It has been confirmed that Vodacom is moving its advertising account from Draftfcb. The agency has held the business for close to 20 years. The news broke last night and by this morning had found its way onto Twitter.
Tag archives: vodacom
Smartphones surge by 40,9% at Vodacom
Vodacom issued a trading statement yesterday morning that shows smartphones active on the network surging by 40,9% in South Africa in the last quarter, even as local revenue growth remains flat, writes Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee)..
Smartphones active on the Vodacom network in South Africa surged by 40,9% in the quarter ended 30 June 2012, according to a trading vodacom pontestatement issued by the Group yesterday morning.
Highlights of the Vodacom Group Limited trading statement for the quarter ended 30 June 2012 included:
– Group service revenue growth up 8.7% (5.7%*)
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.
Creating clever commercials for people who hate ads
By Mandy de Waal (@mandyldewaal) I resent advertising. Like a reformed smoker I used to work in the industry and consult to technology and other brands about how to get more people to buy their stuff. I watched loads of television in those days but nowadays the pathetic appeal of DStv programming and the fact that Ira Glass lives on iTunes has changed things. Advertising’s a grudge experience for me, and on the days I do watch Gordon Ramsay, Californication or Dexter, it is great to be surprised by supremo advertising that’s better than the boring norm. For the most part local commercials are wall paper, but it’s a knock-out when someone comes along who just gets what advertising should be about.
Amy Allais of Ola Films is one of those people. She makes advertising that doesn’t make me want to jab a thumb in my eye. More than that – she makes advertising I actually enjoy. That I’ll watch again on YouTube, because it’s funny, smart, a visual feast, tells a story, captures the cultural zeitgeist or all of the above. Yes, I’ll come out and admit it. I’m an Allais fan girl. She had me at Vodacom’s “All The Single Ladies” and by the time “Daddy Cool” came around I was a convert.
Will HTC slay the market-share monster?
Almost every new major smartphone announcement comes with an element of groundbreaking change. Every groundbreaking change is heralded as the next big thing, until the next next-big-thing arrives the following day. Or until the next big thing turns out to the last big novelty.
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”
Nashua Mobile, Nokia, take on BlackBerry Internet
Nashua Mobile has introduced a near-unlimited data package for selected Nokia phones that directly challenges the R59/month BlackBerry internet Service.
BlackBerry and Nokia reborn
At a conference in Amsterdam and a launch in South Africa last week, BlackBerry and Nokia respectively revealed that they would remain a formidable force in Africa.
Arthur Goldstuck calls 2012
Smartphones, tablets, undersea cables, fibre networks and the Cloud will all contribute to a storm of change in 2012.
Data now 14% of Vodacom income as smartphone use surge
Vodacom has 4.1-million smartphones in use in the South African market – each averaging 80MB data per month. That has grown data to 14% of revenue, writes ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK.