Independent industry news for marketing, advertising & media execs
Mark is showcasing the work of a number of South African based freelance graphic designers and illustrators over the coming weeks. This logo, developed for an online store, The Thrifty Trove (coming soon), communicates a great find, a treasure chest at your fingertips! By Ivancka Kroell (Durban, South Africa)
The New York Times yesterday placed a fascinating article on gourmet food magazines that have started to shift its focus towards ‘cheap home eating.’
“There is an incredible opportunity,” Ruth Reichl, the editor in chief of Gourmet, tells the paper. “People need help learning to cook again, and they need advice on less-expensive ingredients, and we’re trying to give it to them.”
The magazine also added a feature called Cook Smart that “has a budgetary mind-set, where you can take a dish and play it out over a couple of days and use the leftovers effectively.”
Apart from trying to keep budget conscious readers reading the title also aim to pull in mass-market advertisers as the car, home décor and travel sectors pull in spend.
Nominations are now open for the 2009 South African Blog Awards! The SA blog awards is a showcase of the very best of South African blogs. The 2009 SA Blog Awards is scheduled for its annual process of nominations and voting this year from 1st March through to 1st April, and the winners announced on 3rd April. Nominations from the general public will be open from 1st March 2009 to 14th March 2009. After 14th March 2009, the top 10 blogs in each category will go through to the finals so please submit your nomination forms by the 14th!
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Together with advertising agency Ogilvy Johannesburg, the ANC has produced four commercials (the first of which you can view on MarkLives!com) that talk to the positive changes ordinary South Africans have experienced since 1994, while acknowledging “there is much more to be done”. Archive material of Nelson Mandela features in the first segment of the ad, with a message by party president Jacob Zuma following at the end.
Executive Creative Director: Fran Luckin
Producer: Lesley Roe
Copywriter: Xoli Ntusi
Art Director: Xabiso Dlungwana
Clayton-Emil Coutriers, a design student from Tshwane University of Technology, is the first winner of the House and Leisure Green Designers at Woolworths competition for his original and ecofriendly scatter cushion designs, ‘Dance of a Thousand Seasons’. Clayton-Emil was announced the winner in the countrywide design competition aimed at discovering the next generation of environment-friendly designers in South Africa. First runner-up is Kirsten Skidmore, a graphic design student from The Red & Yellow School in Cape Town, for her distinctive and savvy shopper, made from recycled Woolworths plastic shopping bags.
The truth is out – the debate that has been raging across the South African gaming community (see below) about who are better gamers – boys or girls – was in fact a marketing campaign planted by new IS broadband provider PLuGG. PLuGG targeted the gaming community as a core niche in its customer base. It planted posts on gaming forums and blogs, and even put out YouTube videos supporting one side or the other, with the help of agency Hello World. PLuGG conceived the campaign to conclude around a first-of-its-kind Girls vs. Guys Game-Off event that was held at the end of 2008.
“PLuGG created a number of credible yet fake online personas, and set about seeding this debate online,” according to a media release by PLuGG. “Under these fake personas, PLuGG infiltrated some of the top gaming sites in South Africa, namely MyBroadband, Prophecy and Systemshock for example. PLuGG appointed a number of independent seeders with impressive networks who created discussions on social networking sites such as Facebook.”
The total amount of online exposure for the debate was 17 290 views with 640 replies to the seeded discussions.
“The fact that PLuGG is aimed at such a techno-savvy target market gave us the opportunity to develop an effective viral online marketing campaign using various forms of new digital media and BTL activities,” commented Theo Ferreira, Chief Executive Creative Director of Hello World Agency. “The success of the campaign was based on understanding the target market, speaking to them via digital mediums that they use and like, and finally packaging the concepts in an exciting manner so that they shared it with their peers. PLuGG have proved that their game genuinely never stops when using innovative thinking to converse with their audience.”
The YouTube clips:
Girl Gaming Clan – This video featured a fake girl gaming clan “Vixen5” and received 231 views and 2 comments.
Lecture – A lecturer claiming that female mental abilities would allow them to be better at games. Received 190 views and 1 comment.
Lab – Featured a scientific experiment that showed women’s gaming abilities. Received 240 views and 1 comment.
Kind Pockets, Richard Hart’s debut solo exhibition opens at Whatiftheworld in Cape Town this February during the week of Design Indaba. Hart is best known as the creative force behind Disturbance, the highly acclaimed Durban based design studio that was recently featured on the cover of the international design journal, I.D Magazine (and often on MarkLives!). Kind Pockets is an exploration of the concept of the marsupial girl, an imaginary archetype. Aesthetically the work references the visual vernacular of popular youth culture, bringing to mind the work of artists such as Rita Ackermann, Aya Takano and Yoshitomo Nara. At surface level the work seems to deal with the ephemeral – themes such as beauty, fashion, innocence and adolescence. But on closer inspection the girls and their animal companions populate a disquieting world where the fragile present threatens to shatter into something more sinister. The images seem to capture the moment just before the event, and are filled with an unnerving anticipation. The inhabitants occupy an ambiguous space, heightening the overall sense of disquiet – the dialogue between girl and animal often seems to be an uneasy one.
KIND POCKETS
A SOLO EXHIBITION BY RICHARD HART
OPENED WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2009
Source: Whatiftheworld
Vodacom has embarked on an integrated marketing campaign to leverage its sponsorship investment in South African rugby. Afrikaans singer Robbie Wessels features in the TV spot.
The ‘big idea’ at the centre of this campaign is the man wearing the number 23 on his back. He’s an integral part of the team, knows all its players and their strengths and weaknesses intimately but, he’s not the coach or the manager or even a player, he’s a fan. There are always 22 players on a rugby team.
A critical driver of the interactive element of the campaign is the website, www.player23.co.za. This content-rich environment includes details on every team and every player in all the rugby properties Vodacom sponsors from the Vodacom Super 14, the Vodacom Cup and the Vodacom Tri Nations. Depending on the fan’s particular affiliation or preferences, the site will intuitively customise its appearance whenever that fan logs in.
The campaign has been developed by Draftfcb Johannesburg, and was shot by boutique commercials production company, Picture Tree, with director Alan Irvin. Digital (internet) strategy and production by Clickthinking.com.
The Independent Communications Authority (Icasa) yesterday withdrew an invitation to operators to apply for mobile TV licences.
Engineering News:
Icasa decided that it would be “in the interest of the communications industry at large to first finalise the Digital Migration Policy and Frequency Band Plan before licensing any mobile digital video broadcasting services”.
Business Day:
But Icasa does not need to have the digital migration policy in place to license mobile TV, according to analyst David Moore of Africa Analysis.
Moore said the mobile operators and MultiChoice have been ready to launch commercial mobile TV services since 2007, when their trial period was due to end.
Business Report:
According to an industry source, the reluctant withdrawal, which came three days before the licence application deadline, was a response to pressure by e.tv. However, the broadcaster would neither deny nor confirm that it had put pressure on Icasa.
The withdrawal could further delay the testing of the service by the successful applicants before the 2010 Fifa World Cup. The government has made commitments to the local organising committee for the soccer event that by 2010 there would be mobile TV.
Google has posted an official notice on its blog regarding the world-wide failure of Gmail earlier today:
2/24/2009 04:28:00 AM
If you’ve tried to access your Gmail account today, you are probably aware by now that we’re having some problems. Shortly after 10 9:30am GMT our monitoring systems alerted us that Gmail consumer and businesses accounts worldwide could not get access to their email.
We’re working very hard to solve the problem and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience. Those users in the US and UK who have enabled Gmail offline through Gmail Labs should be able to access their inbox, although they won’t be able to send or receive emails.
We’re posting updates to the Gmail Help Centre at http://mail.google.com/support/ and Google Apps users can visit the Google Apps help centre at www.google.com/support/a.
Thanks for bearing with us while we sort this out. We’ll report back as we make progress.
Posted by Acacio Cruz, Gmail Site Reliability Manager
Followed by:
Status Update
2/24/2009
Many of our users had difficulty accessing Gmail today. The problem is now resolved and users have had access restored. We know how important Gmail is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously, and we apologize for the inconvenience.