a #TheFutureByDesign feature by Justin Bush. Society’s inclination to wait for a service or product is diminishing year by year. Any brand that can reduce the time gap to market (or make the wait more productive or entertaining) will be rewarded with customer loyalty.
Tag archives: brand
Kate Wilson of Women’s Health: “I’m not building a magazine brand”
by Herman Manson (@marklives) While her rivals are seeing circulation declines Kate Wilson, editor of Women’s Health SA, just saw the title’s total paid circulation rise 8.4% year-on-year to reach 78 791. Women’s Health has now overtaken both Cosmopolitan and Glamour’s total paid circulation figures.
But Wilson isn’t building a magazine brand, she says, instead she is building a multi-platform content brand. In fact the Women’s Health SA launched a website in the country before the physical magazine arrived and has built various digital content modules into the Women’s Health brand strategy. Extensions like DVD and booklet cover mounts often draw from other aspects of the business (so a booklet might contain extracts from a book you get to order from the publisher). Next year will see events drawn into the mix.
Of course the brand could also draw on the visibility of sibling Men’s Health which Wilson says helps double the facings of for her magazine.
But ultimately it is the service journalism in the health and wellness field particularly that has near universal appeal. Wilson says she won’t apologise for the ‘layer of superficiality’ in women (or anybody else) wanting to look their best. For Wilson looking your best translates into feeling your best and health, nutrition and weight-loss are all issues we have some control over in a time of great economic uncertainty.
Women’s Health also encourages its resident experts and columnists to maintain media visibility and this network keeps reinforcing the Women’s Health brand where-ever they go.
Brand Journeys: MWeb – not quite ‘just like that’
For many people MWEB is still the big black box, which it launched in 1997, the same year the business was established by MIH Limited (a Naspers company). The big black box, in case you don’t get it, was a box, and black, and offered wary South Africans everything they needed to connect to the Internet via dial-up modem, with the payoff line “Just like that” (I still hear the finger snap in the background).
The commercial Internet was new, exciting, and big business was getting in on the act. The first dot com bubble had yet to burst and MWEB was spending large swathes of money buying up rival ISPs before its 1998 listing on the JSE.
Today it is a friendly consumer brand wholly owned by Naspers. Its pay-off line has changed to Connect & You Can to reflect the growing acceptance and integration of the Internet into daily lives. It serves a user base of over 300 000 subscribers (which is not that much higher than figures available for 2005 – although it has had success in converting many of those to ADSL) of whom more than 200 000 sits on ADSL. They consume 4.5 petabytes (4,500,000,000,000,000 bytes) of bandwidth per month.
Quick case: Allan Gray – growing its market share from 3.9% to 16% in eight years
Allan Gray, a successful but niched Cape based asset management firm, decided to extend the business into the retail sector with the launch a unit trust company, in a market dominated by a handful of big brand asset managers (such as Old Mutual and Sanlam) and specialist investment organisations (like Coronation, Investec etc.).
The perils of the online discounting culture for your brands and business
I’m fascinated by the growth and proliferation of the on-line couponeers and discounters like Groupon, Catch of the Day and the like. “Everyone loves a deal” this we know, but what does it mean to brands, margin, customer trust and sustaining pricing models? Asks M&C Saatchi Abel boss Mike Abel.
Media junkets from hell
Take whatever disparate journalists you can lure, stuff them into a plane. Fly them down to East London. Take them on tour. Feed them. Encourage them to drink. Throw free goodies at them. And hope like hell they give you good coverage for the new logo you’re unveiling. Story by Mandy de Waal.
Musica launches “So You Wanna Be A Rock Star” lifestyle range
As music retailers face increasing pressure to find alternative revenue streams beyond the sales of CDs and DVDs, the opportunities have to lie in lifestyle products believes local retailer Musica. Its new “So You Wanna Be A Rock Star” range was conceptualised, illustrated and designed by The Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town.
Sheshwe shoes for Bokkie
Over the next couple of days MarkLives will be featuring the work of Alistair Palmer. His work revolves around design and art. Bokkie makes footwear, the first range predominantly uses sheshwe prints and fun casual footwear styles. I wanted to convey the feeling, attitude and the positive attitude of the people who inspire the brand.
Packaging made from nature
To get consumers to view Consol as a brand that does good things for the environment and for people too agency MGM Brand Construction & Advertising came up with this campaign that creates a visual comparison between glass packaging and nature’s packaging (such as banana peels and carrot skins).
Plax gets a laugh
This ad for Plax mouth wash by agency Y&R uses imagery of a shooting squad to create immediate impact, and at closer view the consumer discovers the guy in line who has been gagged because of his bad breath rather than being blindfolded.