The Martini Shot: Buyer, beware!

by Bobby Amm. We, the Commercial Producers Associations of South Africa (CPA), recommend to all companies, no matter where they stand in the supply chain, to thoroughly check the credentials of companies they commission or supply, to obtain references from trusted colleagues or competitors and to take the necessary precautions when working with companies that are unknown or untested.

Burnt

Over the last few months, we’ve noticed an increase in the number of instances in which clients, agencies, production companies and suppliers have been burnt through working with unscrupulous companies that prioritise making a quick buck over everything else.

In our industry, there tends to be a general assumption that everyone knows exactly what they are doing and has a great deal of experience and knowledge; this isn’t necessarily the case, though, as many newer businesses have started up recently to attempt to capitalise on new client bases and industry trends. Although many of these new startups are excellent and bring added diversity to the industry, there are those which are simply jumping on the bandwagon without much thought for the impact their actions might have in the long term. As a result, several complaints have come our way recently; however, as these companies tend not to be members of industry associations that advocate for professional and responsible conduct, unfortunately there isn’t much we can do.

Examples

To provide a few examples:

  1. A production company working with a small agency that is not a member of the ACA complains that the agency didn’t realise it was required to contract and pay talent, and was under the impression that this fell into the production company’s budget. Upon completion of the commercial, talent agents are advised to send their invoices directly to the production company. The production company also later learns that the agency hadn’t insured the shoot in accordance with ACA recommendations, which significantly increased their risk. Fortunately, there were no claims!
  2. An international client receives a quote from a new service company that is way below all others requested. Almost from the start, things go horribly wrong and then the service company starts to demand additional payment for essential items not included in the original quote. When the client refuses to pay, the service company threatens to withhold the commercial. (The other outcome of this scenario is that the service company decides not to pay any of its suppliers as it’s unable to break even because it has underquoted to win the job. Sometimes suppliers receive payment but, most often, the company will simply use new suppliers on its next job.)
  3. An up-and-coming production company in Joburg markets itself to agencies as being particularly fast and agile in getting the job done quickly and at a lower cost than its competitors. In its haste to deliver, it decides not to apply to the relevant authorities for location permissions or permits to shoot with children. The case is reported to the Department of Labour, which is currently investigating — this has placed the industry’s special dispensation, which makes it the only industry permitted to employ children under the age of15, at risk.
  4. A startup drone company takes to the skies without proper registration with the Civil Aviation Authority and misrepresents that it is “legal”. The production company has failed to properly check its registration documents and when the location authorities find out the location, permits are revoked, placing the shoot in jeopardy. The production company eventually has to bring in a licensed operator at significant additional cost.
  5. A group of suppliers regularly issue production companies with photoshopped fuel slips and fake invoices. There are rumors that there are syndicates at work and also that there are criminal elements infiltrating the film industry. Additional hours are spent going through invoices in an attempt to stop the rot; however, ongoing vigilance is required.
  6. An unscrupulous production company runs out of excuses and time, and then issues a letter to all suppliers to say that it’s now working for and representing another company with a far better track record. It constructs a fake email address and footer in the name of the company in an effort to convince suppliers to keep working with it.

Reputable

The importance of using reputable companies cannot be overemphasised. When a company is a member of an association such as the CPA, its clients have recourse but, when they aren’t, they’re not answerable to anyone (apart from a court of law). Similarly, suppliers should not automatically assume that all their clients operate according to the guidelines and practices set out by the CPA and other associations. Non-CPA members are not bound to the working conditions and payment terms as set out by the CPA. It’s important to bear in mind that trade associations aren’t legally mandated and tend to work on an honour system, rather than legally binding principles.

We urge all clients and suppliers to carefully consider the credentials of companies they choose to work with in the future. Please check if your production partner is a member of an industry associations (membership lists generally do appear on websites) and, if they aren’t, do thorough background checks to ensure they know and respect the standards the industry has implemented to ensure its sustainability and reputation.

It’s up to you as the buyer to be aware!

 

Bobby AmmBobby Amm is chief executive of the Commercial Producers Association of South Africa (CPA), the trade association of production companies that produce television, cinema and internet commercials for the local and international market. After a brief stint in journalism, she began her career in the industry at the Consultative Committee for the Entertainment Industry in the early 1990s. She first joined the CPA in 1997 but left three years later to join a production company. After finding that she missed the big-picture perspective of the CPA and the interesting issues which continuously perplex the production industry, Bobby returned to the CPA in 2003. She contributes “The Martini Shot” column monthly, covering developments, trends and insights into the commercial production and film services industries in South Africa, to MarkLives.

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Q5: Keeping an eye on AI, with Jared Molko [interview]

by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Digital marketer and former global Google guy turned local CEO, Jared Molko (@Jared_Molko) calls himself a tech humanist who’s on a mission to raise awareness of the challenges that come with artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. He took some time out of his dayjob, running entry-level recruitment aid Tellos, to talk about application and adaptation.

Q5: First, what are the practical, on-the-ground applications of AI right now?
Jared Molko: There are so many! A lot [is] happening in the medical sector, with AI technology helping [to] extend healthcare services and improving diagnosis. One simple but profound example: in Africa, which is the most-diverse, multilingual continent on earth, due to the language barriers, many people are incorrectly diagnosed. We now have artificially intelligent, real-time translation tools that mitigate this risk, which will save many lives. Then you’ve got drones helping farmers managing crop yields through image recognition and predictive algorithms. In the financial sector, you have AI programmes helping financial institutions understand credit and risk profiles of the unbanked. Thanks to this, so many more people will be able to participate in the economy, which is very exciting!

Q5: A lot of people are fearful that their jobs will be in jeopardy one day because of AI. Would you say that they are right to be concerned?
JM: There is cause for concern, but I think this topic is mostly misunderstood. We’re in a revolution, no doubt, but every revolution up to this point has ultimately led to greater wealth and job creation. The fact that we don’t know what jobs there will be in the future doesn’t mean there won’t be any. Sure, many aspects of work and entire professions will be automated away but, if you really drill deeper, a lot of time the jobs, or aspects of jobs, that will disappear no one will really miss. The concern I have is not if there will be enough jobs; it’s more how we handle the transition from an industrial society to a technological society, and make sure people have the requisite skills to be employable and create value in the future.

Q5: What does AI mean for the advertising and marketing industries?
JM: I think it will lead to the industry moving away from a mass-market, category and segmentation mindset to a more-personalised, individualist approach. [What] with everyone’s data footprints and the advances in artificially intelligent programs that utilise this data, marketers will be able to execute personalisation at scale, which is both exciting and scary.

Q5: Will AI filter down to all levels of society, or remain accessible only to the wealthy?
JM: Yes, it will filter to all levels of society. I see it playing out the same way other major developments on the internet played out, like building websites, ecommerce, etc. First, innovative technology is reserved for the elite who have the resources; then later, after enough usage and driving down of marginal costs, the open-source model kicks in, which promotes the idea of democratisation and access. This has proven to be a very economically beneficial business model, and something Google has championed. So, I imagine AI will follow the same trend.

Q5: On that note — how has your experience at Google fed into your current work?
JM: The biggest thing I would say is being able to think strategically, and use data to inform decision-making. People at Google are obsessed with data, and you have to be able to really back up any assumptions. So, I apply this same ethic to any problem I set out to solve.

 

Carey FinnCarey 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.

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#Campaigns: #JustStart — the art of starting your business

by MarkLives (@marklives) This time we feature insight into the brief, creative idea, production challenges and results of the current “#JustStart” campaign for Yoco by the in-house Yoco team and Bioscope Films.

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Client: Yoco
Ad agency: In-house
Title: #JustStart

Information supplied by Yoco.

Brief

The core marketing goal with this campaign is to entrench Yoco as a powerful enabler of small business in South Africa. We hope to increase brand awareness within our target market by 10% over the campaign period.

#JustStart is about unlocking and inspiring those with a song but no voice. Any idea is worth exploring. Anyone can start a business.

Yoco has found empty space with its authentic, real stories of South African small business. No one else has a customer base with such a range and diversity of quintessentially South African small business as Yoco. Celebrating this range and diversity shows how much Yoco believes in open commerce and that right of admission is deserved, no matter who you are or what business you are in.

Creative summary

Yoco’s engagement with innovators, entrepreneurs and startups is both broad and deep. Through the company’s quarterly Small Business Pulse survey, the company receives regular updates, feedback, and insight into the SA small business landscape. It was based on this feedback that Yoco devised a multifaceted campaign to encourage, motivate, and call to action SA’s entrepreneurs to take the leap and start their own business — with insight, learnings and motivation from Yoco’s merchant base and a campaign featuring its own customers and their real small businesses.

The Small Business Pulse is a quarterly survey conducted by Yoco, which scores the SA small business ecosystem on a scale of -100 to +100. The Pulse Score is an easy way to measure optimism/pessimism, concerns, struggles, and successes, and compare one quarter to the next, using both qualitative and quantitate metrics. It also provides Yoco with the means to do a deep dive into specific areas of interest, such as technology in small businesses and, most recently, the inhibitors to starting a business.

Campaign elements

  • MOTIVATE: A 90-second lead brand film and 3 x 45s individual customer films
  • INSPIRE: In-depth content on each of the three customers featured in the brand film to get to know the stories of struggle and triumph behind the businesses
  • LEARN: The Art of Getting Started whitepaper: practical advice from people who have done it
  • ACT: Free online six-part course for people wanting to take the first step; three “Just Start” workshops in Polokwane, Bloemfontein and Pretoria where people can get started in a day; and a “Business in a Box” competition where the prize is R20 000 worth of hardware and software to get you started.

Campaign period

23 May–31 July (two months)

Production

The entire project — from conceptualisation, creative elements, film and ad content, graphic design, white paper and course creation — was executed in-house by Yoco’s small marketing and design team. The team collaborated with Bioscope Films on video production, art direction, set creation and post production for the lead film and three customer stories.

The process began simply, with the question: What stops good ideas from becoming small businesses?

The team took the question to its extensive merchant base, and the same answers kept coming back again and again. And, when asked for what advice small business owners would give, the answer was ubiquitous: “Just start,” This was the seed that evolved into the fully integrated campaign.

The biggest challenge for a small startup such as Yoco is always budget. The entire budget of this campaign is less than R2m, which has meant the constant need for a challenger brand mindset; big ambitions but limited resources requires bold thinking to close the gap. The lack of budget also meant the shoot was done over just two days at free locations across Johannesburg and Pretoria, with no weather insurance — a nerve-wracking thing when it rained on and off for the two-day period. Bioscope Films was an amazing partner, allowing us to shoot at locations in their homes, and we also shot at the houses of our customers whom we featured in the film. No professional actors — real customers, real businesses, real doubts and fears.

The team also started internally, motivating staff to get behind the campaign. The merchants involved, some of whom are quite influential, were also asked to share and talk about their experiences as entrepreneurs. This was largely the strategy behind the campaign, as Matt Brownell, Yoco head of brand marketing, says, “As a startup ourselves, we needed to think innovatively about this and find a way to reach people with a shoestring budget.”

Resources

  • YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram digital marketing
  • 77 digital billboards across the country
  • Get Started Guide and Art Of Getting Started re-marketing
  • Community (42 000 existing small business customers) reach outs and sharing
  • Partnership leverage: Xero, Heavy Chef, Over App, Lifecheq, Google My Business, Digify Africa, Govchain, Visa, Mastercard

Measurement

  • Estimated social reach of 3.7m to date, with limited spend
  • #JustStart organically trended on Twitter countrywide for almost five hours on launch day, peaking at no. 2.
  • Total video views of > 300 000 in just over a week
  • Greater than 50% increase in lead generation over the same period previous month
  • More than 300 people have either download the advice or completed our Get Started guide and are on the way to taking the first step to starting their business

Credits

In-house team: Yoco
Production company: Bioscope Films

 

MarkLives logo#Campaigns is the new 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 2mark 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.

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African Echo: The land is GREENer in Nigeria

by Femi Otta. Since the establishment of WNTV Ibadan in Nigeria in 1959, the first television station in Africa, the growth of the advertising industry has continued unabated. In the 1980s, you could count the number of leading agencies on one hand; today, there are close to a hundred established registered agencies.

The Federal Government of Nigeria (through the Advertising Practitioners’ Registration decree number 55 of 1988) established the Advertising Practitioner Council of Nigeria (APCON) to regulate the practice of advertising in Nigeria. The council was inaugurated on 14 November 1989, a date which marked its birth as a principal actor in Nigeria’s advertising scene and established advertising as a profession. It can be said that, in the 2010s, the industry came of age.

The ability to adapt to changes is what determines whether an agency will survive or go extinct; after all, the mantra remains “innovate or die”. The changing times has caused some agencies to lose relevance and close doors; survivors are considered “champions of revolution in a tough terrain”.

Traditional media still king

Over the years, traditional media has grown to become the major platform to reach the target audience. Despite digitisation being the trend across the globe and the drive for O2O (offline to online) is all the rage, Nigerian culture has ensured traditional media remains relevant and inevitable.

Because of Nigeria’s population of over 180m and numerous brands (local and multinationals) which are constantly at war for survival, agencies have realised that what will matter beyond platforms is storytelling — compelling and empathic narrative that is relevant to the life and culture of Nigerian consumers. Not only will this attract their attention, it will invite them to participate.

Agencies have integrated ‘new media’ by deploying a through-the-line approach to marketing communications

Digital driving collaboration

Recently published figures rank Nigeria seventh out of the top 20 countries worldwide with the highest number of internet users. Gulp! This statistic is quite alarming and an eyeopener for marketing and advertising practitioners in Nigeria. It testifies to two things: (a) greater access to information and (b) more freedom to choose. Without mincing words, these two elements have handed over the control of media consumption to consumers, and no longer agencies. The new form of engagement is now “collaboration”.

For collaboration to be effective, marketing communication practitioners in Nigeria are developing skills in empathy — that is, being able to see with the eyes of the consumers, understand trends, feel their pulse and live their lives in a way that resonates with brands.

Another important dynamic of digital and social media platforms is the use of influencers. These individuals have been able to create incredible impact in the digital space amongst the Generation Z using comedy skits to get the attention of the audience. One example is @maraji, a 22-year-old lady who mirrors issues in society and transforms them into hilarious and relatable skits.

All adds up to opportunity

I strongly believe the advertising and marketing communications land is far greener than it was before. As online and social media become more popular, traditional media as a platform is undergoing metamorphosis; consider the rise of internet TV, internet radio, online newspapers and so on. This is happening at a time when macroeconomic factors are reducing demand for services and sponsorship, while also increasing costs.

The new landscape offers many opportunities. As internet access improves for more Nigerians, more channels to connect with consumers are rising. Nigeria’s entertainment industry and telcos are already taking advantage of these possibilities. Now is the time for practitioners to invest in growth, to shape and create an industry they can continue to be proud of, one that creates value for advertisers so that the brands can win (and business can grow). Hey, the land is GREENer here!

 

Femi OttaFemi Otta (IG:@femiotta) specialises in brand management and strategy. He is an account director at FCB DP Partnership in Lagos, Nigeria (a member of FCB Africa), where he is responsible for the leadership of major account management practice of the agency. African Echo seeks to unpack markets in Africa, highlight business opportunities and share insights into what works and what rebounds.

“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.

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#SPOTLIGHT: Adland, we need to talk

by Tarryn Pickup (@tarrynpickup) “I have heard bad things about that agency, like, not a cool place if you are interning and you are a girl.”

Gender bias

During a lecture to third-year students at XYZ School, trying to teach them the principles of branding, communication and marketing, they spent nearly the entire lecture teaching me that gender bias is still alive and kicking in certain agencies, and that is why they will be very careful of which agencies they apply to intern in.

How is this still the conversation in 2019? How is it that these young women, on the precipice of starting their careers, are preoccupied with navigating the minefield of not which is the best, most-respected agency to work for, but which is the best agency not to feel the effects of gender bias, toxic masculinity, sexism and harassment? How is it that these young women, instead of feeling the thrill and shiver of starting their first job, are feeling discouraged and outraged by the knowledge that their voice will be ignored or drowned out, purely because of their gender?

Based on experiences

And the fodder for this lesson is not just hearsay, whispers or rumour; it is based on the experiences of former third-year students who had served their annual internships and had passed on the warning to the next wave of lambs about to be sent into the industry.

When this is the conversation happening in a lecture hall filled with future talent, adland, you know that now, more than ever, there needs to be a shout-it-out-from-the-rooftop conversation around sexism, policies, culture and wellness in advertising.

This conversation is not yet tired, not yet boring because, even though adland continues to push and make inroads in raising the profile of females within the industry and, in some instances, we have made great changes, the tales persist. I challenge you to find a woman who doesn’t have a tale to tell — some tales will be worse than others — but each has a tale, nonetheless.

And if you are one of the agencies guilty of perpetuating these harmful biases and behaviours, just know you have been named and shamed, and the students know who you are. Your future people, the lifeblood of your business, are ‘woke’ to the culture that your agency continues to allow.

Responsibility and response

Herein lies the key topic of conversation: responsibility and response. An agency can’t be held accountable for every individual’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviours in its employ but it will be held accountable for how it deals with those individuals whose behaviours and biases affect others negatively and unfairly.

This conversation with the third-years led me to reflect on one such example of how an agency can choose to deal or not deal with issues facing women in advertising. A while ago, an intern approached me to say that her interaction with an external colleague not only made her feel uncomfortable but that she was receiving unsolicited communication past working hours and had heard that the individual was making claims about their relationship. She was unsure what to do. Does she ignore it and just get the job done? Does she confront him? Does she report him? Does she ask to be removed from the job? She said she was worried, as she didn’t want to put the task at risk and possibly lose her internship if she didn’t continue and complete the job.

The first thing I did was to commend her on her bravery and integrity in approaching me and I assured her that her confidence in me would not be misplaced. As a mentor, and a woman in advertising, I made no bones about escalating the issue to our CEO, who, to his absolute credit, never once questioned the young woman’s concern and immediately put a halt to the situation in line with our HR policy. The intern was immediately taken off the task, not as a punishment but as a way to remove her from an unacceptable situation. The offender was confronted and informed that this was not how we, as an agency, do business and the business relationship was terminated.

Importance of allies

In that moment, I realised the importance of allies. These young women are worried about losing their jobs, jeopardising the future of their careers; they feel small and disempowered. In the context of an increasingly competitive industry, there are still too many men who leverage their seniority and masculinity in manipulating situations, which is why these young women and men need mentors and leaders — male or female — who are willing to be a voice for those who feel that they are voiceless. Don’t be someone who just fobs off inappropriate comments, biases or behaviours with some choice language that diffuses the situation but does little to prevent it from happening again in the future.

Listen up, adland, women in this industry need allies. Allies need to be found in the strong women who hold positions of power in their agency, and the industry at large needs to act as fearless beacons of courage and integrity for our fellow advertising sisters. We need to stand in solidarity.

Allies need to be found in all HR personal. It is up to these allies to set the tone clearly during orientation days for new starts in an agency:

  • To make it clear that sexism and sexual misconduct will simply not be tolerated.
  • To clearly and consistently verbalise your policies and guidelines to ensure that your agency culture doesn’t allow the rot to breed.

Swiftly deal with offenders and allow for fair and thorough investigations on claims.

Agency leaders

Finally, agency leaders need to become allies, because the leaders determine the culture and culture determines behaviour. So, make sure you review your HR policies, stand up to unacceptable behaviour, have an open-door policy and regularly have open communication around the behaviour not being tolerated. Make your stance on the issue not just known but felt.

Allies need to push for open dialogue and more-robust policies within your agency. Most importantly, adland, start calling out the perpetrators; start heeding warnings; start reeducating and rehabilitating. Let us be the change we want to see.

We would like to hear your story and use our platform to create change in our industry. Please email us at ourstories@marklives.com

See also

 

Tarryn Pickup

Tarryn Pickup (@tarrynpickup) is marketing manager at Joe Public United. Her CEO is Gareth Leck.

This year, MarkLives is shining a #SPOTLIGHT on health and wellness in the ad and marketing industries. We would like to hear your story and use our platform to create change in our industry, so please email us at ourstories at marklives dot com.

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#AgencyFocus: Breaking boundaries with DarkMatter

by Sabrina Forbes. Brothers Charl and Xavier Olivier, founders of agency DarkMatter, believe the catalyst to any solution is to traverse into the unknown — to go beyond what is seen, driving creativity and strategic insight to the bleeding edge of the unknown.

“Brand Belief”

DarkMatter was founded in 2015, originally as an extension of a previous company Charl and his partner, Kopano Boikanyo, had started; the name SociaPath (a combination of “social” and “path” but with obvious connotations) was changed to DarkMatter once Xavier has finished his masters in marketing. This full-service digital marketing and content agency has a simple promise guiding everything it does: “Brand Belief”. For the Olivier brothers, they believe that combining strong strategic thinking, powerful storytelling, and best-in-class content design is what will create memorable brand experiences.

Digital is at the heart of what the agency does and what it’s good at but the industry hasn’t always been as open to moving channels or creating new avenues of communication. Charl recalls being made fun of when he first dove into the world of social-media marketing and management. It was a misunderstood concept and he remembers it taking some time to prove its value to brand marketers (the idea of Facebook Pages for brands was still foreign). Charl managed to show the value of social media marketing for a brand when he opened his photography page on Facebook that, according to Xavier, is still the most-followed page for a South African photographer in the country and was the first photography page to get Facebook-verified.

The agency currently also puts value on proving its digital offering by executing the same metrics and strategies it does for its clients for the agency itself. “We do what we do for our clients for us, and its works phenomenally. We’re getting like 4–6 leads a day. The minute we started doing it for ourselves, we saw our own value. Now I can confidently go to meetings and I can say I can do this for you because I am doing it for myself already. In this industry there are a lot of people selling snake oil. They don’t know what they’re doing and it’s a joke. A lot of people come to us after they’ve been burnt by other agencies,” says Charl.

Affordable and accessible

While the agency has worked with big brands such as Aramex, IBM, Nedbank, Dimension Data, CottonOn, OrderIn, Pierre Cardin, and Fila, it focuses primarily on making quality marketing services accessible and affordable to small- or medium-sized businesses. “When we formed the agency, I think what we really wanted to do was make high-quality marketing more accessible to small and medium businesses because we believe that we produce the same quality as any other bigger agency. We have that ability in terms of production and strategy and execution. The three leaders all have degrees in marketing and are using the founding principles to execute what works. Our rates are more reasonable but we can do what they can do. That’s the end goal; we want to give people value,” says Xavier.

The agency’s goal is to work with emerging clients which want to take their business to the next level and are looking for the right partners to help them do so. It also, as part of an effort to give back, has worked with Thalitha’s Children Trust, building the website and creating content in an effort to the NGO get more abandoned children into loving adoption homes (within its first month on social media, the trust received a large amount of donations and pledges).

Agility

The agency is still relatively small and because of this, its ability to be agile is one of its key selling points. “We pride our business on value and we also pride ourselves on speed, too. This is something very different in the South African market. We find that a lot of people aren’t really willing to burn the coals at rapid rates, whereas we are. We can implement things and make changes quite quickly. That’s probably one of our USPs. I think it goes back to that line of making marketing more accessible for small-to-medium businesses,” says Xavier.

When pricing comes up during the interview, Charl shares that he’s experienced a number of projects where he’s been privy to the costing structures of other agencies (in his freelance-photography capacity) and says he’s often questioned why clients are being charged exorbitant rates for something he knows isn’t worth those costs. “You start to realise how many people are just really dodgy and are just marking things up for no reason and adding random line items. I guess that, in the service industry, people do do that but, particularly in marketing, people just add random things and extra cream,” he says, adding that it could also be because some business have massive budgets to blow and so they simply look for whichever company is considered the best but which might not necessarily deliver the best value.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqDV1yLl5vr/

The team at DarkMatter has an unwavering desire to understand what makes its work, well, work, and is constantly looking at the numbers to see where and how it can improve. It’s a tech-/data-focused approach with a strong creative element. “Our difference is that we understand the algorithms maybe a bit better than some other agencies, says Xavier. “We have a desire to understand why an ad would perform better or worse than another ad. It’s a lot of trial and error to make things perfect. It’s not only the content side that’s important; it’s also the management side that’s important. If you don’t have both of those right, then you can go very wrong, very quickly. If your content is not good, no one is going to care and you’re going to get low relevancy scores. If you’re boosting wrong and you’re sending it to the incorrect people who don’t care, then you’re going to get very little engagement and that ad is not going to go very far. There are brands wasting so much money by simply going ‘auto boost — South Africa’.”

Targeting

Charl adds that most people assume there’s just a boost-now button on the front, when there’s a whole business manager on the back with statistics that allow you to analyse and tweak for days on end. For him, targeting in SA is more difficult than other places because of our massive variety of demographics; he says it’s easier to target in rural England, for example, because everyone there is mostly white and is involved somehow in farming but meanwhile, in SA, there could very easily be two people with exactly the same interests, culture, gender, race, and values but with very different incomes.

When it comes to assumptions driving marketing behaviours, Xavier mentions a campaign for a pharmaceutical product that measures the level of ketones in the body. The client was adamant that the brand’s target audience was people who were “banters”. After running an initial campaign and diving into the data, they were able to see that the only people buying the product were women between the ages of 30 and 50, the majority of whom were not banting but simply wanted to lose weight. For him, discovering who your real target market is from data sets gives you the ability to start using that as proper marketing collateral.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqzKGB2Ft89/

When questioned on what Xavier feels the biggest digital trend in 2019 is, his response is that he thinks “the biggest trend is that Facebook is going to integrate all their messaging services into one. So, Instagram [Direct], WhatsApp [Business], and Facebook Messenger are all going to become one universal communication platform by the end of this year. People need to take that into consideration that Facebook is going to integrate all of this. They have become a monolith in the industry. They own these platforms for a reason; they want to create a singularity and that singularity is going to become the most-important marketing tool that any person in digital will be able to use.”

Ephemeral content

Charl adds to this by reminding us that WeChat has been hugely profitable in this space already and that Facebook has definitely noticed. “You’re going to have offers on it all the time. Now imagine [what’s] on your WhatsApp [is] also on your Facebook and Instagram. You’re going to get offers popping up in your free messaging with your friends. You’re going to be advertised directly to,” he says, bringing up another trend he’s noticed, that of ephemeral content. It only lasts a short while and, by the way Instagram Stories’ popularity has grown, it’s easy to understand why this is a key trend for 2019 and beyond. As a photographer, Charl remembers a time when all brands would capture videos and pictures from events for distribution after the fact. Today, brands are shooting stories live in vertical video and uploading immediately, in the moment of action.

“The concept of a time bomb forces the user to engage with it but also allows the person who’s posting it to not be scared because they know it’s only going to last for a certain amount of time. You don’t have to edit and retouch and be perfectionistic about it. You can just launch and then let it disappear into the digisphere. It’s becoming the new thing to shoot video in square crop and vertical because square fits nicely into the Instagram feed and vertical video fits nicely into Stories. You’re optimising your content so that it suits the platform that it’s on. And that’s very important, to be able to understand those little technicalities and to produce content within those realms,” shares Xavier.

The two believe that the best, and most-successful, partnerships are built on transparency and trust. As brothers who work together, Xavier says they’re able to be completely transparent and honest with each other, without judgement. They completely trust each other, communicate openly, and respect the decisions the other person makes.

DarkMatter Agency logo
www.darkm.co.za 
Ramify

  • Office locations: Sandton
  • Revenue band: Under R10m
  • Staff count: 10
  • Key clients: IBM, Dimension Data, Edgetec, New Age Gaming, Aramex
  • Services: Digital marketing, web development, UI/UX, design, social media marketing & production

 

Sabrina Forbes“#Agency/BrandFocus” is an ongoing weekly series updating the market on ad agency performance, including business performance, innovation, initiatives, the work, awards and people.

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.

— Sign up now for the MarkLives newsletter, including Ramify.biz headlines, emailed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!

Press Pass: Julia Raphaely on finding the sweet spot in a disrupted world

by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Declining circulation figures, diverted adspend and changing consumer expectations may be destabilising traditional media models, but publications can thrive if they’re are prepared to reinvent themselves, reckons Julia Raphaely. The ticket to success, says the CEO of women’s magazine media house, Associated Media Publishing (AMP), is remaining relevant.

“Disrupted world”

“You’ve got a disrupted world,” she says. “Each media business needs to understand what they do really well, what their sweet spot is, and they need to keep creating exceptional work.” In the case of AMP, she says, its strength has long been in building brands and audiences. “For 35 years, we’ve created content that does exactly this, and we’ve driven conversations that really matter — that’s why we’ve remained relevant. I think that our job is to continue to look for the relevance.” Established in 1984, AMP is the company behind Cosmopolitan South Africa, as well as House & Leisure and Good Housekeeping/Goeie Huishouding, among other household magazine brands. AMP also published Marie Claire South Africa until December 2018.

Cosmopolitan, Activism Issue, August 2018 - Nomzamo MbathaHouse and Leisure, May/June 2019 — Kitchen IssueGood Housekeeping (US), April 2017Marie Claire South Africa, November 2018 - Zendaya

To be relevant means addressing consumer needs, whether they be entertainment, shopping or advice, says Raphaely — and this is something that women’s magazine media are well placed to do. Cosmopolitan is a good case study of how this may be achieved over the long term, she says, with the flagship title having successfully transitioned from being a brand in just one medium to a multiplatform name with an audience that is largely millennial and on the move in terms of how they engage with media. “Over the last 365 days, we have created approximately 6253 pieces of original content, which generated 85m in views,” she says. The team is focused on creating content that carries global relevance and drives perception of the brand: Raphaely mentions February 2018’s Laverne Cox cover as an example of how the magazine is doing this.

Relevance is not restricted to the realm of progressive editorial decisions, however, and she emphasises the importance of shifting perceptions — both within the publishing company and within its readership — away from an outdated, artificial division between digital and print, towards an integrated, holistic content model. This extends to revenue strategy, perhaps best exemplified through AMP’s Ready to Shop feature, which adds QR codes to print magazines for a shoppable experience. Ready to Shop won Bronze at this year’s IAB Bookmarks Awards.

Consumers, not readers

“In the past, as a magazine publisher, we used to think of readers, readers, readers — and obviously everyone does read, whether you’re on a digital or print platform — but, at the end of the day, you’re not talking to readers, you’re talking to consumers,” says Raphaely. “You have an ability, through reframing your focus, and utilising your brand platforms as shop windows, to encourage and help online shopping — and we do need to do that in South Africa, as publishers.”

It was previously the case that “people created content, and we put it out there, and then it sold, and we carried on in the next issue and next issue,” she says. Nowadays, the entire team “knows exactly what work is coming in, for which client, how quickly it gets turned around, whether it converts or not, and what everyone’s doing.” Moving towards a model perhaps more akin to those traditionally found in agencies, AMP has rolled out a workplace management tool, Chase, across the business — and the 72-strong team has embraced it, she says.

The trick to embedding new ways of doing business into legacy media companies is finding partners and clients who want to collaborate, and then monetising that in a way that allows you to remain authentic as a brand, says Raphaely. “I don’t think that digital platforms or publishers have got it all worked out yet but, at AMP, we’ve realised the importance of creating content that is relevant, that our audience relates to, that resonates with them.”

See also

 

Carey FinnCarey 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.

— Sign up now for the MarkLives newsletter, including Ramify.biz headlines, emailed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!

SA TV Ratings: SABC 1 — primetime top 20 for Apr 2019

by MarkLives (@marklives) The hottest primetime shows on SABC 1 in South Africa revealed: TV ratings for April 2019.

SABC 1 logoSABC 1, April 2019

Top 20 Programmes All Adults 15+
April 2019 Prime Time 5.30pm—10pm
Adults 15+ years U:35679 S:8318

Source: BRCSA April 2019

Day

Date

From

To

Station

Programme title

Genre

AR

Viewers

Share
Tue 16/04/2019 2030 2100 S1 Uzalo Dram 25.46 9 084 947 66.2
Tue 16/04/2019 1959 2030 S1 Generations the Legacy Soap 23.66 8 440 205 60.2
Tue 23/04/2019 1830 1900 S1 Skeem Saam Dram 22.19 7 918 501 60.7
Tue 23/04/2019 1900 1929 S1 Xhosa News News 13.65 4 868 583 35.6
Tue 23/04/2019 1800 1829 S1 Nyan Nyan Real 13.23 4 721 321 41.8
Mon 29/04/2019 1900 1928 S1 Zulu News News 12.24 4 366 214 32.7
Sun 28/04/2019 1930 2000 S1 Ngempela Dram 11.95 4 264 553 35.2
Wed 10/04/2019 1800 1829 S1 Reno-Race Vari 10.03 3 578 425 34.7
Mon 22/04/2019 1759 1828 S1 Now or Never Docu 9.62 3 433 708 31
Fri 12/04/2019 1930 2000 S1 Live Amp Musi 9.54 3 403 833 27.8
Tue 30/04/2019 1930 2000 S1 Selimathunzi Vari 9.32 3 324 648 26.2
Sat 27/04/2019 1800 1859 S1 Friends Like These Vari 8.84 3 153 101 31.1
Wed 10/04/2019 1930 1958 S1 Mtv Shuga Down South 2 Musi 8.78 3 131 674 24.9
Thur 11/04/2019 1931 1958 S1 Throwback Thursday Musi 8.69 3 101 413 24.6
Mon 08/04/2019 1929 2000 S1 Thandekas Diary Real 8.62 3 075 392 24.4
Tue 23/04/2019 1730 1759 S1 Siswati/Ndebele News News 8.6 3 069 349 32.6
Sun 07/04/2019 2000 2059 S1 Emjindini Dram 8.16 2 912 080 27.6
Wed 17/04/2019 1800 1831 S1 Social Fabric Maga 8.16 2 910 191 29.8
Mon 01/04/2019 1800 1830 S1 My First -R Docu 7.98 2 848 586 31.4
Wed 03/04/2019 2059 2159 S1 Khumbul’ Ekhaya Maga 7.76 2 766 934 27.3

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.

 

Broadcast Research Council of South AfricaThe 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.

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Clicks ’n Tricks: D&AD implores us to consider what it is to be human

by Charlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) Such is the proliferation of awards that there’s rarely time to pause and reflect on the role advertising plays and the societal trends that shape its direction — which is why the D&AD’s annual insight report, collated from around 25 000 pieces of work, had the potential to be such an important reference for the industry.

For most in adland, the D&AD Awards, which took place last week, summons up three emotions: the euphoria of triumph, the despair of not being summoned to the stage, and, perhaps more poignantly, the envy the non-entrants feel towards their more-creative peers. Award events — and particularly creative ones — come and go in an endless cycle of champagne, tears and remorse. Once backs have been slapped, words of commiseration dolled out and bile swallowed, it’s time to pack away the Pencils and go bag a Lion.

But getting back to the D&AD Insight Report 2019, I’m not convinced it either hits the mark or provides many takeouts for South African creatives, as I’ll explain later.

Creative insights for 2019

Published in late April as a curtain raiser to this year’s awards, it used its analysis of 2018’s entrants to identify three trends which its authors feel should inform this year’s creative output.

The first trend encourages us to challenge what it means to be human. It then explores the impact of the fractured society in which we live before focusing on how we’re changing the way we assess and share information.

In short, purpose, time and technology.

Purpose has been spoken about extensively in recent months, with Gillette and Nike each offering us a slightly different view on how brands can use advertising to identify with audience groups. The D&D report implores brands to recognise humanity’s desire to ‘be the best version of ourselves’ and suggests that we identify creative executions that show our willingness to have honest conversations.

Humanity and Burger King’s Bullying Jr social experiment

It highlighted a Burger King campaign, in which a group of child actors taunted each other to see if any of the restaurant patrons would step in to stop the bullying. Amid the front-of-house commotion, one of its grillers punched and mangled burgers before serving them. While the camera showed consternation on the faces of those who witnessed the bullying, few intervened. This was contrasted by the long queue of irate customers complaining about the state of their Whoppers.

https://youtu.be/0e8fcpYX5us

The social experiment, which proved that people were more likely to stand up for a sandwich than a child, went onto become part of classroom anti-bullying curricula worldwide and demonstrates how advertising can have meaningful reach and impact.

Its second insight focused on the fractured society we live in. While some consumers have become distrustful of messaging, social-media echo chambers have pushed others into closed-minded clans. If brands don’t have the credentials or confidence to effect change through purpose-driven campaigns like Nike’s or Burger King’s, they would do well, the authors suggest, to lighten our lives through humour.

FCKing up

The D&AD report highlights KFC’s mea culpa advert after crippling supply-chain issues saw hundreds of its UK restaurants run out of stock early in 2018. Instead of trotting out the standard corporate apology, it ran full-page ads rearranging its initials. The Brits love its satire and KFC’s use of humour turned a brand disaster into a PR triumph.

But you don’t always need to fail to succeed. The report also praised Diesel’s fake clothes store campaign and Coke’s double-ended togetherness bottle

The report’s final topic took a look at the one thing that adland is terrified of right now: technology. Forget the doom and gloom about how programmatic is killing advertising and the restraints tech is increasingly imposing on creativity, D&AD said. Rather focus on how we can use it to get our message across.

Talking tech

It cited the London Times’ neat use of AI to compile the greatest speech JFK never gave (it used previous recordings to stitch together the talk he was due to give at the Dallas Trade Mart on the day of his assassination). It also showed how Ogilvy in Brazil created an AR app that helped distract children receiving vaccination jabs by having a superhero slap an invincibility shield on their arm at the exact time the needle pricked their skin.

The verdict

The report highlights some key concerns and showcases some interesting executions, but it’s left me with a strong sense of déjà vu. Not one of these trends is new. Indeed, a fair number of the featured ads were aired in 2017, so it’s not even as though the creative’s current.

Perhaps D&AD would do better to produce its report a month or two after the awards and not base it on 12-month-old entries (although, in its defence, the global award cycle is endless, so it’s probably tough to find a gap amid the demands of champagne-swilling).

More to the point, I’m not convinced there are any actionable insights for our local creative industry (which, incidentally, did rather well at last week’s 2019 D&AD Awards). On purpose, the rainbow nation has been delivering brand advertising that has societal meaning for years. OMO’s efforts around education and maths literacy are, frankly, just as impressive as Burger King’s anti-bullying.

When it comes to humour, Nando’s trumps all.

And, as for the tech bit, I recall VML sweeping local and international awards years ago with its savvy campaign for PASSOP which replaced tweets containing ‘refugee’ with the words ‘human being’.

I feel that D&AD’s being self-aggrandising; had the report been called a “Creative Review”, I’d have been more accommodating — but put “insight” into the title and it smacks of an industry partial to a little too much of its own Kool-Aid.

See also

 

Charlie StewartCharlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) is CEO of Rogerwilco, a multi-award-winning independent digital agency best known for its expertise with Drupal, SEO and content marketing. A Scot by birth, he moved to South Africa in the early 2000s in his quest to support a winning rugby team — a search he’s reluctantly forsaken. Together with Mark Eardley, he co-authored Business to Business Marketing: A Step by Step Guide, (Penguin Random House, 2016) and may be found on LinkedIn. Charlie contributes the monthly “Clicks ‘n Tricks” column, which looks at how brands are using digital channels to engage their customers, to MarkLives.

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Back2Basics: Oh, B2C agency? There’s big money in B2B

by Mark Eardley (@mdeardley) Why develop a B2B competency? For the money. In fact, astonishing amounts of money.

  • B2B spend: R5 490 000 000 pa
  • Ranks third in SA’s marketing spend

TV: R16.70bn
Newspapers: R6.81bn
B2B: R5.49bn
Radio: R5.35bn
Magazines:R4.40bn
Internet:R3.95bn

Source: PWC: 2015–2019 Entertainment & Media Outlook B2B FORECAST: pp 187–198

B2B’s R5.49bn – where it goes:

Trade mags: R733m
Directories: R1 440m
Exhibitions: R3 317m

PLUS all this:

PR Events OOH
Websites Radio/TV Research
Data Sponsorships Collateral
Social Video CXM

Winning a piece of the multibillion pie

I can’t think of a B2B marketing tactic that doesn’t feature in B2C. PR, video, events, content, digital, print, social and sponsorships — all play major roles in B2B.

South Africa’s full-service B2C agencies have shelves full of awards that testify to their proven abilities across all those disciplines. They’ve got real evidence that they’re accomplished in producing the goods. For these agencies, the skill-sets necessary to generate new revenue in the B2B space are already on the payroll and, in many cases, they have clients with a significant B2B component in their overall business.

The skills are in place and the clients are in your orbit. In terms of marketing knowledge, you also understand concepts such as differentiation, segmentation, targeting, engagement and measurement. All that’s missing from an account-winning proposition is knowing how to execute marketing initiatives/campaigns according to B2B’s governing rules.

Playing by the rules

Here’s a quick-read article with a great video that summarises the rules. It may convince you that developing a B2B competency isn’t rocket science for an experienced B2C team.

B2B’s writ-in-stone rules are the same today as they were, say, 60 years ago. The reason they’ve stood the test of time is because they keep B2B focused on its sole goal: attract and retain profitable customers.

Achieving the goal may be distilled-down to just two, hard-core rules. First, engage everyone who influences the buying decisions that create sales. Second, win every influencer’s support for the decision.

Why the opportunity exists

Locally, the bar for B2B marketing-performance is set shockingly low. That creates an opportunity because stacks of B2B firms are totally missing the mark when it comes to getting the right sales-creating messages to the right people for the right reasons.

To highlight just how much they’re missing it, perhaps consider how most corporate ICT providers are promoted. It’s typically grounded in meaningless guff like this: “We configure innovative, world-class digitisations combining best-of-breed solutions with agile implementation to deliver bespoke synergies via holistic partnerships that mitigate risk and embed competitive advantage across converged value-chains.” No mention anywhere of building their customers’ sales, margins or market share. No mention at all of creating what every C-suite wants: profitable growth.

Prove to boardrooms in the B2B market that you can deliver those highly-commercial messages with compelling relevance and credibility, and some of that (possibly misspent) R5.49bn could well be coming your way. Even better, prove to them that you can move their marketing department from a cost-centre into a revenue-generator.

The money-door’s wide open and barriers to entry are low

There are only a few local B2B agencies which seriously know the game and have the capability — as a one-stop-shop — to devise and deploy campaigns that will increase a clients’ sales, protect their margins and build market share. That one-stop offering is massively important. In B2B, long-unconvinced CEOs (with a rightfully rock-bottom opinion of marketing) want one source of responsibility and one source of accountability for their one demand: “Marketing, show me the money.” Finish and klaar.

In this R5bn+ game, when I say only a few SA agencies are capable of meeting that demand, I mean just two. The game’s on. Wanna play?

See also

 

Mark EardleyMark Eardley (@mdeardley) advises B2B companies on how to govern their marketing to attract and retain profitable customers; several of his clients have grown to become market leaders. He and Charlie Stewart have written Business-to-Business Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide (Penguin Random House), which offers practical, actionable advice on how to make marketing make money. His monthly “Back2Basics” column covers how B2B companies and their agencies should manage their marketing.

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