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Drop the banner ad niched local online media brands told

by Herman Manson (@marklives) The great global online media brands like MSN, Yahoo!, Google and Facebook are well represented in the South African market, either through locally owned sales partners, through JVs with local media companies or through a local subsidiary.

Their big numbers mean they get a lot of attention, as does a series of established home grown online brands, like iafrica.com, ITWeb, and Moneyweb. But what of the young guns, the content start-ups, the independents making do without well resourced sales teams?

Sites like Mahala, the pre-eminent online youth mag in South Africa, 10and5.com, SA’s leading creative portfolio site, or ZA News, which hosts the show Zapiro created show no local TV station would touch?

Shit is trending at Design Indaba

“Do shit that matters,” declared Bielenberg in the second presentation of Design Indaba 2012. His sentiments echoing the closing refrain of last year’s penultimate speaker, Robert Wong from Google, who beseeched: “Do epic shit.”

Andy Davis digs up the underground with Mahala

Andy Davis’s name may forever be associated with the defunct student magazine SL. It really shouldn’t be. The not terribly rebellious and long-dead youth magazine, which he used to edit in the early part of the previous decade, has been properly usurped by the creation of Davis’s own publication – the youth-orientated Mahala magazine and website.

Death and Taxes

I thought there was a ban on cigarette advertising? But apparently, now it’s OK just so long as SARS and the SA government also have something to lose. I refer to the emotive ad above. A massive campaign launched by British American Tobacco (BAT), in December 2010, to highlight the imminent peril of buying illegal cigarettes, which, if you believe the ads, could be worse for your health than smoking.