Lurking beneath the headlines of the iPhone 4S launch was a signpost to the next big shift in smartphones – high end devices at low-end prices. ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK explores the meaning of a $99 iPhone 4.
Tag archives: africa
M&C Saatchi Abel gets thumbs up from Moray MacLennan
M&C Saatchi Abel is buzzing. The agency, which launched in early 2010 with no clients signed up front but a powerful management team, has grown to more than 63 staffers working with 29 client organisations. It just won the account for Geely – the Chinese auto manufacturer that also owns Volvo. The agency recently took another floor in the block in Cape Town where it is headquartered.
San Reddy to lead PR firm marcusbrewster
The communication industry is rapidly evolving, thanks to the rise of social media, and Reddy identifies its influence as a major challenge for PR firms to respond to and engage with. Communication strategies no longer solely rely on traditional media and firms in his sector need to understand the value of digital media in communicating with consumers. Reddy admits that, while strides have been made in this direction, a lot of work still waits.
Tiger in the ecommerce henhouse
by Herman Manson. Kim Reid, diplomatically perhaps, doesn’t care what the competition of his online retail venture, Takealot.com, is up to. The ecommerce market in South Africa is so nascent that it makes more sense to focus on successfully implementing your own strategy and building your own business, rather than fretting about what other players are doing, he says.
S’HOT 2011 review: End of the Big 5
The Client: Save the Rhino
The Agency: Stick
The Brief: Highlight the seriousness of the current carnage and show what the eventual outcome of the continued slaughter might turn out to be.
Creative Solution: Create intriguing visuals that suggest that when the rhinos have all gone nothing that we can ever do will bring them back. The Big 5 might soon be something of the past. The work was done pro-bono and is running in supportive media including the inflight magazine of Mango.
Creative Team: Jono Wolberg (Art Director), Mike Ellman-Brown (Copywriter & CD ) and Darryl Cowling (Creative Director)
[Netprophet 2011] African ecommerce market has a long way to go
A billion Africans and 50 million bank accounts. In South Africa, credit cards are used by only 16.5% of the population (2008). No African country comes close to 1% of total retail spend spent online – the magic figure which constitutes the tipping point for digital retail growth (in SA, ecommerce has a 0.4% share of the retail market, while in countries such as Egypt and Nigeria, the figure stands at 0.01%). No wonder, then, that the ecommerce market in Africa hasn’t bloomed.
Looking at these numbers, many international ecommerce plays have shifted investment in the African market 5-10 years down the line. But where others fear to tread Oliver Rippel, CEO ecommerce Africa & Middle East at MIH, sees opportunity and first-mover advantage.
For youth market mobile access to information and communication is the answer
Mobility no longer simply refers to motion, it has also come to describe the untethered use of technology on devices like smart phones, both of which seems to have come together in a perfect storm to enable the revolutions currently sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Setting these revolutions in motion, is the youth, who organise and spread their message using social networks primarily accessed through mobile devices. These platforms are not only changing how young consumers engage with politics but also with commerce and one another.
Where to find the #NetProphet 2011 speakers on Twitter
Want to follow the 2011 NetProphet conference speakers? Look no further. The tag for the event taking place May 12 in Cape Town is #netprophet.
Vodacom name will stay for at least another five years
by Herman Manson. Discussions on rebranding Vodacom have been happening since the world’s biggest telecom brand, Vodafone, announced it would take a majority (65%) share in late 2008, in line with its global practice for majority shareholdings to trade under its corporate branding.
Global magazine industry in decline, FIPP report shows
Magazine publishers face increasingly tough times as the category struggles to reverse declines in its share of global ad revenue, brought upon by the double whammy that was the Great Recession and a continuous shift in spend towards digital media.