The rise of Machine

So there is this online media sales house right, small fry really, just one guy selling space on a website at a time when internet advertising was fairly undeveloped in the South African market. It’s not really even a sales house, more like a sales guy with a bit of ambition.

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.).

King James – the road less travelled

Fourteen years after its launch King James has emerged as South Africa’s most acclaimed independent ad agency. Growing organically, the agency has finally reached a tipping point to boost confidence, influence and revenues, even as it steers the challenges of offering a fully integrated, digitally adept service.

Punk’d out of ATL funk

Alistair King, group creative director of the King James Group, doesn’t bother to hide his enthusiasm for the latest, possibly bravest, move within his agency to further define its offering in a competitive market, where budgets are shifting from above-the-line to integrated campaigns and what was traditionally considered below-the-line work.

Ad award success no longer sole arbiter of agency and industry respect

The 2011 Loerie Awards are done and dusted (no pun intended), with Cape Town agencies grabbing three of the top five (first, third and fifth) spots on the official overall ranking table. Two of the three Grands Prix were awarded to Cape-based agencies.

King James makes good

King James, one of the country’s most respected ad agencies, is full of good news. The Cape-Town-based agency, named after its founders Alistair King and James Barty, has been winning business and accolades and has just moved into the stately building it bought, the historic Roodebloem Manor, in Woodstock, Cape Town.

2010 hit the reset button in Cape adland

In spite of some turbulence, post Great Recession it turns out that 2010 wasn’t such a bad year for Cape Town’s adland after all. While big account moves in Cape Town were rather limited, agencies are taking the initiative to reinvent their internal processes, in some cases shedding staff and departments, while looking for work coming out of Johannesburg or internationally.

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