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#BigQ2019: What do decreasing brand budgets mean for adland?

by Brenda Khumalo. Budget-planning plays a massive role within any business, as it determines whether brands can afford to spend more money on advertising or not; it can even affect the marketing industry as a whole. With the economic downturn continuing to hit South Africa, the market is likely to continue facing the threat of decreasing budgets, resulting in brands advertising less, finding new ways to seek out more share of voice, or introducing more meaningful ways to connect and engage with their audience.

Alternative strategies

Philip Kotler, the “father of modern marketing”, states the following: “By creating early warning systems, the marketers will be able to alter the marketing strategies to meet new challenges and opportunities in the environment.” With these alternative marketing strategies, the industry can move into a space where it can work around budgetary constraints and find a gap to market clients’ brands in a more-affordable way.

But what are these alternative marketing strategies?

A re-emphasis on ROI

The traditional form of advertising may be seen as pretty expensive and the results aren’t always tangible. Yes, the advertisement might be beautifully crafted and generate a ton of publicity and awareness but, unless it results in an increase in sales, companies may experience a negative ROI for the business.

The obsession with ROI in boardrooms during recessionary phases will see a shift towards more-measurable investments as brands seek to justify the cost of media vs leads and sales conversions.

All about personalisation

Some brands are adopting the personalisation space as a solution. Consumers are no longer concerned about what brands’ generic offerings are but what they can get out of them. This is why it’s important for the industry to understand who it is speaking to and how it is speaking to the consumer.

Messaging needs to become more-personal, -targeted and -centered on the consumer. With the rapid increase of online content, marketing can become more customer-focused with information such as demographics, online behaviour and engagement levels — allowing brands to create more-targeted consumer messages.

An approach like this makes messaging more personal using minimal tools. Digital is, therefore, a good fit. Messaging is also not limited to singular media executions, as digital platforms lend themselves to storytelling executions that are personal and speaks directly to the consumer insight. Simply putting a sales-focused message in the digital sphere isn’t likely to attract consumers’ interest; it’s about giving value beyond a mere marketing message, talking to them at the right moment (using mobile content), without being intrusive, and being relevant and talking about things that are top of mind at that moment.

Out with the old, in with the new

Finding more-efficient ways to pair up traditional and digital media will help brands promote their products without cutting down on advertising, which will assist brands to become more personal. Brands need to face that SA is in an economic downturn but, instead of decreasing advertising, they should identify more-innovative solutions.

A constant dialogue with your customers is always important, as is keeping a positive brand image — whether there’s a recession or not.

This is why it’s time to relook old ways of marketing to customers and move into a mindset of ‘getting bang for your buck’; it’s all about having more-effective marketing measures, better consumer insights, and personal and meaningful engagements.

Inside Look: Studio Warburton’s Agency Leaders 2017 poster design

Agency Leaders' Most Admired 2017 inside look

by MarkLives (@marklives) Since 2014, MarkLives has commissioned some of South Africa’s best illustrators and graphic designers to design posters celebrating the winners of our annual Agency Leaders’ Most Admired poll awards. Studio Warburton, which designed the 2017 poster set, gives us a quick lowdown on the design process.

Note: The 2018 poll results start running on Monday, 4 February 2019.

Concept

The 2017 theme was “high-rollers” — a representation of those agencies and creative individuals that have worked hard to stand out and earn the big bucks with real swag. What better way to represent swag than with a personalised ‘Rolex’ watch design for each winner?

Each poster certificate is customised with the winner’s name, use of colours, patterns and watch hands, giving each winner their ‘time’ to shine.

MarkLives Agency Leaders' Most Admired 2017 posters inside look - collage ideas

MarkLives Agency Leaders' Most Admired 2017 posters inside look - collage roughs colour

MarkLives Agency Leaders' Most Admired 2017 posters inside look - collage colour

Process

The process began with some fast-paced brainstorming and sketching. After all concepts were explored, the top four ideas were presented to the MarkLives team and, once a route was chosen, the refining process began.

The design was an iterative process as it moved from sketches to digital illustrations, with the final style being the simple vector style with bright colours and patterns to enable the customisation aspect of the concept.

This aspect was enhanced by the two-colour digital print on Epson enhanced matt paper to give it a crisp and clean finish, with vibrant colours unique to each winner.

MarkLives Agency Leaders' Most Admired 2017 posters inside look - collage B&W

MarkLives Agency Leaders' Most Admired 2017 posters inside look - signing B&W

MarkLives Agency Leader's Most Admired 2017 posters inside look - signature B&W

Studio

Studio Warburton consists of Hylton and Chantelle Warburton, a husband-and-wife team. The design duo focus primarily on illustration, craft design and packaging, having worked with clients that include The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Jamie Magazine, Kit-Kat, Wall Street Journal, and Fast Company.

Look out for the 2018 Agency Leaders’ Most Admired poll results, kicking off on Monday, 4 February 2019!

Gestalt: Customers — key to unlocking an exciting new time in marketing

searching-customer by thanunkorn courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos

by Leeya Hendricks (@LeeyaHendricks) It’s an exciting time to be in marketing, with various other disciplines enabling this area of the business, influencing its future direction and enhancing its impact.

The primary challenge in plotting a brave new course for marketing will be in dealing with the additional complexity and change of a much-wider playing field. That said, marketing has never been in a better position — and neither have marketers, as they have more scope than ever to shine.

The most forward-thinking marketers are moving beyond their traditional marcoms role and embracing data, technology, operations, people, change, strategy and customer experience. Of these, the customer is perhaps the most vital.

Customers first

Saying the customer is key to business success sounds so obvious as to (almost) go without saying. But we should say it loud, clear and often; now, more than ever, CEOs are prioritising customer interactions above all else.

We are currently in a customer-driven growth revolution, where all consumers are mobile, social, and multichannel enabled.

Being entrusted with customer experience (CX) gives marketers an amazing opportunity to bring the customer to life for the organisation, thereby growing their own capability, remit and influence within the organisation. Simply put, the customer is the platform on which to expand marketing’s role to something much bigger than ever before.

Staffing up for success

It’s vital to ensure that you have the right resources for a winning marketing strategy, and part of that is not getting too stuck in the day-to-day cut-and-thrust of marketing’s operational activities.

It’s quite feasible for a capable, well-resourced team to look at the web analytics of the day before and say, “Okay, what are we going to do differently to optimise for the best offering in the market right now?” Your leadership is needed elsewhere.

For example, are you spending enough time listening to your customers and meeting their needs? Does the product work as expected? What’s happening across the industry? Do you have the right product strategy and brand-building capabilities for the year?

Breaking down silos

When we really want to know the customer, our concern is one of the right data.

Data can’t be trapped in silos; businesses have to be able to connect end-to-end in real time. CEOs in boardrooms want a single view of the customer.

In outlining the habits of successful CMOs, Forbes outlines how it all comes down to ‘focusing completely on the customer and CX’: “By keeping the customer front and centre, the CMO can bring focus to the new technologies coming their way and show greater discernment in choosing only those that truly suit their needs.”

Listen, listen, listen

In thinking about customers, we must finally also pay attention, not only to what they want but how they might behave differently in response to different experiences.

Mobile-first companies do well with this, as they have been built from the customer experience backwards. Organisations that have been built in the traditional way, from the inside out, are not finding it so easy to understand customers at every point of the journey.

But, once this is achieved, you will have customer-based insights of expectations on which to deliver. Be sure to listen at both a very granular and overarching way. Are you gathering insights in each of your daily interactions? And, in acting on those, are you driving a behavioural change?

Making the change

CMOs need to make sure they have the right strategies to address the above five priorities, that all of them come through strong enough, and that they know and consider the customer first in all things.

References

Leeya Hendricks (@LeeyaHendricks) is a designated chartered marketer, global marketing strategist, digital driver and a Women in Tech leader. She holds a BA degree in fine arts, a BA honours degree in brand marketing management, an MBA in business management and is completing her PhD in management sciences, focusing on the customer and business transformation. She is now director of customer first marketing at ORACLE UKI, responsible for driving customer success through customer advocacy, and building strategic partnerships focused on emerging technology and the changed customers’ buying behaviour. Leeya contributes the monthly column “Gestalt”, about putting customers first for sustainable business success, to MarkLives.

#BigQ2019: Is advertising screwed?

Jarred Cinman. Credit: Chris Saunders (www.chrissaunders.co)

by Jarred Cinman (@jarredcinman) Whatever your source, the data and thought leadership about the ad industry right now seem clear: we’re screwed.

Dark days

2018 was a year of storm clouds and dark days for our industry. Nowhere was this more evident than inside WPP [full disclosure: I run a WPP-owned business] which lost its apparently eternal CEO Sir Martin Sorrell, Group M’s Irwin Gotlieb, 50% of its share price and some long-term accounts — in the case of Ford, 75 years long. But while the spotlight might have been on WPP last year, there was pain enough for everyone: the encroaching big consultancies which became the world’s biggest ad agencies; the relentless gobbling up of media money by Silicon Valley tech giants; and the collapse in trust of those very same tech giants in the aftermath of Bell Pottinger and Russian hackers.

Here at home things seemed as bleak. The economy went into a technical recession, job losses mounted and client budgets got cut and cut. The industry grappled with issues of transformation — occasionally succeeding but often stumbling. Losing Keith Rose was a hard blow that underlined a grim year.

Is that fair?

It’s certainly the tone and content that I kept hearing. Whether in the pages of “Frenemies” (the excellent Ken Auletta book) or in articles on Ad Age, this message of relentless apocalypse was all too evident.

We live in dark times. Of that there can be little argument. We have a racist narcissist running America and right-wing fanatics are being elected around the globe. At home we are struggling through the aftermath of a captured state and unresolved race and class divides.

Still need to ply wares

But the thing we all forget in all of this is that companies still need to ply their wares to customers. Unless you have a product or service that sells itself (maybe Apple or Amazon could argue they do), you need to build your brand, pitch your deal, service your client and grow loyalty. Until the machines really do take over, the best way to do this is still to hire a great agency.

I’m not saying that because I own an agency. I’m saying that because, in spite of all of this naysaying, no one has actually made a coherent case for how consumers are going to make choices without marketing. There are those who imagine that search engines or e-commerce sites or recommendation agents fall outside the marketing ecosystem. But that’s simply false. Wherever there are competitive products or services, there is a race to capture a consumer. And the only way we know how to do that is to capture their hearts and minds with great advertising.

It’s true that what “advertising” is has changed. It’s also true that it’s changed many times since the Egyptians pasted papyrus notices on ancient stone walls. Technological advances have been major disrupters in the ad business for thousands of years. The papyrus sellers no longer have a business. But that never killed the ad industry any more than the internet has killed it.

Actually, this is a boom time for advertising. There has never been more of it. It has never taken as many forms or been distributed on as many channels or seen by as many people. It has also never reached so deeply into how a business works. These days, progressive companies know that their website and app and call centre and maybe even their product itself are ads.

Only have dreamt of

Agencies are being given assignments that, honestly, our forebears could only have dreamt of. We’re building software and making albums and shooting films and designing gadgets and — yes — making ads. We’re also becoming experts at crunching data and using algorithms to better target people and refine our messages.

I’m not denying that some of our businesses are under threat; we’ve seen iconic South African agencies collapse and there is margin pressure wherever you look. But this isn’t because advertising is dying. It’s because these businesses are failing to keep pace with what consumers respond to and what clients are asking for. Yet there are and will be agencies that do better than ever.

We know some things about them.

They will prize data at their core.
They will be tech-savvy and channel agnostic.
They will still have great, breakthrough ideas.
They will know how to make content that people love and seek out.
They will put the customer first.

They need people to buy their stuff

But the notion that the ad industry is collapsing isn’t true. The people who employ us today have the same problem they have always had: they need people to buy their stuff. Therefore, until there is no human involvement in that process (hard to imagine but not impossible), there will be a need to advertise.

So, this is a message to everyone whinging about budget cuts and procurement departments: get out there and innovate. Help clients win against their competitors using the wealth of new tools and techniques available — and celebrate the chance to be part of this awesome industry for a long, long time to come.

The Suit: Don’t touch unit trusts

Old Mutual Unit Trusts ad in Sunday Times 2001

by Jason Harrison. 25 March 2001. The day the first ad I ever made ran in The Sunday Times. Full Page. Full colour. It was glorious (as a suit, there is nothing quite as thrilling or terrifying as signing off a final DTP laser and then waiting for it to appear in the national newspapers). It was for Old Mutual Unit Trusts.

At the time, Old Mutual Unit Trusts was going through a difficult trading period, with a lot of investors wanting to pull out at a low point in the fund’s performance. It was a totally counter-intuitive move over the long term, which my client, Helen van der Rede, had foreseen and briefed me to sort out as her new account executive. Armed with some fancy graphs and not a clue what a unit trust actually was, I ran down to the creatives to brief it in.

Stopped me in my tracks

Exactly three days later, the copywriter, Gordon Ray, called me to say the ad was done and I was to present it to the client tomorrow as he couldn’t. I sprinted down and, the closer I got to his desk, the more horrified I became because there was a crowd of very excited creatives all crowding around the work oohing and aahing. The headline stopped me dead in my tracks:

“At the moment, everybody is saying don’t touch unit trusts. We couldn’t agree more”.

Now surrounded by the whole creative studio, I started to explain that there must be some kind of misunderstanding. This is a unit trusts ad. The client is expecting a really big graph showing the long-term upside of unit trusts. The answer back was simply, “It’s FRESH — she will buy it” and I was handed the porti bag.

After a completely sleepless night spent rehearsing how to tell her why the graph was so small I met with Van der Rede the next morning. I pulled out the 54×10 board and placed it on the table facing up (rookie error) as I prepared my ‘sell’. But before I could even start, she grabbed the board, read the headline and said, “Now this is completely FRESH. I LOVE it. We HAVE to make it.” Then she picked up the layout, told me to follow her and walked into her boss’s office next door and said, “This is the work I want us to make.” And they did, because she had total conviction for a brave, category-challenging idea.

Two key lessons

I learned two key lessons that day:

Great clients make great work, not just great agencies
FRESH was actually a common and shared acronym to evaluate creative work

As a junior suit assessing creative work, I had never considered anything deeper than “I like it and it answers the brief” which, by every conceivable measure, is woefully inadequate. We make the intangible tangible, so surely judging if we’ve been successful needs some clear and objective measures?

What I found out after the presentation when I returned to the office (#thanksforthatchaps) was that FRESH stood for: First, Relevant, Engaging, Single-minded and Hot.

First: Does this work actually tap into a cultural insight or category truth that feels completely new?
Relevant: Will this work bridge the gap to consumers hearts and minds to change how they think?
Engaging: Does this work really make me feel something after seeing it?
Single-minded: Is the selling message clear and have we stripped away everything unnecessary?
Hot: Is this work disrupting the category or challenging the consumer in an interesting, inspiring or intriguing way?

Shared ambition

Obviously, just because the work is FRESH doesn’t always mean the sell is easy. As suits, the planning, approach and alignment to the strategy are critical to get it across the line. And not every piece of work will tick all the boxes every single time, but it should always be our shared ambition to ensure the things we put out there stand up to some kind of rigour to make it the best it can possibly be.

It’s certainly been a useful and simple framework that’s stood the test of time to evaluate creative work in all its shapes and forms, helped pay due respect to all the hard work that has gone into creating the idea and given it the best possible chance of seeing the light of day.

Ultimately, for that unit trusts ad on 25 March 2001, both the creatives and the client knew that it ticked all the right boxes and were utterly convinced it was the right thing to do.

That is how it should be, because great work, when meticulously planned, sells itself.

PS That piece of work is still in my porti. I fished it out 17 years later. The paper has faded completely. It’s still one of my proudest.

Jason Harrison started as a 23-year-old account executive at Ogilvy & Mather before moving to London five years later to run three agency teams in three different European countries. He joined his old mates again in 2011 as one of the founding partners of the M&C Saatchi Group at 33. He believes that creating beautifully simple solutions for an increasingly complex world will, in fact, save the world. His MarkLives column, “The Suit” is about inspiring and helping up-and-coming suits to be better at their craft. He is no longer on Twitter.

SA TV Ratings: e.tv — primetime top 20 for Dec, Nov 2018

South African TV Ratings Top 20 shows 2018

by MarkLives (@marklives) The hottest primetime shows on e.tv in South Africa revealed: TV ratings for December and November 2018.

e.tv, December 2018

Top 20 Programmes All Adults 15+
December 2018 Prime Time 5.30pm—10pm
Adults 15+ years U:35679 S:8278

Source: BRCSA December 2018

Day	Date	From	To	Station	Programme title	Genre	AR	Viewers	Share
Mon	10/12/2018	1929	1957	e.tv	Scandal	Soap	14.3	5 101 025	39.5
Tue	18/12/2018	2130	2159	e.tv	Imbewu: the Seed	Dram	12.3	4 395 904	48.8
Tue	18/12/2018	2127	2130	e.tv	Scoop Network	Docu	10.2	3 648 318	24
Tue	11/12/2018	1900	1928	e.tv	Rhythm City	Dram	9.9	3 527 671	30.8
Sun	09/12/2018	1959	2228	e.tv	The Fast and the Furious 6	Movi	8.7	3 086 585	35
Sun	16/12/2018	2000	2239	e.tv	Furious 7	Movi	8.4	2 989 338	37.2
Sun	02/12/2018	2000	2231	e.tv	Fast Five	Movi	7.7	2 753 049	32.5
Sat	29/12/2018	1929	2128	e.tv	Mama Jack	Movi	7.6	2 699 528	27
Sun	23/12/2018	2000	2158	e.tv	The Rundown	Movi	7.1	2 515 894	28.4
Sun	30/12/2018	2000	2207	e.tv	The A- Team	Movi	7.1	2 516 131	28.4
Sat	01/12/2018	1930	2130	e.tv	Frozen	Movi	5	1 775 288	21.9
Sat	15/12/2018	1930	2129	e.tv	Big Hero 6	Yent	4.8	1 706 319	19.8
Sat	01/12/2018	2135	2203	e.tv	Olaf’s Frozen Adventure	Yent	4.7	1 678 793	21.8
Mon	24/12/2018	2124	2129	e.tv	The Spotlight (Vari)	Vari	4.5	1 619 781	11.5
Sat	22/12/2018	1930	2133	e.tv	Dr Seuss How the Grinch Stole Christmas	Movi	4.2	1 503 032	18
Tue	18/12/2018	2000	2029	e.tv	Enews Direct	News	4.1	1 446 597	12.4
Sat	08/12/2018	1930	2124	e.tv	Mr. Popper’s Penguins	Movi	4	1 417 849	15.1
Tue	18/12/2018	2100	2104	e.tv	The Powerball Draw	Quiz	3.9	1 406 917	12.3
Tue	18/12/2018	2122	2126	e.tv	Just for Laughs Gags Filler	Sitc	3.9	1 378 099	17.3
Sun	30/12/2018	1700	1751	e.tv	Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Ranch Challe	Real	3.7	1 317 208	18.4

e.tv, November 2018

Top 20 Programmes All Adults 15+
November 2018 Prime Time 5.30pm—10pm
Adults 15+ years U:35679 S:8540

Source: BRCSA November 2018

Day	Date	From	To	Station	Programme title	Genre	AR	Viewers	Share
Tue	20/11/2018	1930	1958	e.tv	Scandal	Soap	16.79	5 989 406	45.6
Tue	20/11/2018	1900	1929	e.tv	Rhythm City	Dram	11.65	4 156 397	33.5
Tue	20/11/2018	2130	2159	e.tv	Imbewu: the Seed	Dram	10.44	3 725 034	42.6
Sun	25/11/2018	1959	2202	e.tv	The Fast and the Furious	Movi	8.23	2 937 741	29.4
Sun	18/11/2018	2000	2202	e.tv	The Fast and the Furious:Tokyo Drift	Movi	8.01	2 859 447	29.2
Sun	11/11/2018	2000	2207	e.tv	2 Fast 2 Furious	Movi	7.98	2 848 394	29
Sat	17/11/2018	1930	2202	e.tv	Snow White and the Huntsman	Movi	7.54	2 690 844	26.5
Fri	16/11/2018	2129	2129	e.tv	Scoop Network	Docu	6.66	2 377 146	10.3
Sat	10/11/2018	1930	2143	e.tv	Annie	Movi	6.34	2 261 202	22
Sat	03/11/2018	1930	2135	e.tv	Zootropolis	Movi	6.02	2 147 307	21.1
Sat	24/11/2018	1930	2147	e.tv	The Huntsman: Winter’s War	Movi	5.78	2 060 306	20.5
Sun	18/11/2018	1700	1750	e.tv	Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Ranch Challe	Real	4.39	1 567 373	18.8
Sun	18/11/2018	1930	1957	e.tv	Blackish	Sitc	4.33	1 545 335	14
Sat	10/11/2018	2144	2147	e.tv	Just for Laughs Gags Filler	Sitc	4.23	1 508 076	20.7
Sun	25/11/2018	1804	1830	e.tv	America’s Funniest Home Videos	Vari	4.13	1 474 054	16.4
Sat	10/11/2018	2148	2154	e.tv	The Spotlight (Vari)	Vari	4.08	1 457 289	19
Sat	03/11/2018	2136	2139	e.tv	Disney – Animated Shorts	Yent	3.95	1 409 624	16.5
Sun	25/11/2018	1830	1859	e.tv	Japandemonium	Vari	3.92	1 396 718	14.9
Sun	25/11/2018	1800	1801	e.tv	E News Direct Headlines	News	3.78	1 346 785	16.5
Fri	16/11/2018	2100	2104	e.tv	The Powerball Draw	Quiz	3.66	1 305 846	8.8

In 2016, the Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (BRCSA) changed its policy about giving away TAMS and now only monthly reports, highlighting the top 20 or 30 primetime shows on several popular channels, are available.

The Broadcast Research Council of South Africa (the BRC) is a non-profit, industry body that was incorporated in 2015 to cater to the audience research needs of the radio and television industry in South Africa.

John Davenport joins Havas South Africa as CCO

by MarkLives (@marklives) John Davenport has joined Havas South Africa as its new chief creative officer.

“I’m terrifically excited to be joining Havas because I think that the agency group has a unique offering for clients,” says Davenport. “Unlike most agencies, Havas,’ being part of a wider non-advertising group, Vivendi, allows for wider collaboration from which deep connections between people and brands can be sustained.” In South SA, sister companies include music stable, Universal Music Group, and gaming developer, Gameloft.

Davenport’s role, over and above that of CCO, will see him lead the creative programme of the Havas Academy, the agency group’s training and development arm.

Davenport was the co-founder and ECD of Ireland/Davenport, recently reinvented as Collective ID. He launched Ireland/Davenport with Philip Ireland in 2006. At its peak, the agency worked accross a range of blue-chip brands, including BMW, Investec, Vodacom and South African Tourism. He left Collective ID in September 2018.

“When a friend called me late last year and told me that John Davenport was interested in joining Havas, I was thrilled,” says Lynn Madeley, Havas South Africa CEO. “We are an agency that is doing some really smart stuff in terms of content and deep connections with consumers ,and we needed someone to join us in getting some work over the line. Enter John. Not only is he highly awarded but he also understands that an agency is a business and he knows how to navigate the business of creativity. It’s a great match for us.”

EXCLUSIVE: M&N Brands launches content hub, acquires youth mag

by Herman Manson (@marklives) M&N Brands has established M&N Entertainment to house its media investments, the first of which is the newly acquired youth culture magazine, Zkhiphani.com. Other M&N Brands business units include ad agencies Avatar Johannesburg, Avatar Cape Town, Avatar Media Agency, Avatar PR, Mela Events and Bozza (a PR firm).

Minority stake

Loosely translated, Zkhiphani means ‘what’s happening’ and was established a decade ago by Andile Mathobela, Ally Fathana and Bonga Mpungose; today, the online magazine employs nine people and covers celeb news, music, trends and social happenings. The founders will retain a minority stake in the business.

“M&N Brands is about value-adding partnerships, and we believe we can combine resources to accelerate the portal’s growth, and provide advertisers with competitive offerings to better engage with young people in South Africa,” says Zibusiso Mkhwanazi, M&N Brands co-founder and group CEO. “I am especially excited about further investing in online publishing, with the long-term goal to consolidate our online sites into a video-on-demand service for Africans by Africans.”

Lucrative youth market

Mkhwanazi says Avatar’s own content team will work alongside that of Zkhiphani. The investment in Zkhiphani will give M&N better understanding of the lucrative youth market, and fits the company’s vision of owning various elements of the media and communication ecosystem.

“We are very excited about this partnership,” says Mathobla, who is editor-in-chief. “After 10 years of independence in the game, we feel that we have to take things to the next level by partnering with like-minded game changers like Zibusiso Mkhwanazi and Veli Ngubane [the other co-founder], who have built amazing businesses in the digital and advertising space in recent years. We are confident that they will take Zkhiphani.com to a whole new level.”

Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.

EXCLUSIVE: New Odd Number ECD; Sitole now CCO

by Herman Manson (@marklives) The Odd Number has announced the appointment of Terry Mckenna as its new executive creative director. Sibusiso “Sbu” Sitole, current ECD and agency co-founder, steps up into the newly created position of chief creative officer.

Mckenna has over 18 years of advertising experience, having started out as a junior writer at Grey Advertising before moving on to TBWA\Hunt Lascaris, Joe Public and Ogilvy South Africa, among others. He’s worked on brands including Heineken, Mazda, IEC, Standard Bank, Steers, Mahindra, Nike, KFC and Cadbury; most recently, he was creative director on Castle Lager at Ogilvy Johannesburg.

Rapid growth

According to Sitole, the agency has seen rapid growth since its launch in 2015 and, coupled with constant change taking place in the broader industry, this necessitated a greater focus on its offering by him and agency CEO, Xola Nouse, while building a formidable leadership team across all aspects of the business. Sitole says the result will be stronger integration between the agency’s various specialised offerings and, ultimately, a more-potent and -quantifiable creative output.

“Having Terry on board will help me focus on evolving The Odd Number into an effective and integrated group,” says Sitole. “I’ll be a lot more available to all our clients [and] have more time to focus on our growth, as well as maintaining our culture. However, I’m certainly not out of the creative studio; I’ll be stepping into a CCO role, and a large part of my role will still involve creative leadership. Terry will invest most of his time leading our creative department, building a formidable and future-fit creative team, creating meaningful and effective work, and decorating our entrance hall with shiny statuettes.

“We’re currently carving out our own niche and DNA in a very competitive industry. Terry brings a fresh perspective and a wealth of experience to help us build our vision for The Odd Number. Ultimately, though, we want to see our work compete at a global level and believe Terry is just the partner to help get us there.

“Revitalise”

“He’ll also be a huge support strategically for our business. His unique style, energy and passion for ideas will revitalise our studio. His wealth of experience on big brands [and] producing integrated campaigns, as well as powerful award-winning ideas, will all be of huge benefit to The Odd Number.”

Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.

#BigQ2019: The year of questions & interrogation of creative output

by Khuthala Gala Holten. In 2019, brand and agencies should not only finetune new opportunities but also take the chance to make major changes. It’ll be important to be hyperaware of the big shifts — specifically toward digital and mobile — while not abandoning the traditional approaches that continue to work well.

Finetuning the customer experience

Brands will continue to look at the customer journey and ask how they might incrementally improve the experience at each step. The boldest will work to eradicate steps all together and redefine expectations in the process. When asking which parts of the customer experience should ‘disappear’, we will need to go beyond the typical route of a customer’s journey and find ways to engage consumers in more creative ways than before.

Work with a purpose

If we’re all truly in the business of gaining market share, then 2019 should be the year of questions and interrogation of the creative output. More clients need to consider and adopt the idea of giving brands a purpose; they win hearts and minds of consumers because consumer dynamics have changed as they become more discerning and demanding. Brands with a clear purpose create more value and a greater impact over time, making this a crucial and long-term business strategy. With this in mind, we the industry should be producing work that is courageous and meaningful, connecting with consumers and moving them emotionally.

Deep insights

I can’t bear to witness any more high-level desktop research or feedback from a one-day immersion session. If you want your communication to stand out from the rest, your research needs to go deep and it needs to be real, because our consumers are essentially you and I — they’re smart. We need to be more critical and we need to ask ourselves if this is a true reflection and does it resonate? These critical strategic insights will also be a key differentiator and a competitive advantage.

So, let 2019 be the year that we stand up to fight against quashed and lacklustre insights. Cast your network wide; connect and learn something new. Deep insights spark genuine creative ideas that connect with consumers because they’re real.

More digital

One thing’s for sure and that’s that digital transformation will continue to change how we do business in every facet of every industry. While it’s hard to get our minds around this so fast, some of these technologies have a huge impact on the way we work, socialise and interact, and the implications will continue to land far beyond the year ahead.

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It’s also a cultural change that requires organisations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment and get comfortable with failure. When we understand this as businesses, then we as agency partners can work to deliver on the business of creativity.

People

Finally, all of this would not be possible without the force majeure and blood line of any business: our people. All of the trends discussed above would not be possible unless we have the talent to make our clients’ creative products soar.

With a depressed economy and looming political turmoil, the economic context in which we will operate in 2019 may be tougher than ever. Budgets will be cut and briefs will be tight. But now, more than ever, clients need to trust agencies to bring their creative to life — to create, develop and design in way that creates value not only for them as our clients but also for consumers.

So, ask yourself which trends will be important for your business growth in 2019.

Alternative strategies

A re-emphasis on ROI

All about personalisation

Out with the old, in with the new

See also

Concept

Process

Studio

Look out for the 2018 Agency Leaders’ Most Admired poll results, kicking off on Monday, 4 February 2019!

See also

Customers first

Staffing up for success

Breaking down silos

Listen, listen, listen

Making the change

References

Dark days

Still need to ply wares

Only have dreamt of

They need people to buy their stuff

See also

Stopped me in my tracks

Two key lessons

Shared ambition

e.tv, December 2018

Top 20 Programmes All Adults 15+ December 2018 Prime Time 5.30pm—10pm Adults 15+ years U:35679 S:8278

Day

Date

From

To

Station

Programme title

Genre

AR

Viewers

Share

e.tv, November 2018

Top 20 Programmes All Adults 15+ November 2018 Prime Time 5.30pm—10pm Adults 15+ years U:35679 S:8540

Day

Date

From

To

Station

Programme title

Genre

AR

Viewers

Share

Minority stake

Lucrative youth market

Rapid growth

“Revitalise”

Finetuning the customer experience

Work with a purpose

Deep insights

More digital

People

See also

Top 20 Programmes All Adults 15+
December 2018 Prime Time 5.30pm—10pm
Adults 15+ years U:35679 S:8278

Top 20 Programmes All Adults 15+
November 2018 Prime Time 5.30pm—10pm
Adults 15+ years U:35679 S:8540