Journal of Marketing - Feb / Mar 2009

The botoxed Journal remains a key part of our burgeoning media stable.

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The media is filled with commentary on the financial meltdown. The aftershock has driven discussion on new attitudes and behaviour patterns that have rapidly taken root in society.

Forked tongue syndrome, as it has been recently coined by a well-know trend analyst, is a psychological condition that is afflicting millions of consumers across the world.

The MediaShop immediately adopted defensive strategies - optimising ad sizes, off-rate card negotiations, ad wear out analysis, and benchmarking minimum exposure thresholds - all the tricks in defence of ROI. Our plans were embedding direct and online marketing techniques to close the sale, as opposed to building awareness.

And here's the final cherry on top. With this job, there's no need to do any of that dreary market research or strategy development stuff, because every newspaper, every radio station, every TV channel and every other half decent (and not so decent) current affairs medium will all be falling over themselves to give you the complete low-down on what your prospects think about you and your competitors, and which brand they intend to support on the Big Day. Plus, of course, no end of unsolicited advice on what you need to do to change that projected outcome.

So the purpose of this rant is to encourage the industry to think more alike while at the same time we strive with all our minds to think different. Our concepts and strategies have to be different - they are the pulsing lifeblood for our industry. But our methodology should be more aligned, more comparable - it's not a bad thing. In fact it may even do us proud as the road we are travelling seems to be better tarred then it was a decade ago.

Master your business; deliver above expectation; control the flow of information about you or your company; never forget that everything you do is in public. Four simple tenets that apply to marketers as much today as they did in the Napoleonic era.

The principles of marketing in a recession are very different to those that work in more prosperous times. But they are not primarily about discounting.

The song unspooling through the mind of the Royal Enfield rider as he heads down the highway is not ''Born to be wild''. On the contrary, he'll leave such musings, steeped as they are in machismo, to his leather-clad counterparts, while he hums along to ''lazing on a sunny afternoon''.

Everybody knows that Willy Wonka is the most amazing, the most fantastic, the most extraordinary chocolate maker the world has ever seen.

The media industry's apparent laissez faire attitude to the de facto evolution from 10 LSMs to the 14 LSM model released in AMPS 2008, is either a measure of its complete disenchantment with LSMs generally or of an irrational desire to cling onto a 10 segment model that has been increasingly disconnected from the reality of developments in the South African marketplace.

In a cool no-sweat, 20-minute sit-down at Unilever's Umhlanga Rocks HQ, Klintworth addressed a wide range of subjects from brand loyalty to how ad agencies should be changing their thinking.

We believe our clients are cautious rather than scared. They're concerned about the ever-increasing fragile nature of their respective markets, and while a decline is inevitable, they're asking us how they can stem it.

A possible source of consolation for the marketing industry in SA, as we contemplate a rather bleak 2009, is the slew of international articles and papers proffering insights and advice on how to survive recessions.

Does anyone know what time is it ? Till time

Thinking of emerging from the economic crisis in great shape? Remember, ''The bike race is won in the mountains.''

In South Africa, faster, cheaper internet access will start to become a reality in June when a new, high capacity, undersea cable will join South Africa with the world. This will allow more and more South Africans to become aware of website forums on which consumers can vent their frustration.

Marcus Brewster Publicity's Hein Kaiser says politicians in South African need to wake up to the fact that politics has shifted from policies to personality.

Andreas Weiss, CEO of Aegis Media South Africa, the umbrella company of media buying and planning companies Carat, Ileum Connections and Isobar, says that in economically difficult times the pressure for marketers is twofold: to demonstrate effective cost-awareness and at the same time to secure sales and market penetration.

A winning marketing strategy should certainly include an event or two as part of the overall brand communication.

Coca-Cola has used music events to build connections and gain kudos among young people for years.

Serious concerns at African Summit

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Malawi's Big Issue

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Business Journalism training in Africa

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Linking Africa (Head)

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GTV succumbs to global financial crisis

To avoid the small likelihood that this could turn into a history lesson, for the sake of posterity as far as memories go, let's bypass the what, where, who, when, and how of AM frequency. This is, after all, about looking forward.

Jean du Plessis, a director at outdoor media company Brandfuel, whose clients include Lollipop Lounge and The Grand, says he approaches billboards purely from a business point of view. He looks at the creative merits of a sign, as well as whether it complies with municipal by-laws as well as legal and Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) guidelines, before giving it the go-ahead.

Marketers, like many journalists, have always regarded Saturday papers as the least read, generally thinnest editions of the week. Yet it is these editions that carry supplements for car sales and house hunting. Now a new breeze is blowing on Saturdays. A wind vane registering the change is Business Day's Weekender.

Twitter offers users the opportunity to register a free account, and then asks a simple question: ''What are you doing?'' to which the user responds in 140 characters, about the length of a standard SMS. So, driving to work in the morning, my ''tweet'' might sound something like, ''N3 North is hectic, listening to 702 and catching up on podcasts''.

After just two years, Zoopy has become a major player in South Africa's social media space - and, with telecommunications giant Vodacom acquiring a stake in the company last year, that status is set to grow. So, what's in store for Zoopy users?

Client : Stimorol chewing gum agency : Ogilvy Cape Town

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Client : Dunlop Tyres agency : O'Donoghue & Associates

While a certain amount of legal process and even jargon is necessary to protect the rights of the parties (including the marketer!), there are areas where this criticism is arguably valid. One of these areas is perhaps the decisions of the Final Appeal Committee (FAC). It was and is desirable that the decisions of this committee be respected and be of a quality comparable with other decision-making bodies. For this reason, a retired judge is the preferred chair for the FAC, and the current incumbent, Mervyn King, fulfils this requirement. Of course, with a retired judge, one has to up the level of argument, and it is seldom that a matter is argued by anything less than senior counsel. The result, while very interesting and meaningful to the lawyers, is sometimes confusing to marketers. Which presents a problem as it is these decisions that are binding on the ASA's other committees.

Driven initially by voice and then email on the fly, users have more recently been released from the constraints of desk-bound jobs and are taking advantage of an array of integrated applications such as mobile customer relationship management (CRM). Astute organisations "see the light" and have begun evaluating the benefit mobility brings into various customer interaction points within their organisations.

Party people

A regular column in which leading South African marketing and advertising personalities tell us the truth about their business.