@me: Should brands speak in the first person?

by Nicole van Wyk. I know that, when I message a brand online, the entity responding on the other end isn’t a talking logo; I’m fully aware that it’s a community manager or brand representative who’s been trained (hopefully) to deal with my social media complaints. But I can’t be the only one who’s been irked by the recent surge of brands online speaking in the first person.

Debate

The first time I noticed this was when I read a few tweets posted by Netflix’s community manager. Initially, I thought it was some sort of social media takeover (that cute thing that brands sometimes do where they allow a ‘staff member’ to post ‘whatever they want to’). Yet I’ve noticed a few more brands have followed suit, sparking a debate about whether brands should be getting that personal with us or not. (For the purpose of this article, I’m not taking into consideration brands that don’t offer a monetary service or product, such as online magazines, but more business brands.

I’ve done community management before and, as a brand strategist, have worked on a few social media strategies. Part of my job involves offering brands advice on the types of personae they should use. If you think I’m mentioning that to make my perspective on all this sound more legit then, well, yeah — kind of. But hear me out, please. You may decide at the end of this article whether this is the right strategy for brands or not.

Questions I have about this

1. Who is the “I”?

When a brand speaks as “we”, we imagine the entire company — customer service, PR, brand management etc. When the brand speaks as “I”, who exactly is it? The CEO? The community manager? The intern? Most of us would understand that we’re not talking to the CEO.

We’ve also already seen an increase in people responding to a community manager as “admin” on the page. But when a brand speaks in the first person, and that first person is the ‘admin’, it makes the connection with the brand less personal. Individualising a brand makes it more about a person on the other end than it does about the brand as a whole.

2. Who takes responsibility?

There really isn’t much of a difference between the brand online and the brand offline. So, when something happens offline (or on a platform other than a social media platform) to upset customers, they’re probably going to take to social media to complain to/about “the brand”. Is it still the person on the other end of the screen’s responsibility? Do they say “I’m sorry, let me take care of that for you”?

We all know that there’s only so much a community/social media manager may do to ensure that a client’s complaint has been followed through and resolved. So, just how much power does the “first person” have on social media?

3. How do you follow this through?

Where does speaking in first person end? Can the brand’s first-person persona be followed through on other platforms and through other customer service portals, such as phone conversations, email, press releases, events and advertising?

I can just imagine how awkward it would be if a community manager has to put out a press release after an unfortunate tweet: “We distance ourselves from the tweet posted last week and are dealing with it internally. The person responsible has been dismissed,” while the community manager tweets, “Hey, here’s my formal apology about a tweet I posted the other day.”

Perhaps brands have a specific strategy for that particular scenario, but it would be interesting to see nonetheless.

~•~•~

It’s important for a brand to have a persona, and it’s important for that persona to be relatable to your target market. Making your brand more human is something just about every brand strategist will recommend. However, at the end of the day, most brands are businesses and customers do understand the transactional nature of their relationship with brands. “More human” doesn’t necessarily mean “more individual”.

Social media is an extension of customer service and not every customer will be your best friend — which shouldn’t be the aim of most brands, anyway. When choosing your persona, think about the nature of your business and the way your typical consumer engages with your products or services. More than speaking to them like you’re best friends, it’s important to speak to them with the kind of respect, understanding or compassion they would expect from a brand they are (or could be) loyal to.

People don’t need best friend brands; they need brands that communicate effectively, honestly and on time. Aim for that first and you’ll have customers who love you even if you’re “we”.

 

Nicole van WykNicole van Wyk is a brand strategist and content lead at Johannesburg-based digital marketing agency, Arc Interactive. She has nine years’ experience in the digital marketing agency, during which she has become increasingly interested in the social contribution brands make and the effect advertising has on society. In her own work, she encourages brands to “exist with purpose” while helping them explore what that means.

“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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Q5: Sphelele Mjadu delves into Dove’s #ShowUs campaign [interview]

by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Sphelele Mjadu, Unilever Personal Care senior PR manager for Africa, talks us through the beauty product’s groundbreaking project, Dove’s Project #ShowUs, from inspiration to execution — and beyond. She also shares key insights specific to the female consumer market in South Africa.

https://youtu.be/o2Ftqlr-Rf8

Q5: Let’s begin with the basics: what was the objective of this campaign, and what inspired the creative solution?
Sphelele Mjadu: The objective of the #ShowUs campaign was for Dove to take another milestone step to combat unhelpful beauty stereotypes and empower women everywhere, so that their beauty is a source of confidence and not anxiety. Project #ShowUs is pioneering because it looks to challenge existing unhelpful beauty stereotypes at their source by providing more-representative images to the media and advertising industries, in the form of a bank of over 5 000 images, in a bid to ultimately help women everywhere. Dove conducted a global study that reveals that 70% of women around the world say they still don’t feel represented in the images they see every day, and thus [we] identified a need to begin a movement for change.

Dove Project #ShowUs key visual

Q5: Logistically, how was the campaign coordinated and managed? What did it entail?
SM: The campaign required extensive coordination with and by all partners involved in order to be successful. Dove worked closely with the Girlgaze network of photographers, Getty and agency partners from around the world to ensure that this went smoothly.

Key points include:

  • A year in the making, the Project #ShowUs library features more than 5000 photographs
  • Every image [was] shot by one of 116 Girlgaze photographers representing a diverse global community of women, non-binary and female-identifying photographers
  • The images feature individuals from 39 countries and counting — each image created by women and non-binary photographers, who understand the beauty landscape of that country, for a more-authentic, hyper-local and inclusive representation of beauty
  • For the first time on Getty Images, every individual of the 179 photographed has personally defined their own search descriptions and tags for their images, allowing them to define their beauty in their own language [and] on their own terms, ensuring they feel realistically represented
  • The images embrace the Dove No Digital Distortion policy and are an unapologetically inclusive vision of beauty

Q5: Tell us more about the research that backed up the #ShowUs campaign?
SM: Dove commissioned a study known as the “Dove Impact of Beauty Stereotypes Quant Study 2019”. The research was conducted on behalf of Dove by Edelman Intelligence, a specialist applied research company, between December 2018 and February 2019, with 9 027 women aged 18–64 in 11 countries: the UK, US, Canada, France, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, China, Japan, India and Russia. Global and regional results were [collated] across various issues faced by women and their current views of representation in the media landscape.

Dove Project #ShowUs Stop The Stereotypes
Click/tap to enlarge.

Local data revealed the following about how women feel about representation by the media and advertising industries in South Africa (among other key findings):

  • 8 in 10 (82%) South African women wish media and advertisers did a better job of portraying women of diverse appearance, including age, race, shape and size
  • Three quarters (75%) of SA women say that pressure from media and advertising drives anxiety around appearance and beauty in general
  • 8 in 10 (84%) SA women say that if everyday media images were more representative of the way most women in the country looked, then women would feel better about themselves
  • Better representation can also have a positive impact on girls. 8 in 10 (82%) SA women say that this would enable girls to grow up without feeling that they are being judged just on their looks and 8 in 10 (76%) believe that it would mean that girls were not held back by gender stereotypes

Q5: Do campaigns like these impact sales, or is that not the objective in this case?
SM: Dove is committed to making a positive experience of beauty available for all women. We do this both by taking concrete actions towards ensuring that representations of beauty are more-inclusive, -representative and -diverse for all women. Additionally, through programmes like our Dove Self Esteem Project, we aim to instill a culture of positive self-esteem among young people, because we recognise the role confidence and self-esteem can play in helping one reach [one’s] full potential. We also make quality products that deliver on their promises accessible to women all over the world.

While we are a beauty brand, we have always been committed to widening today’s stereotypical view of beauty through all of our campaigns. We truly believe profit and purpose can work well together with the right balance, to ultimately achieve beauty that cares. We are really proud to have a brand that delivers on wider societal benefit, and our business mandate.

Q5: The advertising industry still has a lot of work to do in the arena of diversity and inclusivity (of all kinds). What can organisations like yours do to accelerate positive change with your commercial partners like ad agencies?
SM: We have created the Project #ShowUs image bank for all media, agencies and advertisers across the globe, whether they work with Unilever or not, making it possible for everyone to represent women [who] are more realistic and relatable. We work closely with and encourage our agency partners to take the lead in embracing this change.

We believe that anyone who has a role in creating, distributing and selecting imagery at any level and in any industry has the ability — and responsibility — to better represent the diverse audiences they are speaking to. We take this responsibility extremely seriously and believe that representation, inclusion and diversity are important both in the frame and behind the lens because, for too long, media and advertising industries have communicated rigid beauty ideals that create a narrow definition of women that results in all kinds of anxieties in women about how they look.

By creating more of these images, and making them easier to find, we are encouraging creatives around the world to use these more forward-looking pictures in their projects. The more we can get these images seeding the media landscape, the more quickly these concepts become normalised.

Women everywhere can also actively participate in the campaign and demand that the industry #ShowUs more women like [them] by contributing to the image bank at Dove.com/za/ShowUs.

 

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: Sbonis’ iDiski scores goal with help of Chelsea FC, Pirates

by MarkLives (@marklives) This week we feature insight into the brief, creative idea, production challenges and results of the ongoing “Sbonis’ iDiski” campaign for Unilever South Africa’s Shield Deodorant from Chaos Theory, Gorilla Creative Media and Edelman PR, which is now in its third year.

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Client: Unilever South Africa — Shield Deodorant
Ad agency: Chaos Theory, Gorilla & Edelman PR
Title: Sbonis’ iDiski

Information supplied by Unilever South Africa.

Brief

As South Africa’s no. 1 deodorant brand, Shield had been a little too fragmented in its marketing approach and wanted to reconnect with South African consumers. Using insights aligned with the unique South African consumer, we aligned with soccer as the perfect vehicle to enhance and evolve the global brand positioning of “movement” and “performing under pressure”. By combining SA’s inherent love of soccer with our brand values to get SA to achieve more by moving more, the Shield team was convinced it could connect with its target market through sport, and tapping into consumers passions.

“I truly believe that, as brand managers, we must have the courage of our convictions to really get behind a campaign and back it all the way no matter what — sometimes you even need to put your job on the line,” says Gareth Marshall, Shield SA senior brand manager.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_KV7qjIRS0&list=PLz6Hi7fx2FmO7KZlEXNKmdWGywS7tP2nP

Duration

  • Year one: 2017
  • Year two: 2018
  • Year three: 2019 in progress

Creative summary

Creating a unique sponsorship property from the ground up, Shield has been able to connect meaningfully with its target market, in a cluttered marketplace, on a small percentage of global budgets.

Understanding the power and reach of football, Shield wanted to truly own a unique space. Crafting a partnership with European champions, Chelsea FC, the Shield team knew it could deliver a truly inspirational skills development programme that would offer potential SA youngsters the opportunity to access international standard training programmes. The legendary SA superstars, Orlando Pirates, were added as an additional layer in year two to provide a more practical on-the-ground layer to the regional trials while offering a truly aspirational opportunity to actually take to the field in the iconic black-and-white kit. The campaign has evolved in year three to further extend its reach by adopting a scalable train-the-trainer approach in an effort to reach 15 000 aspirational soccer hopefuls.

Now in its third year, Shield’s Sbonis’iDiski campaign has evolved into a national platform to upskill and motivate young South Africans, in all aspects of life, through the medium of football. It offers all players a chance to improve their skills through access to world-class preparation. Through local and international team partnerships, players have been exposed to invaluable training programmes, both on and off the field, from the world’s best development coaches, including skills development, match strategy, diet and nutrition and media-liaison training.

After an intensive national selection processes, the top players attend a finals week and take to the field to see how they perform under pressure under the scrutiny of Chelsea coaches. The top three players then experience an immersive training and match-day experience at the home of Chelsea Football Club, Stamford Bridge, and at its world-class training facility based in Cobham, UK.

Finally, on returning home, one lucky player is then offered a place in the Orlando Pirates Development team as a salaried professional player for the year, making this campaign a truly unique vehicle to prepare a talented footballer for the rigours and pressure of professional sport.

Resources

To ensure effective brand penetration, Shield partnered with SABC 1’s SoccerZone, creating the Sbonis’ iDiski series that outlined the mechanics of the campaign but also profiled the individual players, exposing them to an audience and potential employers they wouldn’t otherwise have.

The TV series is supplemented with a large in-store focus: consumers enter via details on pack, and through a partnership with Soccer Laduma magazine, a large social media presence used carefully chosen local respected influencers and even Chelsea FC and Pirates first team players to further connect around key preparation tips.

Competition mechanics and the ongoing progress of each year’s campaign

A national activation sees thousands of hopefuls try out at skills sessions across the country, coached and assessed by a team of Shield and Orlando Pirates coaches; lucky winners are selected to participate at finals week held at the University of Pretoria’s High Performance Centre. Chelsea Development coaches fly in to put the hopefuls through their paces before a set of ultimate winners are chosen to participate in a UK skills week at Cobham. After that, a final winner is offered a salaried position for a year with the Orlando Pirates Development team, enjoying every opportunity to become a professional and salaried professional.

Measurement

At the end of year one of this campaign, sales of Shield men’s deodorant soared by 9% value and 8% volume year-on-year. In year two, these figures closely mirrored the success of year one, again tracking constant growth of 9% value and 8% volume in 2018.

Social media posts had higher than usual reach and engagement with an opportunity to see (OTS) of 123m in year one, with similar figures for year two.

Organic PR coverage averages approximately R20m per year; the Sbonis’ iDiski series is viewed by Soccer Zone’s 2m viewers each week, with added media value over R5m across media platforms.

Importantly the campaign, through its upliftment and upskilling of local football talent, has created real opportunities for talented youngsters. Over and above the salaried Orlando Pirates Development player prize, Sbonis’ iDiski has seen other players and finalists access opportunities that simply wouldn’t have been available without the campaign’s reach and exposure.

One finalist has signed with an international club and is currently playing overseas. All three finalists from year one were offered trials with local premier league clubs on their return from Cobham, and other players continue to explore semi-professional or professional opportunities, often with the ongoing assistance of the Shield coaching staff long past the expiration of the campaign’s actual footprint.

Credits

Client

Unilever South Africa
Shield Deodorant
Senior brand manager, South Africa: Gareth Marshall
Assistant brand manager: Nomfundo Kahnyile

Agencies

Sponsorship & activation: Chaos Theory
Digital: Gorilla Creative Media
PR & influencer: Edelman PR

 

 

MarkLives logo#Campaigns is the new weekly 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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Dear Radio: Innovations in South African radio

by Paulo Dias (@therealptp) Almost taken as an affront, once I raised the suggestion that local radio is lagging behind in the disruption stakes, colleagues and friends across the industry got in touch to gently remind me of what their stations have been up to.

Radio stations and podcast networks in the US and UK market have attributed the health of their industry to the rise of smart speakers in almost every home. No longer just a trial or novelty, smart speakers from Google and Amazon are now in 23% of American homes. Locally, we are nowhere near that penetration but, when we get there, the Primedia Broadcasting brands will be waiting for us.

Amazon Alexa and Echo

Amazon Echo logo Amazon Alexa logo947, 702, KFM and Capetalk, as well as the news brand EWN, are the first radio stations in Africa to tap into Amazon Alexa and the Echo. Listeners are now able to access their favourite stations from the group and their content with simple voice commands.

You might instantly imagine how this functionality would increase the time you spend listening and improve your chances of discovering new content on the station. However, it’s crucial that the stations don’t tether themselves to any specific device and rather create the habit of voice prompted instructions that activate their stations. Instead of waiting for everyone to have an Alexa and assuming that, over the next few months, most of their listeners would have some sort of voice-activated assistant on their phone, how is Primedia gearing itself to tap into the behaviour that it says its audience is displaying?

Should radio advertising be looking for competitions that are entered by a listener saying a keyword? Can advertisers now drop their web addresses from their ads and replace with some variation of “Hey, Siri, get me the details of XYZ company?”

The listeners are asking for it but is radio advertising delivering it?

24-hour all-day playlist

Music is still the no. 1 reason listeners tune in to most stations and East Coast Radio (ECR) has broken the format with a 24-hour all-day playlist. The culmination of a month-long listener survey, the station took off all presenters and features for 24 hours to play ONLY music and ONLY music selected by the audience.

Listeners love gimmicks like this more than we in radio like to acknowledge and, even in this age of Spotify, Apple Music and our own music whenever we want, for 99% of audiences, having your song played on radio is still something special.

I always like what ECR does; there is real heart behind whatever it gets involved in. It’s a big commercial station in a key region but somehow manages to keep a community-station feel about its content.

This idea shows that we don’t always have to do the latest and greatest to be innovative but do it in a way that means something to your audience.

New lineups

Just in closing, by the time you read this, most stations will have been several weeks into new lineups. There are no major changes this year and I qualify major moves as changes in the AM and PM drives. Rather, there have been enhancements to supporting casts in those shows and other shoulder shows, with the biggest name move being Tumi Morake taking over breakfast on Motsweding with Amon Mokoena.

Keeping lineups stable is not surprising as the precarious nature of most listenership numbers means that no station wants to take the risk of upsetting their audience at this point in time. While stability is always lauded, I also wonder if it points to the possibility that no new talent is coming up, or being given the chance to shine.

With so many other outlets available to young talent, do kids sit in their bedrooms dreaming of being the next Anele — or are their ambitions on being next year’s breakout YouTube star?

YouTube gives them the one-in-a-billion chance; radio’s odds are even higher.

[Full disclosure: While Primedia Broadcasting is a client of Ultimate Media, none of the campaigns mentioned above are by Ultimate Media.]

 

Paulo DiasPaulo Dias (@therealptp) is the head of creative integration at Ultimate Media. He works closely with the programming teams at leading radio stations to help implement commercial messaging into their existing formats. He contributes the regular column, “Dear Radio”, looking at the changing radio landscape in South Africa, to MarkLives.com

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Media Redefined: Brands need to find their inner mosquito

by Martin MacGregor (@MartMacG) The vast majority of brands don’t have big media budgets. That doesn’t mean they can’t make a big impact.

Anita Roddick, founder of cosmetics, skin care and perfume company, The Body Shop, once said: “If you think you are too small to make an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.”

Biggest frustation

The biggest frustration I have watching and working with brands is how so much of what they do seems bitty, splintered, diluted and, a lot of the time, wasted. In a word, unimpactful. What makes it worse is that I know that most of these brands have limited resources and should be thinking a lot harder about how that resource is invested.

There is really only one question a brand team should ask: Is the communication going to make an impact?

What is meant by “impact”? Its definition is simple: “Have a strong effect on something or someone.” If a brand’s communications is not having a “strong effect”, then what’s the point?

Unfortunate assumption

The unfortunate assumption is that impact is expensive. Last year, when Absa rebranded, it plastered the message on every available touchpoint with a media spend that must have run into hundreds of millions. Yes, it was impactful but, essentially, it was using a blunt media strategy for a very blunt message.

There are much smarter ways of being impactful.

  • Identify the core: Know who your core audience is and focus where it is. Don’t waste activity across unnecessarily wide target audiences.
  • Pick one touchpoint: It’s tempting to spread the message across touchpoints. Find one where you know your core audience is and invest properly. Weak campaigns end up in a string of dead-end touchpoints.
  • Pick a time: Take advantage of habitual behaviour, and find a time of the day/ week/ month to be in consistently.
  • Socially accelerate: The force of media equals the mass of media times its social acceleration. If the idea isn’t strong enough to be shared, then don’t do it.

Perfect illustration

There was a great Cannes Media winning entry last year which illustrates this perfectly. It was for a new David Bowie exhibition in New York and, instead of advertising across city radio, newspaper and outdoor sites, it took over one subway station and showcased the artwork in a host of interesting and interactive ways. It reached its core audience, at a touchpoint where most of audience members were, at a time when they were commuting with a message that created a massive social conversation.

https://youtu.be/xaHWMihcTVw

Behaving like a mosquito might appear annoying but to think how small that mosquito is, and the impact it has on such a large body, points to exactly the kind of behaviour brands should follow.

 

Martin MacGregorMartin MacGregor (@MartMacG) is managing director of Connect, an M&C Saatchi Company, with offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Martin has spent 18 years in the industry, and has previously worked at Ogilvy and was MD of MEC Nota Bene in Cape Town. He contributes the monthly “Media Redefined” column, in which he challenges norms in the media space, to MarkLives.com.

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#AgencyFocus: MADE for small startup companies

by Sabrina Forbes. It all began in a garage: a couple of students building websites and offering social media services to make a little extra money. Admittedly, it was less of a business and more a means to fund a lifestyle but all stories need to start somewhere. Six years down the line, we find MADE, an agency with a mission to grow the next big South African business.

MADE Agency collageJames Gilmour, CEO, explains the humble beginnings of his now 22-staffed, Cape Town-based agency. It started offering digital and social media services as a plugin to bigger traditional agencies when the world of digital was still new in South Africa. While it was a great platform for the agency to launch and have access to big brands, he found himself frustrated at not having a seat at the proverbial table and soon got tired of being paid simply to execute other people’s strategies, as much as he will admit it felt good to be able to add top brand logos to his little agency’s website.

Evolution

An evolution was needed and, about two years ago, Gilmour and his team decided to make the move away from being digital-only to positioning themselves as a lead agency. This began with their withdrawing from agency partnerships and pursuing their own client base. They won their first pitch and added BMW Motorrad to their list of clients, and admit that they’ve been fortunate enough to win additional clients by word of mouth and have not had to pitch aggressively, giving them a selective choice of who they work with. The relationship with BMW is still strong and has been the leg up needed to practice what they were preaching.

James Gilmour
James Gilmour

“Even though a lot of our work is still digitally focused, we own the strategy; we own the client relationship. A big part of why we started this agency is that a bunch of us had problems with how the agency model was operating and how the agency/supplier relationship worked. Our idealistic view at that point was we wanted to be the ones that do something different,” says Gilmour.

It was within the last year that he realised the work his agency was doing and the clients it was working with were not completely aligned with the agency’s core beliefs about the role of creativity in business, and so he decided to pivot. A breakaway strategy session birthed MADE 3.0 after a long reflection on what it’d become and what it actually wanted to be.

“It was a really important moment for us because we hadn’t stopped to reflect and look at what we were doing. You just go. You blink your eyes and another year is gone and you ask was that a good year or a bad year?

Bigger opportunity

“We fell into the trap that I believe most agencies fall into. It’s kind of this like small pond with 400 fishermen going after a handful of fish. And one day someone says we’re ‘culture specialists’ and then tomorrow everyone has updated their website to say ‘culture specialist’. It’s very difficult to actually differentiate yourself in that kind of environment,” says Gilmour, realising that, while the agency enjoyed that part of the game and planned to continue to win top-tier brand accounts, it saw a bigger opportunity for itself.

This pivot meant that MADE would start to work more with small, startup businesses. It was work it did with Yoco, a fintech startup, about three years ago that kept nagging at Gilmour while he was strategising his agency’s shift. The year-long Yoco project was different and, as he recalls, was really an anything-goes type of client engagement. The company was in its first or second round of funding and had targets to reach. This meant that the four founders, staff, and team at MADE did whatever they needed to hit those targets. There were much shorter turnaround times, which meant a more-agile operating framework was needed. There was no traditional trafficking process and everything was done using a weekly sprint methodology, more commonly use in the tech/development space.

MADE at workThe opportunity for MADE soon became crystal-clear. No one was focusing on the incredible wave of African businesses like Yoco which were creating a customer-centric product to deliver tangible value. There’s logic in believing that bigger agencies might not be suitable for these type of clients as their methodologies are not agile and quick enough but, for a smaller agency like MADE, it seemed the perfect fit. The traditional long turnaround times for approvals was never a good place for MADE, and not a place it believes it would be valuable.

Focus on SMME & startup

Gilmour has completely restructured his business after deciding to focus on this SMME and startup market at the end of 2018. The agency doesn’t have typical departments. The creative teams are made up of four people instead of two; a copywriter, art director, strategist and an account manager. They work as one team, handling three or four clients, and have more proximity to the clients and their actual business problems than previously. The sweet spot for him? A seat at the table.

The reasoning behind this shift is simple. Gilmour believes these are the four resources that are really valuable to a startup business, a team of people with a good variation of skills, and a group a startup might not be able to afford internally or get access to with bigger agencies. There’s also the very real truth that a founder of a startup is typically a specialist in a field or an industry and doesn’t have that jack-of-all-trades knowledge.

MADE clientsSince January 2019, MADE has brought on board one new client a month, not limited by industry or market but more by the fit of the startup in line with the type of agency Gilmour is set on building. Startups which are already at the growth/client acquisition point are where he believes MADE’s services and experience could add the most value. Two of the first clients to join the MADE stable are ShopStar, a local ecommerce platform, and Mami Wata, a South African surf brand with global ecommerce plans. “If we’re going to give a portion of our lives to building businesses, let’s make sure it’s businesses we believe in,” he says.

Pricing model

While the agency’s pricing model is still a work in progress, it aims to move more towards a value-based model than a time-based on. It’s been a difficult shift to undertake, especially with changing the mindset of clients which are comfortable paying for hours of work done. It currently has a couple of pricing models that suit the variety of type and size of business it is attracting. For very small businesses which can’t afford agency rates, there’s a performance-based remuneration package with discounted retainer fees; As the client grows, it grows. For clients like ShopStar, MADE will invest in the business, converting a portion of the project fee into creative capital and taking a stake in the business. Taking responsibility for the platform and recoding the majority of the functionality, it reports immediately seeing great results.

It’s this agency/VC combination that ties into what it cares about. Everyone at MADE understands the entrepreneur’s dilemma as they each have their own side hustle or business they’re working to grow.

The freedom to think with ownership and autonomy is the culture Gilmour aims to create at MADE. His staff members all have an insatiable hunger to learn and a passion to use creativity to make some form of change. A couple of years of bad hiring decisions has helped him structure his own way of finding out whether a new recruit is going to be a good or bad fit: He won’t hire someone off a CV but looks for signs of an entrepreneurial spirit. If they’ve tried to build a business, even if it failed, this is the type of brain and mentality he’s looking for. For him, to understand the struggles a startup founder goes through every day is something you can’t learn from reading; it’s something you can only learn from doing and, having never worked for ‘the man’ in his life, he’s experienced every up and down.

Bringing his and his staff’s experience to help grow MADE’s clients’ businesses is what he believes is their undeniable USP. “We’re on a mission to build the next big South African business,’ he adds.

MADE logo
made.co.za
madedesign.co.za 
Ramify

  • Office locations: Cape Town
  • Revenue band: R20–30m
  • Staff count: 22
  • Key clients: BMW Motorrad, Shopstar, Flexyforce, Mami Wata, WWF, Red Bull, Cartel House/Inner City Ideas Cartel
  • Services: Full-service (strategy, ideas,  design, growth, branded content, digital media, experiential)

 

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.

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Young, Gifted & Killing It: David Tshabalala

by Veli Ngubane (@TheNduna) Free State-born David Tshabalala (@SlayingGoliath) is cofounder and creative director of branding and design agency, Suketchi. Apart from being a graphic designer and illustrator, he also turns out to be an avid writer, having written social media content for a large TV network. He tells us about his entrepreneurial and creative journey.

David Tshabalala
David Tshabalala

Veli Ngubane: Tell us more about yourself: where did you grow up and what did you want to be when you were growing up?
David Tshabalala: I’m originally from Harrismith, a small town in the Free State. I started primary school in 1996, two years after the dawn of democracy, so my parents told me that the sky is the limit and, true to form, I dreamt big. I wanted to be a pilot and those dreams changed rapidly when I realised that you need to be good with maths for that to happen.

VN: How did your parents react to you telling them you wanted to be a creative?
DT: The initial response wasn’t so positive. I remember that at the time, IT (information technology) was the popular course to study among my peers but the need for mathematics was a negative for me. My parents realised that the options were limited but graphic design was a reasonable and safer bet than, say, fashion or fine art.

VN: Tell us what you do and what does a typical day look like for you?
DT: I’m the cofounder of a branding and design agency, Suketchi, along with Sarah-Jane Boden, who is also the founder of SoulProviders Collective. My typical day is a constant challenge of dividing my time between admin, meetings and doing actual creative for renowned brands and smaller clients. I’m typically very busy because we’re a small team of four currently at my company, but it’s fulfilling nonetheless.

VN: Your educational background: where and what did you study?
DT: For my tertiary education, I studied at the Central University of Technology in Bloemfontein. I studied graphic design.

VN: What inspires you?
DT: I’m inspired by other creatives who make me feel like my ideas and concepts are not in vain, because I see their craziness, too. I’m inspired by people I follow on social media and I enjoy soaking up all that energy and feeding it back into my work. The nuances and tones of where South Africa is today and where it’s going in a global context — I enjoy showing that in my work.

VN: Why do you think the advertising industry is struggling to transform and what do you think should be done to fast track transformation in the advertising industry?
DT: I think the decision-makers don’t look like the majority of the population in our country. While owners of large agencies are well within their rights to hire who they want, the problem starts with the work looking like how white people assume black people act and speak like. Key creative decision-makers should ideally be black because they understand the nuances and tones of that market.

VN: What advice would you give someone completing their high-school education this year and looking to follow a career in the creative industry?
DT: The internet and social media is such an ideal resource! There hasn’t been an easier time in our recent history where you could directly communicate with the powers that be, for advice and insight. I would encourage that person to use these outlets to spark conversations with people and companies that they would like to work for.

VN: What do you feel is missing in the advertising industry today and what should the future look like in SA and the rest of the continent?
DT: What is missing is more work done by the smaller, independent agencies who are faster and more agile in producing work that is more authentic and relatable. Brands need to trust the smaller [people] to do work that reflects where SA is today. The same goes for the rest of the continent. The traditional agency-model is slowly losing traction and this is the best time for the little [people] to have larger chunks of the pie.

VN: Where and when do you have your best ideas?
DT: In my own personal space and when I’m away from the computer and the internet. I feed off what people are wearing, how they talk etc. The best inspiration for me comes from deep immersive research.

VN: If you had a superpower, what would you want it to be?
DT: Definitely inspiring people to be the best version of themselves. My superpower would be to inspire.

VN: Tell us something about yourself not generally known?
DT: I’m an avid writer and I love short-form, witty copy. I’ve written for a large TV network for their social media spaces.

VN: What exciting projects are you working on at the moment?
DT: I’m getting my clothing and merchandise brand off the ground. I’m also collaborating with a huge drinking yoghurt brand where my artwork will adorn their packs to celebrate Youth Month for a limited-edition run.

VN: Brag a bit: what is your career highlight to date; awards, brands you’ve worked on…? Don’t be shy, tell us.
DT: I [was] recently chosen among industry giants like Nathan Reddy to judge the 98th Annual Art Directors Club Awards. I was chosen as one of Mail & Guardians 200 Young South Africans for 2015. I was chosen as a Design Indaba Emerging Creative in 2012. I [was] nominated as a Best Young Gun at the 2015 Bookmark Awards for SoulProviders. Brands I’ve worked on include MRP, Global Citizen, Absolut Vodka, Suzuki and Niknaks, to name a few.

VN: Please would you supply two or three pieces of work you have been involved in?

David Tshabalala: Collage of work
Davetionary couch, Home Is Where The Art Is, MR P, Suzuki, Trace Urban and Johannesburg International Comedy Festival 2019.

 

Veli NgubaneVeli Ngubane (@TheNduna) entered the world of advertising with a passion after completing his BSocSci (law, politics and economics) at UCT and a post-graduate marketing diploma at Red & Yellow, where he’s currently advisory board chairman. He also sits on the IAB’s Transformation & Education Council, is a DMA board member and Loeries, APEX, Pendoring, Bookmarks and AdFocus. He is the group MD of AVATAR, one of the largest black-owned and managed integrated agency offering in South Africa. In his monthly column “Young, Gifted & Killing It”, he profiles award-winning, kick-ass black creative talent in South Africa.

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The Power Report: Of context, cages, cats & curiosity

by Megan Power (@Power_Report) As a young newspaper reporter, I never grew tired of seeing my words in print. That is, until the day I saw them damp and dirty, lining a bird cage. It was a humbling moment — but an invaluable one.

You soon learn in print media that today’s news wraps tomorrow’s fish and chips; that you really are only as good as your last story. The world moves on, a new day dawns. And the budgie cage is graced with someone else’s work.

Living in a bubble

Now it’s digital content, released and refreshed minute by minute to huge and critical audiences, where more often the power, influence — and longevity — lies. From Twitter to Instagram, Facebook to YouTube, news organisations, brands, and individuals exploit these platforms to share content, messaging, promote goods and, inevitably, shape conversations. It’s where everyone wants to be. But, if brands play in this pool of perpetual content, intruding daily into people’s lives, they need to beware of living in a bubble.

Good reporters have long been separated from mediocre ones by their innate “nose for news”. I call it simple curiosity. Reporters with no genuine interest in what’s going on around them, who’s doing what, who’s saying what — and why — are unlikely to stumble across anything extraordinary. Or even know what extraordinary looks like.

Marketers and communication professionals don’t need to be newshounds but they would do well to start thinking more like them. Many, thankfully, already do. At one large digital agency, where I regularly present on this issue, everyone from young social media “community managers”, mid-weight creatives, copywriters and senior account managers is looking and responding to things through a richer, and more-enquiring, “newsroom-type” filter.

Context frames response

It goes beyond knowing about the latest political scandal, trending viral video or celeb gossip. It’s about being in tune with what’s upsetting, exciting, appalling, thrilling, and inspiring ordinary people. It’s about what just happened in their world that changes their view, even if just for that day. It’s into this ever-changing, emotion-driven environment that messages land, and it’s this context that frames how people respond.

Life, views and allegiances change in an instant, and it’s amplified by the speed, and often the sheer brutality, of social media. So, that brilliant campaign perfected over the last three months should be assessed right up until a few hours before launch. Messaging that worked just an hour ago could now be disastrous.

If marketing and advertising aren’t constantly tested against the changing environment they’re operating in, they risk alienating their audience, coming across as inauthentic, out of sync, and invariably tone deaf. Yet it’s not just the stuff to avoid that matters. If you keep your head in the sand — engaging only people and ideas that fit into your own worldview — you miss golden opportunities to add value, join important conversations, and nail your colours to the mast. Or just have fun.

Knowing when and how

But it’s about knowing when and how. US pizza brand, DiGiorno (my favourite case study in flippancy), had to issue “a million apologies” a few years ago after it misread a trending hashtag. After footage of a top US sportstar punching his then-fiancee in a hotel elevator went public, thousands of women responded by sharing their stories of domestic abuse on Twitter, using the hashtag #WhyIStayed.

DiGiorno, not bothering to check the context, quickly jumped on the bandwagon with:

DiGiorno Pizza screenshot 2019-05-07 at 15.18.51The brand took such a knock, it shut down its account for three weeks.

Equally careless

Not nearly as outrageous but equally careless was a marketing mailer from luxury homewear, Weylandts, which landed in my inbox during a week of rolling national blackouts. Boasting the header “Light it Up”, followed by “… see your room in a whole new light”, the mailer’s timing couldn’t have been more off.

It was wholly inappropriate; the kind of ill-timed marketing that damages goodwill. If I could have smashed a pendant lamp (preferably over the retailer’s head) as yet another few hours of loadshedding were about to kick in, I would have. Had Weylandts marketing team been on some remote island that entire week? No, just nobody had bothered to assess the scheduled mailers for context.

Weylandts Screenshot 2019-05-06 at 12.26.48 Weylandts Screenshot 2019-05-06 at 12.26.57The retailer is hardly alone. Out-of-touch messaging happens often.

Crippled EQ

I recall Ford putting out a routine marketing tweet at the same time Kuga models in South Africa were inexplicably bursting into flames, already having led to the tragic death of a motorist. It promoted smart technology that allowed a car to “talk” to drivers. Would it tell them if their cars planned to spontaneously combust, some owners wanted to know?

Ford’s marketing, at a time it was accused of reacting too slowly to the crisis engulfing it, displayed an emotional intelligence as crippled as its Kugas.

And let’s not get started on the blunders routinely made around race, gender and religion. I’m not suggesting being “woke”; simply being awake would do.

There’s so much emphasis these days on being cutting-edge, pioneering and disruptive. But without inquisitiveness, attentiveness and empathy, innovation won’t matter. Lack of curiosity is far more likely to kill the cat.

 

Megan PowerMegan 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.

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SA TV Ratings: DStv — primetime top 30 for Apr 2019

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

DStv logoDStv, April 2019

Top 30 Programmes All Adults 15+ & DSTV Adults
April 2019 Prime Time 5.30pm—10pm

Source: BRCSA April 2019

 Adults 15+ years
U:35679 S:8318

Digital DStv
U:19816 S:5285

Day

Date

From

To

Station

Programme title

Genre

AR

Viewers

Share

AR

Viewers

Share
Thur 25/04/2019 2101 2131 MZAN The Queen Movi 3.77 1 344 463 11.6 7.9 1 565 700 23.5
Thur 25/04/2019 2030 2059 MZAN Isibaya Dram 2.67 952 182 7.3 5.45 1 080 625 14.5
Sun 07/04/2019 1900 1959 MZAN Our Perfect Wedding Dram 2.66 949 236 8.4 5.78 1 145 425 17
Sun 07/04/2019 2000 2058 MZAN The Herd Dram 2.43 866 241 8.1 5.36 1 062 285 16.8
Mon 29/04/2019 2000 2030 MZAN Lockdown Movi 2.25 802 771 5.9 4.72 935 095 12.2
Thur 25/04/2019 2001 2030 MZAN Uthando Nesthembu Real 2.24 800 237 6 4.94 978 634 12.8
Sun 14/04/2019 1801 1858 MZAN Date My Family Real 2.14 763 039 7.2 4.82 955 382 14.2
Tue 16/04/2019 1900 1927 MZAN The Throne (Drama) Dram 1.91 680 458 5.1 3.95 782 225 10.4
Sun 14/04/2019 1640 2209 SSEL Wwe Wrestling Pay Per View Spor 1.87 666 566 6.8 4.1 811 813 13.1
Sat 13/04/2019 1930 1959 MWET Widowed Dram 1.66 590 438 5.2 3.94 780 020 11.2
Tue 16/04/2019 2000 2029 MZAN Utatakho Real 1.61 575 169 4.2 3.39 671 111 8.6
Wed 24/04/2019 2100 2259 SUP3 Premier League:Manchester United vs Manc Spor 1.51 540 156 6.6 2.93 580 923 11.7
Tue 16/04/2019 1930 1958 MZAN Isithembiso Dram 1.51 539 130 3.9 3.24 641 680 8.2
Sun 07/04/2019 2001 2144 ZONE Colombiana Movi 1.46 521 571 5.6 3.16 625 992 11
Wed 03/04/2019 2001 2029 MZAN Unmarried Dram 1.46 519 050 4.1 3.15 624 716 8.7
Wed 17/04/2019 2000 2029 MZAN Papa Penny Ahee Vari 1.4 499 531 3.7 2.89 571 722 7.6
Wed 10/04/2019 2101 2259 SUP3 Uefa Champions League:Manchester United Spor 1.38 493 543 6.4 2.74 543 805 11.9
Sun 28/04/2019 2002 2031 MWET Isthunzi Dram 1.31 465 975 3.9 2.75 545 330 7.5
Fri 12/04/2019 2005 2529 SSEL Wwe Pay-Per-View Specials 2019 Spor 1.24 442 160 6.9 2.63 520 845 14
Tue 16/04/2019 2100 2258 SUP3 Uefa Champions League:Fc Barcelona vs Ma Spor 1.23 439 929 5.7 2.36 466 647 10.4
Tue 02/04/2019 2002 2031 MZAN Yobe Real 1.22 436 400 3.6 2.79 552 949 8
Fri 26/04/2019 1929 1930 MWET Epk:Rocketman Docu 1.21 433 015 2.6 2.63 521 746 5.4
Wed 17/04/2019 1600 1653 MBIO Ilizwi Vari 1.21 429 889 6.9 2.74 543 758 13.2
Mon 22/04/2019 1700 1754 MBIO Uthando Lwababili Dram 1.19 422 929 4.4 2.81 557 133 8.9
Sun 21/04/2019 1730 1757 MWET Isibaya – R Dram 1.18 421 231 4.8 2.91 575 885 10.2
Mon 15/04/2019 1600 1652 MBIO Leshambole Movi 1.17 418 190 6.1 2.51 496 530 11.1
Sun 14/04/2019 1500 1551 MBIO Zimele Dram 1.17 417 785 5.3 2.79 552 310 10.4
Mon 01/04/2019 2001 2030 MZAN Ikhaya Dram 1.15 411 605 3.4 2.53 502 010 7
Sat 13/04/2019 2000 2115 SUP4 Absa Premiership Free State Stars vs Orl Spor 1.15 410 292 3.9 2.39 473 032 7.2
Mon 29/04/2019 1705 1759 MBIO Nomalanga Dram 1.15 409 146 5.2 2.26 448 031 9.1

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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African Echo: Blombos Cave — site of the first #hashtag?

by Rohan Reddy. There’s proof that Africa is not only the Cradle of Humankind but the Cradle of Creativity. However, for much of known history, it has found itself at a crossroads: either follow the paths of economic progress towards the first world or the paths of culture.

Most westernised countries don’t have this quandary, as they seem to have found a way to marry both these paths quite successfully. Japan is a good example. But, here in the 21st century, Africa is still constantly playing catch up — economically, culturally and creatively.

The reasons for this include centuries of colonialism, forced oppression and deliberate eradication of cultures, as well as widespread corruption and capitalism and the denigration of culture. Yet, there was a time in Africa when it was the complete opposite. The brief story of Blombos Cave is one of only hundreds of thousands of untold African milestones.

80 millennia of creativity

Until recently, most of the world believed that our development as creative beings was solely a product of Europe and its ancient inhabitants. The Venus of Willendorf figurine from Austria, the El Castillo cave paintings in Spain and the Lascaux cave paintings in France were long regarded as among the first evidence of a time when humans moved from being primal hunter-gatherers to members of a conscious species capable of creativity. As it happens, Blombos Cave suggests that, around 50 000 years before these findings, a giant leap for humanity was happening in the southern tip of Africa.

Cut by waves into a steep cliff about 300km east of Cape Town, Blombos Cave (discovered in 1991) has been a veritable treasure trove for anthropology illuminating what we know about the birth of human creativity. Its inhabitants were the first humans to truly develop an artistic culture.

First, Prof Christopher S Henshilwood from the University of Witwatersrand and his team found a collection of perforated shells dating back to 76 000 years ago. Some suggest a stone-age woman would have made these to adorn herself with. The 41 shells are punctured with 1cm holes, suggesting they were once threaded with an ancient string to make a necklace.

Other finds which indicated a relatively advanced Blombos culture include ground and polished animal bone tools dated to more than 80 000 years ago. This suggests technological advancements that would only show up in Europe and the rest of the world many thousands of years later, when modern humans spread across Europe only around 40 000 years ago.

The first #hashtag

Another Blombos Cave treasure are two small iron-ore stone flakes with intersecting lines of red ochre pigment, presumably made with a prehistoric ochre crayon with a tip of between 1mm and 3mm thick. Ochre is a red iron oxide occurring naturally in rocks and earth, and was used by our earliest ancestors as a colouring pigment for body painting. In Blombos Cave, archaeologists discovered hundreds of lumps of this ochre material, including pieces which had been ground into crayons like the ones used on the stone flakes, their honed points suggesting they were made for design purposes.

Henshilwood and his team’s findings on the 73 000 year-old drawing were first published in the acclaimed journal, Nature, on 12 September 2018. The discovery suggests that symbolic communication and the development of language could be over 30 000 years older than previously thought. This abstract crosshatch design vaguely resembles a modern-day hashtag. Was this humanity’s first attempt at writing? Or was it merely artistic exploration? Either way, it was our first piece of graphic design.

Consider this

Blombos Cave and the findings in it might not mean much to most people, but consider that the smartphone you’re scrolling through, that image you’re beautifying on Photoshop, that necklace you’re ordering online, that mouse cursor you’re moving to click to the next story might not have been here today if it weren’t for these super-humans living in a cave in South Africa so many thousands of years ago.

Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter. —African Proverb

Sources

 

Rohan ReddyRohan Reddy (IG: @rofotoqoto_) is the head of creative for FCB Connect at IPG South Africa, with responsibility for curating the creative product of the group’s affiliate agencies in Africa, particularly for clients and brands with a global footprint or a presence in markets across the continent. Highly respected as both a leader and a creative, Rohan has more than two decades of experience working on some of the world’s biggest brands at agencies in several African countries. 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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