by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Meet the chairperson of PrideAM, the world’s first LGBTQ network for advertising. UK industry veteran Mark Runacus, who is also co-founder and planning partner at London agency Wax/On, shares insights into championing inclusivity and diversity.
Q5: Tell us the story of PrideAM — how did it all start? Mark Runacus: The idea for PrideAM came about at the end of 2015, when a small group of out UK LGBTQ ad industry figures — Nick Bailey, Jan Gooding, Scott Knox, and Matt Scarff — united to create what was then described as a leadership group. As the group quickly grew in size, it changed from being a networking and support organisation to more of a lobbying group. The network’s aims were then established. Those are:
To promote the fair and accurate representation of LGBTQ people in advertising and marketing communications
To remove any LGBTQ prejudice from the advertising and marketing workplace, and promote an open and inclusive creative environment
To promote positive LGBTQ role models in the advertising and marketing sector
To provide support and information to LGBTQ people working or seeking to work in the advertising and marketing sector
PrideAM is entirely volunteer-run, is not for profit and, in fact, survives on just a few hundred pounds each year to pay for essentials like web-hosting. The organisation is non-commercial to preserve its editorial independence. That’s because PrideAM publicly celebrates great LGBTQ-inclusive advertising, and privately calls out instances when brands do it badly, miss opportunities, or offend and are prejudiced.
PrideAM is focused on lobbying for positive LGBTQ representation in paid advertising and marketing, recognising that other organisations are working hard to improve LGBTQ representation in areas like entertainment media. We recognise that our efforts should form part of a broader and integrated diversity and inclusion strategy.
Q5: What are the organisation’s goals for 2019–2020? MR: This year, we are focusing on producing an updated guide to creating LGBTQ-inclusive advertising for a mainstream audience. It’s called Outvertising and will be available free on our website. It will contain a how-to guide, case studies, and interviews with LGBTQ leaders and straight allies from the UK advertising sector.
Another key theme is the development of role models in the creative workplace, and we will continue to provide free workshops to LGBTQ people and straight allies to help develop those role models. We’d love to do more but, with very limited resources, it’s important we remain effective and do a few things well.
Q5: How can brands and agencies promote positive change in terms of queer representation? MR: It’s important that brands first work out how they can play an authentic role in the diversity and inclusion space. Tokenism is never acceptable. They should start from within by ensuring they are an exemplary inclusive employer. From an LGBTQ point of view, do they have an internal LGBTQ network with senior management representation and support? Are their HR policies welcoming of the LGBTQ community? For example, what is their transitioning policy? Their LGBTQ parenting support? Gender-free bathrooms?
Q5: Does PrideAM have representation outside the UK? MR: We’ve been overwhelmed by the support we’ve received since we launched, and are delighted that, as our members have moved around the world, they have started PrideAM sibling networks in other countries. Canada and the US have come first, and we’d love people from other countries to join our welcoming family, too.
Q5: How can readers get involved? MR: Anyone is welcome to volunteer and get involved in PrideAM: you don’t even have to work in marketing and advertising, though some experience or understanding of the sector would be useful. In aiming to be as accessible as possible, there’s no membership fee to pay; we just welcome active support.
Runacus explained that people in South Africa could join in by campaigning remotely, citing writing and blogging as examples of helpful contributions. He added that PrideAM would be willing to assist in the formation of a local chapter — with the caveat that they are volunteers “with almost no cash and limited resources”.
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 new regular column “Q5” aims to hone in on strategic insights, analysis and data through punchy interviews with experts in media, marketing and design.
by Steve Miller.The concept “content is king” originated in an essay by Bill Gates in 1996. In it, he describes the future of the internet as a marketplace for content. Great content helps build trust with your customers. If it’s is engaging, educational, and valuable, then they will think the same things about your business. But why isn’t content working like we’re told it would? Could it be that the “content king” is dead?
Content works
Content evolved as a strategy to counter consumers ignoring online advertising — so-called “banner blindness”. The data in favour of it is compelling:
Content marketing provides conversion rates about size times higher than other digital marketing methods (ABG Essentials)
After reading recommendations on a blog, 61% of online consumers in the US then decided to make a purchase (Content Marketing Institute)
According to 74% of companies surveyed, content marketing has increased their marketing leads, both in quantity and quality (Curata)
HubSpot reports that inbound marketers are able to double the average site conversion rate (from 6 to 12%), in part due to their content marketing efforts
And yet businesses will tell you that their content programmes just aren’t delivering the results they expected, despite shifting sizeable budgets into them.
Time to re-evaluate?
Perhaps it’s time to reassess the oversimplistic dictum that “content is king” and consider how to get more out of your content initiatives:
1. Be honest about your content premise
The problem is that content is tacitly understood to be the licence to move forward with the pitch. You give with the hope that the prospect will stick around and finally buy something. But, after 20 years, consumers know it — and they might hate you for it if you don’t offer any value. A commercial context doesn’t necessarily diminish the value of strong content, provided you educate, entertain and enthral. Most intelligent consumers understand the trade and engage when you’re honest and interesting.
2. Be tougher on your content quality
Quality content is elusive. Content is meant to inform, educate, entertain and offer utility. It’s more about consumers than it’s about you. It’s incumbent on you to identify your client-cohorts discretely and educate them subtly: tell them what to look out for; give them valuable tips on how to achieve success; demonstrate how you’ve helped others in their shoes; open their eyes to new possibilities. Only then have you earned the right to offer yourself as a solution.
3. Respect the context
With millions of content pieces being created every day, “content is king, but context is god” says revered blogger, Gary Vaynerchuck. He’s right. We have to show respect for the interaction betweenthe platform and the audience. A mom might be looking to buy something on Pinterest, but maybe she’s more interested in sharing her life on Facebook — getting our content and our sales pitch mixed up for those two interactions is a sure-fire recipe for disaster.
4. Hustle like hell
Even this isn’t enough to ensure the success of your content strategy.
The truth is that digital is the most “through-the-line” media ever. The creative idea and how it’s put out there are inextricably bound. Too many clients and more ‘traditional’ agencies have been seduced into believing that the budget can now be spent on making pretty things without a plan to get it out there. This is conceptually, ethically and pragmatically flawed. Without it, you’re just winking in the dark, no matter your content quality.
5. Rethink your budgets and your partners
We’ve been bamboozled into thinking of content as a cheap medium. This is simply untrue. For efficacy, you need to put money behind it — maybe even more than in the past — because your options have grown exponentially. It’s no longer a choice between media channels with the best reach and frequency; it’s a choice between channels with different purposes that deliver different results at different times in the content journey. Understanding this rich and complex landscape is perhaps the new content-frontier, and where the right digital creative specialist makes the biggest difference.
~• ~ • ~
So, is the content king dead? Perhaps. But maybe the king just needs new ideas and new disciplines. The king may be dead, but long live the king.
“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) ‘There is no greater feeling than beating life at its own game.’
I’ve never really thought about this but, every day, we use hacks to dodge the curveballs that life throws at us — those random situations which require a quick two-step. This is why I’m convinced that every one of us has at least one strategist DNA strand. Because, if you think about it, the life hacks that we use all the time are strategies.
They’re strategies because they’re preceded by an objective motivated by speed, ease and the lowest amount of pain (ok, maybe not that deep). From using a back-route to get home quicker to a putting a wet cellphone in rice to avoid a R5000 bill, you need to think outside the lines and that’s what people struggle with.
Life hacks are defined as “uncommon solutions for common problems” by Annabel Staff and the uncommon part requires anything between creativity to common sense. Let me explain…
I recently decided to get into hiking with a group as a serious pastime. Now, the thing about hiking is that, much like a marathon, it’s a mental thing. Somewhere in between the breathtaking scenery, lungs taking in breath and the silent screams of your ankles is the epiphany that numbers and strategy live everywhere and hack anything.
The cost of Amakhekhe wom’ncwabo (funeral cakes)
It was a crisp 7am Sunday morning and my group was ascending the incline at the Suikerbosrand hiking trail in Gauteng. Probably at the 4km-mark, a voice in the group pierced through our huffing and puffing: “Guys, rough. So, I need someone to bake a bucket of scones/queen cakes for a funeral at 11. I need a number asap.”
Accountant brain
AB swings into action: “What is the most cost-effective way to swerve this oversight?” She could phone all the numbers given to her with crossed fingers and hope that the aunt of the friend’s cousin’s cousin even had the ingredients that day. But that’s stress. And the airtime. And those are costly in the three hours left. “The national treasures aren’t going to be ready and baked by then,” I responded. “Just go to a mass retailer like Checkers and buy these by the packet. And empty them out into a bucket.” The response?
Now, you must understand the significance of why this was a crisis. In the African context, the nuance of that bucket is that it is the national treasure of a sombre event: the joy between each sip of tea during uncomfortable small talk; a family’s ability to host; a bucket that is locked up in ‘in the vault’ — a specific room in the grieving house where only one person has custodianship of the room key. So, it’s very important to arrive with the goods. That “saved me” was acknowledgement of a life hack that was between community street-cred life or death.
Life hacks allow us to have that internal burst of euphoria. That internal happy dance that lets you know that you’re back in the driving seat, that you’ve got your life in order. It’s important for humans in general to feel that way from time to time.
You see, every time we’re able to get the feeling that we are one step ahead of life and are able to swerve around curveballs using creativity and planning on your toes, you go further with that “I got this” confidence. And isn’t that all that life asks of us?
The strategy of gratitude
Getting to the 10km mark demands the hack of breathing through my nose and out through my mouth because the objective is to finish the hike without dying. Grateful for functioning body parts, omg.
Accountant brain
“We have so much to be grateful for.” I don’t think we internalise and break that statement down enough. When we start putting numbers and lists to things, they become more real and more alive.
With every step I took as I descended, I could name a blessing. The number of things to be grateful that I named literally took me to that 10km mark. That descent was 5668 steps of blessing-counting. That’s a crazy and granular way of thinking about life.
Strategist brain
We have to be ‘consumers’ of the right things. When your life is all about positivity and the things your value, the things that aren’t so great pale in comparison, because you have hacked the world’s oldest secret: a life operating from abundance. Having that sort of insight— that you already have access to the things that you want — is how you strategically navigate towards more. More things, more money, more creative ideas. This insight is what drives your world-shakers, pioneers, advertising mavericks, the religious and non-religious alike.
The hack here is being able to repeat this type of consciousness until it becomes automatic… much like putting one step in front of the other… and walking.
Siwelile Thusi (@Siwe_Thusi) is a qualified South African chartered-accountant-turned-creative-strategist at FCB Africa and a working photographer. 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 space. 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 Megan Power (@Power_Report)Organisations that choose to ‘hide’ will pay the price. Disrespected consumers don’t respond like benevolent grandmothers.
Buried my supper
When I was 10, I buried my supper. Literally. I loathed the tinned viennas and baked beans so much that dumping it in a small hole hidden in a bed of hydrangea bushes in my great grandmother’s garden seemed the only way out. But guilt got the better of me the next day and I owned up, expecting the worst.
To my surprise, my great grandmother (as Victorian as they came) was most gracious. Without a shred of sarcasm, she thanked me for coming clean and assured me that digging holes was altogether unnecessary. All I needed to do in future was to let her know what food I really couldn’t stomach and she’d do her best to accommodate that. Trust and open communication blossomed, and remained strong until her death decades later at the age of 102.
I learnt two key lessons that day: first, never let fear of consequence override honesty and, secondly, doing the right thing brings reward in the long run — nothing too profound — most of us learnt this stuff growing up. Which makes it all the more baffling that, in the customer experience and reputation work I do with organisations, it’s still one of the hardest things to land.
Head for the hydrangeas
It seems the minute people don a business hat, the human hat comes off, along with all insight into the needs and expectations of ordinary people. Too often, when organisations have to communicate something uncomfortable (such as a product defect, a safety recall, or misconduct), they head for the hydrangeas. It’s a default setting.
So, instead of taking out full-page adverts in the front-section of a big weekly newspaper, they opt for tiny black-and-white placements in the classifieds of a small daily. In place of following safety recall guidelines for public notices (complete with hazard logos, pictures of the implicated product, full detail of the risk and how to mitigate it) they offer the bare essentials — usually just enough to escape censure.
These are the same companies and brands that don’t send out media releases or post social-media statements, hoping their hidden notice buried among the man-with-bakkie smalls will cover them.
These organisations also leave their websites as is, giving no inkling it’s not business as usual. Homepages continue to reflect routine competitions and promotions, as if the recall, fraud threat, or apology has happened in a parallel universe.
Getting it right
That’s not to say there aren’t those who get it right.
A large retailer faced with leaking hot water bottles not only sent out press releases, placed full-page recall ads, and posted warnings on social media but put up notices at all its store checkouts to alert as many customers as possible. The same retailer, however, boasts a “news and press” page on its site, which includes a handful of select statements (many undated) but no archive to search for more. So, anyone wanting to find out the company’s take on any previous issue or controversy, comes away emptyhanded, forced onto Google. Not the smartest way for an organisation to build trust — or control its own message.
A competitor does little better. With no online “news” section at all, it sees fit to bury critical information on four consumer scams (three rackets listed for May alone) in among recipes, competitions and refund rules. Unless trawling the site specifically for news, who would ever stumble upon it? It’s feels like a box-ticking exercise at best.
This is why a visit to the Motor Industry Ombudsman of South Africa (MIOSA) site at the time of writing was so refreshing. Just under its welcome message, in a prominent box on its homepage, is a very clear warning about an unauthorised email doing the rounds, purportedly from MIOSA.
While I would have preferred more information on the suspected scam (and to see MIOSA embrace social media), the bold website notice serves its purpose. It’s relevant, useful and, most importantly, hard to miss — the kind of straight-up communication consumers expect and respect.
Megan Power (@Power_Report) has nearly 30 years’ experience working in South African media, including investigative journalism and news editing; she now runs Power LAB, a strategic communications and customer experience agency focusing on customer journey audits, crisis readiness and brand reputation. Megan’s consumer column, The Power Report, ran weekly in the Sunday Times for six years and has now found a new home on MarkLives.
by Sabrina Forbes. There are many global and local brands named after fictional characters: Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima, Johnny Hexburg, Ronald McDonald… even Tony the Tiger, as grrrrrreat as he is. This isn’t the case with Johnnie Walker, currently one of the five largest premium spirit brands in the world.
Brand history
The brand’s history dates back to 1819, when 15-year-old John Walker lost his father. Within the year, the family farm had been sold and the money used to buy a grocer’s shop in his local town, Kilmarnock, UK. Without much in the way of business (or life) experience, the youngster found himself blending tea for the locals, a skill that would change the whisky world forever: Any whisky available in retail at the time consisted of single malts that often varied greatly in taste and texture; using his tea-blending experience, Walker began blending these malts into a liquid whose flavour profile he could control.
He died in 1843, leaving a thriving business to his son. A keen business man, Alexander used the industrial revolution to his advantage. The railroad had just arrived in Kilmarnock, carrying good to the great ships that travelled to all corners of the earth. So, he created a distribution network that shipped his late father’s whisky worldwide, using sailors as advocates for the brand. “He invented the concept of influencer marketing. The Walkers are just pioneers, way ahead of their times,” says Karabelo Nkoe, Johnnie Walker South Africa senior brand manager.
Alexander also innovated the use of square bottles, which causes less breakages in transit, and pioneered the highly recognised (and exact) 24° angle of the label. By 1862, sales averaged 100 000 gallons each year and the first copyrighted blend, “Old Highland Whisky”, hit the shelves in 1867; the recipe is a direct ancestor of what we now call Johnnie Walker Black Label. For Nkoe, there was a method to this madness. The square bottle is sturdier and fits more liquid, while the slanted angle fits more copy and allows the font to be bigger without losing too much space. This slant has now become an iconic visual, copied the world over.
According to Nkoe, by the time of Alexander’s death in 1889, the Johnnie Walker brand had really started to develop in culture. Walker’s grandsons, Alexander II and George, introduced the naming of each blend according to the colour of the label and so Red, Black, Green, Gold Label Reserve, and Blue were born. The brand’s even-more iconic mantra of Keep Walking had also been brought to life by then; The Striding Man logo was sketched by a young artist, Tom Browne, on the back of a menu during lunch and remains the core visual for the brand today.
Today, on year shy of its 200th anniversary, the brand’s mantra and logo still speak to their original purpose, the rallying cry for progress and the continuous striving for change. It’s a mantra that extends beyond race, gender, and creed.
Keep Walking South Africa
At the beginning of 2019, Johnnie Walker SA launched the Keep Walking South Africa campaign, shot by Dani Hynes of Egg Films, that features well-known faces — Trevor Noah, Nelson Makamo, and Chad le Clos — and perhaps lesser-known but equal in striving for greatness: fashion designer Thebe Magugu, businessman Ze Nxumalo, cinematographer Motheo Moeng, trombone player Siya Makuzeni, SA’s first black female helicopter pilot Refilwe Ledwaba, and actress and businesswoman Enhle Mbali Maphumulo.
Nkoe believes the global “Keep Walking” fits perfectly within a SA context, considering our tumultuous history. “We are leveraging [the mantra] and are really trying to reintroduce Keep Walking in that same space because SA has gone through some challenging times in itself… We’re a very resilient nation that has gone through a lot and, I think, achieved a lot as well over the past 25 years. We really wanted to celebrate that spirit of progress through South Africans who have progressed their life in their own special way. We want to show SA that, even though it’s been tough and we’ve been through a lot, here are some people that you can look up to — to gather this inspiration around their personal stories and celebrat[e] their steps while honouring every mile that they have kept walking,” he says. Even the act of walking talks to this idea, that each small, calculated step gets you closer to your end goal.
While the brand has used “Keep Walking” in marketing communication before, Nkoe believes that the current approach speaks to consumers in a much-more relevant way, allowing the brand ambassadors to tell their personal stories in their own way. As authenticity continues to develop as a trend in the marketing industry, Johnnie Walker’s message is one of partnerships, not of top-down brand communication. “The more you partner with your consumers, the more you can be a part of their lives,” he says.
When asked whether it’s true that all brands seem to be catching onto this and riding the ‘authenticity’ bandwagon, Nkoe agrees that, while some might be simply doing it for commercial reasons, he believes that authenticity is at the heart of the whisky brand: “[It] is all about inspiring personal progress. That’s what the brand stands for and it’s always been the case. It’s a thing that we have, as a brand, been doing for almost 200 years. This means it’s the perfect space for us to live in. It’s not like we are bringing in a new lens that consumers have not seen before. We are speaking through the brand’s history and heritage and the impact it has had on inspiring personal progress to tell these stories of South Africans in a relevant way that is really authentic.”
Johnnie Walker ad, 1948.
Trends
Additional brand marketing trends Nkoe mentions are innovation, experiences, and the rise of content and influencer marketing. As consumers generally seek out new things and different brand experiences, innovation continues to be key across the board and across all industries. The way in which consumers used to experience and consume a brand has changed, so how do brands currently fit into the lives of consumers without just speaking to them directly? He believes there’s growing merit in making brands more relevant to consumers in the spaces that they’re already in.
For Nkoe, the rise of content and influencer marketing speaks to introducing brand relevance through having someone, who is considered influential, bring your brand into their world, letting their consumers view it through their unique lens.
What used to be a male-dominated market is no longer: women across the world have opened themselves to the (often-acquired) taste of whisky (or whiskey, if you’re into the Irish kind). As a brand, Johnnie Walker wants to ensure it doesn’t isolate anyone when it comes to its communication but, at the same time, it wants to remain relevant in culture and focus primarily on its key demographic: the rising middle-income millennial. It’s a way of balancing how it shows up to the younger demographic with specific needs and wants while paying homage to the historical history and core elements of the brand.
When asked whether it’s simply another ‘bandwagon’ situation, what with every whisky brand focusing on the ‘youth’, specifically young men, Nkoe quickly explains how, although the brand is focusing on the youth especially when it comes to digital marketing communications, women as a demographic is a major focus area. “It’s a matter of the way the marketing landscape has changed. A lot of it happens on digital and this is where a lot of the younger demographic is. That’s why I feel most of the communication is trying to at least engage with and have a conversation with the younger demographic. You want to make sure you’re still speaking in the correct, relevant language to whoever you are speaking to… It would be a shame not to engage or speak with women as a whisky brand and display women in whisky in a more-prevalent and -relevant way. We want to make sure we show the world that whisky is not just an old boys club and we want to bring that to the fore more,” he adds. The Keep Walking South Africa campaign exemplifies what Nkoe says, as it showcases several pioneering women.
Cocktails
Johnnie Walker is also driving the use of whisky in cocktails. There aren’t many other brands doing this, and many people don’t know that whisky was one of the original cocktail liquids. Cocktails may be becoming a lost heritage but, according to Nkoe, it’s more because the market hasn’t really begun to explore the space properly. Johnnie Walker is looking for new experiences to engage with a broader demographic and, for those who think whisky is too harsh straight up, cocktails are a good introduction. “We don’t want to restrict consumers because we feel that it’s best enjoyed how you feel. If you want to have a Johnnie and Ginger, go for it. It’s more about making sure that, even though consumers understand the notes, they can create their own style and enjoy it in the way they want to,” he says, adding that it goes back to creating a brand with relevance in culture.
Key competitors in price and perception include Jameson and Ballantine’s, and Nkoe welcomes the ‘fight’: “Competition is really important and, without competition, we wouldn’t be where we are as a brand. Our market has strong competition; we value that and we do want to see it coming up. It challenges us to be better, and creates a healthy environment and system for brands to coexist.”
An innovation that has put Johnnie Walker even more on the global map was its recent collaboration with HBO and Game of Thrones (GoT). At the time of this interview (March 2019), the new White Walker varietal wasn’t yet available in SA. Guests were later introduced to the blend while being able to watch episode one of season eight at a live 3am cinema-screening launch — the same time it aired in the US. White Walker is the first whisky of its kind meant to be served straight out the freezer, with the bottle changing colour as it reaches optimum temperature to reveal the phrase “Winter is here”.
Another brand extension is the 200ml Pocket Scotch. For Nkoe, it’s a funky, sleek pack perfect for sharing at any occasion where whisky might not be a ‘thing’. You can bring it anywhere with you, right in your pocket.
Keep striving
Johnnie Walker aims to have a place in your whisky cabinet, on your dining table, and everywhere you go. It’s a brand that continues to speak to the human desire of consistently trying to improve and strive for a better life, striving to remind us that each small step counts towards a greater future, for all.
“#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 Paulo Dias (@therealptp) As with any medium, there are fail safes and standards that never let you down but, when you put a brief to your agency or radio station to do something that breaks through the clutter, do you have a reference point? Here are some clever radio ideas with which to challenge your radio supplier.
The most-standout campaign for me recently was the return of the Mental Health Minute. Across the UK, commercial radio and the BBC united to broadcast a one-minute message in support of mental-health awareness. First run in 2018, the 2019 spot ran simultaneously across national networks and community stations, as well as BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, and 5 Live.
That’s a few hundred radio stations and over 20m listeners.
We know radio is nothing without star power and, following on from Princes William and Harry, Lady Gaga and Dame Judi Dench last year, the latest version saw Prince William return, this time with Stephen Fry and Katy Perry, among others.
I really loved this campaign — the right message with the right execution at the right time.
A roadblock, style take-over like this is nothing new, but the sheer scale of over 400 stations with this coordinated approach is a thing to marvel. It was driven by the UK radio industry body, Radiocentre, and shows the absolute necessity for having a powerful local, independent authority — something we miss in South Africa.
Downsides
There are downsides to radio takeovers, though.
In Brazil, every radio station is mandated to carry one hour of government messaging every single day. So, at 7pm, all stations break normal programming and cut to The Government Hour.
Listeners are still able to listen to the upbeat and contemporary Radio SulAmérica Paradiso FM through its app, which carries on as normal. But, in a city with the eighth worst traffic in the world and South African-like attitudes to speed limits — if the app detects that you are breaking the speed limit —it takes you back to The Government Hour for one-minute as a penalty.
Radio is at its best when it understands the loves and hates of its listeners — and it’s even better when it prompts listeners to change a habit.
Both campaigns highlighted this month, while more public service in nature, showcase how radio and its enormous reach can be an amazing catalyst for behaviour change and awareness, so keep that in mind when designing your next radio campaign.
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
by ORiSA. Alastair Tempest, Ecommerce Forum of Africa CEO, is a man on a mission. His goal is to increase shoppers’ trust in ecommerce and to drive the growth of online retail in Africa. Why? Because thriving consumer (B2C) ecommerce typically precedes the big numbers that come in the form of business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce. Tempest answers four big questions about online retail.
ORiSA: Why is trust an issue with local online retail? Alastair Tempest: Trust has always been an issue regarding ecommerce. This is because, when a shopper buys something online, you can’t feel it. This was always an issue with distance-selling. When you cannot touch, or smell, or try on something you’re going to purchase, you need to believe that what you see is what you’ll get when the parcel arrives. In a physical store, you can experience an item, [and] walk away if you’re not satisfied. But, with buying online, the difficulty is that the product arrives and it isn’t the kind you want. Online, when it says a product is 100% wool, you need to know that’s what you’ll get.
ORiSA: Why is online trust a big issue locally, in comparison to places like Europe or North America? AT: Distance-selling has been a big part of the culture and historical narrative in places like Europe and Canada, because of established companies, like Reader’s Digest (which I once worked for), that helped establish trust through distance-selling. As a child, I was brought up by an aunt who was born in the late 1890s in Colorado Springs. She remembered seeing homes which had been bought from a Sears & Roebuck catalogue being pulled across the prairies by oxen. You bought your house with everything in it — from the linen to the cooker and everything else. The buyer placed it on his plot of land or ranch. The Wild West was founded on distance-selling and, so in the US, you find that this is part and parcel of culture — of what people know.
This kind of distance-selling didn’t happen in South Africa, so locally there was no tradition to build on. So, people question whether they’re going to get what they wanted. And whether what arrives will be as good as what it looks like online. They wonder whether their Visa or Mastercard data are safe. Yet people don’t bring the same degree of consideration to handing out their transactive cards to petrol attendants, or waitrons — or even to buying services, like travel tickets, online.
The good news, though, is that over time the trust challenge is eradicated by use. The more people go online and buy, the more they have a great experience, the more the issue of online trust goes away. You just need to get over the first significant psychological hurdles.
ORiSA: What is the role of online retailers? How can they help build trust? AT: Research shows that customers ‘showroom’ and ‘webroom’ retailers. ‘Webrooming’ is when people browse online but make their purchase in store. And ‘showrooming’ is where people check out items in a store, and then, after knowing what brands or products they want, buy online. Both of these phenomena require a basic online store, so what we advise retailers is to treat their online store as a second ‘shop window’. This builds trust — something that retailers don’t always grasp, or that is overlooked by retailers sometimes; in my experience, retailers tend to silo their activities. But, for the consumer, the shopping experience is the same. The big challenge for retailers today is to see things the way their customers do — online and offline.
ORiSA: Why is the Ecommerce Forum of Africa pushing to grow ecommerce? What is the long-term goal?
AT: What we’re talking about, here and now, is goods that are sold online to consumers. This is very important but it is the tip of the ecommerce iceberg. The rest is business-to-business and that is massive. B2B ecommerce is exceptionally important for the future of Africa. That’s where the significant, continental growth will come from. But, to get to that point, we need to get the first step right — which is to build trust for customers and businesses. It’s very much an educative issue: in the case of business, to provide training on all the aspects of ecommerce. We like to say that ecommerce is like a watch; what you see is just the face of the watch but behind that are all the working bits, the cogs and springs — like, for example, logistics, reverse logistics (for returned goods), secure online payment, customer service (vital), and research.
Online Retail in South Africa 2019 (ORiSA) is a study conducted by World Wide Worx and Platinum Seed with the support of Visa, and is endorsed by the Ecommerce Forum of Africa. Marklives.com is the media partner, and Heavy Chef is the learning partner for this initiative, which seeks to actively promote online shopping and the growth of online retail in South Africa. For more info, go to onlineretail.co.za, or download the executive summary.
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 Marguerite Coetzee. Too often we treat a complex problem as complicated and lose sight of possible solutions or desired outcomes. Zwelihle’s unrest is just one example of how a complex problem can be overcomplicated and threaten the sustainability of a system or organisation.
When presented with a problem, we can place it in one of four categories:
Simple:something that is easy to understand or decode, like a cake recipe
Complicated:something that is difficult to understand and requires specialised knowledge, like putting together a car engine
Complex:something that has multiple parts that interact to create different outcomes, like a family or organisation, or
Chaotic:something that has unpredictable outcomes or only makes sense in hindsight, like a black hole or the situation in Venezuela).
Take note
Zwelihle — the name translates to “beautiful place” because of its prime location between sea and mountain — is a township situated between Hermanus and Sandbaai, Western Cape. Most of its residents have disproportionately less income compared to their more-affluent neighbouring towns. What started out as a small and peaceful march to the mayor’s office around a year ago (News24 reported this in December 2018, but residents say there were peaceful marches prior to that), with the intention of raising concerns over housing and service delivery, was met with delayed and unsatisfactory responses from local government and leadership. Since then, it has evolved into a series of protests involving multiple participants and concerns. The matter has escalated into something far beyond its origins.
We find ourselves in a time of rapid change. Complex contexts produce complex problems that require adaptable solutions. A community, organisation, family, and country are all complex systems with multiple moving parts that interact with one another and create different results. If an organisation remains unchanged, it would be vulnerable to surprises. The key is to transform with the times, foster an environment of learning and creativity, engage critically with participants in the system or organisation, and continuously reflect on where the organisation is and where it needs to be.
Lessons from a complex township
Lesson 1: Socialise strategically
An issue within Hermanus and Zwelihle is that there is a strong focus on difference rather than similarity, destruction rather than creation, and continuation rather than transformation. The time and place have changed but the narratives, relationships, power-relations, and logic stay the same.
Hermanus and Zwelihle are largely stuck in a cyclical pattern that regenerates the past, rather than moving forward toward a different future. This is the same for organisations which have an internal us-vs-them behaviour that creates social exclusion or outcasts in the workplace, organisations which place levels of employment on a hierarchy and separate task teams to construct boundaries between colleagues, and organisations which prefer ‘business as usual’ and defend the way things have always been done, rather than being disruptive, transformative, and progressive.
“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.” —John Maynard Keynes, economist.
Lesson 2: Promote participation
The unrest in Zwelihle has revealed a gap in leadership and mistrust in government. Protest and police intervention have highlighted the powerplays between leadership and residents, and it has encouraged resistance to authority. What’s needed here is a shared sense of purpose, a goal of a sustainable future for all involved, incorporating diversity, and a reframing of narratives to be more inclusive, to be motivated by an ideal future, and to incorporate multiple perspectives in developing the solution.
Organisations that experience fading corporate culture, disconnect between colleagues, or a lack of faith in management, should consider revisiting their mission and reformulating their vision. There needs to be a plan of co-operation, coherence and positive competition put into place.
“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” —William Gibson, writer.
Lesson 3: Diversify sustainably
Hermanus has traditionally been financially viable for three main reasons: tourism, small business and access to labour from neighbouring areas. Owing to the protests, holiday-goers are at times prevented from entering Hermanus and surrounds, warding off tourism and the potential income that comes with it. During protests, employees residing in Zwelihle are prevented from going to work, and this negatively impacts their own finances, the businesses they work for, and the town’s overall viability.
It is vital – for an organisation’s survival and sustainability – to diversity its offers and income streams, and to prepare for those unexpected surprises in its ever-changing environment. One way of being prepared for the unexpected is to first understand what is happening or changing in the organisation’s immediate and broader contexts by paying attention to news and narratives being circulated. The second step is to map these changes in terms of trends, quantitative patterns, and anticipated outcomes or scenarios. Finally, the best way to anticipate the future is to create it; influence the desired outcome by developing a plan, vision, and actions needed to make it a reality.
“The best way to predict the future is to invest it.” —Alan Kay, computer scientist.
Marguerite Coetzee is an anthropologist, artist and futurist who provides research and insight services through Omniology. FieldNotes, the latest series in her regular column on MarkLives, captures experiences from the field, shares the cultural lessons learned, and advises on qualitative tools, methodologies and frameworks when exploring the world of the consumer.
by Warren Moss (@warrenmoss) When B2B brands speak about the companies which make use of their products or services, they either refer to them as “clients” or “customers”. These terms may simply seem interchangeable but the choice actually offers a tremendous insight into the way in which the brand views — and handles — that relationship.
Major differentiator
When I was in New York last year on a tour of the city’s top businesses, we were privileged to spend some time at Goldman Sachs. Mark Harris, the head of Goldman Sachs private clients, spoke to our group about how it related to the entities that bank with it as clients, rather than customers — citing this as a major differentiator between Goldman Sachs and other corporate banks. “Goldman Sachs has clients, Home Depot has customers; we can’t have casual relationships with our clients,” he proclaimed.
The same applies in the B2C vs B2B space: B2C retail brands have customers, while B2B brands have clients. Calling someone a “client” conjures an image of a much-deeper, personal and customised relationship whereas, if you’re a “customer”, you’re probably just one of tens, if not hundreds of thousands. It’s a philosophy, not simply a way of doing business.
For the same reason, the top banks call their prestige members “private clients” and not “private customers”; the former has much more gravitas to it. If you bank with one of these, the odds are that you can pick up the phone and speak to a dedicated personal banker who can attend to your needs quickly and efficiently, because they’ve taken the time to understand you, your lifestyle and your requirements. If you call up your medical insurance provider, odds are you’ll call up its call centre, quote your customer number and, once your file has been accessed on its database, it’ll do its best to address your query based on what is seen on the screen in front of the call centre agent.
Relationship depth
The depth of the relationship B2B brands should have with their clients should position them as solutions providers, as opposed to product suppliers. The only way to achieve that is if they can show their clients the depth and breadth of the solutions they can offer to grow their business. The increasing role that technology plays in modern business should help offer B2B businesses offer these solutions but the reality is that, while tech can provide all the information in the world, it’s the way that information is used to help grow a client’s business that still depends heavily on the personal relationship between them. Artificial intelligence (AI) can do great things but, as things stand, the application of technology can’t replace the deep chemistry built up between brand and client through meaningful, personal interactions. For the B2B brand, that feeling of making a client understand that it’s genuinely cared for also can’t (currently) be delivered by technology alone.
When a B2B brand looks at its market as clients, rather than customers, it sets up a platform for a different type of behaviour that drives towards a deeper relationship — that is ultimately more successful for both sides.
Warren Moss (@warrenmoss) is the CEO and founder of Demographica, a multi-award winning full service agency that specialises in the B2B category. He has been the chair of both the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa (DMASA) and the Assegai Integrated Marketing Awards (Assegais), as well as the only African to judge the B2 Awards, which recognise the top performing B2B marketers in the world. Warren contributes the monthly “Thinking B2B” column, which looks at the latest trends in B2B communications and explains why it is fundamentally different from B2C comms.
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 new regular column “Q5” aims to hone in on strategic insights, analysis and data through punchy interviews with experts in media, marketing and design.
