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Developing markets grabbing bigger share of global ad expenditure

New research by ZenithOptimedia shows that developing markets, including South Africa, are quickly expanding their share of global ad revenue and remain key drivers of global ad revenue growth. In its Advertising Expenditure Forecast report, updated on a quarterly basis, ZenithOptimedia says developing markets will increase their share of global ad expenditure from 30.9% in 2010 to 35.1% in 2013.

Already there are two developing economies in the global top 10 ad markets. The first is China -currently in fourth place but expected to overtake the German ad market this year to grab the number three spot. The Chinese ad market is expected to grow by 13.6% a year to 2013.

Brazil currently claims the seventh biggest ad market in the world but is expected to overtake France for the number six spot this year. Brazil’s ad market is seeing annual growth of 15.4%.

Russia is expected to enter the top 10 this year, climbing from 12th place to 10th, eighth in 2012, and then seventh in 2013. Its ad market is currently growing at 23.3%. It’s interesting to note that Naspers has media operations in all three countries.

Currently the top 10 ad markets, according to ZenithOptimedia, are the US, Japan, Germany, China, UK, France, Brazil, Italy, Australia and Canada.

It is, however, in the 10 largest-contributors-to-global-adspend-growth between 2010 and 2013 that emerging markets are really stepping to the fore. China is expected to add US$10.8 billion to spend, Russia US$6.9 billion, Brazil US$3.3 billion, India US$2.5 billion, Indonesia US$2.4 billion and South Africa $1.5 billion. This suggests six of the 10 countries adding the most cash to global ad revenue between 2010 and 2013 are emerging economies. Oh, and all five BRICS countries are represented.

Globally, developing market regions are growing fast while developed economies only just keep the ticker going. North America will average growth of 3.1% a year between 2010 and 2013, Western Europe 3.5% and Japan by 0.7% a year. Latin America, meanwhile, is expected to grow by 8.2% a year, Central and Eastern Europe by 12.4%, Asia Pacific by 6.6%, and Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) to grow by 10.2%.

ZenithOptimedia has also put an initial dollar price tag for adland on the revolutions and unrest convulsing the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the recent earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. Together, these events are expected to wipe US$2.4 billion off this year’s global ad expenditure. The report notes that, during the Egyptian revolution, there was almost no advertising. The Egyptian ad economy will is expected to fall by 20.0% this year before bouncing back with 12.1% growth in 2012.

Between 2010 and 2013, newspaper ad expenditure is expected to fall from US$95.2 billion to US$91.2 billion, while Internet ad expenditure will rise from US$63 billion to US$94.5 billion over the same period to become the world’s second-largest advertising medium in 2013.

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

Memeburn set to launch two new sites, awards

Matthew Buckland has grown his marketing and publishing businesses, Creative Spark and Memeburn.com, to 12 full-time staff members in little more than a year. At the moment he complains about the pace of growth – as in not quite fast enough – and, to inject further fuel into his budding media empire, he is announcing the launch of a series of new burn.com websites.

First up is Gearburn.com, which soft-launched last week and which will focus on reviews and news on gadgets and games. The site will be fully operational by the end of this week (that is, by 22 April 2011). Gearburn.com intends offering video reviews as well as more traditional text based reviews.

Several months down the line is Ventureburn.com, which will focus on the venture capital and start-up scene, followed by the Burn Awards, which will recognise innovative and entrepreneurial products in the mobile, ‘Net or app space.

Memeburn.com itself, billed as a ‘Mashable/Techcrunch for emerging market tech’, has grown to a monthly audience of 80 000 and accounts for about a quarter of Buckland’s business. The site is expanding its editorial focus outside South Africa to include the other BRICS countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China. Ultimately, the intention is to grow the site and content to a point where Memeburn South Africa and Memeburn BRICS can be split.

Buckland believes SA media has some inherent strengths that makes it competitive in the emerging market space, including the fact that it operates in both the developed and developing markets while also having great command of the English language and Western business practice.

He found Cape Town an easier location to take the leap of faith and start his own business, saying an “optical illusion” in Cape Town makes the start-up/entrepreneurial community seem bigger than it is.

Cape Town is wedged between a mountain and the big blue sea, of course, which forces business to be quite concentrated. Because of this tight geographical spread, the entrepreneurial community are bound closer together than in a city as vast as Johannesburg.

Resource sharing, co-opetition and lots of goodwill help break the isolation many entrepreneurs feel when they launch a business. The new Creative Spark/Memeburn offices on the corner of Kloof Street and Park Road, for example, sport tables donated or sold on the cheap from rivals Quirk and iafrica.com.

Read the full story on BizCommunity

Death and Taxes

I thought there was a ban on cigarette advertising? But apparently, now it’s OK just so long as SARS and the SA government also have something to lose. I refer to the emotive ad above. A massive campaign launched by British American Tobacco (BAT), in December 2010, to highlight the imminent peril of buying illegal cigarettes, which, if you believe the ads, could be worse for your health than smoking. By Andy Davis

Reviewing this campaign is like unpicking a tangled web that highlights a toxic nexus of self interest, double standards and making sure that the big business tobacco company spin on illegal cigarettes wins out and becomes the dominant narrative. You know, the usual grist of late capitalism.

Let’s start with that goon with the gun. To the untrained eye, he looks like a bad ass 26, a scary Cape Flats gangster, a stone cold killer, but really a bit of Google research shows that it’s just a photo-shopped Getty stock image. Still until I knew that, I was scared, that dude looks batshit crazy. It prompted me to think, maybe illegal cigarettes are dangerous? Fuck I’d hate to confront that guy in my living room late at night. So the ad plays on a basic fear response. Low hanging fruit in crime-rocked South Africa. To get the maximum fear bang-for-their buck this criminal couldn’t be a funny looking, PC, white oke in a balaclava, like those Trellidor ads. Nope, this needs to resonate! It needs to dip into the well of established suburban fears. A young black man with a gun… Roll out the old faithful racial trope. An uncontrollable rapist on a killing spree… surprise surprise, he’s black. This is lowest common denominator propaganda shit right here. And it’s damn obvious. Let’s draw strong lines in the public’s mind between illegal cigarettes, crime, drugs and international terrorism. Get your fear on.

Let’s defer to Occam’s razor. Invariably, the only people who benefit from this campaign are the established cigarette companies, SARS and the SA government who love our tax moolah so much. It’s obvious that behind the slip of an “awareness campaign” the cigarette company’s big hairy balls are showing. They’re doing a suggestive PR dance with ostrich feathers, the truth and a gilt-edged opportunity to bring the subject of cigarettes back into the mainstream media space. Let’s breakdown the boardroom logic:

“OK, so we make a product that if consumed, regularly, over time, as prescribed, will kill our consumers. Because of this the government slaps a huge amount of tax on the sale of our product to try and deter you, the smoker, and make a lot of money at the same time. Lucky for us, the high prices don’t really deter smokers, because nicotine addiction is very strong. But now there’s a recession and right next door we have a major tobacco producing nation, with serious political and economic problems and a steady flow of economic refugees looking for a better life in South Africa. And all of a sudden there’s a major influx of illegal cigarettes, eating into our profits!”
“Hang on sir, I have an idea!”
“What is it Morris?”
“Selling illegal cigarettes is a crime, right?”
“Yes…”
“And people who commit crimes are criminals, right?”
“Yes!”
“And criminals are highly likely to be involved in other crimes! So what we need to do is unleash the specter of violent crime, drugs and international terrorism.”
“But are they related?”
“Of course they’re related! They’re illegal… and besides, this is the underworld, no one has absolute stats or definitive market research.”
“You’re right Morris, Illegal cigarettes are the number one enemy of freedom! They fund everything from car hijacking to Al Qaeda.”

And in one fell swoop they get to act against the loss of profits, do some important PR spin on just how bad and dangerous those pesky illegal cigarettes are, and get some of that good ol’ banned advertising juice they love so much but aren’t allowed to touch. And so instead of a new wing for emphysema research at Baragwanath, we get this guy with the gun on billboards, in print, on radio and TV – it’s a blitz. It’s the war on illegal cigarettes. And no matter what anyone argues, these ads also work to sell cigarettes.

Let me explain, one way or the the other – people on the street, just going about their business, and not necessarily thinking about having a choof, are suddenly invited, by a scary looking man with a gun, to think about cigarettes. This is better than skiing in Colorado with Peter Stuyvesant… this shit gets your attention. Fear! Kak yourself. Don’t fund crime! Smoke the real thing. Much better. Exhale. Aaaah. And if you’ve ever been hooked on that sweet sweet nicotine that final thought is enough to get the ol’ pleasure receptors in your brain firing. Soon you’ll be mindsurfing towards an image of yourself pulling on a nice fresh shmaf – and kazaam! Advertising has been achieved. Awareness of a whole range of products has been created, and thanks to the power of nicotine, a need has been exposed that needs to be sated. Leading, happily, to the sale of cigarettes. Ironically, many of them illegal. Cue trigger of scary black man with the gun. Well done BAT, you may have just become a case study for Trojan Horse advertising campaigns. What a scoop. A coup. Boardroom high fives all round.

Now I’m not arguing that illegal cigarettes are not problematic and that there aren’t criminal syndicates involved in a range of crimes who turn a tidy profit supplying these high quality Zimbabwean tobacco products to a willing market. What I am arguing is that it’s not such a major issue that it deserves a massive R8.5 million Rand advertising campaign, that flaunts a ban on cigarette advertising, to bring it to our attention. I’d rather BAT sink that cash into research to combat and treat lung cancer, or how about a health insurance fund tied into cigarette sales?

Obviously, to BAT the continued supply of cheap Zimbabwean cigarettes is eating into their profits, and it’s against the law! Cue rising indignation. At SARS, the same thing is chowing up the tax money bonafide cigarette sales generate. And that, we have to identify, is the primary impetus for the campaign. But it’s hard to expect the population to feel sorry for tobacco companies or SARS. Death and Taxes. It’s the same Modus Operandi as the build up to the war in Iraq: “sex” up the problem, shift the real focus and spin a web of fear to protect the profit.

These ads, paint the story they want you to see. Scary criminals that erode the fabric of our society. Gone is the nuance, the human story of a failed state next door, whose aged, corrupt and autocratic leader has been supported by a protracted 10 year policy of obfuscation and inaction from our government – the supposedly democratic regional superpower. A failed neighbour state that just happens to be a major producer of high quality tobacco products. And what about the inconvenient story of millions of economic refugees who cross the border, frequently with bags stuffed full of cartons of tasty, high quality cheap Zimbo cigs… Poor, oppressed Zimbabweans looking for a better life in South Africa, escaping tyranny, who just happen to see a gap in the market. Entrepreneurial heroes to the families they feed. It’s not the story of hard working immigrant Somali spaza shop owners who simply supply the demand for a cheaper alternative. It’s not about sin tax, porous borders, a dysfunctional police force, the recession or being addicted to nicotine. Nope, it’s the story of cold blooded gangsters who kill and maim and rape and kill again because you smoke illegal cigarettes.

And yes, in case you hadn’t worked it out yet, it’s all your fault.

By Andy Davis. Reprinted from Mahala with permission.

Vodacom name will stay for at least another five years

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Discussions on rebranding Vodacom have been happening since the world’s biggest telecom brand, Vodafone, announced it would take a majority (65%) share in late 2008, in line with its global practice for majority shareholdings to trade under its corporate branding. Enzo Scarcella, Vodacom’s managing executive for marketing, says it simply hasn’t happened in southern Africa before now as ongoing negotiations with minority shareholders, concerned with cost and sceptical over rebranding campaign benefits, were only recently resolved.

These shareholders finally came round during the course of last year and budgetary approval was received in November 2010. The company and its partners have been planning nonstop since then to roll out Vodacom’s new image.

With the massive rebranding campaign of Vodacom’s corporate colours now well underway, a fair amount of confusion seems to exist around why it’s changing its colours to those of Vodafone but sticking to the Vodacom brand.

Scarcella says that, while minority shareholders bought into organisational changes and the associated brand revamp, the Vodacom brand was considered too valuable to change at this stage. Because of costs it is safe for at least the next five years, says Scarcella, after which stage a name change might well be up for discussion again.

Biggest undertaken by Vodafone group

Vodacom is the third biggest company in the Vodafone empire and the brand revamp is the biggest ever undertaken by the Vodafone group.

Apart from pressure by Vodafone, which considers it standard practice to rebrand majority owned businesses in its own image, Vodacom was running the risk of becoming the incumbent telco company in South Africa, and was possibly becoming way too comfortable in its entrenched position.

For this reason, explains Scarcella, and because the local telco landscape has changed so dramatically over the past several years with the launch of 8ta, the rebranding of Cell C and marketing successes for MTN, the business felt it had to change and reinvigorate itself, as well as its brand.

The business is moving to data, yet its stores are still all about handsets, says Scarcella. In short, Vodacom needed a culture shift, in line with changed consumer requirements and expectations and products in keeping with changed demands on the ground.

Designed to prove substantive proposition

The first part of the campaign is designed to facilitate the identity migration. From business cards to Vodacom’s 40 000 points of presence, all need to be moved to the new brand identity, a process that is expected to be completed by Sunday, 4 April 2011. What follows is a campaign designed to prove the substantive proposition of the new brand.

Internally, a process to modernise the business is also underway. On a cosmetic but symbolically important level, group CEO Pieter Uys is moving out of his corner office into an open plan office, while IP protocols that restricted access to social media sites such as Facebook has been opened up. These form the foundations of building a new organisation for a new age, says Scarcella, which will see every single customer touch point reengineered.

In terms of changes in the formal telco market, and Scarcella points out that Vodacom’s competition is much broader than that:

MTN has finally managed to make an emotional connection with consumers through its ‘Ayoba’ campaign. It’s also making a concerted push into the data space – one Vodacom believes it owned up to now.
Cell C has been relaunched and is investing in its network while positioning its messages as disruptive in the marketplace.
8.ta is the new player on the market but for the moment remains a relatively unknown entity.

All the players have upped their marketing spend, which brings renewed customer focus on this sector.

Fragmented in the past

As the new marketing campaign rolls out across South Africa, Scarcella says around 50% of stores have been converted to the new image to date. While Vodacom’s visual identity was quite fragmented in the past, the new image will be monolithic across the country.

The new identity is being rolled out in all of Vodacom’s markets except for the DRC. Mozambique, Lesotho, and Tanzania saw the new brand identity rolled out at the same time as SA.

On Internet rumours that Vodacom paid Cell C off to change its own corporate colours from red to black when it did, Scarcella has a chuckle, and says he can categorically deny these claims. It was fortuitous that Cell C changed it branding when it did, but as Scarcella points out, Vodafone successfully competes with Bharti Airtel in several markets, whose corporate colour is also red.

In total, the rebranding project will cost R200 million in hard costs, while media spend around the marketing campaign has been integrated into the current media budget. Hard costs would be signage, the new logo atop Ponte tower, changes in store, etc.

Relied on Vodafone’s best practice

Since Vodafone has widespread international rebranding experience, the company relied on Vodafone’s best practice to roll out the local rebrand, with considerable assistance from Vodafone’s offices in London and Dublin in particular.

It’s too early to say how the campaign has been received, but initial research indicates a high level of consumer awareness that Vodacom’s branding has changed. Criticism of the heavy flighting schedule on local TV has resulted in that being pulled back, says Scarcella. The proof will ultimately be in the pudding when the second phase, with its focus on substance rather than the colour red, is launched and, of course, beyond.

Scarcella admits Vodacom’s website doesn’t deliver to standard for a tech-focused company and promises improvements in the next several months. Consumers should be able to initiate their relationship with the company online, search for products and packages that suit them, purchase those, and make use of services such as billing etc online.

While Vodacom might be playing catch up on its web offering, it is looking at leapfrogging Vodafone companies in other markets soon. The real world experience and the digital experience need to match, says Scarcella, and soon it will.

Renewed focus on data services

With a renewed focus on data services, Vodacom will be redesigning stores to move the customer experience beyond mobile handsets. It is currently aiming to introduce smart phones at under US$100 cost-to-customer because it sees these devices are the first point of ‘Net access for many South Africans. Scarcella expects users to migrate from smart phones to tablets and finally laptops as they gain web proficiency.

Tablets are a major growth area for Vodacom. Research indicates that, by 2015, tablet sales will outpace laptop sales globally – a trend Scarcella sees playing out in SA in roughly the same time frame.

Soon consumers will realise the difference brought about at Vodacom is about much more than blue and green vs red and white, Scarcella insists. Ultimately the rebranding exercise will prove to be about more than new corporate colours but about a new way of servicing customers.

Vodacom can expect South Africans to hold them to that promise.

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

DDB/Draftfcb furore highlights industry confidentiality issues

A sparring match between Vodacom and Cell C has upended the advertising industry and lead to heated debate on whether or not it’s possible for agencies to effectively protect confidential client information.

A spoof campaign by Cell C, developed by DDB South Africa on a project basis (Ogilvy remains Cell C’s agency of record – see box below) and poking fun at Vodacom rebranding its corporate colour red, has, according to tech news site Techcentral, lead to Vodacom’s agency Draftfcb threatening legal action against the creative director behind both the Vodacom rebrand and the Cell C spoof campaign.

Grant Jacobsen was employed by Draftfcb on the Vodacom rebrand but left in the agency in December 2010 for DDB, where he was placed on the rival Cell C account. Essentially, Jacobsen is spoofing his own work (for Vodacom) for a competitor brand (Cell C).

So the current debate centres around Draftfcb’s belief, apparent through its stated recourse to possible legal action, that the success of Jacobsen’s Cell C campaign rested on confidential client information. Jacobsen is on record as denying any wrongdoing in this matter.

A few points to answer to

Obviously, Draftfcb has quite a few points to answer to – why did it not pay out a restraint-of-trade agreement that would have left Jacobsen comfortably out of any competitors’ reach if he were the key strategist on a R200 million campaign being one; why it did not have a strategy in place to respond to competitor advertising poking fun at the relaunch being another – but its concern must certainly be that it is now quite obvious that the matter of client confidentially and its enforceability has exploded in the public domain.

Whether any wrongdoing took place is a moot point at this stage – clients will be wondering if they haven’t over-shared company secrets with agencies promising “special client-agency” relationships. If a senior strategist leaves one agency for another, what guarantee do they have that their secrets stay secret?

Probably none at the moment. Breach of legal confidentiality agreements are hard to prove, especially if you need to quantify and prove damages.

Draftfcb’s lawyers should have told it by now that this is a long, draining process; that it is going to cost it a lot of money and take up management time for years to come.

Or maybe not. If the agency is smart, it will drop talk of legal action in a judicial system that grinds along at a snail’s pace – every second for which is billed for by the legal fraternity, to be sure.

Should approach the ACA

Instead, it should approach the industry’s self-regulatory body, the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA), to engage in a public and transparent debate about the legal limitations of confidentiality agreements, and the imperative for agencies to agree that any such perceived breach of trust is bad for everybody. The ACA can enforce its code on members much more effectively than law courts can enforce legal agreements.

ACA members might do well to agree that, for the benefit of all, agencies will not employ recently poached senior talent on rival brand campaigns for a set period of time. It keeps talented people in work, but keeps trade secrets out of reach of rival brands, and moves toward re-establishing the trust relationship between client and agency.

For the moment, Draftfcb CEO John Dixon has exited the debate, saying proceedings are sub judice, when he should be driving the conversation, probably alongside DDB CEO Glen Lomas, who has as much to lose if his clients think their own trade secrets are at risk or that the agency is blind to outside perception (as, in fact, they have seemed to be in this particular matter). The industry is poorer for it and the lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank.

EXTRA: How DDB got to do work for Cell C

For those interested in how DDB got to do work for Cell C when the account actually rests with Ogilvy Johannesburg, DDB CEO Glen Lomas says that when the account went to pitch two years ago, both Ogilvy and DDB went down to the wire. DDB then won FNB and decided taking on both accounts at once would be biting off more than it could chew. Lomas stayed in regular contact with Cell C and had approached it for project work as far back as June 2010. DDB has since been signed up for two pieces of project work – the first being the current Vodacom spoof campaign.

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

Flexible working conditions becoming global norm, but adland still missing out

Flexible work environments have been on the radar for a long time and new research suggests it’s fast becoming the norm globally. Used both as a tool to save costs and to attract and keep talent flexible work environments, where employees are in charge of when and where they work, they are also playing an important role in improving work-life experience of many employees.

A global study by Regus also suggests that flexible work environments contributes to better business performance, improves staff motivation and productivity, and helps companies access a wider talent pool.

While many people still think flexitime is limited to smaller businesses managed by hippies or that it remains the domain of companies working out of the highly competitive Silicon Valley, the Regus research reveals that 81% of companies globally are now offering “their employees a level of choice about when and where they work”.

Motivation and productivity

Globally, more than 60% of firms believe flexible working practices held economic benefits, while 70% views it as positive for the entire family. About 40% believes it improves employee productivity (which means, I suppose, that 60% don’t) while a third believes that it also motivates staff. At the very least, cutting out rush-hour traffic jams should count for something in both motivation and productivity.

The research makes a relevant point in relation to emerging economies in that it says that, during periods of sudden growth, flexible work environments allow rapid scalability – something that could also be relevant to ad agencies suddenly boosted by major account wins.

It allows for rapid growth while maintaining tight cost controls. It also cuts down on the need for office space – some estimates suggest by as much as 30%. In industrialised economies now in trouble after the global financial crisis, the opposite is also true – flexitime is being used to scale down business costs – also true for agencies faced with the sudden loss of a major client.

A gap in trust between managers and staff is highlighted by the study. While 59% of firms will allow a flexi-work environment regardless of employee seniority, age or service record, 40% will only extend it to senior staff.

Many SA companies still prefer 9-5

In South Africa, many companies still prefer a 9-5 schedule for their employees, especially in the ad industry. But Regus suggest that this is no longer the norm – only 15.1% of SA business categorically state that they won’t allow employees flexibility at all, while 48.4% said only senior personnel will be allowed flexitime privileges.

As many as 67.5% of local businesses surveyed believed flexible work conditions represented a lower cost than fixed location working. In Cape Town, 32.1% of companies said it would give them access to a wider talent pool, compared with 25.3% in Jozi. Nationally, 40.5% of businesses reported they believe it encourages staff to be more self-sufficient and pro-active in their work.

In SA’s advertising industry, few companies are biting.

“Firstly, the culture of my company is a huge contributor to the kind of work that we do,” says Alistair King, group creative director: KingJames Group, Cape Town. “We have a house style so to speak, as so many agencies do. That style comes from many people contributing to the thinking -conversations in corridors, arguments over strategic direction, ideas thrown in for the team to explore. Making ads requires personal and on-going interaction between a number of players, so I wouldn’t consider such an arrangement.

“[Freelance] work is seldom extraordinary”

“Freelance arrangements are often like this and the work is seldom extraordinary. Most of the time freelancers don’t really have a grasp of the kind of way we like to think and that is why it doesn’t really work. That knowledge can only come by being in the same space as the rest of us. It’s a collective way of thinking…”

King’s feelings were echoed by numerous agency bosses.

Charl Thom, MD of agency FoxP2, is more relaxed in his attitude to flexible working conditions, saying that, while FoxP2 doesn’t have a formal work from home/hot desk policy in the agency, “we’ve always been very open to people coming and going as they please, as long as the work gets done.”

“It’s something that has happened informally at FoxP2,” says Thom. “We believe in each of the individuals at FoxP2 and as such it’s easy to give our team the latitude to work flexible hours. However, our business does require some structure as things like team brainstorms, creative reviews, brand reviews etc, require the team to all be in the same place.

“Actually want to be there”

“We also strive to make FoxP2 a creatively stimulating environment to be in, so you actually want to be there rather than feel you have to be.”

At recent start-up agency 60 layers of cake Cape Town, co-founders Ben Wren and Michael van den Heerik – already causing a stir with their collaborative communication model adapted from their sister agency in Amsterdam – say they completely buy into flexible working conditions for staff.

Their offices, they explain, is a shell where staff get together when they want to. It attracts a different kind of talent to the agency, says van den Heerik, who further says as long as deadlines are met and quality is maintained, he doesn’t care where the work happens.

Read the full story on BizCommunity.

What 1984 means to 2011

“1984”, the television commercial which introduced Apple Macintosh computers to the American public for the first time, would have been killed by focus groups. Charl Thom, MD of FoxP2, slams campaign pre-testing and wonders how many great campaigns have been killed off because of them.

The Super Bowl commercial break. The most coveted and expensive piece of television media real estate on the planet. This is a broadcast that reaches more than 90 million people, and 30 seconds of advertising time will set you back around US $3 million, or R22 million.

This cost all but guarantees that advertisers will go all out to produce the most creative and innovative work possible for their brand. The commercials are highly anticipated by viewers and they are discussed around the office water cooler as much as the game itself. In fact, TiVo, which allows viewers to skip over the commercials, reports that viewers pause and rewind to go back to the commercials they enjoy. The really good ones also spread virally as the black plague did through Europe. Big ideas live everywhere.

More than 600 years after the black plague, Lee Clow and his team at Chiat/Day in Venice Beach conceived “1984”, the television commercial which introduced Apple Macintosh computers to the American public for the first time. The commercial shows Apple Macintosh, represented by a heroine in a white tank top, liberating humans from conformity by throwing a sledgehammer into IBM, represented by a large Big Brother image. The concept borrowed from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four novel, which described a dystopian future ruled by a televised Big Brother.

The commercial was produced by Ridley Scott and broadcast on January 22, 1984 during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. The rest as they say in the classics, is history. It is now widely considered and acclaimed not only as one of the most successful and memorable commercials ever produced for the Superbowl, but as an all-time classic advertising masterpiece. An updated version of the commercial was rebroadcasted in 2004 where the heroine was modified to wear an Apple iPod, the device that turned around Apple’s fortunes after a difficult period of time for the company, only this time the villain was viewed as Microsoft rather than IBM. Big ideas stand the test of time.

A focus group would have killed this commercial.

In 2007 an experiment was conducted and filmed as the opening to the Hatch Awards show, a Boston creative competition. “Consumers” are shown an animatic of the 1984 masterpiece, but this time in the generally accepted research format of an animatic, which is made up of storyboard renderings. The respondents don’t hold back with their first reactions: “it’s just black and white, dark, a little depressing”, “bizarre”, “modelled after the Nazi rallies”, “it’s the one commercial I’d get up to leave the room for, I didn’t care for it whatsoever”, “I’m a big fan of anything with a chimpanzee in it”.

The research results suggest that Apple do not move forward with the communication without significant changes like using real people, putting the Apple logo at the start and using a dog or a chimpanzee in the commercial. These folks were recruited to give their opinion on a commercial concept, and it is human nature to feel they have to earn their research fee, selection of triangle shaped sandwiches and tin of Coke. Simply saying it’s a terrific idea and moving on will not suffice, but more than this, they are not even given the opportunity to recognise something great. Try comparing the very basic concept for E.T. “boy befriends alien to help him get back home” to viewing the film in its full splendour. General psychology suggests however, that respondents will try to give an opinion to improve things in a staged and unnatural situation like this, however well-intentioned and misguided it may be.

My belief is that there is very little merit in pre-testing a campaign. We cannot expect of consumers to envisage the potential of a creative concept in a state that is not even close to half-baked. In effect, the research experiment demonstrated that we often ask consumers to have the same creative vision and insight as a brilliant creative team, photographer, digital programmer or a director like Ridley Scott. It’s simply not realistic to expect this of them. Most consumers can give us information based on what they see in front of them, often drawing on an existing frame of reference or experience to contextualise it (chimpanzees anyone?), but they cannot be expected to recognise or give us inspiration in most of the current campaign pretest methodologies.

Campaign pretests need to be limited to basic checks that determine consumer understanding of certain ideas, confirm whether they are vehemently offended by other ideas or prefer one basic thought over another. In the words of John Hegarty “I don´t believe in ‘Campaign Pretests’. These researches just show us what people think. A good idea makes people think.” Apple’s 1984 commercial dodged the pretest bullet, I wonder how many others didn’t.

View the Hatch Awards experiment here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=624FxhJlVM0

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TopTV still scoping ad sales, HD

TopTV has denied reports that it is coming to market with an advertising offering by July 2011. Elouise Kelly, VP: marketing at TopTV, says the group is still in the process of looking at costs and setting budgets etc. No timeline has yet been approved by the board and no rate card has been issued as yet. A contingent of sales staff has also yet to be appointed.

News of TopTV’s supposed sales offering was first published in a newsletter (Media ShopTalk – 24 March 2011) published by media-buying group The MediaShop.

The newsletter noted that: “We have received communication from Top TV to advise that they are aiming to start selling advertising space from July 2011. They announced mid-January that they have 200 000 subscribers. 50 000 new subscribers were signed up in December and they are estimating that they have a viewership of 800 000 (average of 4 people per household). They also advised that during the course of 2011 they will be including a sports channel (by Q3), new HD Channels (Q1 2012) and an HD PVR.”

Kelly says a sales drive will be launched much later in the year to ready the market for advertising opportunities on TopTV during the next financial year (most ad budgets have already been committed for the current financial year).

Asked if TopTV is communicating sufficiently clearly with the broader media industry and advertisers, Kelly insisted that TopTV had been clear that it would publicise news when it had any and that, until they had all the required elements in place, there was nothing to communicate.

Kelly did acknowledge that TopTV should have had their sales plan in place for the current financial year but said as a start-up business, TopTV faced numerous challenges and that it has chosen to invest in improving its customer service offerings first. Supply chain and billing issues had to be resolved as a priority and the management team is working hard at rectifying early errors.

TopTV is also buying new content to bump up its current offering, says Kelly, with a focus on content not yet available in the local market (ie already carried by DStv).

Trish Guilford, associate media director at The MediaShop, was critical of TopTV’s communication and education efforts with media buyers, saying she has seen little information filtering towards advertisers.

Asked on what Media ShopTalk based its original report to the industry, Guilford pointed to an email from Kelly to another MediaShop associate media director, Sean Sullivan, and sent on 11 March 2011, indicating July as a possible launch date for commercial sales. Kelly did point out in the same email that the target date of July could not yet be confirmed.

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The press muses amusingly

April 1 in the media world is a bit like casual day at school. Everybody pitches but no-one is really there. That’s because we are all browsing to ‘Net to see which scores got settled, who threw the best punch without anybody really realising that’s what it was, and who should we copy next year this time around.

While some would argue that every day is April Fool’s day over at the press secretariat of certain youth leagues, the ‘general’ media only gets one day a year to impress with its unique brand of cynical humour, unless you are planning a move over to the tabloids.

Rival bids for Avusa

The Daily Maverick (DM) and the Gupta’s have both emerged with rival bids for Avusa, publishers of the Sunday Times, or as DM puts it the “publisher of everything not owned by Naspers”.

“Avusa, with its strong commitment to cutting-edge printed products such as telephone directories is a real treasure. But we’re also making this offer because we don’t want any political party to have undue influence over a newsroom, and that is what we’re afraid may happen if we don’t step in. We’ve never had political interference in a broadcaster or publisher in South Africa, not ever, and we’d like to keep it that way,” wrote DM editor Branko Brkic.

The New Age, meanwhile, reported that its owners, the very well-connected Gupta family, is to relaunch the newly bought Sunday Times as ‘The New Age Weekender’. The paper reported that “the [Sunday Times] editors were summoned to the Gupta compound in Saxonwold last night, where Cabinet ministers presented them with their story diaries for upcoming issues of the paper.” It also announced a new editor for the paper – Mondli Bruce (burn!).

Lots of coffee-splatter

In news that saw lots of coffee-splatter redecorate computer screens MyBroadband broke the news that MWeb is discontinuing its uncapped ADSL offering.

Having pioneered local uncapped broadband at ‘affordable’ prices, “SEACOM’s instability over the last year meant that MWeb had to subsidise its SEACOM bandwidth with more expensive SAT-3 bandwidth for redundancy – a decision which essentially ‘broke’ MWeb’s uncapped ADSL business model,” the site explained. Uncapped ADSL customers will be migrated to the new high-end capped ADSL accounts.

Techcentral meanwhile mooted new government legislation that will ban use of cellphones for pregnant women and children under 16. Memeburn reported that Tweeps will be paying Twitter to tweet. The first five tweets of every day will be free; thereafter, users will begin paying on a sliding scale, reports Memeburn.

Staaldraad II

News24 is reporting that Rudolf Straeuli has been recalled to lead Staaldraad II ahead of the 2003 RWC. Former Koevoet commander General Gerhardus “Aard” Vark has also been drafted (ahem) in to oversee Staaldraad II. Springbok coach Peter de Villiers is also promising to participate personally in “certain of the exercises”.

In great news for conservationists The Media Online is reporting how ambient advertising comes to the aid of endangered animals. “Embattled game farmers are selling advertising rights on South Africa’s big five in a bid to raise money for conservation efforts,” the site reports.

Budget airline Kulula has announced that it has become the first African passenger airline to offer a commercial Skywriting service but promised that “the writing phase of the flight will be timed not to coincide with beverage services.” Technically, this is not newspaper humour, but as we all know journalists need PR copy to fill up space, so I thought I would add that in (I get paid by the word, folks).

Delays at King Shaka

Writing on a topic Kulula would know a lot about, The Mercury reports that delays of up to three hours can be expected at Durban’s King Shaka airport because aircraft noise is harming a nearby roost of swallows. Sculptor Andries Botha has also been commissioned to create a sculpture titled “Spirit of the Swallows”, according to the paper. Another statue by Botha, valued at R3 million, was removed last year after the “Zulu Royal Household raised concerns that it was not a true reflection of the Zulu warrior king”. That bit, unfortunately, is not an April Fool’s joke.

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While electronic media grows, print falls behind

The South African Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF) has released its latest data on the local media environment for January-December 2010. No news was construed as good news for print – on average, newspapers and magazine seemed to hold steady – while electronic media continued its growth path as more people are listening to radio, watching TV or surfing the Internet.

SAARF found cinema attendance stable (1.6% reach any given week, 19.2% reach for attendance within 12 months) while it noted out-of-home media has stabilised after a decline as reported in its June 2010 data set.

Middle class continues to expand

In spite of the recession, says SAARF, the middle class continues to expand, having grown to 20.3% of the population from 19.3%, compared to the previous reporting period (its June 10 data set, which covered July 2009 to June 2010).

However, 13.9% of the population still only earns between R800-R1 399 while 4.2% earns less than R800 a month. Access to appliances such as electric stoves have grown (to 62.0% from 60.3%) while access to microwaves (to 56.0% from 53.0%) and refrigerators (to 80.4% from 78.6%) also showed growth. Access to TV grew from 82.0% to 84.0%.

Shockingly, 65.1% of the adult population are not working, while 26.2% of South African adults have full-time work and 8.7% work part-time. The official (government-endorsed) unemployment rate stands at 24.0% for fourth quarter 2010.

SAARF’s figure, it should be noted, is for people who are “not working” and includes everybody from housewives (who would argue they work very hard – and would be right), students, retirees and the unemployed. As such, this category is likely to measure a larger population than just “unemployment”.

Declining

Print, says SAARF, remains stable, but its finding shows the average number of publications read (based on readers) is declining. Having read an average of 4.91 print publications (mags and newspapers) in December 2009, consumers read only 4.63 publications by June 2010 and this declined even further to 4.21 in December.

Among daily newspapers, the average issue readership stood at 29.4%, compared to the previous reporting’s period’s 29.2%, but no title showed any significant change to its total readership figure, according to SAARF.

Weeklies currently have an average issue readership reach of 33.4%, with a total readership of 11.351-million. The Sunday Times has shed readers – dropping from 12.0% penetration nationally to 11.2% and now stands at 3.8 million readers, while City Press saw its readership decline, from 6.2% to 5.5%, to 1.867 million readers.

Magazines also held steady except for fortnightlies, whose reach declined from 13.7% to 12.1% or to 4.132 million readers. Bona’s readership reach grew from 9.8% in AMPS June 10 to 10.6%, thanks to growth in rural areas which pushed its total readership up to 3.603-million. Dish/Skottel saw its readership rising, from 6.6% previously to 8.3% or 2.807-million readers.

Lost male readers

On the downside, TVPlus declined to 1.567 million readers, Amakhosi declined from 5.3% to 4.5% reach or 1.538 million readers. Top Billing magazine lost male readers in the metros – falling to 2.3% from 2.8% reach (a readership of 771 000).

In the women’s category, Fairlady declined from 2.9% reach to 2.2% for a readership of 742 000, while Marie Claire fell from 1.0% to 0.7% or a readership of 252 000. Living & Loving fell from 1.6% reach to 1.3%, or 446 000 readers. Rooi Rose saw its reach fall, from 2.7% to 2.2%, to a total readership of 752 000, while archrival Sarie declined to 767 000, with reach dropping from 2.7% to 2.3%.

As bad as the news is for print, so good is it for electronic media owners (and yet Government insist on entering the newspaper market, some would argue by proxy with The New Age, and more directly with Vuk’uzenzele).

TV viewing has increased to 88.5% of all South African adults in any given week, substantially up from 86.8%. Growth was driven by rural areas in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Gauteng, and SABC1 grew its weekly viewership from 75.6% to 76.8%.

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