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. By media bloggerMediaSlutZA.

INTERNATIONAL
Vanity Fair, March 2012

If you’re at all in the magazine industry, and have ever been involved with any shoot, you will definitely appreciate the hard work that went into this cover, and all previous similar ‘Hollywood’ covers that Vanity Fair does every year. It all paid off – the young Hollywood actresses look fantastic!

New York, 6 February 2012

The cover story is about “The Celebrity Economy” and features an image of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on a dollar bill. They certainly know how to use their stardom and ‘exclusive pictures’ to work for them.

Desktop, February 2012

Take one Photostat of a bum. Add a clever coverline “PUBLISH YOURSELF” and make it pretty with some basic CMYK-colours. This is a very basic, but very efective cover.

LOCAL
Rolling Stone, February 2012

Very smart move by the Rolling Stone guys! It’s makes for a very strong concept, and I’m sure a talking point around every dinner table, from people of all backgrounds and cultures. The cover has already gone mini-viral and is being shared via Facebook like crazy. Might be one of my favourite South African covers…

- The (for now anonymous) blogger behind MediaSlutZA knows way too much for his own good about media in South Africa. Magazines in particular. His mission is to show when South African magazines might fail, but most importantly, succeed. If you’re looking for a library about South African magazines and news, your one-stop pitstop is MediaSlutZA. #MagazinesForTheWin

- Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us @marklives and @mediaslutza

By: Herman Manson Tomas Roope has been doing multimedia since 1991. That was before most of the rest of us even realised it existed. So listen closely.

Once it might have described CD-ROMs (he did that, too) but today multimedia features in numerous consumer touchpoints, both online and off, and Roope has had a front-row view as a technical and creative director at The Rumpus Room. This UK-based company describes itself as a “hybrid communication [firm]; fusing participation, real world, interactive and social platforms”.

Roope, who has won several awards, including four D&AD Silvers and a Gold Lion at Cannes, and has presented a large number of international conferences, is visiting South Africa as a guest and participant of the Toffie Pop Culture Festival scheduled to take place in Cape Town, 30 March through 1 April 2012. The festival is a three-day conference and festival focusing on contemporary pop culture, design, music, magazine publishing, art, and everything else that relates to everyday pop culture. It takes place in the Cape Town City Hall.

Roope was also part of the collective antirom (it published a CD-ROM with arts funding in 1995), a protest against ‘multi-mediocrity,’ which was awarded at Digital Archaeology 2010 (Europe), part of Europe Internet Week. Antirom developed into a commercial venture and continued until the spring of 1999, when Rooke and two of his antirom colleagues began Tomato Interactive.

Herman Manson: What are the key elements of successful hybrid communication?
Tomas Roope: I suppose it is respecting and understanding the broad range of communication tools. Each tool operates in a different context and thus has a different relationship with the audience. The traditional vs digital argument is not really very helpful; is a spanner better than a hammer?

The key is to engage in different ways on different platforms. I expect to have to watch ads on TV (I understand its transitional nature – I watch four minutes of ads to see 20 minutes of what I want to see), but when it comes to digital platform, the same content just annoys me – what am I getting from it?

Digital platforms are mine; engagement is by invitation only. Effective communication on these platforms has to feel like I am getting more than I am giving, a very tricky challenge.

Manson: I saw a piece where you predicted that film-participation digital activations will become a popular trend this year. That’s basically consumer-generated content, facilitated by brands, to be used for advertising and branding?
Roope: Brands want to see their investment working harder across communication platforms, especially in social spaces, while at the same time people are increasingly wanting to be included; they want to make things that show, and get other people to see how talented, creative, funny, cool, for/against something they are.

We founded The Rumpus Room to harness power of people building experiences together and align this activity to with brand communication.

Here is a nice quote that kind of summarises what we are talking about: “Creating something personal, even of moderate quality, has a different kind of appeal to consuming something made by others, even of a high quality” – Clay Shirky.

Manson: You played a part in putting together the crowd-sourced video for Lily Allen’s hit The Fear. Can you tell us what was involved in a production of that scale – it wasn’t just here clips of people taping themselves on their cellphones and sending it in.
Roope: The project was a combination of a touring shoot, with traditional off-line editing (for the low-resolution grids) that dove tailed into the more complex grids created by our bespoke software.

We used our database extensively for both the offline and grid executions, as all performances were organised and rested so they could be easily accessed, and mechanically composed.

Manson: It’s also interesting that, with putting together the video for Allen, you sought to integrate physical and digital environments – getting people out and away from their computers to participate in this. What was the thinking there and was it easier than you expected?
Roope: We came on board when the performance-sourcing tour was already established, in its basic form. It was a classic product-experience approach where three teams were scheduled to tour for six weeks in shopping malls, clubs etc and film people using the game lips (an Xbox-based karaoke game).

We worked with them to establish what they should do (background colours, lighting etc.), and built a database that the touring teams could record the subjective (how good where they?) and empirical data (back ground colour, gender etc) for each performance.

This was exciting for us, as we had done some similar projects but using web submissions. The problem with this approach is that the only really low barrier to submit content is through a server-based streaming-capture system, which is reliant on really good connection speeds to get anything like good/stable content.

It was really nice to see the results from our software when we were able to use the HD content from the tour, rather than the flaky content we had been capturing from web cams on our previous projects.

It was a bit of a scary project because we didn’t really get a sense of how it would look until we had finished the touring and Lily shoot, so there was no going back if we had messed up, but luckily it all worked out how we thought. In the end it was a reasonably simple – as we had already developed some of the hard-core compositional software – but extremely time-consuming process (rendering).

It is probably the project we have done that has received the most attention, as it really seems to tap into an approach that really embodies an authentic social experience, while resulting in a pretty classic piece of slick adverting that is really a classic piece of testimonial adverting.

We have been working hard at mobile as a way of people capturing film locally and then submitting the film they have captured. This will really improve the quality of the source content, as well as getting the content out of people’s bedrooms.

Manson: How are brands using mobile apps in their marketing efforts?
Roope: Mobile is the new frontier, but for me it is a really tricky environment. If you have a good idea for an application, why would you do it for a brand? Why not just make it and sell it?

The barrier to create something you can sell is really low for creative developers, and all brands will do is compromise the experience to up their presence in the experience.

It feels like the music or games industry, where advertising has really struggled for the same reasons. Advertising is never really wanted; it just creates want, and struggles when it is up against an industry that is purely focused on satisfying people’s desires.

There are, of course, exceptions, but for me they really prove the rule.

Ideas that are going to work need to extend beyond the duration of the usual advertising campaign, provide utility (remember that fun is utility), and embody the brand communication so that the idea does not need to be compromised to deliver the brand message, and get clients to pay more for it than you could make if you just made it and sold it. These are four pretty big hurdles, but are not insurmountable.

Manson: What should marketers keep in mind when developing an approach to social media?
Roope: The key is to understand that brands are competing with people’s friends. Brands are used to communicating with people in spaces where the audience has no choice but to listen, which is not true in social spaces. Brands need a reality check; they really need to understand how interesting they really are.

This must come from a shift of creatives looking as the audience not as the object but the subject of what they make.

Brands need to be more relevant and entertaining than my friends for me to bother getting involved.

Manson: What will your talk at Toffie be about?
Roope: I suppose I am really interested in new ways of being a creative author, that harnesses people as co-creators, rather than just looking at them as them as “the audience”.

The challenge as an author is to look at chance not as the enemy but as an intrinsic part of the process.

We need to think of how we build responsive platforms, rather than fixed monologues.

All very challenging and threatening but exciting. Brian Eno sums it up really well in this video!

 Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.

by Herman Manson A small Cape Town agency has just taken the Spur account and brought on board the former executive creative director of Draftfcb – Francois de Villiers. Haas Collective is a creative collective run by Mike Orrey, one of the founders of Orrey, Rightford & Drysdale Advertising (ORD Advertising) and Glynn Venter, a former ECD of the Draftfcb through-the-line studio.

Haas Collective launched in March 2011 and consists of a concept store, a design gallery and a high-end coffee house and roastery, as well as the agency, all tucked into two buildings across from one another in Rose Street in the Bo-Kaap.

It quite literally is a collective of small creative spaces and businesses that collaborate when need be. Wallpaper magazine recently voted the space one of the top 20 reasons to be in South Africa.

Different people are involved in different aspects of the collective. For example the gallery is managed by Francois Irvine and Vanessa Berlein, while the agency consists of Venter and Orrey and now De Villiers.

Venter helped start the various businesses as the right partners came along and didn’t initially plan for them to feed off one another to the extent that they do – but, today, the concept store readily ties in with the gallery which ties in again with the agency – all in all, the design collective represents 50-60 up-and-coming designers and illustrators which any of the businesses can call on as required.

While the other parts of the business have attracted considerable media attention, Venter says the agency has kept a low profile while it built up its business. Its clients include the Whisky Live Festival, Aegis Media (which includes trigger/isobar, Full Circle Media, Vizeum, Carat and Clickthinking), Fancourt, Katjes, the Compass Bakery, Act II Popcorn, Hipp organic baby food (Germany), Bebivita Baby Food (Germany), WOSA (wines of south africa) and Boland Cellars.

Haas Collective also collaborates with Draftfcb on Johannesburg on parts of the Old Mutual account. It won the Spur account in mid-January 2012 and will take up the account 1 March.

According to De Villiers, he decided to leave Draftfcb late last year; he had been with the company for 17 years. At that stage, Draftfcb had already lost the Spur account. Spur founder and executive chairman Allen Ambor and he had such a good relationship, says De Villiers, that he decided he would want to continue their working relationship, if possible.

To this end he was accommodated by Draftfcb, and after a pitch for the Spur business with his new partners at Haas, they duly won the account. De Villiers joins Haas on the same day the Spur account becomes active – 1 March (Mike Barnwell will be replacing De Villiers as Draftfcb Cape Town ECD).

The account win has lead Haas to appoint Nick Barr, ex-group account director at The Jupiter Drawing Room, as account director, who will eventually be mentored into an MD role; a new account executive; and a copywriter. For the rest, the agency works on a collaborative model, bringing in a wide range of experts, as and when required.

De Villiers says the collaborative model allows Haas to step around the numerous middlemen big-agency operations layer between the creative decision-makers and the client decision-makers. The specialists the agency use, be they photographers, CRM specialists, or directors and producers, include the best in their areas.

Those collaborators have their own trusted suppliers, and so the model ripples out to the advantage of the agency and its client, with best-of-breed relationships in place all along the production chain.

Venter says the other businesses in the collective keep the agency close to consumers. For Orrey, the advantage of shared space is keeping a lid on costs in a tough economy – something that ultimately benefits clients as well.

And the roastery holds other benefits, too – the agency has picked up work just from Venter getting to chatting with customers downstairs. Which lets the customers upgrade from the coffee shop to the plush lounge style room upstairs from where the Haas agency operates – of course, with some great coffee to go.

 Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.

Microsoft has launched The Microsoft Advertising Story Awards (MSAs), which invites marketers from 30 countries across the world to submit a campaign idea for a brand or nonprofit of their choice using Microsoft Advertising’s storytelling platforms (including MSN, Mobile, Windows Live, Xbox, Messenger, etc.).

Winners in the Middle East and Africa region (entries from Turkey, Israel, South Africa, UAE, Saudi and all GCC countries, Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan are eligable) will receive a trophy and a ticket to enter the global competition, which will award two global winners with a VIP trip as Microsoft Advertising’s guests to the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2012 taking place from 17th to 23rd of June 2012.

To enter you need to submit a hypothetical digital media plan and creative idea for the brand or nonprofit of their choice that addresses a ‘key business challenge’ for that organization’s 2012 or 2013 calendar year. David Sable, Global CEO at Y&R will chair the global judging panel.

Deadline for entries is March 31, 2012. For more information on how to enter the competition click here.

Y&R‘s Land Rover Defender ‘Jumper’ print ad made the front cover of the latest issue of Lürzer’s ARCHIVE – “200 Best Automotive Ads 2000-2010 worldwide”. Lürzer’s ARCHIVE is a leading ad industry collection. The ad was originated and shot in Cape Town, but was scheduled for publication in the UK.

Account Manager: Rebecca Hanson Art Director: Ntobeko Ximba Copywriter: Ntobeko Ximba Creative Director: Graham Lang, Clinton Bridgeford Photographer: Bryan Traylor Retoucher: Lee Aldridge, Stuart Frost

This year the annual Loerie Creative Week, taking place in Cape Town from 15 – 23 September, will incorporate the Loeries Judging Week and Seminars, the Pendoring Awards and the two Loerie awards evenings.

The 34th Annual Loerie Awards ceremonies will be held on Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd September at the Cape Town International Convention Centre while the Pendorings will host their awards on the evening of Friday 21st September.

The Loeries seminar will include international marketers and creative leaders and takes place on Friday 21st September.

Entries for the Loerie awards open March 15th.

Important Loerie dates:

Call for Entries
15 March 2012

Judging Week
17 – 20 September 2012
Loeries Seminar
21 September 2012

The 34th Annual Loerie Awards
22 & 23 September 2012

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. By media blogger MediaSlutZA.

NTERNATIONAL
Interview, February 2012 (Russia 1st, and Germany 2nd)

Readers of my blog will know they I have a grudge against publishers of international titles who just ‘copy and paste’ a cover from another edition onto their own. It shows no creativity. Interview on the other hand did something rather unique. Lana Del Rey (my ultimate new favourite singer) is featured on their Russian editions’ cover. Instead of just re-using it, the Germany editions’ editors just cropped in a bit, made it black and white, and voila!

uMag (Germany), January 2012

Not the most flattering picture, but the “U” logo use is something very creative and smart. CoverJunkie has already featured it, and I think it’s definitely worth another mention. You can view all the uMag covers on CoverJunkie.

LOCAL
SARIE Kos, Februarie / March 2012

“Roomys-stafies anyone? Could someone please start producing these to the mass market, because they just look delicious! Beautiful execusion and colours.

Getaway, February 2012

The guys from Getaway just keep turning out beautiful and inspiring covers! This cover is really striking and I also love the main cover line, “Escape to Malawi in a Mini Cooper”… and then “Say what!?”

Cleo, February 2012

I confess, it’s not the most beautiful or unique cover ever, but I felt it’s worth including in my list for 2 reasons: This is the last issue of Cleo South Africa, and they used the stunning Tamara Dey on their cover. The fact that they decided to use a South African celeb on the cover, which they are not too fond of doing, is a great way to say goodbye to their South African readers.

- The (for now anonymous) blogger behind MediaSlutZA knows way too much for his own good about media in South Africa. Magazines in particular. His mission is to show when South African magazines might fail, but most importantly, succeed. If you’re looking for a library about South African magazines and news, your one-stop pitstop is MediaSlutZA. #MagazinesForTheWin

- Find a cover we should know about? Tweet us @marklives and @mediaslutza

by Arthur Goldstuck BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) Monday announced that it was replacing its co-CEOs with Thorsten Heins, ostensibly paving the way for a new phase in product evolution, but possibly also preparing it for sale.

A civilised “passing of the baton” at BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) may well presage a messy struggle to find the right buyer for the company.

The announcement of the appointment of Thorsten Heins as President and Chief Executive Officer was couched in deeply diplomatic terms, to ensure that it is characterised as planned succession, rather than the former co-CEOs bowing to massive pressure from investors, industry and media.

A formal statement from RIM began: “The Board of Directors of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) today (January 23, 2012) announced that, acting on the recommendation of its Co-Chief Executive Officers to implement the succession plan they previously submitted to the Board, it has unanimously named Thorsten Heins as President and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Heins was also appointed to RIM’s Board. The Board acted after conducting its own due diligence. Both appointments are effective immediately.”

Former Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who have long resisted shareholder pressure for change, each own more than 5% of RIM’s shares, giving them a powerful hand in how the company is run. It also means that they are controlling the positioning of the transition tightly.

Lazaridis has been named Vice Chair of RIM’s Board and Chair of the Board’s new Innovation Committee, while Balsillie remains a member of the Board. Barbara Stymiest, a member of RIM’s Board since 2007, has been named independent Board Chair.

As Vice Chair, said Lazaridis, he will work closely with Heins “to offer strategic counsel, provide a smooth transition and continue to promote the BlackBerry brand worldwide”.

Heins, for his part, said: “Mike created a whole new way of communicating and I look forward to continuing our close collaboration.”

Elaborating on the transition, Lazaridis, deliberately avoided mention of the challenges facing RIM: “There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the Board and told them that we thought that time was now.  With BlackBerry 7 now out, PlayBook 2.0 shipping in February and BlackBerry 10 expected to ship later this year, the company is entering a new phase, and we felt it was time for a new leader to take it through that phase and beyond.  Jim, the Board and I all agreed that leader should be Thorsten Heins.”

Balsillie echoed these words: “I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership, and I have complete confidence in Thorsten, the management team and the company.”

He also took the opportunity to remind the market who calls the shots: “I remain a significant shareholder and a Director and, of course, they will have my full support.”

Meanwhile, Lazaridis intends to gain even greater control: “I am so confident in RIM’s future that I intend to purchase an additional $50 million of the company’s shares, as permitted, in the open market.”

That, of course, would be a clever move if the company is close to being sold. There is little doubt that any buyer would pay a premium over the current $8.5-billion market capitalisation, which is lower than the asset value of the company. Strong speculation emerged last week that RIM had tried to engage Samsung in acquisition talks, but that the latter wasn’t interested.

A more likely buyer would be one of the lesser phone brands that has struggled to get a look into the current global smartphone war, where the chief combatants seem to be Nokia, Samsung and Apple, with BlackBerry and HTC maintaining the high ground in some markets. The outsiders include Sony and LG, whose market shares have slumped in recent years. Even the emerging Chinese brands Huawei and ZTE, who are about to take on the developing world with cheap Android-based smartphones, understand the appeal of BlackBerry at the high end of these markets.

The buyer could also come from outside the phone market. Microsoft is often cited, as is Google – although the latter may not have the appetite for it after the lukewarm market reaction to its Motorola acquisition. Could BlackBerry’s e-mail and Messenger application be incorporated successfully into Windows or Android phones? That development challenge may be too costly for either organisation, even if the purchase price is right.

Then there may be candidates out of left field, who would be interested in the corporate user base BlackBerry has built up, and do not have an operating system legacy to defend. That could apply to any laptop maker, although most are already in the Android fold for their tablets.

The most likely purchaser, ultimately, would be a consortium of investors. Should that come to pass, it should also be expected that existing executive management would not be around for long, following the sale. The focus would be on turnaround, and then all bets would be off for the current BlackBerry roadmap.

However, it is likely that RIM would wish to sell to one of the market leaders in Western markets – if they have the luxury of that choice. Laziridis would prefer the market turn its attention away from that debate, saying he had decided to move to the Vice Chair role in order to return the public’s focus to what is most important, i.e. “the great company we have built, its iconic products, global brand and its talented employees.”

The announcement did not suggest a greater sense of urgency around the need for BlackBerry to respond more quickly to shifts in market demands. Quite the contrary: Heins endorsed current management style: “It is Mike and Jim’s continued unwillingness to sacrifice long-term value for short-term gain which has made RIM the great company that it is today.  I share that philosophy and am very excited about the company’s future.”

Heins joined RIM from Siemens Communications Group in 2007 as Senior Vice President for Hardware Engineering. He became Chief Operating Officer for Product and Sales in August 2011, and has thus been part of RIM’s transition from smartphone market leader to a company battling against declining market share.

However, in his sales role, he is keenly aware of the fact that the company’s demise has been severely exaggerated.

“We have a strong balance sheet with approximately $1.5 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter and negligible debt.  We reported revenue of $5.2 billion in our last quarter, up 24% from the prior quarter, and a 35% year-to-year increase in the BlackBerry subscriber base, which is now over 75 million.”

The near future is already mapped out for Heins, and he expressed no intention to change its current development path:

“Mike and Jim took a bold step 18 months ago when RIM purchased QNX to shepherd the transformation of the BlackBerry platform for the next decade. We are more confident than ever that was the right path.

“Going forward, we will continue to focus both on short-term and long-term growth, strategic planning, a customer- and market-based product approach, and flawless execution. We are in the process of recruiting a new Chief Marketing Officer to work closely with our product and sales teams to deliver the most compelling products and services.”

Nevertheless, it is inevitable that behind the scenes, the debates must be raging. Waiting for the end of 2012 for a new operating system, when the old one is clearly inadequate for the apps revolution, may be too much of a stretch for the market. However, Blackberry’s reputation for innovation and market responsiveness will, to some extent, also be riding on what the PlayBook 2.0 tablet can deliver when it is launched in the coming weeks.

RIM’s founders may have stepped aside, and they may well be hawking the company around, but the BlackBerry brand is not ready to go away.

Thorsten Heins biography (as supplied by RIM)

Thorsten Heins, 54, is a respected business leader with 27 years of broad experience and expertise in wireless networks and consumer electronics devices. Mr. Heins has a global reputation for his organizational and leadership skills and his ability to build successful organizations that deliver on their commitments. Prior to today’s announcement, Mr. Heins was one of RIM’s two Chief Operating Officers and, before that, Senior Vice President for the Handheld Business Unit.  He played key roles in the creation of RIM’s product portfolio. Mr. Heins came to RIM in December 2007 from the industrial conglomerate Siemens AG.  He joined Siemens in 1984 after graduating from the University of Hannover in his native Germany.  At Siemens, Mr. Heins rose through the ranks of R&D customer service, sales and product management positions.  After serving as Chief Executive Officer of various business divisions in the communication business, Mr. Heins moved to Chief Technology Officer and member of the Group Board of the Siemens Communications Group. He came to RIM after being impressed by the level of innovation displayed by founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. Mr. Heins is married with a daughter and a son. Away from RIM, he is usually outdoors bicycling, motorcycling, skiing or hiking.

* Arthur Goldstuck heads up World Wide Worx (www.worldwideworx.com) and is editor-in-chief of Gadget. Follow him on Twitter on @art2gee. Reprinted from Gadget.

by Johann Schwella The new poster released by the Democratic Alliance Student Organisation (DASO)has, to put it mildly, caused a stir. Many commentators have quoted race, sex, and countless other reasons as to why this is a good or a bad advert. I’m going to try and stay away from the obvious ‘traditional’ South African tensions and dissect this from a brand and advertising point of view.

Firstly, let us look at Brand DA. The DA has gone to great lengths to sell itself as an all-inclusive, equal brand that avoids controversy, ignores racial lines and targets supporters of all creed and colour. It’s very much evident in their most recent election campaign slogans “Service Delivery for ALL.” The focus being on ALL. This viewpoint is constantly reinforced by Helen Zille, arguably the party’s most vocal mouthpiece. To avoid drawing negative attention to the party, Zille, and by extension, the DA, has been reluctant to get involved in petty racial debates for the sake of debating.

Furthermore, the DA, as analyzed by local strategic design agency, Coley Porter Bell, in their “Visuals Futures” project from 2009, has been using international design trends of Hope and Optimism to spur their extended stance of equality and inclusivity.

With this in mind, let’s look at the piece of communication that was produced:

The poster features a semi-naked inter-racial couple in a suggestive embrace with the tagline – In OUR future, you wouldn’t look twice.

Obviously a piece of communication that was distinctly made with the mission to shock. Or to “get young people talking” as the DASO admits. This intention to shock implies that the DASO believes that the majority of viewers are not comfortable with the inter-racial image and de facto implying that we are all mostly racists (and they are not), thus proving their point of a split and racist nation and hence why the DA is required – in my view a self fulfilling prophecy as well as one about 15 years too late.

So why is this wrong in an advertising context, and why is it wrong in a Brand DA context?

Media and Advertising agencies have unprecedented power over the masses, and its ability to influence both our values and our viewpoints is an extremely potent and profitable one. Their main product to their clients is to influence the public to make certain choices and have certain opinions, and they get paid to do this every day. As such one of the top creative directors I worked with in my career said “It’s our job to inspire the world through creativity to get people to consider our clients products.”

This advert does not inspire. In fact, it does the opposite – it further polarises. You just have a look at the close to a thousand comments on the image, defeating the purpose of good advertising.

This advert has belied the crux of the brand that the DA has been building for years. Pushing a campaign that is sensationalist and attention-seeking in its thinking and in its execution, reeks of ANCYL tactics. We are a country with problems, we all know that, but instead of focussing on the problems (AIDS, crime, etc), how about we focus on the good and extend that to give a message of hope? – One that Brand DA has been pushing all along.

A simple way to have avoided all the minefields would have been to show an inter-racial couple holding hands, or a inter-racial group of friends drinking beers together, with a tag line reading “A nation working together is better for ALL.” Still not a great ad, but at least not shaking the tree to see what falls.

When attempting to affect change, it’s easier shock than to inspire, but where would we be if everyone took the easy road.

Be Better.

– Johann Schwella is the co-founder of 10and5.com where he has been showcasing and curating South African creativity for over 4 years. Johann has also spent the past six years working in and is currently employed by 140 BBDO. Image Source: 10and5.com

by Herman Manson Martin MacGregor, the former MD at Nota Bene MEC Cape Town, has joined M&C Saatchi Abel as managing partner: connection (we’ll get to that in a moment). MacGregor joins the agency as it turns two years old this February and follows an announcement that M&C Saatchi Abel is increasing its head count to 100 by the end of Q2 2012. Revenues have reached R50 million.

MacGregor (@MartMacG) had started his career at TBWA before landing a job at Ogilvy alongside M&C Saatchi managing partner Mike Abel (@abelmike). MacGregor joined Nota Bene MEC in 2003, heading up the Brandhouse account, and became MD of Nota Bene MEC Cape Town in 2007.

MacGregor says he has been viewing the changing media and marketing landscape with interest and have come to believe that in future media’s impact on consumers will become smaller and smaller.

More interested in looking at business challenges

The days of making big TV ads and thinking it’s going to achieve business success is long gone, but is still the bread and butter of many agencies, says MacGregor, who has become much more interested in looking at business challenges and identifying and supplying real business solutions to organisations.

Here, media is only part of a larger mix, and he believes he has found the synergy in vision at M&C Saatchi Abel, which positions itself as a consultancy supplying business communication solutions, rather than an ad agency in the traditional sense.

MacGregor says his new position will allow him to imprint the importance of all the various consumer touchpoints to brands.

MacGregor says media agencies separated out from agencies (media buying used to be part of the ad agency process until not too many years ago) because agencies were often justifying making the ads that would make them more money, rather than servicing client needs. He believes media agencies have not been evolving fast enough in terms of attracting the breadth of skills required in the modern media environment with its many consumer touchpoints.

Strategy is moving back into agency domain

MacGregor also says that media agencies are good at negotiating volume deals for clients at good prices but that strategy is moving back into the domain of the agency/communications consultancy. Media planning has also been focused on paid-for media, rather than owned (eg retail outlets) or earned (social conversations) media.

MacGregor says measurement has been left to media companies when he firmly believes it has become an indispensable part of any communications company – after all, how else will they prove that their solutions offer a real return to their clients? He will focus on increasing measurement capacity at M&C Saatchi Abel.

Going back into a communications consultancy environment will allow him to work with a diverse range of specialists which MacGregor believes will allow him to write proper touchpoint/connection (note the job title!) strategies grounded in real knowledge and based on a diverse skills base.

Offers a strategic advantage

Mike Abel says having somebody like MacGregor look at retail/in-store touchpoints offers a strategic advantage to his business and its clients. Abel says ad agencies have traditionally focused on a single P in the marketing mix, namely promotion, while it is clearly only one element of a brand strategy.

The consultancy model, says Abel, adopted by M&C Saatchi Abel (he compares its structure to that of a law firm of partners) has helped reorient its thinking away from advertising to offering business solutions.

Abel mentions two of his clients, the recently relaunched Mr D (formerly Mr Delivery) and online retailer Takealot.com, as an example of how his group seeks, business rather than purely ad-driven solutions:

While Mr D had peak delivery hours during lunch and supper times, the rest of the day saw little for its drivers to do. Takealot.com was looking for better and quicker distribution solutions. Abel and his team brought the two together – helping Mr D make better use of its delivery infrastructure outside peak hours and giving Takealot.com a new and competitive distribution strategy.

 Originally published on Bizcommunity.com Marketing & Media | South Africa – click to see more comments.