Ideate

WWF-SA and UCT Graduate School Of Business In Novel Partnership To Boost Sustainability Leadership In Africa

Staff Reporter — Fri, 17 May 2013 08:50:47 +0000

Bringing together the expertise of two undisputed leaders in their fields, a new partnership between the World Wide Fund for Nature – South Africa (WWF-SA) and the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB), has produced a programme to equip and inspire sustainability leaders across Africa to improve their impact.

The groundbreaking executive education short course, the One Planet Leaders in Africa Programme, is aimed at supporting the development of sustainability-leadership competence and will offer delegates the technical, relational and transformational skills to enable processes of social change through sustainability innovations. The work on the programme will also feed into new research at the GSB, thus amplifying its potential positive outcomes.

“By combining the WWF’s network of expertise and the GSB’s own vision of business for better, we hope to provide a catalyst to promote sustainable change not just within Africa, but on a global scale,” says Dr Glenda Raven, Senior Manager of the WWF-SA.

Comprising two modules and a workplace-based assignment, the course will gather leaders from across all sectors, who have diverse perspectives on sustainability, into a collaborative learning space, and support an exploration of contextualised sustainability issues and responses in a systems framework. It will explore their leadership capacity within change processes and allow them to develop collective responses for application in a variety of institutional and social contexts.

According to Ralph Hamann, Research Director at the GSB, the vision is that, over time, the course will unlock the opportunity for ongoing cross-sector engagement around key sustainability issues and responses. He said that the complexity of the issues at stake demand an extraordinary response from institutions like the GSB and WWF-SA and that this programme is one such reaction.

“It’s impossible to separate the issue of environmental sustainability from those of social and economic development. Without proper environmental management, our world’s fragile climate patterns and eco-systems will continue to collapse. The many critical environmental issues, often inter-related to economic concerns, are central to developing appropriate and effective sustainability objectives. This programme will offer delegates the skills to achieve such outcomes,” says Hamann.

The WWF-SA – GSB programme is adapted from the international One Planet Leaders programme offered by WWF International in collaboration with the Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland, and has been contextualised to the African context with its associated development and sustainability challenges.

Dr Raven says that the programme is underpinned by an understanding that sustainability should concern everyone, regardless of context, and that responses developed through the programme should be innovatively crafted through collaboration and engagement across multiple and diverse contexts.

Offered at the Waterfront Campus of UCT GSB in Cape Town, the programme is supported by various fieldtrips and engagements to enable an application of learning in context. Module one runs from 21 to 26 July 2013 and Module two from 18 to 22 November 2013 at a cost of R30,000.00 per delegate that includes tuition, all course materials, on course meals and snacks and associated fieldtrips.

For more information on the programme, contact Ann Wium at ann.wium@gsb.uct.ac.za, or 021 406 1314.

Ideate is one of South Africa's biggest business blogs, with a team of authors all of whom have had entrepreneurial experience. Ideate is read by entrepreneurs thinking BIG. Follow us on Twitter here. View more articles by Staff Reporter.

Openness Will Define The Future Of Mobile Transactions

Bevan Ducasse — Fri, 17 May 2013 06:30:15 +0000

If your smartphone is near you while you’re reading this – and I’ll be surprised if it isn’t – pick it up and take a moment to consider all the things it is to you.

It’s a calendar, little black book of contacts, games console, music centre, camera, miniature TV, communications portal, news delivery system, encyclopaedia, navigation system, memo pad… and of course, you can also make calls on it.

All this – and yet there’s still room to cram more functions in there. The one you can expect to hear a lot more of in the next couple of years is simple – it’s also going to become your wallet.

The idea of a mobile wallet is nothing new, of course, but until now the concept hasn’t taken off in South Africa – or, indeed, in most of the rest of the world outside East Africa, the home of MPESA. The main reason has been that too many people have tried to carve out areas of exclusive access: You can use my wallet, but only if you’re a customer of the bank I’ve partnered with, or only at the retailers in my limited stable.

Consumers have reacted to this the same way they react to everything that makes their lives more complicated instead of simpler: By quickly getting bored and moving on to something else.

In the past few months, however, something has shifted. As the walls have begun to break down, mobile banking has exploded – there are ten million South Africans actively using it. The market is not among the smartphone users, but among those who have extremely limited access to conventional banking services: They’re using USSD technology on the most basic cellphones to check statements and balances and buy airtime.

Increasingly, they’re also using services like MTN Mobile Money – currently growing at somewhere in the region of 5,000 users a day – to transfer money and make payments.

Two trends are going to drive ever-faster evolution of mobile transactions and payments in the near future: Convergence and interoperability. .

By convergence, I mean the way all sorts of different money-related services come together on the mobile phone: Payments, information, vouchers, tickets, loyalty points and more. By interoperability, I mean how nicely all these services play with each other.

Let’s take an example. Currently there are a few companies offering things like sports and music news on mobi sites. What if it was also possible, on your favourite soccer or rugby site, to buy tickets to the next game that then gets sent directly to your phone for scanning at the gate? Throw in a discount voucher for team branded clothing, also on the phone, that can be redeemed at any sports shop, and you have an offer few can resist.

A lot needs to happen behind the scenes to make all this possible, of course: The news site needs to talk to the ticket sales company, both need to talk to the banks and the stadium operators need to agree to accept mobile tickets.

The technology to do all this already exists – it’s getting the people to agree that’s the hard part. But all the indications are that the big players have now realised that trying to own the customer exclusively is self-defeating. The future belongs to those who are willing to tear down the walls.

After competing his Financial Analysis studies at Stellenbosch University, Bevan joined UCS solutions as a junior consultant. He went on to work at a firm in the mobile payment industry, and slowly started to connect the dots between business, retail and mobile systems and seeing how the three could work seamlessly together. When the time came for Bevan to go into business by himself he went to his old friend, Basie Kok whom he met at university, and asked him to build the prototypes that would be the basis of their initial company, WiWallet, which later evolved into WiGroup. View more articles by Bevan Ducasse.

Coaching Circles Can Help Organisations Develop And Retain Top Talent

Staff Reporter — Thu, 16 May 2013 09:00:58 +0000

New research shows that Coaching Circles can impart valuable business and management skills more cost effectively than conventional training programmes.

Research from the Centre for Coaching at the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) is demonstrating that Coaching Circles – a relatively new coaching training technique – may be a cost-effective solution to develop and retain high potential employees.

Internationally, the quest for talent is top of the agenda for most organisations. Thamsanqa Maqubela of the SA Graduates Development Association pointed out earlier this year that in addition to university qualifications, employers are looking for: “People with an ability to communicate the theory and apply it in the work place… In addition, they want people with confidence, humility and individual brilliance.”

Such individuals are rare. Knowing this, many companies spend billions of rand annually on training and developing their people through in-house training and external training development programmes incorporating proven techniques like action learning, mentoring and other coaching techniques. The aim is to motivate, empower and inspire staff to ultimately increase productivity while retaining top talent. Finding the right balance is a full-time occupation for many talent managers in big organisations.

Janine Everson, academic director at the Centre for Coaching, says that coaching already plays an important role in most organisations’ talent management programmes, and that their research shows that novel applications like Coaching Circles are proving effective in accelerating these initiatives.

“Although there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that Coaching Circles are effective, this is one of the first formal studies to test the validity of this relatively new development tool,” says Everson. The study showed that managers who participated in Coaching Circles had more empathy, tolerance of others and self-confidence, resulting in a more harmonious workplace with better business outcomes.

The research, which was carried out by MBA student Nadia Barsch, used a mixed-methods approach of a sample of participants from an Absa in-house integral coaching programme run by the Centre for Coaching.

The Absa banking group initiated their ambitious coaching programme in 2010 for their African operations, using Coaching Circles to develop and motivate managers and high potential employees.

Absa’s talent development expert, Maria Cussell Humphries has said that Coaching Circles have had a profound impact on the organisation. “We realise coaching is a powerful tool for unlocking talent and is a core skill to have internally. So far we have found it extremely beneficial in terms of talent retention and leadership development,” she said.

“By using their professionally trained, certified pool of internal coaches, all of whom have studied for at least seven months through the GSB’s Centre for Coaching, the bank has been able to afford to offer coaching to many more staff than previously ever thought possible and at approximately 9%, a fraction of the cost of doing the same amount of coaching using external coaches.”

In addition, developing in-house coaching expertise has saved ABSA quite a bit of money. If the group had gone with external coaching at about R60,000 per coaching contract, the total cost to Absa would have been around R25m. The cost of providing the training to internal coaches was around R35,000 per delegate or a total of R350,000 – a saving of R24,6m.

Coaching Circles involve small groups of people, who share a project or an activity, and meet regularly to work on problems in a supportive environment. But unlike action learning, which has problem solving as its prime goal, Coaching Circles have a triple focus on solving problems, empowering individual members of the team, and teaching and embedding coaching skills in the organisation during the process.

“Most adults struggle to learn and change under conditions that make them feel vulnerable, defensive, or open to judgment. Coaching Circles, like action learning, create a haven for realtime problem solving and learning, whether personal or professional, by allowing participants to reflect on their behaviour and receive immediate feedback,” said Centre for Coaching Director, Craig O’Flaherty.

Evidence from the GSB study revealed that 90% of participants felt that the Coaching Circles offered the ideal space to make mistakes and be corrected in a safe environment; while 100% thought that it enabled them to develop a sense of camaraderie and teamwork; and 100% felt they developed more self-awareness along with better listening skills and skills to ask the right questions of others.

As the demands on top talent increase, so too does the need for effective talent management interventions. Coaching Circles, which merge two already proven techniques – action learning and integral coaching – allowing organisations to tap into the best of both worlds and develop individuals while building more resilient organisations.

88mph Opens Applications In Nairobi

Staff Reporter — Thu, 16 May 2013 06:30:39 +0000

88mph, an early stage startup fund and 3 month accelerator program has opened applications for Nairobi.

The program assists start-ups by giving them investment of up to a 100k, access to business networks and the know how to quickly grow their businesses. 88mph’s strategy in Africa is to fund strong teams and web-mobile ideas that have the ability to scale across English speaking Africa.

“There’s an immense opportunity to build mobile/web startups in Nairobi right now. African Mobile/web is hands down one of the fastest growing markets in the world and we want to reach out to entrepreneurs who build products and services for hundreds of million mobile/web users that are rapidly popping up on the continent,” says 88mph Program Director Nikolai Barnwell.

Barnwell continues,“Unfortunately, the natural course of a startup is to die before succeeding. But we provide the funding and the infrastructure to boost the odds of survival and we now want to look for the next batch of future successful entrepreneurs.”

That’s why, in addition to funding, the 88mph team in Nairobi has put together talent and resources, to add more value for the startups:

A partnership with Google has enabled the right space and internet resources to build tech companies, as well as access to Google’s experienced web professionals who can mentor the startups.
A host of highly experienced local Kenyans and global mentors have been added to the already top-notch 88mph mentor network.
Furthermore, “Entrepreneurs-in-residence” – experienced entrepreneurs, specialized in sales, programming & web design – are being brought in from across the world to work side by side with the local startups during the 3- month acceleration.
Finally, 88mph arranges a demo day, where the startups will get access to a group of investors and showcase what they’ve achieved so far.

Last year 88mph invested in 6 web-mobile startups in Nairobi. The 3-month program to accelerate the growth of the startups in Nairobi last year has reaped great rewards for the start-ups, with one startup with confirmed follow on funding and another two that are in final discussions. This will allow them to be able to scale their businesses across Africa successfully.

‘I’ve seen a wealth of talent infused in Nairobi within the past couple of years,” says Carey Eaton, co-Founder, One Africa Media and CEO, Cheki Africa Media.”88mph and the ecosystem brewing here are making a very significant contribution to building technology companies in the region to another level, building the next great wave of web and mobile businesses that solve African problems. I’m looking forward to following these startups closely throughout the program.”

The speed at which the mobile internet has reached the markets of Africa, now at 274 million Africans on Edge or 3G, has created a huge demand for local applications and services catering to the young and growing middle classes of Africa. 88mph is here to fund start-ups wishing to grab a portion of this growing market. So far, they have invested over $750,000 into 23 early stage start-ups.

The combination of a large market, young population and opportunities within the mobile/web industry makes this accelerator attractive to any tech entrepreneurs who are looking to solve real challenges in Africa.

“Looking 2-5 years ahead, the US and Europe will be stagnating at best. I think the biggest opportunities for return on investment will be in Africa and other emerging markets. Our accelerator program is a great opportunity for international tech entrepreneurs and returning diaspora to come, take advantage of the insane growth here, and work on solving some really interesting problems,” concludes Barnwell.

Interested in joining the programme?

• Application deadline is midnight July 15th, 2013

• Startups can apply now on 88mph.ac

• 88mph invests up to $100k per startup.

• Equity will depend on the startup company valuations, which could range from $100k to $1mil.

• Altogether 8 – 15 teams will receive an investment and get accepted into the 3-month program.

• The teams will be notiﬁed if they have been accepted to the program by August 1st, 2013.

• Program starts on August 26th at the 88mph Garage in Narobi, Kenya.

• Startups in the program will have access to tech hubs in Cape Town, as well as to 88mph’s partner tech hubs across Africa.

In A Time-Poor World, Deal With Delays, Kill The Queues

Aki Kalliatakis — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:45:24 +0000

The single most-cited source of frustration for customers is delays and long queues. Your company needs to take this seriously because when customers are kept waiting patience turns to frustration very quickly – and they then start looking for other things that have gone wrong.

Waiting customers, in their frustration, may make a scene, exaggerating the delay, (“I’ve been waiting here for hours now!”), or over-simplifying what needs to happen, (“What does it take to just go and fetch the thing from the stores!”). Some may make unrealistic demands, (“If you don’t get it to me in the next 10 minutes, I’ll go somewhere else”), or suggest difficult, expensive or impossible solutions, (“Why don’t you just hire more staff, for goodness sake!”)

At best, the credibility of the business takes a dive, at worst we lose customers by the dozen. There will be times in your business when customers will have to unavoidably wait, but even so, the most important thing is how you react to the delay that makes the difference.

So what can a business do to deal with this so that it doesn’t end up with hordes of unhappy customers? Here are some suggestions:

First identify hold-ups and slowness. This may sound obvious, but it never ceases to amaze me how out-of-touch many managers are with what is happening in their businesses. They are often surprised when customers tell them how bad things really get. Therefore, make sure that you have some way of identifying- and measuring the time it takes to process customer orders, and for “red-flagging” long delays and queues.

Second, ask why the delays exist in the first place, and do whatever you can to eliminate the root causes. In the majority of cases, you will find that customer complaints are justified, because to carry out the necessary work does not take that long in reality.

Delays can be caused by poor systems, overworked, demotivated or apathetic staff, overloaded processes which cannot get products and services out, work not done right the first time, and so on. If a little investigative work is done, you will probably find the root causes of delays very quickly, and first prize is to eliminate the causes as soon as you can.

In one major life insurance company, they recently reduced the time it takes to process a claim from a few days to a few hours, and discovered that most of the time it took to process a claim was not time spent working on the claim, but rather the fact that the claim was waiting on someone’s desk for further processing. (Who says Just-In-Time principles don’t work in a service environment?)

Third, be proactive when it comes to communicating with customers. So much trouble can be avoided by talking to your customers before they even notice that there is a problem and start getting irritated Apologise for the wait, and if you can explain of the reasons for the delay. Most people are naturally curious, and just telling them that you are sorry is not enough.

Fourth, unless you are really skilled at being warm and empathetic with customers, it is probably also not going to help if you tell them to be patient. You have to be genuine and sincere in this request, and make sure that they know that you care. Demanding their patience is just not on. I recently found myself on a plane which was delayed on the runway, and the pilot came onto the system before we even knew there was a delay. After apologising sincerely, he told us exactly why this had happened, and reassured the passengers that everything would be fine. Which brings us to the next point…

Fifth, If possible, tell customers exactly how long the delay will be, and what you and the company are currently doing to sort out the problem. If you are unable to give a fixed time for the end of the problem, then you have to do a great job of explaining what is going to happen next, and reassuring them that they will be taken care of before others are processed.

Sixth, in a business where customers have to wait their turn, and they know who was before and after them, there are two additional things that need to happen: obviously, never compromise yourself by allowing late-comers to obviously jump the queue without an extremely good explanation. But also keep informing those still in the queue how far they are from the top of the list. I have seen this working very effectively even with some telephone systems, where, every once in a while, you hear, “There are now 12 calls before yours will be answered.”

Seventh, while customers are waiting, keep them busy. Some stores install a television monitor visible at every single till point in the store, and customers watch funny videos (and a few ads), while they wait for their turn. I’m willing to bet that customers are far less aggressive about the queues, and that the cost of magazines damaged while being read at the till has also dropped. Music on the telephone is another example, although many people today find this irritating, so try to make sure that someone live is regularly, (every 40 seconds or so), getting back to the waiting caller.

My all time favourite story involves Virgin Mobile, where the person at the contact centre patiently told the customer she would call back in a few minutes because the system was slow that morning. When he insisted on waiting, she casually asked him “By the way, what’s your favourite song?” Caught by surprise, he eventually said, “Uuhm. New York, New York, by Frank Sinatra.” After a pause, she replied, “Oh, I know that one. Please feel free to join in,” and she started singing the song for him! It created an incredibly loyal customer.

Finally, help customers with preliminary work which may save time later, such as, for example, giving them the contract to work through, training them to use their new appliance, or arranging for payment processing. This is also symbolically useful because it shows them that you understand their need for speed. As an alternative, you may offer customers the option of partially filling their orders so that they can get on with something else. If this occurs, then you also need to offer to deliver the balance of their order at your company’s own expense. But also broadcast this fact to your colleagues because it is a very effective way of helping them to understand how expensive delays can be to the company.

Delays and queues may be something, which you and your customers may experience occasionally for a number of reasons, and often beyond your control. But, once you have a system for identifying them when they happen, it is how you react to them that is so critically important. Make sure that people in your organisation are sensitive enough to understand the impact on customers, to do something to lessen the frustration, and to help customers minimise the impact of the problems.

Aki Kalliatakis is the Managing Partner of The Leadership LaunchPad, a company dedicated to helping clients become more customer driven. He can be contacted at (011) 640 3958, or via the website at www.DelightYourCustomers.co.za. View more articles by Aki Kalliatakis.

The Balancing Act Of Localisation

Ian Henderson — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:30:41 +0000

Finding the point where cost and reach intersect.

On entering new territories, companies are confronted with the need for localising their offering, literature or even brands, to maximise their reach. But how far can they go to accommodate marginal languages while still making a decent return on investment (ROI)?

Inverse calculation

The ROI calculation involves an inverse relationship between the size of the investment (roughly the sum of the cost of all languages that the material is translated into) and the resultant reach (in size of each additional language group).

If the cost of each new translation is roughly the same (barring cost of production and distribution of print publications), but some languages provide greater reach than others, it makes sense to translate into dominant languages first. When translating into a range of languages, ROI will become progressively less as languages are more and more marginal.

But at the same time, volumes will increase (generally-speaking, but not in all cases), affecting ROI. Each company will have a cut-off point. Initially, this may simply be influenced by affordability, but over time and with increasing in-country success, the formula will come into play.

Different for different businesses

ROI is further a function of the kind of industry you’re in. For example, an educational publisher has very different variables from a cellphone manufacturer.

If we assume that the fee for translating and typesetting a school book in any language is a fixed amount in the low thousands of rands and the selling price in the low hundreds per copy, the payback calculation is in the tens of copies. Huge volumes are not needed to justify either Afrikaans books or Tshivenda books as additional languages. The business is still printing and distributing the same number of books, whereas now they are available in more languages, not just English.

However, when translating a teacher’s guide, the cost can increase ten-fold or even considerably more, and with soaring costs greater volumes are needed.

With a consumer products company it is quite different. Whereas translation and typesetting costs can be roughly the same for product booklets as for educational material, extra languages may incur extra printing and distribution costs into new geographical terrain, making inclusive marketing less of a no-brainer.

More and more technology companies are avoiding print, as the cost of printing and distribution is huge compared to electronic delivery. However, this luxury is not an option for most schools in South Africa.

Different for different markets

Little is needed by way of localisation for a South African company moving into Namibia – where English is the official language despite being spoken as a first language by only 1% of Namibians. But in linguistically fragmented countries like Nigeria and Uganda (and South Africa), a more difficult situation presents itself.

When mobile operator Orange entered Uganda, the choice of local language fell on Luganda, the dominant language, despite being spoken by “only” 10 million people (a third of the population). As a first-choice alternative language the numbers justified the decision.

Which dialect?

Even the same language might present difficulties. While it may not be viable to translate into different variants of Afrikaans, French as it is spoken in Canada is a more enticing option.

But Metropolitan French is understood by French Canadians, so French multinationals need not translate for local consumption, whereas French Canadian companies setting up in France will have to translate their wares. The same choice comes into the reckoning with Portuguese as it is spoken in Portugal, Angola and Brazil, and Zulu as it is spoken on the coast and in Jozi.

Enviable problem

The problem of ROI is further complicated beyond translating static literature – if you’re going to translate product packaging or manuals or websites into a new language, you also need to avail yourself of the resources to provide customer service in that language.

Another issue is the proliferation of commercially translated languages in modern times, making the choice that much more of an enviable problem. At the height of Nokia’s dominance, its wares were marketed in 52 languages. Today, leading mobile vendors translate into 200 languages. How many languages are justified by your volumes?

What not to do

With such a wide choice, it would seem that market segmentation is the only way to predict viability of a service in a new language, but this is only affordable for companies with the clout of an MTN or Apple. It may not even yield reliable results – Steve Jobs has called market segmentation a wasteful exercise, reportedly saying “it is not the consumers’ job to know what they want”.

The only way to find out for sure is to test the waters first. The right language service provider can offer advice on which aspects of a content-rich product to translate to keep costs down, allowing projects to either fly with minimal input costs, or fail.

Ian Henderson, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer, is the founder of Rubric and oversees the process of creating a better localization experience for Rubric’s clients. Ian combines a deep knowledge of globalization issues with an equally deep understanding of technology and distributed team management. Ian’s opinion is often reported throughout the localization industry and has appeared in Multilingual Computing & Technology and Software Business. Prior to joining Rubric, Ian worked in a variety of management and engineering positions at Siemens (Germany), Expert Software and Phoenix Software (New Zealand) and Berlitz (England). Follow Rubric on Twitter: @rubricinc View more articles by Ian Henderson.

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Google, Ogilvy And Machine Join IMC Conference Keynote Speaker Line-Up

Staff Reporter — Tue, 14 May 2013 06:30:58 +0000

This year’s Cape Town edition of the Integrated Marketing Communication Conference has announced the latest additions to its already-strong keynote speaker line-up.

Taking place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on the 10^th and 11^th of June, this marketing conference will give delegates the tools and insights to execute effective, integrated marketing strategies that build brands and drive consumer conversations.

The quality and experience of speakers at this year’s IMC conference has seen a massive increase in interest from the who’s who in the industry. Joining the final list of keynote speakers include:

Jonathan Ratcliffe (Agency Lead at Google South Africa):

Before joining Google, Jonathan spent 5 years at Ogilvy South Africa and 2 years at Quirk emarketing. While at Ogilvy, Jon was elected to the committee of the Advertising and Media Association of South Africa (AMASA) and spent three years on the committee before being elected as the AMASA Vice Chairman in Cape Town. While in London Jon was elected as a special advisor to the British Interactive Media Association and lectured at numerous universities including the London Business School and the London School of Economics.

Abey Mokgwatsane (CEO of Ogilvy South Africa):

Having started his career at VWV, Abey later joined the South African Breweries marketing team in 2001. After spearheading the launch of Miller Genuine Draft into the South African market in 2003, he later received three Managing Directors Awards for marketing excellence at SAB. In 2007, he was appointed Group Chief Executive at VWV. Under his leadership, VWV produced the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2010 FIIFA World Cup, was awarded a 2010 Loerie Grand Prix, named Financial Mail’s Specialist Agency of the year and received a Special achievement Award from Finweek’s Adreview Ceremony.

Andy Gilder (Head of Group Digital Strategy at MACHINE):

At MACHINE, Gilder works on brands like Redbull, Adidas, Miller, L’Oreal and Marmite amongst others. Having previously run SA finance site, Just Money, he developed search marketing and usability solutions for some blue chip financial brands. He also led social media campaigns for Sanlam and Visa, integrated social, real world and digital for Axe Deodorant, and recently completed product development on a payment solution for some of the country’s biggest e-commerce sites.

For more information on this marketing conference as well as previously announced keynote speakers, visit our website, or follow us on Twitter at IMCConference for regular updates.

Managing Online Social Mentions Around Your Event

Ruth Steyn — Mon, 13 May 2013 11:00:30 +0000

Social media and review sites are playing an increasingly important role in event exposure and coverage.

The recent Taste of Cape Town event is an example of how event attendees take to social platforms to tweet reviews, share Instagram photos and offer their opinion on value for money and overall experience. For instance, Nash of Bangers and Nash was quite vocal about his views:

Another attendee posted the following positive feedback and recommendation:

However, when it comes to organising an event, it can be difficult to keep track of everything that is being said, particularly when it comes to media we have no control over. So how can you encourage positive PR exposure for events through online social mentions and reviews, and how can you minimise negative coverage?

Here are five tips on how to get the most out of events from a PR perspective.

1. Create a solid PR plan

There is great truth in the project management mantra, “Failing to plan is planning to fail”. As clichéd as it seems, lack of planning can be disastrous when it comes to events – and this planning should not only include ensuring that the caterers are booked and the guest speaker shows up on time. Having a solid PR plan in place for the event means that you will generate as much publicity and earned coverage for the event as possible. Ensure that you include social media and blogger outreach strategies in your plan (see point 3).

2. Put together a PR team

Any big event will have a team in place that is responsible for ensuring that everything runs smoothly during the preparation and aftermath, as well as the event itself. Ensure that you include an individual or team who will be responsible for generating and monitoring coverage. They will respond to mentions and ensure that any negative coverage is attended to. This will help
to avoid potential crises and allow you to make sure that the event catches the attention of all the right people.

3. Build an online presence for the event

Creating an online presence specific to the event is an easy way to group mentions together in order to monitor them. Create and publicise a Twitter hashtag and use it to generate interest and excitement around the event by tweeting information, news and competitions. Use Facebook to post images in the run-up to the event – photographs of exhibitors’ ranges, performers, the venue during set-up and so on. Use Facebook and Twitter to share any coverage of the event and increase its reach – this form of content syndication makes it easy for your audiences to spread the word even further by sharing links with their friends and followers. Approach well-known bloggers who write about the industry and offer them value in some way – for example, Taste of Cape Town provided several influential food and lifestyle bloggers with free tickets to give away to their readers. Getting industry influencers involved is a good means of generating hype about the event.

4. Balance expenses with free platforms

Events can be expensive: the more impressive you want them to be, the more they end up costing. This is just one of the reasons why you should take advantage of free online platforms for exposure. They offer an easy and cost-effective means of communicating with audiences about the event and managing any issues that may arise. Public relations is all about building and maintaining positive relationships with audiences, and platforms such as Facebook and Twitter make this easy at no additional cost.

5. Use monitoring tools

There are multiple ways of keeping tabs on what is being said about your business or event online. Free tools such as Facebook and Google Analytics are very helpful, as is Google Alerts, which allows you to enter search terms and track what is being said online. There are also paid-for tools that allow you to track mentions more accurately and in more detail, if your budget allows. BrandsEye and Hootsuite are two popular platforms, but there are many different tools available, and it is worth doing some research to ensure you choose one that is best suited to your needs. Don’t forget about the customer review site Hellopeter.com, which allows you to monitor and respond to complaints and compliments online.

After the event itself, maximise earned coverage and reach by sharing photographs, statistics and reviews with online audiences. This is a great way to ensure that the event itself has a lasting presence, and that you get the most out of it. Publicly thank everyone involved, and create a space for attendees to share their comments and photographs. By taking the trouble to do this, you will help to keep the memory of the event alive.

Ensure you’re equipped with the latest PR skills and knowledge with the University of Cape Town Public Relations short course, which starts on 10 June 2013. The course is presented part-time and entirely online by the University of Cape Town, in partnership with online education company, GetSmarter. For more information, contact Jade on 021 447 7565 or on jade.methven@getsmarter.co.za. Alternatively visit www.getsmarter.co.za to choose from over 30 online short courses designed to help you advance your career.

Ruth Steyn is an Academic Officer at GetSmarter, an online education company. She is the primary content developer for the part-time University of Cape Town Public Relations short course, and assists with the writing of numerous other short courses. View more articles by Ruth Steyn.

Getting Into The Swing Of POPI

Pieter Streicher — Mon, 13 May 2013 08:45:04 +0000

Keeping track of the latest version of impending legislation as it makes its way through the South African parliamentary system can be a nigh on impossible task. So prepping your business for upcoming law – such as the Protection of Personal Information (POPI) Bill – can be a challenging and stop-start affair.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve received further clarity on POPI and its key definitions, allowing businesses to confidently start laying the foundation for regulatory compliance in continuing to market to their customers and prospects via electronic communication channels.

POPI refers to how companies collect and store consumers’ personal information, and then, crucially, how companies can use this information to market to consumers. The good news is that it is a relatively simple matter to ensure your existing customer database is compliant and that any future details you collect are legal.

Key to understanding POPI is section 69 of the bill which deals with unsolicited commercial communications and direct marketing – which we’ll unpack in a bit more detail here.

Which communication channels are affected

In line with international best practice, POPI applies to electronic communications that involve a level of automation, storage and forwarding. This means that SMS and email are included in POPI’s definition of electronic communications, but regular person-to-person (P2P) telephone calls are not. This is pertinent, because it recognizes that the automation of communication is one of the main reasons why spam has become such an issue and needs to be managed via legislation. The point to take home here is that direct marketing via a P2P telephone call is handled on an opt-out basis, while all other electronic communications must be opted into by a consumer.

Customers and prospects opt-in are handled differently

The bill makes a distinction between how existing customers’ and prospects’ personal data is handled in respect to opt-in to receive direct marketing communications. A business’s existing customers need only to have given inferred consent to be sent direct marketing via electronic channels, while prospective customers (that is non-customers) need to have given express consent before receiving the same communications.

Getting inferred consent from customers

Inferred consent means that you have informed your customer how you will be using their personal details when you collected them. In addition, you need to give them the opportunity to opt out of marketing communication at this point.

Customers should also be given the opportunity to opt out of marketing communications on each subsequent communication you send to them. The opt out instructions need to be clear and the process must be free of charge and not bogged down in unnecessary formality.

If you have not done this yet, you can relatively easily get your customer database compliant with POPI. The key is to get consent at the point when you collect the customer data, which is not necessarily at the point of sale. By running a campaign to update your customers’ details you should, at the same time, inform your customers that you will be marketing to them and give them the opportunity to opt out. This process will make your database POPI compliant.

Getting express consent from non-customers

POPI is the first regulation in South Africa to define express consent for non-customers in order to market to them directly via electronic channels. This means that the consumer must agree to their personal information being processed and used for direct marketing. In terms of POPI, consent needs to be specific, voluntary and informed. In other words, at the point when a non-customer is engaged, the following should be asked: “Would you like to receive regular marketing communications from company A? Answer: YES or NO”.

However, ensuring existing non-customer databases are retrospectively made compliant needs to be handled with kid gloves. If you can prove the database has been acquired legally you are free to contact the consumers and ask for their permission to market them – but you can only do this once.

While there are additional technicalities around the wording of opt out messages and related charges, the above guidelines will ensure your databases are POPI compliant.

It is expected that POPI will be passed into law within the next six months, at which time it will be specified how long companies will have to comply with the handling of personal information when using electronic communications to market to existing and prospective customers.

Dr. Pieter Streicher is MD of BulkSMS.com, a leading SMS messaging service provider offering two-way messaging via a versatile portfolio of web, application and API products. Thousands of users locally and across the globe have adopted the service, which now connects to over 800 GSM networks in 180 countries. View more articles by Pieter Streicher.

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The Founder Institute Comes To Johannesburg

Staff Reporter — Mon, 13 May 2013 06:30:49 +0000

The Founder Institute (FI) is in the exploratory phase of opening it first Johannesburg chapter.

The FI is the largest technology incubator globally, operating in over 40 cities and having successfully incubated more than 750
technology startups. The approach of the FI is unique in a number of ways: Firstly, the course is a part time, with lectures running one evening a week over a fifteen week period. Secondly, the lectures are given by CEO’s of successful technology start up’s only, so Founders get a real world view of the challenges they face and how to overcome them.

The programme follows a curriculum that is designed to give the participants the skills they need to launch their business and apply for
funding if they need it.

Keith and Odette Jones are the local Directors and will be facilitating the course in Johannesburg. “We are very excited to bring the programme to South Africa for a numbers of reasons” says Keith. “The programme is designed on a best practice approach as determined by the team in Silicon Valley – so not only are the Founders leveraging off the learnings of the team in Silicon Valley, but they also become part of the largest start up community globally with direct access to a seasoned team in the USA and locally. The global best practice approach and community, combined with input and guidance from seasoned local entrepreneurs makes it a compelling incubation programme for anyone thinking of starting a business”

There are a number of information and recruitment session running over May and June, the next information session is in Rivonia at 6.30 pm on the 14 th of May. Join them if you are in the process of starting a new business (or thinking about it) by registering online for the events or email keith.jones@founderinstitute.net.