criticism on his decision to appoint former NoW editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief after Coulson resigned from the paper in 2007, when the paper’s royal editor and a private investigator were charged and sentenced in a phone hacking (Coulson resigned earlier this year and was finally arrested on Friday, 8 July 2011, amid allegations that he knew about and where involved in the hacking of phones during his editorship).
Cameron describes his attempts at government intervention in the regulation of media in terms of making the press responsible before the law. Yet the legal framework for prosecuting the journalists, editors and private investigators involved in illegal hacking does exist, and will certainly – and finally – be enforced.
All this is happening just as Print Media South Africa (PMSA) and South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) launched the Press Freedom Commission, a new commission investigating the regulation of print media and which will be chaired by Justice Pius Langa.
Calls for more regulation and a less free press, both here and abroad, are in line with disconcerting attempts by the powers-that-be to centralise power and create a more fearful, less free world. Cameron speaks from a centre of power that has effectively created a surveillance state in the UK.
Politicians in democracies are meant to safeguard the democratic rights of their constituents, not erode it by criminalising ever larger sections of society.
The system we have built to safe guard our democratic rights and protect our way of life is falling over, politicians are on the make, the law is becoming only accessible to the moneyed and health care often employs the uncaring, while those sworn who protect us brutalise us instead.
The fourth estate, the rogue safeguard against the executive excess, has been party to its own undermining, centralising and consolidating itself under people such as Murdoch, sometimes breaking the law and often failing to maintain public trust.
The debate, it seems, should go well beyond the role of the media in a democratic society.
Of course, as the politicos and journalists face off to fight for the future of print, social media and the Internet are sweeping away the ability of either to effectively control the flow of information. As media becomes more democratic, the fight to control it seems ineffectual, but serves as reminder how out of touch and disconnected the Western power ecosystem has become.
Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.
Have you ever seen a Parrot AR.Drone? Alan Knott-Craig Jnr has one and he is happy to show it off, having it lift off as soon as we step into the still-deserted offices (one of three in Stellenbosch) of World of Avatar, his new mobile and media business venture. The Parrot AR.Drone is a toy quadricopter controlled via an iPhone, thanks to its on-board Wi-Fi system.
Alan Knott-Craig Jnr
What makes it cool, in geek terms, other than the fact that you are flying something via an iPhone, is the live video feed from the quadricopter broadcasting to your screen. I joke about bosses flying these things through those vast open air offices checking up on employees. He has a laugh and relaxes a little.
Knott-Craig Jnr (@alanknottcraig) isn’t a stranger to media attention, being the former MD of iBurst, but also having had to speak up for his father against mighty Vodacom on opaque allegations of nepotism (that, quite tellingly, never progressed past the allegation phase). He’s had a tough learning school in media relations and faces (unknown) journalists with a slight sense of quite understandable caution.
Having left iBurst, Knott-Craig Jnr moved to Stellenbosch with his family – his wife grew up there – and took a break from the business world. On a flight back from the States on 1 April last year, he decided he was ready to get back into the business game, that he wanted to use his experience and network in the mobile space, and that, whatever he did, it should benefit people and make money, rather than just one or the other.
He called up some former colleagues from Cellfind, his first business, and within a month his new team of four had all gotten onto planes and resettled their families in Stellenbosch. Today the group consists of 14 companies, mostly focussed on the mobile consumer space, and a media investment in the Daily Maverick. The business was officially up and running by mid-August 2010.
World of Avatar recently took on two investors, one a silent partner Knott-Craig Jnr doesn’t name, the other Francois Swart, the former CEO of Paladin and now the chief operating officer of World of Avatar. Knott-Craig Jnr and Swart did their articles together at Deloitte’s way back when and had been friends ever since.
The companies World of Avatar has helped launch or have invested in include ARC Telecoms, free SMS service FSMS.co.za, app developer boom! with its mobile blogging platform and FireID. Investments have stood at around half a million and up, says Knott-Craig Jnr, who adds he only looks at investments personally recommended to him by his network (so forget about sending him unsolicited stuff).
The initial investment covers living costs for the developers and gives them a chance to focus on the product or service they are developing, before being assessed for further funding. The idea is to tap into and empower the very talented base of software developers in South Africa and cover some of the risk they face on launching a new venture. It’s about more than money, though; rather, it’s about the entrepreneurial ecosystem that World of Avatar offers its start-ups, housing experts in many fields from WAP to location-based services, music and selling ads, all of whom are accessible to one another.
Knott-Craig Jnr played an important role in helping get that wondrous experiment in online journalism, the Daily Maverick, off the ground. He and publisher Branko Brkic had become friends while Brkic was still publishing the Daily Maverick’s print predecessor, Maverick.
After Brkic’s print enterprise collapsed, in part due to the costs of launching media magazine Empire, Knott-Craig Jnr, in his personal capacity, offered some start-up funding for Brkic’s new online venture. World of Avatar would later take a further stake in this business, and Knott-Craig Jnr was also instrumental in introducing Brkic to Styli Charalambous, who would become the CEO of the Daily Maverick in due course.
Journalists are often being held down by Big Media which undervalues them and pays them low salaries, says Knott-Craig Jnr, who believes anything that can be done to cut out middlemen will benefit both content creators and consumers. He seeks to fund inspirational leaders, and media has very few of those, says Knott-Craig Jnr, and, while not mentioning Brkic directly, the context is clear. And hard to argue with.
It’s also heartening to know there are business leaders out there who would rather finance quality journalism than try to squash it with their lawyer cronies.
Back to mobile for a moment: World of Avatar aims to develop ‘smart apps for dumb phones,’ and more than that, it wants the mobile apps it develops to empower its users.
While primarily focused on SA, World of Avatar wants to be active in 12 African countries in a year from now, and in 52 markets within three years. It will partner with locals who know the lay of the land, rather than go it alone, and is already working its networks to identify partners in East and West Africa.
Knott-Craig Jnr says a lot of SA firms venture into the rest of Africa in pretty much the same style US companies would (read arrogantly) and that as a result they often get burnt. He intends to learn from the mistakes of others.
Mobile, says Knott-Craig Jnr, has the ability to help people help themselves; whether it is the ability of a local band to upload music and find its audience or for craftspeople to display and sell their goods online, apps are tools that can do more than just make money for their creators.
The apps World of Avatar is developing is aimed at the bottom two-thirds of the pyramid, and the aim is to keep those customers as they gain traction and move on up. For Knott-Craig Jnr, this approach makes more sense than sitting at the top of the pyramid and wondering how the hell you are going to reach the vast majority of the population (and mobile users).
South Africa cleaned up the awards at the Cannes advertising festival last month, but it failed miserably in the digital category. There are lessons to be learned, writes Arthur Goldstuck.
The village of Cannes in the south of France may not be the best place to take the pulse of online media, but when the International Advertising Festival comes to town every June, it offers a revealing insight into the Internet’s place in the creativity pecking order.
More than anything else, it shows that creativity in TV and radio advertising is still thriving, and the Internet has caught up – but not in South Africa. While we clean up in most categories, this country has never won an award in the digital category – the Cyber Lions – at Cannes.
This year highlighted just how bad things are: a grand total of one entry even made the shortlist.
It’s worth highlighting the entry that made it that far. It was made by the Ogilvy Johannesburg ad agency on behalf of People Opposed to Woman Abuse (POWA), and came in the form of the simplest of YouTube videos.
“We used the residents of a typical middle-class neighbourhood in South Africa as unknowing participants in a stunt designed to shock South Africans out of their apathy regarding woman abuse,” the agency said in its submission.
“Unbeknown to the residents, we set up an experiment in a middle-class neighbourhood in South Africa… On one night we held a practice drumming session in a quiet town-house complex; on a different night we staged a violent domestic fight with the sounds of screams, smashing glass, punches and slamming doors, to see how the neighbours would respond. We documented the event and created a two-minute mini-documentary, which we sent around virally.
The stunt proved exactly what it set out to show: neighbours lined up to protest about the drumming; they utterly ignored the sounds of violence (Click here to view the advert.)
“Our objective was to confront them with their own implicit tolerance of woman abuse, and force them to realise they are passively contributing to a society that allows 1400 women to be killed a year, because no one is willing to speak against it.”
After the video went online, an unprecedented number of men called to report suspected woman abuse. To date, it’s been viewed more than 600 000 times on YouTube.
The video was made on almost zero budget. Ad campaigns with massive budgets come nowhere close to its online impact. This is not unusual with public interest and pro bono campaigns; agencies are usually given far more creative leeway for such campaigns. This means they instantly become more adventurous and brave.
Yes, the ugly truth about this glamorous industry is that it remains deeply conservative, and nervous of offending its clients.
It’s also a factor of the Internet remaining the poor relation in South African agencies. The medium terrifies them because it is so difficult to come up with effective strategies, but so easy to measure performance. Until agencies entirely re-educate themselves, they have little hope of competing in the brave new digital outside world.
They could do worse than use Cannes as the starting point for their education. The highest possible award, the Grand Prix, went to three digital entries:
Google won with “The Wilderness Downtown”, an interactive music video featuring cool rock band Arcade Fire, R/GA New York took the honours for “Pay with a Tweet”, a social networking payment system that started life as a marketing campaign, and Wieden + Kennedy Portland was rewarded for the now-legendary Old Spice Body Wash campaign featuring the muscular “Old Spice Guy” in a cutting edge campaign for what had become a very old-fashioned brand.
These very different campaigns had one thing in common: they reinvented the way people thought not only about brands, but also about how the digital arena is evolving. The local ad industry may want to take note of the ground shifting beneath their feet.
* Reprinted from Gadget. 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
