#AdForumSummit LA: Focus on content & collaboration

by Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) LOS ANGELES: We pitch consultants met with four agencies — Virtue, Collab, Summerjax and BBH — on Day 2 of the AdForum Worldwide Summit Los Angeles, Tuesday, 9 April 2019.

Virtue

AdForum Worldwide Summit logoThe first agency meeting of the day was with Virtue, the agency born out of media content company, Vice, whose headquarters are in Brooklyn and whom we have met with twice previously. Virtue has full-service capabilities with fast turnaround capacity. It can do everything in-house, including full production facilities. It is still privately owned and has added quite a lot of firepower to its creative and strategic offering in the past couple of years. Its belief is that “advertising is far from dead; it is just starting to look different.”

And remember that, through Vice, it also has formidable knowledge of the youth market and its everchanging needs.

Because of the way it works, it has built up assets such as data, creative network, award-winning output, channels and partnerships. It defines what it does for its clients as follows:

  • Revitalise reputations
  • Reach new audiences
  • Build commercial value
  • Change beliefs

It demonstrated the above through eight case studies:

  • Google Chrome — “Don’t be a browser”
  • Bushmills Irish Whiskey
  • Target — reaching a new audience
  • Park MGM — Casino
  • Amazon Alexa
  • Meet Q — genderless voice
  • Dove Men+Care — Paternity leave
  • Museum of Weed

Although Vice is its biggest help, it’s also its biggest hindrance, it told us. So, there is a shadow-and-halo effect. Vice has helped it over the years with background and strategy but, when it comes to creative, Virtue is on its own as it develops products and campaigns. It also now actively competes against 72andSunny, Anomaly and BBH in pitches.

A great session with an excellent lunch and wine — a real treat for AdForum.

Collab

Collab is a content-creation company, independently owned and started by three brothers (two of whom we met at the session). Collab provides services to creators for YouTube, mainly. The typical profile of creators are individuals who build a following through their own videos, which they make and edit and post on platforms such as YouTube. Age-wise, these are usually teens to young adults in their 20s.

We learned that the no. 1 ambition of most kids these days is to create content for YouTube.

Collab has about 300 main creators on its books. It looks for creators who are consistent and Collab makes its money from taking a share of any earnings from rights that the creators may obtain through their relationships with brands. Collab manages all of this for the creators and brings opportunities to both brands and creators that will fit with the integrity of both.

Collab is the largest independent content studio and the brothers set it up as they wanted to have a company that would provide all the services that they, as young creators, couldn’t access when they started out making their own comedy shows. What they believe is that strategy and digital video are a powerful combination and that the videos created by the creators offer an authentic view of the creators’ lives. As the videos are created (and many of the creators have their own facilities but may also access those at Collab), they are rated by at least three people within Collab — the human review. This is particularly important when looking after brand safety.

When asked if the creators are making enough money to have this as a full-time occupation or is it just a hobby, the answers were interesting:

  • 50% of the creators is making enough money per year ie US$35 000 per year not to have to take an ordinary job
  • Some of the creators are making millions of dollars per year; these would be the more popular, with the greatest followings and the highest levels of integrity, to which brands want to be aligned
  • Some are not making enough to “quit their day jobs”

The brand partnerships that Collab helps its creators to have are designed to enable the creation of branded content and management of influencer-marketing campaign strategy and execution for some of the world’s most-innovative brands.

I made a note two and a half years ago, when we last visited LA, that all of this was predicted as a general trend and it has now happened. Plus, those involved have worked out how to monetise it.

Summerjax

Next up was Summerjax, a women-owned and -run production company that works directly with in-house marketing departments. Both partners are from a brand space and they have a deep understanding of how marketing departments work and where the gaps are. As a result, they’re able to close those gaps and create much greater efficiencies.

Summerjax embeds itself within the marketing departments it works with, enabling it to work seamlessly with the marketers. It typically will work out what “assets” the marketers will need in a 12-month period, time lines, costs etc. Based on this approach, it’s saving its clients a great deal of money through the efficiencies and non-siloed methodology they are able to adopt.

With marketers needing so much more content at low cost these days, but without losing out on quality, Summerjax seem to have created a winning formula, especially as the quality of its work is at a very high level.

The meeting took place at a bar/restaurant in Santa Monica, with great snacks and wine-tasting into the bargain.

BBH

One of the day’s highlights was a visit to the BBH offices in LA, built around entertainment clients, hence its location in West Hollywood. Its presentation was a global one, with leading members of the group present along with its local management team.

Formed in 1982, the agency made its name through some of the world’s greatest ad campaigns, and this great heritage and timeless principals continue to be the DNA embedded in the culture of the agency. BBH has moved into all areas of advertising and digital, and can do everything for its clients, including deep digital work. The accolades continue to grow through awards (2018 IPA Effectiveness Awards Grand Prix; BBH Singapore taking Ad Age’s 2018 International Agency of the Year; and BBH London making the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For list 10 years in a row).

Although now part of Publicis Groupe, it is very independent and has maintained its unique culture. BBH has a network of its own, which has been deliberately kept small and fully integrated. It’s now more content-driven than in the past. Charactised by long-term client relationships, the agency continues to want to work with those clients which really value creativity.

A very special dinner, cooked by a world-renowned chef, finished off a full day of fascinating content and trends.

See also

 

Johanna McDowellJohanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) is managing director of the Independent Agency Search and Selection Company (IAS), which is partnered with the AAR Group in the UK. She will be presenting detailed and in-depth reports and case studies on each agency from this 2019 AdForum Summit at her masterclass presentation in Johannesburg in May.

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FieldNotes: When brands are all the same

by Marguerite Coetzee. At Mai Mai, a traditional Zulu market situated in Johannesburg’s CBD down the road from the trendy Maboneng Precinct, there are three distinct types of car-tyre sandals being sold: izingcab’lela, dabula izinzwane and izimbadada. What makes the latter so intriguing is that they make a very bold statement about branding.

Boss-branded sandals at Mai MaiWhen you arrive at there, you’re likely to find a row of taxis being hand-washed outside the entrance while Maskandi music blares from their speakers. To the left of the market is a food area, tables and chairs set up in clusters and grills lined up underneath tin roofs with pigeons perched on top. Women with long skirts and painted faces sort through piles of raw meat. To the right of the market is an informal settlement — the dividing wall plastered with posters advertising live music performances by Maskandi artists.

Walking further into the market space, there are makeshift stalls selling sweets and blankets, and cages stuffed with chickens stacked against a wall with a mural painting depicting a village scene. Further along still, some men play card games with MTN-branded playing cards, and others play checkers on tables constructed from cement blocks and chipboard. The air is thick with smoke, varnish, herbs, and stagnant drain water.

When you reach the actual market — the small brick trading rooms that used to be stables for horses in the 1920s — you see a beer depot, a small dance space, coffins, animal skins, fighting sticks, pots, drums, beads, and branded car‑tyre sandals.

Take note

There are three distinct types of car-tyre sandals sold at Mai Mai: izingcab’lela (similar to ox-leather sandals that originated from KwaZulu-Natal), dabula izinzwane (meaning “cut between the toes”, worn by traditional dancers from nearby hostels) and izimbadada (branded fashion-statements).

What makes these branded izimbadada so intriguing is that they make a very bold statement about branding. Each pair of shoes is sold for the same price, regardless of which brand they feature — whether it’s Nike or Lacoste, Puma or Adidas, Gucci or any other brand, it’s all the same. Brands here are all the same. They are assigned a collective identity: they all cue aesthetic value (stylish and trendy), economic value (branded items are known to be expensive), personal value (an expression of identity), and use value (an indicator of social status).

Lesson 1: Understand the context of consumption

Mai Mai market, as an example, shows us the impact migration may have on a person’s lifestyle, mindset and consumption behaviour. In an increasingly globalised world, we have access to more at an accelerated rate. Often, commodities act as a connection between ourselves and our environment — and so brands need to fight to stand out and stand for something among the clutter, chaos and confusion. They should also be adaptable to different contexts, not simply a global campaign transplanted into a local setting.

“Material culture gives symbolic meaning to human activities.” —Ian Woodward, author.

Lesson 2: Use material culture creatively.

The dancers and stick-fighters from nearby hostels refer to their wounds (obtained through fighting or dancing) as ‘decorations’ that hold the stories of their past experiences. Adornment plays a big role in ceremonies, celebrations and rituals the world over. Similarly, in everyday life, clothing is an expression and extension of our personal identity. In addition to this, brands enable us to renegotiate our external identity by adding messages and meanings to how we present ourselves and to the story we communicate about ourselves.

“Your body is the canvas of your life.” —Johnny Clegg, anthropoligist.

Lesson 3: Know your consumer

Mai Mai market shows us that global brands are aspirational, but that they lack individual meaning in this space. Consumers who frequent this market range from youthful newcomers to older regulars, from migrant workers to business professionals. They tend to be after the same thing: they are looking to maintain a connection between the two worlds they occupy: a fast-paced, ever changing, westernised, modern cityscape and a familiar, grounded, consistent traditional landscape. Global brands have the opportunity to acknowledge the consumer’s style, values and aspirations — and to respond in a localised, personalised, authentic way.

“Status symbols can serve expressive functions, relating to a person’s own style, taste or cultural values, as either real or aspired to.” —Erving Goffman, sociologist.

Updated at 9.28 on 11 April 2019.

 

Marguerite de Villiers Marguerite Coetzee is an anthropologist, artist and futurist who provides research and insight services through Omniology. FieldNotes, the latest series in her regular column on MarkLives, captures experiences from the field, shares the cultural lessons learned, and advises on qualitative tools, methodologies and frameworks when exploring the world of the consumer.

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Customer experience a growth driver at Cape Union Mart [interview]

by ORiSA. With 260 stores across South Africa, family-owned business Cape Union Mart is well-established in local mall culture, given it has been around since 1933. But the group, that includes Keedo (by recent acquisition), K-Way, Old Khaki, Poetry and Tread + Miller, is earning respect for its digital prowess. Amanda Herson, director of ecommerce, speaks about the group’s omnichannel future.

Cape Union Mart Mall of Africa June 2017
Cape Union Mart, Mall of Africa.

Online Retail in South Africa: How do you make the magic of Cape Union Stores live online?
Amanda Herson: We continually leverage technology, as it improves, to get even better. We’re implementing small amounts of artificial intelligence to add that extra layer of magic online so every customer feels that the site was specially created for them. What’s important to us is that our customers feel visible and cared for.

We always talk about the five senses when we talk about our brand, Poetry. When someone comes into the store, it must smell beautiful, the music must work, and it must feel like walking into a home. Translating this online is not easy, but thinking mobile-first makes you far more selective about what you show the customer because you must make tough decisions about what is essential, and what will help that customer’s journey.

A fundamental improvement during the past 12 months is photography. We’ve started to include far more images and a lot more video on our website. Poetry recently started shooting on models. Reviews are another fantastic addition to our website. We want the good and the bad. Negative reviews often help customers more than good reviews.

ORiSA: When there’s so much to do, how do you decide on what to do first?
AH: It’s a challenge, but thinking mobile-first helps you focus on the essential things. We prioritise great copy. We have to provide you with the right information. In a store you can touch and feel it; online you can’t. Each of our brands has a very different type of copy — we want you to experience the brand through the copy, and again through the photography.

We don’t think of marketing any more as online vs offline. It’s omnichannel marketing, so every element that we’re thinking about in stores is in some way translated to digital. When it’s festive in-store, it must feel festive online.

We try to customise more to experiences. On the Cape Union site, you can search according to activity, because most people prefer to shop this way. Blogs are also useful, because some customers want to explore or interact with the brand, adding richness beyond the product or the shopping cart.

We are focusing on getting a single view of the customer to better understand them. It’s still a work in progress but, in the not-too-distant future, one person would see a different webpage from what another would see. This would be based on our understanding of them as a customer and their psyche.

ORiSA: Are you saying there’s a direct correlation — the better I do online, the better I’m doing overall?
AH: We are starting to see traction from our strategy, from reviews to improved photography. You can start to see spikes. We’ve done some customised pages and started to see some behaviour change. Customers want to feel like people, not a number.

ORiSA: Talking about omnichannel — how do you track and measure that what you’re learning? Does that feedback to the stores?
AH: Absolutely, and that’s the beauty of it. We try not to have separate teams and silos. We have decentralised customer service across channels, so we’ll be able to see trends across channels pretty quickly.

Leveraging your search terms is a great way to use learnings from online for your merchandising team. They’re going to pick up on trends far faster digitally than across a couple of hundred stores. Every week we have cross-functional meetings — it’s an ecommerce meeting but all the cross-functional teams share. We’re trying to change our mindset from the online team vs the store team to one omnichannel team.

ORiSA: What are the big things that stood out?
AH: First, we can see online how much new products are being researched, and exactly what customers most want to see. So, instead of putting it on its shelf in its section, where a customer has to look for it, we put it on the front table. Particularly in Poetry, our customers love to check out what’s new, so we have the same new product that features on the page, right up front in store.

Then, because of our live chat, often there are questions that customers ask online about a product that we didn’t think to provide in the description. There was one product we were selling that didn’t have batteries, and the customer got frustrated, so we gave that feedback to the merchandising team on the floor. I think online you hear a lot faster about customers’ frustrations than you do in-store.

Thirdly, if an item is out of stock online, there is a “Get notified” button, so we can quickly see when there’s massive demand for a product, and we’ve got data behind it. From stores we might get the message, “We need more jackets” — but how many? What size range? Online we know exactly: 50 customers have requested it in an extra small. Online data and analytics can improve and empower in store.

ORiSA: How do you work with data so that data becomes meaningful?
AH: Recently we started to build out our business insights team, so now we’re diving into more in-depth analysis and are building dashboards to be able to see more. We are on the path to integrate into broader business dashboards.

We are not there yet — we are very much learning, testing and trialling. It’s a constant feedback loop. I believe that, if we’re not failing, we’re not trying hard enough. We keep trying, innovating, and travelling abroad to learn more about the impact data can have on building this part of our business.

ORiSA: How do you stay ahead of the curve?
AH: There’s so much opportunity; I think we’re barely scratching the surface. There are so many amazing South African startups that are solving unique SA problems, from logistics to payment. We’re ahead of the world in some areas — you don’t see 20 payment options on international sites, but you do see this locally because there’s a need for it. I’m optimistic about the local startups and we’re working with a lot of them.

I think South Africans are ready for ecommerce. Even my grandmother gets her groceries delivered to her now. I know our penetration is much lower than the rest of the world, but I don’t see any reason why we can’t catch up.

More ORiSA stories

 

Online Retail in South Africa 2019 (ORiSA) is a study conducted by World Wide Worx and Platinum Seed with the support of Visa, and is endorsed by the Ecommerce Forum of Africa. Marklives.com is the media partner, and Heavy Chef is the learning partner for this initiative, which seeks to actively promote online shopping and the growth of online retail in South Africa. For more info, go to onlineretail.co.za, or download the executive summary.

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#AdForumSummit LA: Insight into WPP’s restructuring

by Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) LOS ANGELES: This year marks a big change: we normally hold our AdForum Worldwide Summits in New York, where we meet the global CEOs of the networks, the large multinational agencies and some independent agencies. As a group last year, we decided that it would be worthwhile spending a week again in Los Angeles (LA) (7–12 April 2019), which is a big centre for the advertising, media and entertainment industries, as well as the tech companies, and the competition for talent is a huge issue for all concerned.

AdForum Worldwide Summit logoTo give some context to California and LA, California is the most-populated state in the US, with a population of 39m people. Los Angeles has a population of about 3.8m people. It is a big sprawling city; it reminds me a lot of Johannesburg, with many tall skyscrapers and then lots of smaller, residential areas in between. It is, without doubt, an entrepreneur’s city, where many pioneering spirits have come in the past and no doubt will continue into the future.

Santa Monica — where all of the consultants are staying at the Viceroy Hotel — is a seaside community of about 86 000 people. Surfing shops intermingled with fashion boutiques and a huge choice of restaurants make up Santa Monica, where everything revolves around the beach and the ocean. Our theme for the week is “Surfing the Trends” and what better place than in LA? Californians are open-minded people, with a great capacity for living in a balanced way. This permeates through to their attitude to the advertising industry and its foibles!

So, let’s review Day 1, Monday 8 April, 2019.

MeringCarson

We started out with MeringCarson, an independent full-service agency of 82 people. Its case studies and clients reflect the economy of California, with its main clients being “Visit California” tourism, Hollywood Military Forum, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, and the NFL Fantasy Product.

Its culture reel reflects its beliefs:

  • every brand should take a stand
  • brand action fuels consumer participation

And about itself:

  • It’s modest but it’s mighty

It had a clear point of view and we were impressed to hear that it has successfully defended competitive pitches for the highly attractive Visit California account five times!

It sees its main competition coming from other agencies, rather than from client in-house.

WPP

We then went to meet a few of the leading exco members of the newly reconstituted WPP at one of its agencies. It’s been a year since we met with Mark Read in New York, who had taken over as acting CEO after the founder’s unexpected departure last year. It takes time to turn around a massive ship like WPP but it has certainly made some interesting moves already and these were highlighted:

Where agencies have been joined together to form even stronger entities with more capabilities, in order to meet the structural changes within the greater industry such as:

  • Role of the traditional agencies is challenged
  • Client disruption is happening
  • Consultant companies are making inroads eg Accenture buying Droga5 and Shackleton in the last week are good examples
  • The rise and rise of Facebook, Google, Alibaba and Amazon
  • Trust has become paramount

WPP has, for the first time, positioned itself as a creative transformation company, rather than a holding group. It has developed a values proposition that previously didn’t exist, and the hierarchical approach has been replaced by a younger, flatter structure. We heard from the leaders of Wunderman Thompson North America and Essence (a digital media and TV agency with offices around the world and clients mainly in the data space such as Google).

  • Wunderman Thompson told us about its deliberate growth in expertise around Amazon and what it can offer for clients.
  • Essence talked about the six ways it believes that it makes advertising more valuable to the world:
    • Data and analytics
    • ‘Precisioning’
    • Developing an ethical web
    • Scale creates better advertising experiences
    • Embedded collaborative teams
    • Augmented intelligence

WPP concluded the session by reminding us that it wants to spend less time in meetings and monotonous routine, and more time on creativity, big questions and big opportunities. Contracts with clients should be output- and outcomes-based, rather than time-based. A refreshing restart!

Fred & Farid

Pitching and rules of engagement

Workshop hosted by Fred & Farid with input from AAR Group

We then moved on to Fred & Farid’s new premises in Los Angeles (another independent agency micro-network), where we had a workshop session with several different agency leaders and the intermediary consultants. It was all about pitching and what clients are looking for, when they go through a pitch process. There were some extremely helpful inputs from the AAR Group.

There’s an overall sense that clients don’t really understand what goes into a pitch from an agency perspective, not just the financial aspect but also the emotional aspect — the hope — and there were some excellent tips on how agencies can improve their hit rates, based on research conducted among 40 CMOs in the UK by the AAR Group.

Circus

Definitely a highlight — this is a multicultural independent agency network in eight locations. It is an integrated digital agency with 270 people across offices in:

  • LA
  • Costa Rica
  • Mexico City
  • Santiago, Chile
  • Buenos Aires, Argentina
  • São Paulo, Brazil
  • Bogota, Columbia
  • Madrid, Spain

It positions itself as a new economy agency with new economy clients. which include Netflix, Spotify, Google and eBay. Circus is the lead agency for Spotify in all Spanish-speaking markets.

It talked about its transcultural vision, that it sees itself as a “big tent” for “misfits that do not fit into a traditional agency”. We saw work for Netflix, Spotify, and Northgate Market, where the production budget was minute but the work achieved a 12% sales increase over the Superbowl weekend.

Five reasons to choose Circus:

  • Fully integrated
  • Value for money
  • Agility
  • Transculturation
  • Emotions driven by data

The Many

Our final agency of the day was The Many, another independent agency with offices in Los Angeles — we were shown their new beautiful spot in Malibu — and shortly opening in Boston, with 92 employees and very focused in social media, branded content and, of course, television. It has found a sweet spot for clients with budgets between US$3m and US$30m and shared some excellent case studies with us, as well as its optimism and openness that seem to typify these agencies in California.

The end of a great day on Day 1 and it was off to bed as I saw emails coming in from South Africa — we are nine hours behind all of you this week.

See also

 

Johanna McDowellJohanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) is managing director of the Independent Agency Search and Selection Company (IAS), which is partnered with the AAR Group in the UK. She will be presenting detailed and in-depth reports and case studies on each agency from this 2019 AdForum Summit at her masterclass presentation in Johannesburg in May.

— One subscription form, three newsletters: sign up now for the MarkLives newsletter, including Ramify headlines; The Interlocker, our new monthly comms-focused mailer; and Brands & Branding, launching soon!

EXCLUSIVE: Middleton joins Liquid as MD

by Sabrina Forbes. Mike Middleton, ex-KFC CMO, has joined the leadership team for Liquid, WPP’s new bespoke agency for Distell, alongside Paul Jackson (CEO) and Fran Luckin (CCO). At the time of writing, Middleton had been managing director for just five days.

When the WPP team were putting the Distell pitch together, Jackson, the CEO of Grey South Africa, contacted Middleton for some advice and, after winning the account for seven major Distell brands, offered the role of running Liquid to him.

“Great opportunity”

Distell logo“I thought it was a great opportunity. It’s not more of the same so it’s not another CMO role. It’s working for an exciting client like Distell that’s got amazing brands but also looking at it from an agency perspective and getting that agency knowledge and know how. It helps that Distell is based in Stellenbosch — I study through Stellenbosch — so the whole thing came together quite nicely in the sense that I can continue my studies, I can work on amazing brands with Distell, and I can get agency experience which is exactly what I needed. Otherwise, I would have carried on life doing more of the same until nobody wanted me anymore,” says Middleton.

The agency is a dedicated WPP agency created just for the producer and marketer of spirits, fine wines, ciders and ready-to-drinks, based on the win and in line with the company’s greater strategy to grow its presence not only in SA and Africa but further afield. In light of this, Distell wants, and needs, an agency network that’s able to operate beyond just SA. WPP offers the opportunity to ensure alignment of Distell’s brands as they expand into multiple geographies. This is especially important as introducing and establishing brands into new markets becomes increasingly difficult without consistency.

There are currently 107 people who will be working on the Distell portfolio, some full-time at Liquid and others from agencies within the WPP network.

Career history

Middleton’s career history spans multiple categories including ice cream, household cleaning, beer, chocolate, coffee, biscuits and, most recently, quick service restaurants where, for three years, he worked as CMO Africa for Yum! Restaurants International, leaving the brand in December 2017.

He’s spent the last year studying philosophy and future studies in Stellenbosch University, explaining that he needed a break from the industry to reeducate himself and figure out how he wanted to tackle the industry going forward. His return to the market found him uncertain on whether another CMO role would challenge him enough to stay and, with creativity as his first love, he knew whatever role he took on would have to include it in some shape or form.

“You don’t grow as a person if you don’t push yourself out of your comfort zone and try new and different things. One of the challenges I had in taking a general management role in an FMCG organisation was the fact that creativity, and the heart of what I love, would not have been part of what I do anymore,” he explains.

Hands-on role

Middleton’s role as MD is set to be very hands-on: he will be spending half his time in Johannesburg with the creative team and the other half in Stellenbosch with the client and client-service teams. This will enable him to marry strategic creativity and business solutions together.

When asked on trends facing the industry has a whole, he believes that the creative industry is stuck in an old model and rhythm, and that it’s the fault of both client and agency. According to Middleton, we treat brands too perfectly and are afraid to execute anything that’s not completely in line with the brand’s positioning: “The reality of the world and where it’s going is that you’ve got to be far more in the moment and part of current conversations and you’ve got to allow your brand to have a bit of flexibility with the space,” he says.

The same trend is being played out in the consumer space. People don’t buy perfection anymore, because nothing is perfect. Herein lies the opportunity for brands to show their realness and to have a real viewpoint on what’s happening around them in order to connect better with consumers. Most marketers are, unfortunately, reluctant to let go of the reins on their brands and be part of daily conversations.

Winning brands

“I think the brands that are going to win going forward are going to be the ones who are using big data but in the right way — using big data to tell them what conversations are happening in their categories and on their brands, and then allowing their brands to have a viewpoint on those conversations,” he believes. Presenting your brand in a perfectly crafted way is an outdated method of communication; it’s too formulaic. People are going to talk about you, no matter what; it’s how you get into the conversation that matters.

Middleton suggests we look at what marketing was like in the olden days and try to go back to that one-on-one way of communication before TV, radio, and outdoor. He believes these platforms have made marketers lazy by giving an easy way out of throwing a strategy together, telling consumers whatever message you want and plastering that message on every platform you can.

“Big media these days and a push strategy [don’t] work anymore. Consumers want to engage with your brand on their terms, so you’ve got to have a strategy where they pull the brand into them, rather than you pushing the brand onto them. Brands that are prepared to let themselves go a little bit, and personalise themselves, and have viewpoints on what’s happening around them and not always trying to be perfect but be real instead, I think those are the brands that are going to win going forward,” he says, mentioning Nando’s as a brand he believes is doing it right, in the moment.

“Very brave”

While the win is still fresh and we’re yet to see work come from Liquid on Distell’s top-tier brands, Middleton shares that he’s enjoyed his first week so far and is looking forward to this new challenge. “I must admit I am loving being on the agency side. I think that Distell is a lovely client. They have amazing brands and do amazing things with their brands. It’s really exciting setting up an agency from scratch. It’s a bespoke agency for Distell and I think going from zero to hero is really exciting. I think that they are very brave in doing what they’ve done, because they’ve had many creative partners and they’ve restructured their entire business… bringing it all together under one umbrella and saying, ‘We want to do things differently, we want to do things better, and we want harmony and alignment in all that we do,’” he says.

See also

 

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.

— One subscription form, three newsletters: sign up now for the MarkLives newsletter, including Ramify headlines; The Interlocker, our new monthly comms-focused mailer; and Brands & Branding, launching soon!

Q5: Ellie Frymire’s tips for life in the age of data [interview]

by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Ellie Frymire, the data-visualisation specialist who explored what people were really saying about the #MeToo movement through a cluster analysis of 1.4m tweets, shares insights into her research, as well as tips for life in the age of data. Frymire was a speaker at this year’s Design Indaba in Cape Town.

Q5: What was the biggest learning from the #MeToo analysis for you?
Ellie Frymire: The biggest learning from the cluster analysis [was] likely just understanding the capabilities of machine learning (although it took my computer a few hours to complete, which felt reminiscent of trying to get online in the early ’90s). Machines are our friends! Within the corpus, though, I learned how much of what we post online is… inconsequential. So much of our social media activity doesn’t hold significant meaning (mine included — my last tweet as of writing this was a meme, but it was a funny meme!). We can use those powerful machines and other dimensions, like engagement or content, to find the meaningful messages.

Q5: Are you planning any similar studies in the future? What criteria would you use to choose a new topic/project?
EF: I always have projects in the back of my mind I hope to start. Since meeting so many amazing people at Design Indaba, I’ve been inspired to use machine learning to create art. The power of machine learning is amazing — but algorithms still require a lot of hand-holding, which affects the analysis. Art, however, allows for a certain freedom unconstrained by the critical eye of statistics. I’d love to see art transformed through live data, in essence, real-time analysis and visualisation. An abstract dashboard, if you will. If I were to repeat this project of collection, analysis, and reporting, I’d love to apply this process to a more-worldly topic. I learned so much about the water and land issues in South Africa, and I think I’d like to know what people have to say about that (not to mention, who they are).

Q5: How can we, in this age of ever-increasing data, guard against losing depth (or voices) in all of it?
EF: One of the biggest lessons my parents shared with me while growing up in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s was the thought that “everything you put online will last forever”. Although it’s somewhat true, we’re finding a lot of the clutter of our old websites is either lost (like MySpace, losing all music and pictures from that time) or forgotten (into the white-noise abyss of data online today). The process of archiving this data is its own beast (good luck to the Library of Congress on that one), not to mention the intentionality and voice behind the data. So often in our reporting (not only in publications but also internal organisational reporting), we focus too much on aggregation and less so on evaluation. We need to not only ask “how much”, “how often”, “where” and “when”, but also “why”. They all work together to paint a picture. It’s important to find the sweet spot between quantitative and qualitative as we discuss current data and movements such as this one.

Q5: How can we know which data, and which interpretation(s) of data to trust?
EF: This is a difficult question that I struggle with often. We should always try to understand the details that went into data analysis but, with so much of our current life dependent on data, it would equate to a full-time job just to parse through the datasets and their interpretations that we interact with daily. I have been particularly struck by the stories I read in Weapons of Math Destruction, written by Dr. Cathy O’Neil. If our algorithm was trained on a racist data set, it would give us racist results. Even raw data needs to be questioned — how was this data collected, what was asked, and what could have been missed? My rule of thumb is to question the motivations of the creators. Who is the analysis by, what owners have a stake in the research, and what was the purpose of the work?

Q5: In a way, your work feels like an ultra-modern type of content/discourse analysis — do you think that discourse analysis/content analysis is something that will ever be entirely outsourced to machines?
EF: I suppose, in a Black Mirror sort of way, this is possible. But so much of my analysis relied on decisions I made in regards to data cleansing, algorithmic parameters, and qualitative analysis, just to name a few (something I’ve referenced often in these answers, which I suppose speaks to how important those decisions are when we consider the results of machine learning). Human decisions are not entirely removed just yet. However, I think it’s entirely possible to see something created by a human but applied to a new corpus — for example, it wouldn’t be too difficult to run my analysis on a larger data set of #MeToo tweets, possibly from an entire year, or #blacklivesmatter, etc. Machines certainly do the work — and likely can do more analysis, faster, than a year ago. But it’s up to us to understand, interpret, and communicate the results. Although, once machines can give nervous speeches at Design Indaba like me, then I might be singing a different tune.

 

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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Clicks ’n Tricks: Divisive EU copyright laws — you’ll be affected

by Charlie Stewart (@CStewart_ZA) Evidently feeling marginalised by our own set of our clownish MPs, European parliamentarians have just pushed through a set of rules that present an even greater threat to freedom of speech.

Around this time last year, I wrote a column detailing the shocking news that South Africa’s parliament had passed the internet censorship bill aka the Film and Publications Amendment Bill. It smacked of the controlling hand of a paranoid big-brother state.

Going bananas

Much of what comes out of Brussels is nuts (it’s been a quarter of a century since it passed the bendy banana law) but the EU Copyright Directive represents a new low.

The rules include the controversial Article 13, intended to hold tech firms liable for material that’s posted without copyright permission, and Article 11, which states that search engines and news aggregating platforms should pay to use links from news websites. Critics of the early Article 13 draft complained that it would be almost impossible to load content to social media platforms that contained even a tiny part of copyrighted material.

That might have been a boon for haters of laughing cat pastiches. Unfortunately/fortunately (take your pick), the law was changed to make provision for memes “for purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature and parody”. So, no end in sight for Garfield’s misery.

While the intent of the Article 13 is good — artists and creatives should be protected — the worry lies in its enforceability. Facebook’s recent travails around banning white nationalism have shown just how hard it is to screen content and decide what constitutes hate speech vs what is freedom of expression. Quite how it’s expected to build real-time filters that check for copyright infringement is beyond me.

Given this, there’s a real fear that, if the EU starts to enforce the law, the social media giants will have no option other than to remove or redact pretty much everything. Which would mean that the very people who were supposed to benefit from this — the creators — would be unintentionally victimised by tech companies adhering to the rules.

Rolling around

https://youtu.be/SP14zlGmvSQ

And it’d likely have a fairly significant effect on an advertising industry that’s often criticised for ‘borrowing’ historic creative. The upside is that ads might become more humorous as agencies play on the parody exemption and serve us more fare like last year’s hit “rolling’ ad from KFC” which made fun of Neymar’s theatrics.

Google digital ghost town visualisationWhile much of the debate has centred around Article 13, Google is worried that Article 11 will turn the internet into a digital ghost town. It produced a visualisation of what its search results might look like in an era where it has to pay publishers to show content snippets.

Those thinking that there’s no way Google would block publishers from its results should look at what happened in Spain five years ago. In 2014, the Spanish passed its own copyright law with very similar provisions to Article 11. Google’s response was to close down its news feed.

Hitting where it hurts

The reason it was so quick to close it down was threefold: the search giant had been unable to monetise Google News so it’d rather shutter it than have to pay to keep it alive; it was terrified of further antagonising law makers (and the UK’s very recent announcement that it intends to clamp down on the ‘wild west’ internet just ups the ante to another level altogether); and, most tellingly, wanted to avoid punitive financial penalties for non compliance.

The EU hasn’t been shy in hitting Google where it hurts; in the last couple of years, it has levied antitrust penalties of US$9.3bn against it. This suggests we can expect to see more eye-watering fines in the coming months.

An internet devoid of hard — as opposed to fake — news is a worrying prospect. But it’s not unthinkable. So, enjoy it while it lasts.

Updated at 9.29am on 4 April 2019.

 

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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#AgencyFocus: Problem-solving before tech-building — Realm Digital

by Sabrina Forbes. “They talk about that ‘founders’ energy’, where working until three o’clock in the morning is not the worst thing in the world. That founders’ energy carried us for about the first 10 years,” says Simon Bestbier, CEO at Realm Digital, a digital strategy and technology partner providing everything from enterprise solutions to software as a service (SaaS), responsive ecommerce websites, mobile applications, and digital strategy.

Realm Digital was founded almost 20 years ago by current chairperson, Wesley Lynch, in the UK, sending development work to a small team in South Africa. Shaine Gordon, CTO, joined the company 16 years ago, followed closely by Bestbier 14 years ago. The three worked tirelessly to grow their client list from what they called rats and mice to where they are now, working with some of SA’s most well-known brands: Sanlam, Daily Maverick, Exclusive Books, T-Systems, Gondwana, MultiChoice, and African Bank, to name a few.

Simon Bestbier
Simon Bestbier

Business milestone

Bestbier isn’t shy to admit that running a business comes with a myriad dynamics and that it’s easy for business owners/entrepreneurs to allow fear to paralyse them. A milestone retreat with Realm Digital’s board members a few years into the business is what Bestbier believes really set the company up to be where it is today. The team members realised that, while they all really ‘know tech’, they’ve continued to make it for other people and decided to make something for themselves.

It was here that Snapplify was born. “It’s an educational technology ecosystem and the largest distributor of digital books. If you have a kid in a Gauteng school [who] is using a tablet, Snapplify provides the technology,” says Bestbier. Building up something like Snapplify, as well as a business like Realm Digital, continuously reminds the team that it has the skills and know-how to deliver great work, no matter the industry. “In the last 20 years, we’ve seen a lot of the guys we aspired to be disappear,” he continues. Snapplify and Realm Digital now run as two separate companies, with Snapplify currently in its second round of investment from Angel Hub Ventures.

The rapid growth of Realm Digital meant there was a quick succession of firsts for the company and Bestbier recalls the excitement of creating the first logo and moving into the first office. Even creating a letterhead for the company involved a big whiteboarding session. Then there were things like the first female hire and what that would entail for a business of only men at that point.

For any entrepreneur, the feeling of firing your first client is both terrifying and exhilarating, and not something you wish to do often, but one must understand the importance of doing what needs to be done. “Each of these things for a small development company are big bloody things,” he says.

Seen and done it all

After almost 20 years, the team has seen and done it all, and has learned the appropriate lessons: “For us, the last probably four years have been around realising that we need to de-risk the company a lot by getting the right people in place, having the right processes, and getting rid of the types of clients we don’t want on board,” says Bestbier.

When asked about company culture, Bestbier admits that it’s an increasingly tricky and fickle term, especially in the tech industry when you’re competing with the likes of Amazon. Everybody is looking for the best talent and sometimes free food and a pool table just won’t cut it. He believes that its less about money, free stuff, and cool gadgets and more about creating a team that pushes each member to be the best they can be. A culture created by its peers, not its leaders.

“There’s an idea that a good culture is going to fix anything. You can take a bad person and put them in a good culture; it’s not going to fix them. It takes a company to raise a staff member. It’s not up to the management or the CEOs to prune out bad habits. It’s about if there’s a poor developer on a team, that developer must feel uncomfortable because [they’re] not delivering,” says Bestbier.

Comes with time

Another aspect of the tech industry he mentions is how leadership experience and strength really come with time. Being given a high-powered job without earning it will always do less for you in the long run, no matter how shiny and lucrative it may seem. To effectively lead a team, you need to have been a part of one, at many different levels.

“The IT industry is particularly bad because you’ve got these young [people]  who haven’t started at the bottom and worked their way through the different levels where they’ve been knocked down and dusted themselves off. You’ve got these young [people] coming out of university with some Java skills or .NET skills, get given a R50 000 salary and all of a sudden they want to be running a team. They don’t have any of that substance that actually allows them to be useful to the business,” he says.

At almost 20 years old, Realm Digital admits that it’s been privy to every new buzzword faced by the tech industry, a lot of which have disappeared as quickly as they’ve appeared. It’s seen all the tech trends and, according to Bestbier, has found it frustrating that it has to add each new buzzword into its service repertoire in order to compete — especially when a lot of those trends don’t last very long at all: “We’ve seen all the changes in the industry. Sometimes we’ve been caught up in these cheesy buzzwords. You look at a presentation you prepared eight years ago and think, ‘I can’t believe I said that.’ Our core focus is about delivering value. We don’t want to be running around creating buzz around things that aren’t buzzworthy.”

Partners, not suppliers

Realm Digital’s main aim is to work with clients who view it as partners, not suppliers. It’s at this point where true, deep conversations and honest communication begin to happen. It’s here where the scary stuff can be said without fear of judgement or upset.

Bestbier recalls moments where clients asked for something they believed they needed — but didn’t — and where the difficult decision to advise them on going another route ensued. For example, there have been clients who’ve wanted a mobile app but should have been focusing on foundational tech before talking apps. Another client wanted something built with the ‘best tech’ but whose target audience was mostly using feature phones. Bestbier has experienced these sorts of disconnect many times.

“Often, in our pitches, we’ll say this is how much we think this is going to cost but we don’t think it’s the right way for you to be going. It’s been surprising how clients respond to that honesty. That creates a long-term relationship which is infinitely more valuable to us. I think it’s also about enforcing those boundaries. The moment a client starts treating us as a supplier, rather than a partner, we will nip it in the bud,” he says.

“You need that trust relationship”

“Clients will say, ‘Can you build us a Magento site?’ We respond, saying: ‘Don’t tell us about the technology; tell us about what you need and we will advise you.’ That’s one of the biggest problems in the industry today. There are technical decisions being made by people who shouldn’t be making technical decisions. You need that trust relationship to say we’re not going to build this for you; it’s a waste of time. This type of trust takes a bit of time to build up.”

Realm Digital was tasked with building the DStv desktop player, beating a well known consultancy* in the development pitch. According to Bestbier, it was probably one of the first Node.js webkit projects in the world and, without a doubt, the first in sub-Saharan Africa; up until then, companies such as BBC and Netflix had been working on their own desktop players. For almost a decade, Realm Digital has been looking after the Daily Maverick site and has also built the ecommerce solutions for Exclusive Books and KitchenAid. For Multichoice, it built an internal HR system allowing staff to track leave, view payslips, and update their personal data. It also worked with PwC to develop the Sanlam portal and mobile application.

Always looking to first figure out the problem that needs solving, imagining how to do it, and then building the solution is what Realm Digital strives for with each project worked on. “The technology part, what we do, is the easy part. Building technology is the easy part. Everyone can build an ecommerce website. Solving a business problem? That’s the hard part. If you can solve the business problem, the rest comes naturally. The scary thing is that in a lot of the meetings clients are having with their digital partners, the business problem is not even put on the table; it’s just build, build, build,” says Bestbier. “On all our projects, it’s the tech in the background we’re most interested in. The lifeblood of Realm is really building good technology. Building really good, scalable systems, and all that type of stuff.

Simon Bestbier
realmdigital.co.za • Ramify

  • Office locations: Cape Town
  • Revenue band: R10–20m
  • Staff count: 27
  • Key clients: Sanlam, Exclusive Books, Daily Maverick, Gondwana, Vital Health Foods
  • Services: Consulting & strategy, development, design, mobile, SEO, digital marketing

*Updated 8 April 2019: Consultancy name removed as it was unclear whether it was an on- or off-the-record quote.

 

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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Only Connect: How CMOs can use data to be sense-makers

by Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA) What are the biggest challenges CMOs will face in the future? How do you gear your marketing department for digital transformation? These are just some of the burning conversations brand custodians are having in marketing-led companies right now. Join me each month as I chat to the custodians of the world’s top brands about what matters most to them. First up, Uber Eats South Africa GM Ailyssa Pretorius and I chat about why data is critical to sustaining competitive brand advantage.

In March this year, SA’s food delivery industry got even more competitive. Bolt (formerly Taxify), announced that it was taking on Uber Eats and Mr D Food. Increased competition means competing brands will need to become really smart at understanding customers. With this in mind, I spoke to Pretorius about how Uber Eats is using data to make sense of its customers’ vital statistics.

Bradley Elliott: There is a lot of hype around big data and AI. What is your take on this?
Ailyssa Pretorius: Data and AI have had a seismic effect on everything we do today. At Uber, data science and machine learning are built into our DNA, whether that’s helping millions of people around the world push a button and have a ride turn up in a few minutes, or transforming the way people eat and restaurants do business.

In South Africa, we use data to scientifically perfect everything we do, whether that’s using traffic and weather patterns to predict when a delivery partner needs to arrive at a restaurant to collect food or working with restaurants to optimise food preparation time to ensure a user’s order arrives hot and fresh. We’re also increasingly using machine learning to personalise our app for users. For example, if two people stood next to each other in the same location, they would see a completely different selection of restaurants. Why? Because we use a bunch of inputs such as previous-order history, most-popular dishes in a particular area and trending restaurants to curate our menu for every individual user. Another great example is how we’re using data to help restaurants identify new business opportunities and receive real-time feedback from their customers. A great example of this is our restaurant manager portal which provides our partners with access to a huge amount of information about the performance of their business, their customer satisfaction and, interestingly, macro-data on the big food trends in their area.

BE: What does customer-centricity mean to Uber Eats SA? How can companies use data to be more customer-centric?

AP: Customer obsession is one of our core cultural values at Uber Eats and this means ensuring everything we do is focused on serving the needs of our customers. In a three-sided marketplace, the customer is not just eaters but restaurants and delivery partners as well. For me, this is mostly about good business practice: ultimately, if you don’t keep your customers happy, they will no longer be a customer. At a basic level, customer satisfaction has always been a core element of our service. In the Uber Rides app, our entire ecosystem is built on a two-way five-star feedback mechanic, while on Uber Eats users have multiple ways to [give] feedback, from giving a specific dish a thumbs-up to rating a delivery partner’s delivery.

We’re customer-obsessed at Uber Eats and that means building long-term relationships with all our customers. And to ensure we stay customer-focused for our end-users, we need to ensure restaurant partners are happy and providing the best service to those users. By taking the time to ensure our team has the right tools and development they need, we can build great service models for our restaurant partners and, in turn, great service to the customer base.

In order for companies to succeed by using data to be more customer-centric, companies need to first understand and then anticipate the needs of their customers which will be the key to making sure they are successful in their mission. It is vital for companies to invest time to better understand their customers and using data can help make them understand this, and they need to look beyond their company. Data can be useful here as they will be able to pull information about their customers and solve problems with them by looking at the data and trying to change anything that impacts the end-users.

[Using] this information, they can collaborate with the relevant stakeholders to offer the products/services their customers want. This is what gives data-savvy companies the edge — a proactive and insight-driven strategy. Ultimately, I believe anticipating customer needs is paramount as each market becomes increasingly competitive and customers become more discerning in their taste

BE: Uber Eats helps SMEs use data to extend their offerings (“dark kitchens”  is an example of this). What is your advice to SMEs that don’t have powerful products like UberEats to gather data and gain insight?
AP: As a technology company, data and insights are at the heart of everything we do. We’re helping restaurants navigate this change and discover new ways to grow their businesses. We build trust with partners by focusing on how we can add value to their business. For example, we’re working with thousands of restaurants around the world to help them identify “selection gaps” in their market, using data to launch delivery-only menus that answer latent demand in their local area for a particular cuisine. We like to call these data-driven concepts virtual restaurants (VRs). In essence, a VR only exists in the digital world; there is no storefront or front of house, and they can only be accessed via an app or a website. Importantly, VRs require minimal investment and, with data informing every decision from the name and menu to the location, success is almost assured.

With that in mind, it is clear that industries are changing fast and will only continue to do so in the future. Ultimately, the companies that leverage insight and data-driven business models — while anticipating changing customer needs — are those that will emerge on top. With technology rapidly growing and becoming more accessible to everyone, including businesses, SMEs should easily be able to leverage a platform like Uber Eats, which should bring in a significant amount data and insights on customers that they were unable to reach before.

Take our industry as an example. The choice of location and cuisine is, at best, an informed guess and, at worst, a stab in the dark. Then, of course, the restaurant has to stand out from the crowd to attract customers, which, in an ultra-competitive market like SA, isn’t simple. For existing businesses looking to expand, the risks remain equally high. A large capital investment is usually required to acquire new premises and, while selling burgers in one area may be popular, there’s no guarantee local residents from across town will be equally enthusiastic. Without data, it’s an endless amount of guesswork, which inevitably creates a high-risk model. The exponential rise of food-delivery apps like Uber Eats has started to provide entrepreneurs and restaurant owners with the data and insights they need to unlock the value of their business. While there’s nothing new about food-delivery apps helping restaurants reach more customers and creating incremental demand, the data restaurants now have at their fingertips is quickly becoming a game-changer.

However, in an age when technology is keeping people more connected than ever, it’s important for businesses, and particularly startups, to keep their customers in mind when they’re innovating. SMEs need to adapt their business models to a market where consumers are more engaged, driving more visits but at lower prices.

BE: Uber Eats is set up as a data-centric business. Most large corporates have siloed data sets and no single source of truth. What is your advice to CMOs to work around this and start gaining powerful insights through data?
AP: At Uber Eats, we believe the key to success lies in our ability to [use] our technology to continuously improve the experience of both eaters and restaurant partners on the app. Which is why we put emphasis on effective and accurate data collection that can provide our partners with valuable business insights and customers with food they want, when they want it. The Uber Eats team strives to build the best app experience possible for our customers. We use data and insights to analyse the demand for specific cuisine types, advise restaurant partners on revenue opportunities, and ensure we have the right number of couriers in the right place at the right time throughout the day. We also use insights to direct our expansion plans. We never enter a new market in a proverbial leap of faith and, in 2019, data will play even more of a key role.

So how can business leaders to get around this and start gaining powerful insights through data?

[First], for most companies, accessing data, let alone understanding how to extract value, has been a challenge few have managed to crack at scale. However, data should play a fundamental role in any business decision-making process, especially given the historically high cost and risk associated with launching and running a business. However, it is important for any business leader to use the data for the right reasons and, as businesses scale, it’s really important to keep that focus and to make sure you still spend time listening to customers, hearing what they’re actually telling you, not just looking at the data. If you lose sight of the customer, you can lose sight of what the next opportunities are.

For a business to be successful, they need to really innovate across all sides of the marketplace and tackle the biggest challenges their customers face, and all this can be done with powerful insights through data.

BE: Any final words or thoughts?
AP: We’re optimistic about the future and, thanks to our strong product and brand, as well as the momentum we’re seeing in cities across SA, we’re confident Uber Eats will continue to grow at a rapid pace and we look forward to expanding our business even further in 2019.

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Bradley ElliottThe founder of Continuon and Platinum Seed, Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA) has created a number of businesses in the digital and technology sectors. He believes that marketing needs to be reinvented so that it becomes more useful to humans and brands. He’s also a collector of fine whisky. Bradley contributes “Only Connect”, exclusively to MarkLives.com. In this column and twin podcast, he chats to custodians of the world’s top brands about what matters most to them.

— One subscription form, three newsletters: sign up now for the MarkLives newsletter, including Ramify headlines; The Interlocker, our new monthly comms-focused mailer; and Brands & Branding, launching soon!

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