The Innovation, Media, Mobile and Outdoor Lions category winners have been announced at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. See also SA Cannes Lions winners Day 1.
Tag archives: Media
Media laughs on April Fools
by Herman Manson (@marklives) April 1, a day in which the mainstream media plays tricks on readers by publishing/broadcasting stories that ranges from the plausible but untrue to the improbable, and disguises fiction as news, is always an interesting alternative measure of media zeitgeist. Of course, post WMD and the Iraq war and Rupert Murdoch’s incarnation of The Galactic Empire, the more cynical amongst us could be excused for feeling many news days offer little more than Ground Hog Day meeting April Fools.
So what are on the media’s radar this year? Oscar Pistorius and North Korea, increasingly desperate measures by the treasury to dig into your pocket as the political class empty out the cookie jar and technology and its impact on language/habits/life all made an appearance. Julius Malema, deposed from his soapbox and stripped of his assets, was less fun to make fun off, although Times Live gave it a shot.
Here are some April Fools highlights from around the web.
Magazine covers we love (this week!)
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
Louise Marsland & MarkLives launches TREND.
MarkLives and well respected marketing and media commentator and editor Louise Marsland have teamed up to launch an exciting new market intelligence resource to the advertising, media and marketing communications industry in Southern Africa.
TREND. brings together the research savvy of Marsland with MarkLives’ cool and sexy take on the modern advertising world. TREND. launched this morning at trendlives.info and will focus on trend forecasting, in-depth reports, insight and analysis relevant to the broader marketing industry.
The site will serve as a central curated resource for local and international marketing and media research as well as create its own unique in-depth reports that sources and charts influential modern trends marketers and their agencies need to note.
As with MarkLives, TREND. will will offer its content free of charge, and will be supported by site and report sponsors. Ornico, Quirk, Machine Agency, 60layersofcake Cape Town and John Brown Media are the founding landing page sponsors for the site.
The first in-depth Dissect report to be published on TREND. focuses on socialising the enterprise. Compiled by Marsland and sponsored by Quirk, the report, which runs to over 11 000 words, sets forth the effects of a socialised consumer base on the modern enterprise. Content is broken in readily digestible pieces for the busy executive.
Social media is not about a suite of social networks and tools writes Marsland. “It is now about the social enterprise, the brand that integrates social across all platforms of engagement. It is about living social.”
Crowdsourced recruitment hits adland as Hiring Bounty teams up with MarkLives
Agencies and marketing departments now have access to innovative crowd sourcing recruitment platform Hiring Bounty through its partnership agreement with MarkLives.com Careers.
Hiring Bounty taps into networks of friends to bypass recruitment agents and crowd-source candidates for positions in the marketing and technology industries. The sites gives a cut of the recruitment ‘bounty’ set by employers to those recommending successful candidates as well as the candidates themselves.
It incentivises friends who already know the skill sets of one another as well as important considerations such as culture fit and personality to recommend friends for jobs. It also incentivises candidates to throw their hat into the ring, since there is a cash pay-out for both themselves and their friends, should theirs be the successful application.
The service has already successfully landed hard to find candidates for companies such as Woolworths, Urbian and World Wide Creative.
MarkLives was the first to report the news of the recruitment start-up in June, and is pleased to be associated with a category disruptor. Here Greg Schneider, MD of Hiring Bounty, describes the business model and some of the success it’s achieved since its launch.
Design Times eyes a digital future
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Mark Rosenberg was flipping through Wallpaper magazine when he saw a feature on newspaper design. It was sometime in 2004 and he had just getting started in the ad biz, with a background in the arts. Rosenberg went home and designed his first newspaper. It was called Design Times. He was 20.
Rosenberg knew that students with a design interest could hardly afford the international design glossies imported into the country. He also struggled to find design orientated publications that spoke to him as a consumer. With this in mind the first print run of Design Times would sell at R2 a copy. He printed 500 four pagers and was selling ads at R500 a pop. It just covered his production costs. He sold his first ad to a reseller of Adobe and Apple products.
Overheads were low – he was staying with his folks and putting the newspaper out from his bedroom – with only a limited amount of exposure to the publishing business (the agency he was working for had a travel client and was producing their in-house magazine).
Initially Design Times, which covered graphic design and photography initially, was less about content and more about layout and design admits Rosenberg but this has gradually been changing. It has also expanded its editorial coverage to touch on multiple facets of design including fashion, interior architecture and product design.
Video interview site Adlip relaunched, signs FNB as co-developer
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Adlip, the advertising industry site known for its video interviews with creatives and industry executives, has received a major upgrade after owners John and Sonja Culverwell inked a sponsorship and co-developer deal with banking group FNB.
The revamped site is positioned as a gateway for consumer engagement on advertising created and flighted locally, as well as a go-to resource for those interested in insights from senior marketers, brand owners and creatives involved in advertising communication.
Adlip launched three years ago after a conversation between John and Sonja on the lack of video interviews, and the word from the proverbial horse’s mouth, on John’s favourite sports websites. The conversation soon turned to the ad industry, in which both are employed, and three glasses of wine later a business was born.
BizTechAfrica – IT in Africa finds a (anonymous) voice
Here is a site that launched below the radar of both the South African start-up scene and many media watchers.
In SA Samsung tablet sales figures are closing in on iPad numbers
by Arthur Goldstuck The days of the iPad’s dominance of the tablet market are numbered. Until recently, more than two thirds of tablets sold across the world have been made by Apple. That has afforded the manufacturer the luxury of dictating the direction of the market, from size to functionality to case studies of ideal …
Continue reading “In SA Samsung tablet sales figures are closing in on iPad numbers”
Magazine mindset undermines tablet opportunity
The rush by media owners to embrace tablets borders on the unseemly. And who can blame them given the continued decline of print revenue and resistance by folk to pay for content on the internet. Tablets, we are told, are much closer to print magazines than to the free-for-all interwebs.