by MarkLives (@marklives) We feature insight into the brief, creative idea, production challenges and results of the “#BiogenJourney” campaign for Biogen South Africa from digital sports marketing agency, Retroactive, which ran September 2018–June 2019.
Client: Biogen South Africa Ad agency: Retroactive Title: #BiogenJourney
Information supplied by Retroactive.
Brief
The brief was to showcase Biogen as South Africa’s no. 1 health and wellness brand.
Creative summary
For years, brands have been investing big bucks in the biggest sports stars to help market their products because, according to recent studies (Telegraph), sports sponsorship is capable of driving exponential growth in brand awareness and affinity. To showcase Biogen as South Africa’s no. 1 health-and-wellness brand, we aligned it to someone who didn’t match its brand at all: Hobbo, a 130kg male in the worst shape of his life. Biogen was the vehicle for him turn his life around, from eating badly and not exercising to rediscovering good nutrition and focused exercise discipline en route to finishing the Ironman 70.3 Durban.
Resources
In order to remain true to the authenticity of the idea, we adopted a ‘shoot from the hip’ documentary-style approach. We kept the budget lean and followed Hobbo on his journey, produced fortnightly content for Facebook and Instagram, and boosted the content with a small media budget, while the organic interest, and earned media did the rest. This campaign effectively launched Retroactive agency, so we needed it to be light on resources and expenses.
The story was filled with the peaks and troughs associated with a formal narrative arc, and the fan base for the season grew exponentially.
The campaign ran for 10 months and we had the support of the brand in-house social team, as well as the dev team, who hosted new content and built a ‘Hobbo basket’ of products he was using, showcased via Biogen.co.za.
Production
Over the 10-month campaign, fortnightly videos were produced by creative director Ben Karpinski. This involved his capturing moments from Hobbo’s new and improved way of life, and the highs and lows of it. The high frequency of videos created a challenge in the sheer amount of filming needed to keep things interesting but this also allowed for a very authentic story to evolve from one episode to the next. The spotlight also acted as added motivation for Hobbo to reach the audacious goal.
Says Karpinksi, “The #BiogenJourney was a very special experience as it was Retroactive’s first opportunity to create a body of work that reflects our passion for sport and creativity. Personally, it was also unique in that I took on the production duties of filming and editing so as to strike a personal bond with Hobbo and ensure the story could always be very real — certainly a ‘biting off more than you can chew’ situation, but it made the campaign more rewarding as a result.”
Duration
September 2018–June 2019
Measurement
Biogen’s best campaign in the brand’s 15-year history:
R2m+ in earned media
More than 7m people reached
Over 500 000 content views
Over 220 campaign posts
Over 800 comments
Over 1000 shares of content
600 real #BiogenJourney’s started from followers of the campaign
Says Hobbo, “In the beginning I certainly didn’t think too much about finishing this thing; in all honesty, I wasn’t even thinking much about what this transformation would mean to me. But crossing that finish line in Durban, and drawing the #BiogenJourney to a close was something I will never forget. Health benefits aside, this has changed my approach to a few other aspects of life and I’m really happy I decided to give this a go.”
He lost 30kg — from 130kg down to 100kg
He covered 4 118km, made up of 203km of swimming, 429km of running and 3 476km of cycling.
Biogen South Africa
Managing director: Brandon Fairweather
Agency
Executive creative director: Mike Sharman
Creative director/production: Ben Karpinski
Art director: Duncan Blackhurst
Designer: Tyler Jade
#Campaigns is the latest MarkLives column featuring insight into the brief, creative idea, production challenges and results of South African communication campaigns, both ongoing and recent. Have a campaign worthy of being featured in #Campaigns? Submit a short motivation to and we may well be in touch. Please include links to campaign material, when it ran/is running and why you believe it should be featured.
by Jabulani Sigege (@papa_action)Every marketer’s dream is to be able to influence pop culture or ride the wave and turn it into a thriving social campaign. If a brand can recognise the right opportunity at the right time, the effects can be immense.
Keep it real
Over the past decade, brands have come to realise that they can no longer talk at people — they have to talk to them (think Pepsi with Kendall Jenner vs Nike’s “Dream Crazier”). That said, pop culture isn’t something that can just be marketed as if you’re selling a can of soup. People are creators of pop culture by liking the things they see and sharing that with their friends. You can market a product but you can’t market the notion of pop culture.
So how may marketers use something that they didn’t come up with and that can’t be marketed to their advantage? By harnessing the influence of pop culture for social good by looking at five key areas:
Representation: encouraging diversity in pop culture both on- and off-screen
Authenticity: supporting the profile of sincere, genuine voices
Normalisation: inserting messages in our social circles over time that change the narrative and move society forward
Relationships: creating points of intersection beyond and within sectors
Novelty: tapping into the zeitgeist and leveraging (not merely using) influencers
Getting it right
Tapping into the latter can go horribly wrong if a brand forces an issue that isn’t aligned with its values and guided by its mission statement. A brand that certainly got it right was Jungle Oats after the season finale of the last season of Game of Thrones.
Now that #GameOfThrones has ended here are some other things you could watch.
What’s clear is that brands don’t need teams who necessarily dip in and out of pop culture but rather those who are already immersed in it. Pop culture must be second nature to them. But that doesn’t mean the creative teams should simply jump on the bandwagon — they must have a solid understanding of the brand’s strategy. When the creative team is clear about the brand’s philosophy and values, it’s easier to come up with tactical ideas that are appropriate and impactful.
The thing with pop culture is that it moves so fast, it’s almost like hopping onto a moving train (ukulathaza, for those who grew up in Cape Town). If you try to hop onto the train in the wrong way, you’re going to take a tumble. A hard one which you may struggle to recover from. But, if you time it correctly and you have the right technique, you can get on and have a smooth ride with minimal effort.
Check yourself before you wreck yourself (and your brand)
So, before you jump onto the bandwagon, ask yourself the following questions:
Do your brand values align with what it is you want to ride? Can you join the conversation credibly?
When you speak, do you sound authentic?
What purpose does it serve for your brand, or do you simply want to be part of the conversation?
Does it help you elevate that aspect of the pop culture you are talking about and amplify it in a positive way?
Does it allow your brand to be relevant and resonate with the topical issue?
At the end of the day, culture will consume your brand if you don’t have the capital to be part of the conversation and you think you can manipulate it to your own end.
Jabulani Sigege (@papa_action) is executive creative director at Hero, a full-service advertising agency based in Cape Town. He’s picked up a few tricks while working at some of South Africa’s most-iconic agencies, plus a few accolades along the way, including Cannes Lions, Loeries, Bookmark, Pendoring, One Show and APEX awards.
“Motive” is a by-invitation-only column on MarkLives.com. Contributors are picked by the editors but generally don’t form part of our regular columnist lineup, unless the topic is off-column.
by Siwe Thusi (@Siwe_Thusi) The title of this month’s piece is a line from one of my favourite artists of all time, Kanye West. No judgement, please: ‘I miss the old Kanye’, too. Family Business, off the album College Graduation, is the track in which this line sits snug and poetically. I’ve always believed the same things that play out in his African-American family which he raps about in this track play themselves out in the black South African families here. I thought it would be interesting to analyse some of his rap lines in parallel with some familiar scenes.
Traditional wedding
Why? Two months ago, I had my traditional wedding, naturally a large family (and friends) affair. Now, nothing can prepare you for how strategies and numbers play themselves out in family situations. And nothing prepares you for how important families are, regardless of the different shapes and sizes that they come in — much like every single biscuit in that Choice Assorted box is at Christmas. The lead up to my traditional wedding found me observing families: how they crawl, walk, run then fly; how the disappointments walk hand-in-hand with the joys; and how every character has its place. Even at imisebenzi*.
Accounting brain
“And this is for the family that can’t be with us…”
There’s something so telling about reconciling the number of people who rock up to a family event against the invites sent. It’s an immediate signal of who’s still around and who’s not — the voids left by death, a fallout or a sincere “I really can’t make it”. Obviously, death is a strange one because you can’t even send out an invitation and, as the years pass by, the numbers of older family members seem to dwindle. I got married with none of my grandparents present, which was pretty rough… but the irony is that, as their memory fills up our events space… their ancestral presence is multiplied.
“Sitting here, grillin’ people like George Foreman”
Kanye refers here to an endearing act of hitting a family member with your wit while you tease them.
When my family gets together, it might as well be the National Grilling Championships. Smart-mouthed wit is served hot between breakfast, lunch and supper by everyone to anyone. That’s a lot of servings, divided by roars of kitchen laughter, all from a very loving and endearing place. But the trick is to have a “Weeeehhh” and rapid-fire response to make it onto the imaginary rebuttal leader board.
Another irony: During a wedding, this grilling is the energy that is needed to keep the momentum going, the time ticking and spirits high during the many tasks that need to be done.
“Fit 3 in the bed if it’s 6 of ya’ll / I’m talkin’ about 3 by the head and 3 by the leg…”
When the family comes together, it means that there are many more people in the four-bedroomed house that you grew up in. Sleeping arrangements become mathematics problems because, even though extended family is implored to find accommodation, it won’t happen. Much like RSVPing. The numbers that rock up need to be accommodated. At my house, we were critical but stable. I didn’t have the pleasure of waking up with someone’s ‘gelish’ pedicure in my face but I assure you that it’s a reality for other brides.
Strategist brain
“Why Uncle Ray and Aunt Sheila always performin’ / The second she storm out then he storm in.”
Look, what’s a wedding without drama? Not a wedding. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that a family event like a wedding suddenly has a cloud of kumbaya that settles over it but, nope, you would be wrong. A family shows up as it is, no airbrushing and definitely unedited. You will come across a screaming match and dirty laundry being aired in the lounge while silently eating umdoko** for breakfast in your favourite spot on the couch. The irony here is that a black family will never let this same scene play itself out publicly. Many black families still suffer from very strong cases of “Bazo’thini” (what will people say?). Which means that laundry can air itself out internally but never externally. Externally, the family’s honour comes first.
“You know that one auntie, you don’t mean to be rude…”
There are family members that you have to plan for. Strategise for. When they ask this, say that. When they do this, do that. Because, unfortunately, not every family member is your friend. Deep but true. As the old adage goes, you can’t choose your family. So, you have to manage the “When are the children coming?”; “What are you earning now?”; “Where in Joburg do you live (so that I can come crash)?” and things of that FAQ nature. The best thing to do is to always arm yourself with the standard answers to the FAQs and live your best social media community manager life. Yes, FAQs in black families do exist, but it’s how you swerve and plan around them that makes all the difference.
The beauty about family is this: we always find ways for um’sebenzi play out successfully… and that realisation is only made when the crowds have gone and we are washing dishes in the kitchen into the night. The politics of black families (all families, actually) at events will be around for generations beyond us. But ok’salayo***…
“When they get together / they be electric sliding…”
*imisebenzi: traditional family gatherings (weddings, funerals, tombstone unveilings, thanksgivings etc)
**umdoko: Zulu sour breakfast porridge
***ok’salayo: the fact remains
Siwelile Thusi (@Siwe_Thusi) is a qualified South African chartered-accountant-turned-creative-strategist who’s just joined M&C Saatchi Abel from FCB Joburg. She is also a working photographer and writer. Since mid-2015, she’s been in strategic planning, working on some of South Africa’s big brands in different categories and industries in the ATL and digital spaces. She contributes the monthly column “An Accountant in Adland” — exploring where, when and how the two ‘disciplines’ overlap… and why they should! — to MarkLives.com.
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Absa Bank is putting its creative advertising account out to pitch, several agencies invited to submit RFIs have confirmed. A request for information serves to collect written information about the capabilities of possible suppliers.
Thabang Skwambane, FCB Joburg managing director, confirmed that the agency had been officially notified that a portion of the Absa account is going out to pitch and that the agency would be participating. “Because of the lengthy pitch procedures, FCB Joburg would also continue working to deliver the 2019/2020 campaigns already briefed into the agency,” he told MarkLives.
Absa is the third major bank to go out to pitch over the course of the last year. Standard Bank appointed M&C Saatchi Abel as its new through-the-line (TTL) ad agency in June 2019, also tapping Ogilvy South Africa as its brand agency, Clockwork Media as its consumer PR (retail and business) agency, and Edelman as its key corporate reputation management agency. At the end of 2018, Nedbank appointed Joe Public United (previously its ATL agency) to its TTL account, with Levergy managing the sponsorship account and Digitas Liquorice managing digital creative.
The major banks are under significant preassure to perform in a tough economy and, with a range of new digital startup banks, including TymeBank, Discovery Bank and Bank Zero, having launched or set to launch this year, and, of course, Capitec, which continues its spectacular rise unabated and has moved into credit and business banking services.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.
by Herman Manson (@marklives) McDonald’s South Africa has appointed Pacinamix as its new above-the-line (ATL) lead agency, the agency announced on social media last week. Pacinamix is an integrated services, trading and management consulting group.
The incumbent ATL agency, Leo Burnett South Africa (formerly Owen Kessel Leo Burnett) — which was appointed in mid-2015 and took up the account in October that year — remains an agency partner on a non-exclusive basis. Pacinamix has worked on below-the-line (BTL) for the fast-food retailer since late 2016.
Belinda McKenna, McDonald’s SA corporate communications manager, declined to release further details on the appointment, saying “at this point in time we have no comment”.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.
by Sabrina Forbes. “When you really want to create a global icon, you have to go to the Americas as well, so we are seeding the brand in the US, in California. Why [there]? Because [California] connects really well with the BOS way of living and its values.” So says the Spanish-born and Amsterdam-based Montse de Rojas, who became BOS Brands global marketing director in December 2018.
“What I really love is the mysticism around rooibos, because everybody feels that there is something medicinal and magical within rooibos, whether you like the taste or dislike it. I really like the idea of… making something big globally out of it,” she says.
Other than South Africa, where it launched in mid-2010, BOS has been in The Netherlands and France for three years and, just over a year ago, was launched in the “Golden State”. While the SA market is established and growing, De Rojas and her 15-strong global team are working to turn BOS into the single brand most closely associated with the geographically protected, truly South African export of rooibos (in 2015, TIME Magazine named it as one of the world’s Top 50 Superfoods).
BOS = rooibos = superfood
De Rojas wants consumers to think BOS equals rooibos equals superfood and believes that, especially now with health becoming more and more important to people around the world, positioning the brand as a healthy but still delicious option is what’s going to stand it in good stead. Rather than it being treated as yet another FMCG brand, she also believes it should be treated as a lifestyle brand and that it has legs to become culturally relevant, and she’s been working hard to make this happen. Her plan is to show how this organic, natural and healthy product gives back, not only to your body but also to society. Since the first can of BOS was sold in 2010, the company has been planting one tree for every 2000 cans sold and, through growing all its rooibos organically here in SA, the brand indirectly employs another 100 people who do the farming.
From the get go, BOS has put consciousness in everything it does and, for her, it doesn’t need to fix anything; it just needs to talk about it. Even new employees are asked about their feelings towards ethical practices to see if they are a fit. While this may be seen as naïve, she believes that, if every single brand were to be conceptualised this way, a better world would be created.
What’s fantastic for De Rojas is that she can finally play and be brave with what she does, and that the past nine months have been a positive change for her, “coming from the big multinational companies — where you have to be very measured in everything that you do in terms of reputation and impact because you have eyes everywhere looking at you — you cannot play and experiment as much as you can when you are a small, bold, confident brand.”
Licence to explore
De Rojas drives her agencies — Girl About Town PR & Communication, VMLY&R South Africa (project) [VML SA to rebranded VMLY&R SA on 22 July 2019 — ed-at-large], and Workbench (in-store trade, when necessary) — to continuously experiment, believing that the BOS audience has given them the licence to explore and try new things. For her, if a product is launched and it doesn’t work, that’s better than not even trialing it. If people don’t like it, the team will simply do something else.
BOS’s most-recent marketing campaign is “Go For Fun”. It pushes for an inclusive and open message that says, no matter what you’re doing and where you are, you should choose to have fun and, in doing so, be reminded that BOS is a brand focused on bringing the fun back into everyday life.
“It’s such a universal thing, ‘go for fun’,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how. Going for fun could be going on a long trip or having a drink with a friend or going for a walk. It’s such an insightful, and universal truth and an invitation to everyone to just enjoy and embrace life that feels so close to what we want fun to be for people [without compromising one’s health]… Go and take it, we are looking after you.
“Ethical, democratic brand”
“I feel that we are building an ethical, democratic brand and I love that. When I think about it, it’s been designed to be good, to be good for you, and to bring happiness, joy, and optimism in a healthy way that I think is unique and feels super-South African to me. I am falling in love with this country because you guys are such a melting pot, and people are happy, vibrant, expressive, outgoing, and healthy. I think it’s a real reflection of the SA society — very artistic but very contemporary —a different take on art [here] in SA than anywhere else in Africa. It’s very sophisticated, very cosmopolitan but very understated. It’s a beautiful country, it’s a beautiful brand and… they are so interlinked that… in the future, I really want people to associate BOS with South Africa,” she says.
“#AgencyFocus/#BrandFocus” is an ongoing weekly series updating the market on ad agency performance and brand, including innovation, initiatives, the work, awards, people and business performance.
Sabrina Forbes (IG) is an experienced writer covering the food, health, lifestyle, beverage, marketing and media industries. She runs her own full-stack web/app development and digital-first content creation company. For more, go to moonwrench.com. She is a contributing writer to MarkLives.com.
by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) “Journalism is still one of the most-exciting jobs you could ever have,” says Khadija Patel (@khadijapatel), Mail & Guardian editor-in-chief. “It is a privilege to do this work on any day. But it is very, very difficult work. And the difficulty is compounded by the intense pressure on this industry right now.”
Manifold challenges
Though the challenges facing the news media in South Africa are manifold, Patel, like many of her peers, identifies monetary concerns as the biggest. She says that the financial peril in which newsrooms are increasingly finding themselves — as advertising spend is diverted — affects everything they do, from the number of reporters that can be deployed to how they work day to day. There’s a definite sense that the future of the news worldwide is in jeopardy, she says, and no single publisher can claim to have a definitive solution. “But there are glimmers of hope,” she adds.
“We have to somehow fight our way out,” Patel says. “We have to negotiate our new reality, which holds fewer and fewer resources.” The battle is an urgent one, something that she worries may not be fully understood by audiences. They may not grasp the real possibility of many newsrooms shutting down in the coming years, she says. “But the danger is quite tangible.”
According to her, news-media practitioners can’t wait for heroes of democracy to swoop in and save them: “It is journalists who will ultimately have to come up with the solution. It is our work; it is what we believe in; and it will ultimately be up to us to secure the future.” She believes that there’s a great readiness to confront the challenges and to work towards finding solutions.
Reprioritising journalism
At the M&G, this involves reprioritising journalism. “What we have to do is first of all ensure that our journalism holds up to scrutiny,” she says. Following the ownership changes that came at the end of 2017, the company is focused primarily on producing quality journalism; at the same time, it’s working to increase the publication’s agility, in the business sense of the word. “We are unshackling ourselves from the idea that we have to keep doing things the way we did 10 years ago,” explains Patel. “Because 10 years is gone — and it’s not coming back.”
While many of these shifts may be invisible to the public, a noticeable example (from a design and structure perspective), is recently booting sports off the back page to create space for an arts section. Other efforts include an ongoing search for ways to improve efficiencies within the publication’s production flow, and investment in the company’s digital infrastructure.
When asked about her take on in-house agencies or the adoption of an agency model for news media, Patel expresses reservations. Citing The New York Times as an example, she acknowledges that some publishers have seen success with this approach to future-proofing their media. However, she emphasises the importance of “both sides not interfering with the other” in such situations, and says that there needs to be “some interrogation” into the pursuit of new revenue streams. Provided it doesn’t carry negative implications for journalism, the agency model could be “an important cog in the bigger machine” that news media must build in the coming years, she says. The M&G, however, has no plans to go that route, at this stage.
Fervently optimistic
Despite the challenges facing the industry, Patel remains fervently optimistic. To young people considering a career in journalism, she offers words of encouragement: anyone considering a career in the field should build their knowledge not only in journalism itself but in business, law, history, data science or other subjects that take their interest and will help them to do their job more broadly.
Beyond that, they need to be ready to work in tough circumstances: “The work is difficult, but it will be worthwhile,” she says. “You have to keep pushing, keep knocking at doors, but also keep pursuing your curiosity. That ultimately is what we need from young journalists.”
Patel, who describes herself first and foremost as a journalist and teller of stories, has been known to joke about why anybody would want to enter the profession. “But, actually, why wouldn’t they?” she asks. “It is a great job. It is exciting, and fulfilling, and it certainly helps you to play a role in making the world a better place, I believe.”
Both the challenges and opportunities in SA are immense and, though the future may sometimes be frightening, she is excited, and determined to protect the position of the news media — because, she says, a world without it would be intolerable.
Carey Finn (@carey_finn) is a writer and editor with a decade and a half of industry experience, having covered everything from ethical sushi in Japan to the technicalities of roofing, agriculture, medical stuff and more. She’s also taught English and journalism, and dabbled in various other communications ventures along the way, including risk reporting. As a contributing writer to MarkLives.com, her column, “Press Pass”, is a monthly feature spotlighting media leaders and their responses to the trends and tribulations in the industry.
In 2016, the Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (BRCSA) changed its policy about giving away TAMS and now only monthly reports, highlighting the top 20 or 30 primetime shows on several popular channels, are available.
The Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (the BRC) is a non-profit, industry body that was incorporated in 2015 to cater to the audience research needs of the radio and television industry in South Africa.
by Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA) Marketing continues to evolve, and lately some of the ‘big guns’ — such as McDonalds and Johnson & Johnson — have decided to rid themselves of their chief marketing officers (CMOs). What does this mean for CMOs in South Africa? Is the role really extinct, or is it evolving? We talk to Rob Paddock, Valenture Institute CEO, in this fourth Only Connect podcast episode.
Full podcast transcript
Bradley Elliott: Welcome to Episode 4 of Only Connect, a MarkLives.com podcast. I’m Bradley Elliott, your host, founder of Platinum Seed and Continuon. Episode Four brings a very special guest in Rob Paddock, the co-founder of GetSmarter, alongside his brother, Sam Paddock. GetSmarter is one of the big success stories in the tech industry in South Africa. The business was acquired by NASDAQ-listed 2U in 2017, for roughly US$120m. And, today, I get to pick Rob’s brain in terms of how marketing played a role in their business, what the role of their CMO was, as well as some exciting news in terms of him starting his next venture. So, Rob, for those people who don’t know you, which is probably not too many, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and your story to date? Rob Paddock: Brad, you know, they say flattery will get you nowhere.
Brad Elliott: It works with my wife, so I don’t know about that. RP: [Laughs] So my background is that I guess I’ve always been an entrepreneur in some form or fashion. I had an entrepreneurial spirit but was drawn to music. And music — whilst a few people will succeed wildly — I would be one of those people who didn’t. But what I was drawn to was a corporate team-building company that was using African djembe drums to do team-building activities. And I joined this company called Drum Café in Cape Town, South Africa, and worked with them for a couple of years and there had the opportunity to work with the founder in launching Drum Cafe in London, which was just the most-unbelievable experience to kind of get an from-the-ground-up experience of building a business, building a brand, getting marketing down, getting operations down, delivery, and really doing that all from the ground up. So, I learned a huge amount from this entrepreneur, Brett Schlesinger, who I worked with for a few years. And then for many reasons, which included the fact that I actually had to stop playing because of a ringing in my ears, I ended up realising that, in fact, what one of the things I was enjoying most about the work that I was doing was teaching music. So, I got drawn to teaching generally, did some postgraduate studies in teaching. And then found myself in a position where, between my brother myself and my mom and dad, we started a business called GetSmarter, which is an online education company that, that in 2007, was working only with University of Cape Town, to deliver short courses to working professionals. And we grew that business over the next 10 years to the point where we were operating with students from 145 countries around the world; we were achieving an average graduation rate of 90%, ie 90% of the students who started their programme successfully graduated. And we were working with universities, the likes of Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford and many more top, top Ivy League universities. And, by the time I finished up my tenure, we had educated just over 90 000 students. That was an incredible journey, also very tiring, and we had the opportunity to sell the business in 2017 to NASDAQ-listed 2U. And I continued to work within the business for another year. So, I finished up my time, and [have] taken a bit of time off and [am] now looking quite confidently towards the next thing.
BE: I’m sure we can chat about that in a bit and that’s going to be really exciting to see what you’re onto next, especially given the success of GetSmarter. So, during that journey, if I can just touch on that journey and get a bit of context, our conversation, Rob, is there’s a sort of trend that we’re seeing in the media and there’s a lot of hype in the media around CMOs becoming extinct. That’s the kind of headline or clickbait that’s going around at the moment. So you’ve got guys with really big companies — Johnson & Johnson, Uber, Taco Bell, Hyatt Hotels — all losing the CMO role. McDonald’s recently announced on Monday [22 July 2019] that they’re also not going to be replacing their global CMO. From my perspective, at least, it’s not so much that the role of a CMO is no longer needed; it’s that the role has just changed so much. That the role of marketing has just changed so much, and having gone through this super-hyper-growth journey in GetSmarter, it would be really interesting to see how you structured your marketing departments. [You did] have a CMO, didn’t you? And what was the role of marketing in that organisation? RP: Perhaps the best kind of perspective that I can give you is quite individual to me, based on my experience of putting together a startup, high growth, very, very marketing- and sales-orientated business. And because we didn’t take on any outside venture capital, our cash flow was the lifeblood of our business. So, if we didn’t get our marketing sales right, the business was going to die very quickly. For us. the idea that you could ever decompartmentalise the general awareness — and let’s call it brand-awareness or lead generation — from the actual ability to sell and convert that into sales, I just couldn’t, didn’t have the opportunity to think at the sort of scale where you’re able to just create general brand awareness, and kind of creative campaigns around your business. Digital marketing has fundamentally changed the game. The fact that we can get the degree of analytics and insight into the efficacy of various marketing channels, means that — I’m sure you’ll remember the old adage, “50% of our marketing is working, we just don’t know which 50%” and that’s certainly not the case anymore, at least as it relates to lead generation. Making sure that your marketing spend is incredibly targeted, and that you’re tracking that spend all the way through to the completed sale, is just absolutely critical particularly for small businesses and startups and more especially in the in the digital domain. So, Brad, I don’t know that if I had to reflect on our CMO function at GetSmarter, under the CMO function always included functions like sales, it included head of digital, it would include a content marketing team, a PR team underneath them. But the entire marketing ecosystem was always very, very squarely pegged around the CMO function.
BE: As you start reading into these articles past the headline of CMOs becoming extinct, they’re actually changing the title of this role to “chief of growth” [chief growth officer] as an example. You obviously come out of a digital domain and a digital product. But what may be interesting to see is do you think this sales function, sitting very closely alongside or even underneath a CMO function, works for more-traditional real products in the real world as well? RP: Look, my sense is that the full marketing sales cycle, if it’s not seen in one cohesive view, I struggle to see how you could keep any kind of portion of that cycle individually accountable. And I think it’s something I’ve always been keenly aware of: accountability really matters. And, although there’s a lot of areas where there’s collaboration, teamwork, and so on, the fact is that you can’t really view general brand awareness, as an example, or let’s say in another example, social media presence, and not concurrently view the impact that it’s having on sales. I would significantly struggle with that. So bigger companies, jeepers, again, I think that you’re missing out on some absolutely key intelligence, if you’re not looking at the entire marketing cycle, which to my mind, very much includes sales.
BE: Businesses have traditionally siloed those roles and they sort have a hatred for one another, these two departments. You know, sales guys don’t understand how marketing is actually helping them at all, and marketing are like, “Ah, the sales guys, all they care about is selling!” But, to your point, it’s about becoming a lot more collaborative between those departments. And we’ve seen it, and taking lessons from digital products and sort of software service companies, the really good ones tend to make those not one role, not silo them. They work very cohesively and collaboratively. So, I think you’re on to your next chapter, which I’m sure everyone would want to hear about. So, firstly, what is that? And, secondly, do you see obviously the same pivotal role of marketing? Is it going to shift differently? How will you do things differently, given your learnings, your early learnings from GetSmarter? I’m assuming, and maybe incorrectly so, that capital won’t be as much of an issue?
RP: I’m in the process of launching an internationally accredited, private, online high school and I can’t tell you how excited I am about this project. I’ve been keenly aware that there is a growing place for digital education in primary and secondary education, and I believe that that’s on a global scale. Primary education is something I’ve struggled to get my head around — a fully online primary educational experience — I just think there’s too much social and emotional development that’s happening that really benefits dramatically from in-person, and physical-presence, learning experiences. But, at the high-school level, Brad, I’m seeing an enormous opportunity for an entirely online high school, which focuses specifically on solving the world’s biggest problems. Now, that’s a very big statement, so let me unpack that a little bit. We’ve run a lot of market testing, a lot of market research, looking at what is it fundamentally that’s motivating the leaders of tomorrow? And what my primary hypothesis, going into the market testing, was that kids are all about wanting to become too technologically literate; they want to understand the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), they want to understand how they can integrate their educational experience with industry, and so on, and so on. And, as a kind of side-test, I started looking at, well, maybe there’s a possibility that actually they want to deal with dramatic changes affecting their futures, like climate change. But that was really just a side hypothesis. So, we went out and did this market testing and I can’t tell you how surprised I was to see that the next generation are very different from — or let me speak for myself — they’re very different from the way that I was wired when I was 16 or 17 years old. These kids really care about the world that they’re inheriting and they’re not prepared to just wait until some point in the future where, perhaps, they can come of age to supposedly then start to effect the change that they want to see in the world. So, this idea of a kind of purpose-driven high-school experience was forged off the back of that market testing and we’re building out a business called Valenture Institute, which is really focusing on building the change-makers of tomorrow. And it’s a global, private, online high school — we’re going to be launching in January 2020. Our first intake will be at the end of January 2020. And perhaps, just to get a bit more specific to your questions around marketing, something that I’m acutely aware of, particularly with this age group, is that millennials and Generation Z, and so on, are far more-interested in story-doers than storytellers. And I think a lot of marketing, for the longest time, has been about the telling stories, as opposed to just more honestly baring the kind of DNA of your business for others to then judge. And, for me, really, as I think about what has to be absolutely mission critical to Valenture Institute, is that we walk the walk and that, if we are teaching kids about how to solve the world’s biggest problems, around things like climate change, social justice and inequality, health, etc, we need to be contributing in exactly same way; it very much needs to be baked into our DNA. And that’s the way I’m structuring my board, the way I’m structuring my exco team, the way we’re thinking about our work and our role in society; it’s far more than just providing a product and a service. It’s about setting the right example that others can then follow.
BE: That’s really great insight. And congrats — it sounds like an amazing, amazing venture — and I’m sure it’s going to be extremely successful. Just speaking on that, I read an article as well, warning about millennials and Gen Z buying into brand values and not actually buying into the product itself. Also, I don’t know if you know, Dave Duarte from a company called Treeshake — great talker as well/great speaker — he and I actually had a chat not too long ago, and he was saying, “You know, the whole marketing world is talking about storytelling and storytelling and storytelling [and] I think it’s all about story making.” So, you’ve hit the nail on the head there, where businesses actually also need to walk the talk, and start making stories, not just telling stories. On a final note, something that we always like to ask the people we chat to and who have given up their time is, what are your favourite resources for learning? Any podcasts, any great books that you vouch by? I do have a bit of secret intel — well, not secret intel, I think it’s quite public, your brother talks about it quite a bit — around the Rockefeller Habits being a key book in your in your journey. Are there any other any really great reads that you can recommend?
RP: Sam and I flew over to Florida in about 2012, and met with this guy, Dan Devine, who had built a business much like ours but much larger and far more successful. And he said to us, “Guys, just do one thing: read this book and implement everything that’s in it. And that was Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. S,o I’m always hesitant to advise anything other than Mastering the Rockefeller Habits except for the follow-on book which is called Scaling Up, by the same author, Verne Harnish. Brad, it’s an astonishing, and very practical, how-to guide for high-growth businesses looking to manage cash carefully, looking to align strategy with execution across the board for hyper-effective growth, and I really can’t —I’m tempted to talk about one or two other books but really, let’s keep it focused here — Scaling Up by Verne Harnish, is one of the most-powerful books that you can possibly read. And then to marketing, I just love Seth Godin. He’s brilliant. So, I’ve subscribed to — I mean, he’s really good. Sometimes I feel like he’s a fly on the wall, watching me and giving me advice based on what I’ve normally done wrong the day before. And he gives this wise, wise counsel the next day. He is a profound marketing thinker, and I guess, really relevant to the points that we’ve been discussing today. I think Seth is always a number of steps ahead.
BE: Yeah, and I agree with that. Okay, Rob, I really, really appreciate your time. I’m sure all of us are going to be watching Valenture really closely, and I wish you all the best for your journey with that. RP: Wonderful. Thanks for your time.
BE: Thanks for listening to Only Connect, a MarkLives.com podcast… Please be sure to subscribe so that you can be the first to know about our future episodes. Until next time, keep connecting.
Transcribed using otter.ai and then edited lightly.
The founder of Continuon and Platinum Seed, Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA)has created a number of businesses in the digital and technology sectors. He believes that marketing needs to be reinvented so that it becomes more useful to humans and brands. He’s also a collector of fine whisky. Bradley contributes “Only Connect”, exclusively to MarkLives.com. In this podcast, he chats to custodians of the world’s top brands about what matters most to them.
by Paulo Dias (@therealptp) I consider myself a major radio nerd and anorak (incidentally, a term which was popularised by a UK radio presenter who used it in the early 1970s for fans of offshore radio, who would charter boats to come out to sea to visit the radio ships) but even I nerdgasmed hard at the Gareth Cliff-led audio-crossover event of recent memory.
Four of the Fired — T-Bo Touch, DJ Fresh, DJ Sbu and Robert Marawa — descended upon the CliffCentral studio for as good a piece of audio as I have heard in ages. Gareth Cliff played the role of Tony Stark bringing together these Radio Avengers (Revengers?), superhumans with superpowered personalities, for almost two hours of genre-defining conversation.
I started this article with the intention of talking about the key takeouts and interesting lines and quotes but I already had a full notepad after 10 minutes, so that idea didn’t pass go. Instead, I sat back as a fan and enjoyed the picture that each one of them painted.
Master storytellers
Master storytellers with a wealth of knowledge explored everything from the state of play at the national broadcaster, the suggestion that they lost their jobs for political rather than radio reasons, the lament that social-media pull is more valued than talent and every… and I mean EVERYTHING… in between.
At first glance, any audio that comes in at an hour and forty minutes makes you skeptical; I mean, for how long can a room of rich and successful men moan about their former employers? But I got none of that. The time flew by and, as with any good piece of audio, I was upset when it ended.
It’s as simple as this: if you are in the radio industry or have an interest in it, take a listen.
Legends
These men, legends in their own right, were shaped by the last generation of radio legends — who they talk about with reverence — and they, in turn, are shaping the next generation of legends. You would be hard-pressed to find a group more attuned, switched on and savvy about the current broadcast environment than this panel.
Paulo Dias (@therealptp) is the head of creative integration at Ultimate Media. He works closely with the programming teams at leading radio stations to help implement commercial messaging into their existing formats. He contributes the regular column, “Dear Radio”, looking at the changing radio landscape in South Africa, to MarkLives.com
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