Journal of Strategic Marketing Newsletter – October 2020

27 October 2020

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Journal of Strategic Marketing Newsletter – October 2020

A NOTE ON MARKETING THE FUTURE

I write this note as South Africans mark 200 days in lockdown. Yes, we’ve climbed down to reach level one of the lockdown ladder, but we are by no means out of the Covid-19 woods. We’ve just learnt how to navigate our way through these dark times a little better, and are starting to live alongside the pandemic in what is now a normal way of life.

While we’re not at the point of ‘business as usual’, certainly in terms of marketing, brands are mostly back to work. Especially as it seems Christmas (marketing) is coming early this year. Research by WPP agency in the UK, Kinetic Worldwide, says more than half of UK adults say Christmas is more important than ever. While we don’t have such research in South Africa, the fact that we are already seeing Christmas products on the shelves – before Halloween and Black Friday – says something.

In our must-read lead story this month, Kantar’s Kent Diepraam writes how its BrandZ research and data shows strong brands are continuing to recover from the economic shocks earlier this year with more convincing performance and growth figures. Nevertheless, he says, marketers have to learn to do more with less, and balance these short-term gains with long-term brand building.

It’s something multinational snack food company Mondelez has considered. In a novel way to adjust its marketing budget, its chief financial officer is diverting the company’s travel, consulting and real estate funds to marketing and advertising efforts – and most of that spend will be on digital (rather than TV commercials). Now there’s a strategic solution to Covid-19 impacted marketing budgets.

iProspect’s head of ad operations in Kenya also has a positive story to tell. Kenneth Mutuma has investigated potential opportunities within e-commerce and marketing in light of the fact that there are now 500 million mobile money users in Africa. With mobile subscribers set to hit the 600 million mark in five years, marketers will be able to reach users from all economic classes via ad tech developments.

In another optimistic piece, we’ve taken a look at the importance of supplier development as a means of boosting local supply chains. As Fetola’s Catherine Wijnberg (who is also founder of the Absa Business Day Supplier Development Awards) says, when supplier development is driven as a strategic imperative from the boardroom, there is distinctly greater success and long-term impact. Leading companies are passionate about doing supplier development right and are going beyond a scorecard to a genuine desire to support lasting growth in the supply chain as a way to build an effective and transformed economy.

And finally, some very good news for students wishing to study in the Western Cape: The IMM Graduate School is launching its new campus in Stellenbosch in January 2021. As of 30 January 2021, 750 students will have the opportunity to study in the historic university town.

Glenda Nevill

Editor

Hello Lucy. Accelerate brand recovery in the next normal: How the new era of analytics can unlock superior marketing effectiveness

It is time to shake off the doom and gloom of working under Covid-19 conditions and make more informed business decisions for more effective marketing results, now and in future, writes

KENT DIEPRAAM, Director of the Analytics Practice for Kantar Insights (South Africa).

Having lived with the global pandemic for six months now, economies are starting to slowly reopen, to breathe fresh life into markets under lockdown. Not a moment too soon, as this has been a crisis unlike any other. Marketing budgets were among the first to be cut and consumer spend is expected to only return to pre-Covid-19 levels in the next 18 to 24 months.

Transacting, saving and investing in digital Africa

With an expected 500 million mobile-money users on the African continent in 2020, KENNETH MUTUMA, Head of Ad Operations at iProspect Kenya, investigates the potential opportunities within e-commerce and marketing

When the first mobile device was launched more than three decades ago, Africa wasn’t expected to be at the cusp of adoption and innovation. However, the growth of mobile in Africa has been unparalleled.

Mobile subscribers are expected to hit 600 million by 2025; this as operator revenues soared to over $51 billion for the period between 2019 and 2020. And 1.7 million people were hired (GSMA Intelligence, 2020). This is despite having less than two mobile subscribers to every 100 people in the last two decades, according to the World Bank.

Supply chains in South Africa need to be local, future-focused and world class

Unless we build a strong, inclusive economy, South Africa (and every company in South Africa) is in big trouble. Supplier development and transformed supply chains are key to this. GLENDA NEVILL reports.

The work many South African companies do in terms of supplier development is quite “remarkable” because they have to make both their SMME suppliers, as well as their customers, the focus of their supply chain management activities.

Supplier development and supply change management (SCM) don’t sit comfortably together, says IMM Graduate School SCM lecturer Marzia Storpioli. “Typically in SCM, the focus is on superb service to the customer and enhanced customer experience, and not the number of jobs added to a specific sector in the economy and the financial security of the suppliers,” she explains.

A dream come true for Stellenbosch students as IMM Graduate School launches new Winelands campus

Demand from students wanting to study in Stellenbosch has resulted in the growth of the IMM Graduate School in this historic Winelands town. A new campus will open its doors on 4 January 2021.GLENDA NEVILL reports.

The IMM Graduate School has had a presence in Stellenbosch for many years, but increased demand from students wanting to study in the historic town has resulted in the need for a larger campus.

The new campus will allow the IMM Graduate School to grow its numbers in Stellenbosch by a third, says Irene Gregory, the IMM Graduate School’s National Head: Student Support Centres.

The new campus will replace the current Student Support Centre, and can house 750 students, with a maximum of 320 on site at any one time.

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Christmas marketing comes too early… or is it?

How can marketing for Christmas come ahead of marketing for Halloween? Social media users in South Africa suggested those who dared do so should be strung up – and used for Halloween marketing. Seriously, though, WPP agency Kinetic Worldwide says its research in the UK has shown more than half the country’s adult population believe Christmas is more important than ever this year and are already hitting the stores in anticipation. Chief planning officer at Kinetic, Nicole Lonsdale, says: “Our study suggests a remarkable resilience in people’s shopping behaviour and a steely determination among UK consumers to make the most of this year’s Christmas season.”

IMM Graduate School launches two new Supply Chain Management qualifications

From 2021, the IMM Graduate School will be offering two new supply chain management qualifications. Firstly, a Higher Certificate in Supply Chain Management will give students a basic understanding of the field, while also bolstering overall business management knowledge. It is designed to give a view of the processes and inter-relationships across the supply chain that enables organisations to create sustainable value. Then there is the Bachelor of Commerce Honours degree in Supply Chain Management, an essential qualification for those aspiring to specialise in the discipline. It places an emphasis on problem-solving, equipping graduates with the knowledge on how to approach various unorthodox situations. For more information on these new qualifications, please visit www.imm.ac.za

The colour red

The Pantone Colour Institute found itself in the news after collaborating with Swedish feminine products brand, Intimina. Pantone created a new colour, Period, which it describes as an “energizing and dynamic warm red shade encouraging period positivity to serve as the visual colour identifier for the Seen + Heard campaign; a campaign whose purpose is to inspire national and international conversations about periods through creative ideas that portray periods sympathetically and accurately”. But it seems it might have not quite hit the mark as women say it looks nothing like menstrual blood and label it a “gimmick”.

Liberty is ‘in it with you’

Insurer Liberty has made major changes to its marketing with a brand refresh and new messaging following the coronavirus pandemic and consumers’ desire to embrace more ‘human’ brands. Chief Marketing Officer Thabang Ramogase says Liberty wants a more holistic relationship with its clients, to be there for them in the best and worst of times, hence the payoff line, ‘In it with you’. As Ramogase says, “People need more than just new products, advice and expertise. If they’re trusting a financial services provider with their money – even their livelihoods – they need to know that the people in charge of such important investments care about them, and truly understand them.”

The fine life, with Snoop Dog

The Corona beer brand has had a pretty strange year. A name associated with a dreaded virus. What do you do? Well, it kept quiet for most of the year. But now, ahead of the holiday season, it has unveiled its new La Vida Más Fina (the fine life) campaign. And in the pound seat, is the inimitable Snoop Dog. The brand says in a press release, “the campaign began to take shape earlier this year but was paused as unexpected cultural considerations came into play”.

Mondelez diverts travel, consulting and real estate funds to digital marketing

Mondelez is taking a new approach to its marketing. The global snack food manufacturer is diverting its travel, consulting and real estate funds to marketing and advertising efforts – and most of that spend will be on digital (rather than TV commercials). Company CFO Luca Zaramella told the Wall Street Journal he hoped the renewed focus on marketing would help them retain their recent sales gains in North America and stimulate demand in other markets. The company, in 2019, spent $1.21 billion on advertising.

A dream come true for Stellenbosch students as IMM Graduate School launches new Winelands campus

27 October 2020

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The IMM Graduate School has had a presence in Stellenbosch for many years, but increased demand from students wanting to study in the historic town has resulted in the need for a larger campus.

The new campus will allow the IMM Graduate School to grow its numbers in Stellenbosch by a third, says Irene Gregory, the IMM Graduate School’s National Head: Student Support Centres.

The new campus will replace the current Student Support Centre, and can house 750 students, with a maximum of 320 on site at any one time.

“There has been an IMM Graduate School Student Support Centre in Stellenbosch for many years, however the increase in registrations from students wanting to study in Stellenbosch has resulted in the need for a larger campus,” says Gregory.

In researching whether a brand new campus was feasible in Stellenbosch, Gregory says studying in the scenic town is a dream for many school-leavers, who “long to be part of the vibey student life with its sidewalk cafés and cultural heritage”.

“The oak-lined student town of Stellenbosch, located in the heart of the beautiful Cape Winelands, is always bustling with young adults seeking this vibrant lifestyle,” Gregory says.

The campus will be located in a brand new building which is under development in Bosman’s Crossing, Distillery Road. The building is close to the beautiful and famous Eersterivier in the shadow of the Onder-Papegaaiberg, which is only a five minute drive from the centre of town.

Gregory says management of the IMM Graduate School looked into various locations during 2019 and opted for the Bosman Business Centre at the beginning of 2020.

She lists the elements comprising the new campus:

The campus will offer beautiful areas for students to relax, including a large deck with the most exquisite views of the surrounding mountains and Stellenbosch town
There will be eight light and spacious studios, able to accommodate between 20 and 120 students
A beautiful Information Centre, equipped with all prescribed books and computers hosting a huge bank of resource materials
Free wi-fi for students available throughout the campus
Administrative offices with student consulting rooms
Café courtyard at the entrance to the campus
Secure parking for vehicles and bicycles

Daytime tutorials will be offered for these qualifications:

Higher Certificate in Marketing
BBA in Marketing Management
BCom in Marketing and Management Science
BCom in International Supply Chain Management
BPhil Honours in Marketing Management
BCom Honours in Supply Chain Management

“The Stellenbosch campus will be manned by seven full time staff and a team of industry experts contracted to offer tuition to the students,” says Gregory. “The campus is supported by a strong faculty at national office level, as well as departments which take care of student support, academic administration, and a technical team.”

The campus opening event will be held on 30 January 2021 and the first intake of students will start on 1 March 2021.

To receive an invitation to the launch, please contact info.stellenbosch@immgsm.ac.za. To register, visit the IMM Graduate School website.

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Supply chains in South Africa need to be local, future-focused and world class

27 October 2020

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That is why initiatives highlighted in the latest Absa Business Day Supplier Development Awards are quite “remarkable”.

“Supplier development generally involves achieving a sort of partnership where the buyer achieves lower costs and higher quality and the seller consolidates his business by ensuring continuity of supply for the buyer through innovation,” Storpioli explains.

“This is not generally the case in South Africa’s supplier development programmes because the aim is to uplift small, black-owned and black female-owned businesses. Most often this results in paying slightly higher prices because small businesses are supported. The benefits lie in the number of jobs created or the revenue stream guaranteed to such SMMEs,” she says.

The reasons for doing this are, in the main, aligned to political and socio-economic demands. The Absa Business Day event recognises efforts in developing suppliers in line with B-BBEE initiatives, Storpioli says. “This has little to do with supply chain management itself but rather more about spreading wealth and opportunities through a business’ procurement spend,” she adds. “As a professional I can only applaud what is being done by Absa and commend the winners on their achievements (immensely hard to do in a sluggish economic environment).”

Founder of the awards, Fetola CEO, Catherine Wijnberg, says no company is an island and leaders in business are hyper aware that unless we build a strong, inclusive, economy South Africa (and every company in South Africa) is in big trouble.

“For this, our supply chains need to be local, future-focused and world class,” she says. “Transformation ensures broader participation in the economy, and resultant growth in national wealth and increased wealth and well-being is critical to all our futures.”

Wijnberg says the purpose of the awards is threefold:

To make visible the good work of big businesses
To acknowledge and encourage best practice in supplier development
To encourage collaboration and shared learning, building a community of best practice so that the whole industry can advance

Despite being only three years old, they have had an impact. “We see an increase in corporates collaborating within and between industries. We see that when supplier development is driven as a strategic imperative from the boardroom, there is distinctly greater success and long-term impact. We see that leading companies are passionate about doing supplier development right – going beyond the scorecard to a genuine desire to support lasting growth in the supply chain as a way to build an effective and transformed economy,” Wijnberg points out.

She acknowledges that supplier development is not always the most economical way of doing business but in South Africa, it is vital in the socio-economic sense. So, how do big companies balance economic imperatives with socio-economic ones?

“The Absa Business Day Supplier Development Awards are about going beyond the scorecard – so moving away from the tick box of compliance to real strategic thinking,” Wijnberg explaines.

“Investment into supplier development is investing in the future competitive advantage of the company – so, selecting the right suppliers and working together for shared benefit. The decision-making needs to move away from the cost or ticking the supplier development scorecard and become more about the cost of NOT developing competitive, diverse and healthy local suppliers,” she adds.

While there are hundreds of worthy and honest initiatives, IMM Graduate School SCM lecturer, Dr Myles Wakeham, warns against “window dressing”. What is supplier development in a South African context, he asks?

“Some see it as a financial investment in a supply organisation and if that is the case, then quite honestly there are too many charlatans/shady operators in this space. All you have to look at is the failure of B-BBEE, particularly in small to medium enterprises as well as corruption and blatant theft. I do, however, support supplier development in terms of training and helping organisations to become more adept in outsourcing. Give them the fishing rod and help them to fish!”

Wakeham believes medium sized organisations would do a better job if there were some tax incentives to get involved. “Remember that this will become a long-term project and so there should be mutual commitment on both sides,” he says. “Businesses should commit themselves for the medium to long term. Supply chain development is not supplier development so businesses should consider including medium and small entities in their chains. The problem here is that by doing so they will be exposed to greater risk.

“Risk management should be used when assessing supply partner suitability and there should be continued supplier evaluation. There has to be a comprehensive and mutually binding service level agreement (SLA) in place that spells out exactly the mutual obligations of both parties,” says Wakeham.

Still, the challenges are legion, as Wakeham points out. “The unhealthy economy, Covid-19, poor business ethics, the lack of transparency and trust, self-reference criteria, the racial divide, the continuing narrative of costly mistakes in this regard, opposing business cultures and a ‘I look after myself philosophy etc…”

How to overcome all this? “Government support and new business models applicable to the development of suppliers and supply chain development to foster inclusion…”

Wijnberg has some ideas too. “We can reduce the inefficiency in supplier development through increased levels of collaboration between businesses and across industries,” she says. “As more companies move beyond the ticking of supplier development boxes and work together to build a national network of world-class, local suppliers’ funds will be released to do bigger and more impactful work.”

There are also plans afoot to bring small and medium enterprises on board, Wijnberg reveals. “We have lots of smaller businesses already playing their role in supplier development and local supplier support. In 2021 we plan to encourage this with recognition for SMEs that support the transformation of their own supply chains,” she says.

Wijnberg acknowledges winners of the overall award, the Spar Group, for its commitment to local economic growth via their rural farming supply chain. “While their programme is far from being the largest, their inspirational approach shows strategic leadership commitment, aligning company purpose with actual delivery of local economic growth,” she says.

“Collaboration with local and international role players in the development of their rural vegetable farming scheme, the active enabling of these small farmers to access competitive supply chains and the vision for community-owned facilities illustrates an inclusive, strategic approach which embodies the spirit of the Absa Business Day Supplier Development Awards.”

Distell, too, stood out this year with places across a range of categories and their commitment to stay the distance with small suppliers despite the ravages of Covid-19, she says. “This long-term commitment to building healthy supply chains is central to their future strategic advantage and makes them leaders to watch and emulate.”

And then there’s the V&A Waterfront who “showed why they are leaders in the retail precinct industry, with their project that actively brings ‘buy-local’ opportunities for small suppliers alongside international brands. The V&A are a great example of innovative collaborative thinking as a way to strengthen the long-term, competitive advantage of their mall”.

Newcomer Award: V&A Waterfront for its Joy from Africa to the World programme. They partnered with 140 artisans and smaller suppliers – at every level of the supply chain – to reimagine their festive season décor. The category runner-up is Goodyear.

Local Manufacturing Award: V&A Waterfront for its investment of R336 million in small suppliers representing 38% of their total procurement spend. Runner up was Tiger Brands.

Youth Development Award: Distell for the group’s Green Up Recycling and Bansela Taverner programmes, which provided 320 job opportunities to mostly youths. Runner-up was Tiger Brands.

Black Women Development Award: Empact Group has 30% of total procurement spend going to SMME’s – of which 39% was channelled to support black women suppliers. Runner-up was the V&A Waterfront.

Rural and Township Development Award: SPAR Group Ltd won the award for their SPAR Rural Hub programme in which markets have been created to support small-scale farmers in the production and sale of their vegetable products. Runner-up is Distell.

Skills of the Future (4IR) Award: Unilever South Africa for their Isazi Farming Technology project that is providing technological solutions in the agriculture sector through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Runner-up was Distell.

Collaboration Award: This year’s joint winners were Distell and Tiger Brands.

Small Supplier Development Award: SAB with runner-up being Goodyear.

Impact Award: It acknowledges a company whose supplier development initiatives have substantially impacted the value chain. This year’s winner is Tiger Brands, with Distell being named runner-up.

Overall Winner: A discretionary award for the company that stands out as the leader in supplier development in South Africa. With their purpose-driven strategy to address challenges such as food security, nutrition, job creation and transformation, this year’s winner is SPAR Group Ltd. Distell was named as the runner-up.

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Transacting, saving and investing in digital Africa

27 October 2020

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Mobile subscriptions in Africa

Astute Africans have been able to leverage mobile technology to create tailored solutions to solve African problems. It has been inadvertently labelled leapfrogging, a key attribute to Africa’s developing economies whose ability to skip redundant and inferior eras of technological advancement is unparalleled.

However, mobile-sector taxes have continued to hinder the adoption of mobile in markets like the DRC whose sector-specific taxation is among the highest in Africa, holding back adoption and potential GDP growth. The mobile sector contributes approximately 20% of total tax revenue, despite accounting for just 3.6% of GDP, meaning the total tax contribution of the mobile sector is almost six times the size of the sector in GDP terms.

Mobile money

A recent research study carried out in Africa determined that over 62% of Africans are unbanked (Fintech News, 2018). Mobile money provided a unique solution to close this gap by creating a simple technology that is easy to roll out across rural and urban settings.

Source: Mobile Industry Report 2019

Mobile growth in sub-Saharan Africa reached a milestone in 2019, representing over 66% of all global mobile-money transactions on the globe. In sub-Saharan Africa, East Africa is still leading, although West Africa is steadily gaining ground – thanks to Ghana.

Kenya is a pioneer in mobile money with M-PESA, founded in 2007. Currently, it boasts over 24 million active monthly users; the share of the population with access to financial services has gone from 14% in 2006 to above 80% today thanks to M-PESA.

In Kenya, you can pay for almost any commodity or service with M-PESA. In addition to this, there are added features for loans and savings. M-PESA users form the single biggest investors in government bonds in Kenya.

M-PESA app and sim toolkit

In the financial year 2019–2020, M-PESA business grew by 18.4% to $84.4 billion, with more than 43% of the growth attributed to new business channels, primarily savings and lending products: M-Shwari, Fuliza and KCB M-PESA.

On the other hand, Ghana is busy setting itself up as the leader in mobile money in West Africa. The country has seen mobile money accounts rise six-fold between 2012 and 2017, from 3.8 m to 23.9m, while the value of transactions increased by a factor of 261, from GHS594m ($109.8m) to GHS155bn ($28.7bn). Transactions rose again by another 43% last year to total GHS233bn ($43.1bn), according to the Oxford Business Group.

Source: Mobile Driving Digital Disruption

Growth Opportunities

The creation of OEM (original equipment manufacturers) factories to produce quality mobile phones in African countries will accelerate the adoption of mobile by providing quality devices at a more affordable cost. Rwanda has set up the first African high-technology factory to manufacture smartphones.

Caption: Mara X phone

The phones, called Mara X and Mara Z, are the first ‘Made in Africa’ models, with the cheapest device retailing at $130.

Mobile marketing

Beyond the utility that mobile devices provide to the user, marketers have also seen high value derived from them. From historical campaign data, over 60% of all internet traffic is through mobile. This has enabled advertisers to create unique ad tech to effectively target and reach users via the most utilised channel.

Mobile enables marketers to reach users from all economic classes with contextualised messaging: Ring-back Tone is one such example enabling marketers to break the language and literacy barrier in Africa with short, incentivised audio of 15 seconds or less served to users before their phone call connects.

The impact of COVID-19 on growing mobile transacting

The pangs of the pandemic are forging a new era of cashless transactions in Africa. In Kenya, banks continue to promote the cashless culture by encouraging the use of their apps and cards instead of cash. They have gone to great lengths to waive all transaction fees on money transfer between mobile wallets.

The Economist reports that in Rwanda, the number of mobile-money transfers doubled in the week after a lockdown was imposed in March, according to data collected by the Rwandan telecommunications regulator and analysed by Cenfri, a South African think tank. By late April, users were making three million transactions a week, five times the pre-pandemic norm.

In countries with a developed online retail industry, the middle class have increased spend on e-commerce, with the majority buying their groceries and other essentials online. JUMIA has seen the greatest growth in sales during this period, as more people, including users who had never used e-commerce before, are leveraging the service due to restrictions on movement.

BIO:

Kenneth Mutuma is Head of Ad Operations at iProspect East Africa. He is a digital media specialist with six years of successful experience in digital media buying and strategy and currently heads the digital media-trading arm of the business. He is a strong believer in the power of data in revolutionising marketing.

References

Ramadan, A. (2020). The Unbanked in Africa Could Be One of the Biggest Opportunities in Fintech History. Plug and Play.

Quest, R. (2018). Quest Means Business. YouTube.

GSMA Intelligence. (2019). Country Overview: Ghana Driving Mobile-enabled Digital Transformation. GSMA.

Fast Company. (2019). Rwanda Just Released the First Smartphone Made Entirely in Africa.

Ozyurt, S. (2019). Ghana Is Now the Fastest-growing Mobile Money Market in Africa. Quartz.

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Accelerate brand recovery in the next normal: How the new era of analytics can unlock superior marketing effectiveness

27 October 2020

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It is time to shake off the doom and gloom of working under Covid-19 conditions and make more informed business decisions for more effective marketing results, now and in future, writes

Yet the turmoil following these crises is nothing new, and history has taught us that recovery will follow. This is clearly seen when comparing leading indices’ data with that from BrandZ, the world’s largest brand equity platform, which shows that strong brands have continued to recover from economic shocks earlier and with more convincing performance and growth figures.

That said, under these conditions it’s no longer a case of marketing as business as usual. We all need to find ways to do more with less as the playbook for 2020 was largely thrown out the window but rest assured that brands matter now, more than ever.

There’s a temptation to be reactive and think short-term, but it’s important to balance those short-term gains with long-term brand building. This means re-estimating sales forecasts across markets and regions, and revisiting demand across portfolios, channels and point of sale.

Marketers need to understand that different categories will also follow different recovery plans, as hygiene products have seen increased demand throughout lockdown while restrictions on other products such as alcohol and tobacco sales in South Africa meant unexpectedly sharp declines.

What all categories do share is the fact that past data is no longer enough.

New data is needed to overlay brand and category trends while learning from historic performance and country-specific macro information like specific Covid-19 data and government policies, as well as consumer sentiment.

The long and the short of it: The future of marketing investment

In times of crisis, marketers’ top challenge right now is how to best optimise their marketing budget when consumer behaviour and media consumption is so rapidly changing.

Most organisations are pressed to make tough decisions on how to best allocate budgets, keeping both short-term sales uplift and long-term brand building in mind. But while many marketers have a measurement system in place, only about 23% of them have an integrated system in place.

The evidence from Kantar’s database tells us that focusing on just one objective means you are possibly grossly underestimating the overall impact of your marketing efforts. The short-term impact of media on sales is 13% and if you add the long term, the impact is doubled.

“To strive for as holistic a picture as possible, it’s key to integrate different sources of data into a singular framework. This is best implemented when organisations have data architecture in place. Having this infrastructure enables the organisation to leverage the power of data and analytics at scale and drive a culture of transparency within the organisation,” says Sagar Ramsinghani, Analytics Director, UAE, Kantar.

In this changing environment, where marketers are regularly deploying new ways to engage with consumers, it is critical that we continuously test and learn. Traditional measurement systems are backward looking and refreshed once every two years, which is today’s context may well be irrelevant.

The future of marketing optimisation lies always-on platform-based solutions that enable organisations to test and learn on a more regular basis and plan marketing actions based on expected outcomes.

Tips to get the best out of your content and media

When it comes to unlocking the power of creativity and optimising a multimedia touchpoint strategy, it makes sense to consider whether consumers’ responses to advertising have changed. Kantar’s Link ad-testing solution revealed that the reactions haven’t really changed when the same ads were tested pre- and during Covid-19.

Parallel studies conducted in digital behaviour also revealed that consumers continue to engage with online content in the same way as before – it’s how we consume content on different platforms that differs. So, while the video skip time for YouTube remains steady at seven seconds, it’s down to just three seconds for Facebook. When putting creative work on these channels, customise it for a greater chance of impact.

On the creative side, the back-to-basics strategy remains – have a strong creative idea that creates lasting impressions and integrates the brand. Getting this right could provide up to 10 times more ROI for your brand. And in the digital space, getting the creative right can get the ad from being avoided and blocked to liked and shared.

With out of home, cinema and event sponsorship off the cards for some time now, marketers are tempted to push all the budgets to digital. At Kantar, we know digital-only strategy can be restrictive. Synergy plays a big role in driving impact and having a TV and digital strategy provides the best ROI in today’s context. It’s key to have the content customised to the platform to ensure the creative is consumed in the right way to create desired impact.

In times of crisis when budgets are being slashed, the top learning has been around re-allocation of budgets to meaningful channels rather than completely going dark in order to avoid negative impact on brand and sales.

Watch this video for more on how to unlock superior marketing effectiveness in the new era of analytics: https://youtu.be/q0BCw_G1BUo

BIO: The world we live in today is powered by the data currency. As director of analytics at Kantar, Kent Diepraam an experienced advanced analytics professional with a demonstrated history of creating data-led business opportunities for growth. His skills span consumer behaviour, customer insight, analytical skills, and applying machine-learning techniques that enable businesses to examine their performance and predict logical step-changes in an upward trajectory. His knowledge and skills are solidified by a cum laude MBA, focused in strategic management from the Wits Business School.

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Journal of Strategic Marketing Newsletter – August 2020

24 August 2020

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Journal of Strategic Marketing Newsletter – August 2020

A NOTE ON MARKETING THE FUTURE

It has been an extraordinary time. And no, not just because of the global coronavirus pandemic. In the past few months, we witnessed two astronauts take off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre for the International Space Station in the SpaceX Crew Dragon. It was the first crewed flight by SpaceX, the company founded by South African born Elon Musk. And we watched it all.

For a Star Trek fan, it was riveting stuff. Not just the space travel aspect of these missions, but that we could communicate with astronauts in space in real time. Who can forget Captain Chris Hadfield singing David Bowie’s Space Oddity in the ISS. Or Star Trek’s original Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner, tweeting Hadfield in space.

@Cmdr_Hadfield Are you tweeting from space? MBB,” Shatner wrote, signing off with his abbreviation of ‘My Best, Bill’.

And Hadfield responded, calling Shatner ‘captain’, bless him: @WilliamShatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we’re detecting signs of life on the surface.”

Astronaut Doug Hurley, too, tweeted from space, sending magnificent photos of Earth, including images of Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg which had South Africans entranced and sharing like crazy. When our world was reduced to four walls during lockdown, astronauts showed us a very big picture.

Social media kept us connected to that wider world, reaching even to space. It’s not surprising marketers and brands had to start thinking about how to utilise that reach, especially on emerging youth platforms such as TikTok and Twitter. Even Instagram changed, morphing from a (mostly) superficial look at pretty stuff into something that chronicled users’ lives much more realistically.

What seemed like magic even 20 years ago is the norm now. Artificial intelligence in popular culture was a construct we saw in sci-films and TV shows. But now it’s a reality. And it will play an increasingly important role in the marketing sphere.

In this issue, we’ve taken a look at the application of AI in marketing. Dr Myles Wakeham, Carl Wakeham and Maria Hamman outline where we are now, and where AI will be in the near future. IBM Watson’s ‘Lucy’ can write in-depth marketing plans, sourcing and analysing all the data needed to so so. It’s a vital overview marketers need to note.

In their story on beauty marketing in the age of influencers, Zama Nkosi-Mabuye and Cuma Pantshwa interview the gorgeous Kim Zulu, a virtual human and influencer. Zulu says the global pandemic has “hastened our pathway to more technology driven solutions, we see it across all consumption of media”. She came to ‘life’ in April. Her creator, Jason Campbell, told TimesLIVE, “lockdown has forced us to actually realise that there is a whole environment online and we want Kim to be at the centre of that environment or even kick-start that idea of transacting online”.

Back on earth, lockdown also saw us communicating excessively on social media, and witness the surge in TikTok and Twitch, as well as Instagram, as spaces where brands could communicate with humans who were locked down and desperate for entertainment. We’ve checked in with agencies working in this space on how the conversations have changed, and where they’re going.

Finally, a well-grounded story on the importance of employee experience. Also spurred by Covid-19, EX the new battleground for increased productivity and competitive advantage.

There’s certainly a lot to think about in terms of ‘marketing the future’.

Glenda Nevill

Editor

Hello Lucy. Please solve my marketing problems

IBM’s Watson’s Lucy can be used to determine market segments, develop products, conduct competitive or market analyses, handle media planning, provide the numeric marketing data needs in writing a marketing plan, and assist with salient information in developing a marketing strategy. DR MYLES WAKEHAM, CARL WAKEHAM and MARIA HAMMAN give some idea of the power of AI in marketing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the creation of human-like intelligence that can process, learn, reason, plan, and discern natural language.

AI comes in three forms, namely, narrow AI, with which we are involved with on a daily basis and which is designed to perform specific tasks within an area (technology with intelligence in a particular domain) and general AI which is not area-specific and can learn and perform tasks anywhere and finally strong AI, which is an artificial super intelligence. Thus far, we have only managed to master narrow AI.

Beauty marketing in the age of influencers

As beauty marketing moves from medium to medium thanks to technology, some remnants of a time gone by seem to linger even though the innovators of the space show that audiences demand some authenticity. ZAMA NKOSI-MABUYE and CUMA PANTSHWA of Asante Blush look at how beauty and the conversations around it continue to evolve.

The beauty industry is one of the few that continues to grow and keeps its share of the pie when it comes to how women spend their money. Even though the face of the industry is slowing shifting, there are some ways the beauty industry and the marketers that shape the narrative refuse to evolve at the same pace as their consumers.

It wasn’t that long ago that glossy magazines and TV were the playground of big beauty brands. Stunningly shot double page spreads used to reign supreme, then advertorials had their moment in the sun. Now that influencers are the ones driving trends and consumer interest, it would make sense to think the narrative for beauty brands would be different, but is it really?

From quarantine culture to mainstream, social is open for business

There’s no doubt social media kept millions entertained (and sane) during lockdowns around the globe. And while Facebook and Twitter maintained their popularity (perhaps among an older demographic), the growth of Instagram, TikTok and Twitch has been phenomenal. How did brands take advantage of the captive audiences? GLENDA NEVILL asks South African digital marketing agencies working with influencers to share their stories.

Social is open for business. Quarantine culture is a powerful thing. And brands need to rethink existing consumer journeys and paths to purchase to align with changes in daily routine. Things are getting real out there, and marketers need to be aware of just how much consumers have changed, and continue to do so.

Why Covid-19 has brought employee experience to the fore

Marketers will be closely looking at employee experience in the coming months and years. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted how essential it is to have a positive workforce.

In her piece on the changes Covid-19 has wrought on the marketing sector in the July 2020 Journal of Strategic Marketing, IMM Graduate School head of academics, Angela Bruwer, referenced the importance of employer branding/employee experience.

“Marketers should and will be looking at this more and more during this time,” she wrote. “It is essential to have a positive workforce who are positively impacting on the country at this time. As organisations across various industries try and regain their commercial foothold, they will want to count on the contribution of every employee. The immediate past and the present moment calls for unparalleled feelings and acts of community by organisations towards their employees: a new bond has been forged and it could be to the advantage of both parties.”

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IMM Graduate School rises to the Covid-19 online challenge

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic defined the first semester of 2020 for most people across the world, including our IMM Graduate School students and staff. True to our values of thoughtfulness, commitment and student centricity, our team implemented digitally led strategies resulting in a seamless transition to online learning and full, high quality education experience for our students. All our qualifications were completed successfully and on time. IMM Graduate School completed another successful student intake for the second semester of 2020, despite the current environment and uncertainty. During times of disruption, investment in a high quality education and relevant skills becomes ever more important. Our intake reflected this trend with many new students trusting IMM Graduate School to provide an education that will prepare them for the future. ~ Dalein van Zyl, CEO of the IMM Graduate School.

MPhil students start next phase of research papers

Most of the 13 students who presented their MPhil Research Proposals at a virtual panel event were successful and have been given permission to proceed with the fieldwork once recommended changes have been made to their proposals and ethical clearance has been granted. These students will most likely attend the 2022 IMM Graduate School graduation events to receive their MPhil in Marketing certificates. The panel interacted online with students from all over South Africa and from neighbouring countries with the study supervisors as participants. Proposals were submitted on a range of marketing-related focus areas, including:

The use of algorithms in strategic decision making about marketing on social media
Evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on the loyalty of diners in the sit-down restaurant industry
The influence of user-experience on customer retention in the business-to-business SME sector
Gauging the impact and influence of social marketing on the Zimbabwean Telecommunications Industry

The influence of the brand of the country of origin in purchasing of engineering products.

Marketers increasingly ‘conscious’ of pitfalls

The Conscious Advertising Network is being inundated with queries from marketers on how to navigate the minefield that is marketing right now. From Black Lives Matter to #StopHateForProfit, digital marketers are terrified of putting a foot wrong and being hammered with a social media backlash. Co-chairman of the Conscious Advertising Network, Jacob Dubbins, told The Drum: “Advertising needs to step up to its responsibility for its supply chain and the fact that it funds the internet; the good stuff and the bad stuff.” Dubbins said the network of over 70 agencies had been swamped with queries. “At the convergence of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and the Facebook boycott, we’ve been contacted from all over the world by campaigners, brands and also big networks who once weren’t necessarily too keen to engage.”

Nike’s latest campaign hits and misses

Staying on the topic of Diversity, and Nike’s latest campaign has been lauded around the world… but it’s own employees are not as impressed. The You Can’t Stop Us campaign features high profile athletes, including South Africa’s Caster Semenya, Kenya’s Eliud Kipchoge, Serena Williams and often-controversial former NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick among many others. It was created by Wieden+Kennedy’s. The creative team searched through 4 000 pieces of footage to find perfect shots that would underscore the commonalities between athletes. But The Financial Times reported that a group of black Nike employees believe the company should acknowledge its own equality issues before promoting an ideal on TV.

Survey confirms massive uptake of online shopping, but fear of unreliable payment solutions

A digital customer experience report by Rogerwilco, ovatoyou and Julia Ahlfeldt has, not surprisingly, confirmed massive uptake of online shopping since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The big online category winners were grocery shopping, health and fitness, and education. The bad news is the CX study found unreliable payment solutions were a major pain point for consumers. And it revealed that only 50% of programmatic advertising reaches its target audience. “This suggests that local brands are wasting over R1-billion on failed acquisition – money that could have been spent on building a better understanding of existing customers and creating experiences that foster loyalty,” said Charlie Stewart, CEO of Rogerwilco.

Building digitally enabled business models

The first virtual CEO Dialogue series, co-hosted by the Shared Value Africa Initiative and Strathmore University Business School, focused on the future of work in Africa and the impact of the digital economy on the continent’s growth. Panellists discussed the underlying fears of new technologies replacing humans and pointed out that it is the responsibility of all our leaders from the private and public sector to create an inclusive future of work – one capable of generating opportunities for all, especially young entrepreneurs. The primary message was that we could achieve so much more if we collaborated and worked together and that companies should focus on building digitally enabled business models, which are purpose driven, inclusive and sustainable.

Why Covid-19 has brought employee experience to the fore

24 August 2020

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Marketers will be closely looking at employee experience in the coming months and years. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted how essential it is to have a positive workforce.

Writing in Human Resources Today, Jade Taryn Graham, says a strong employer brand is only as good as the talent within a company. This, she adds, is why a strong employer brand is “critical in the pursuit of attracting and retaining the talent you need to take your organisation forward, while competing in ever competitive and increasingly challenging markets”.

As Graham points out, this is especially important now in light of the challenges Covid-19 presents, as “despite the downturn of some business operations, there continues to be, in many essential business sectors a continuation of the highly competitive need to acquire top talent”.

The employee brand, she says, “brings to life your employee value proposition”. And employees inevitably have questions to ask, typically such as “How did the employer treat its employees through this really difficult time”? or “Would the behaviour of this organisation in response to the pandemic, align with the values that I have myself and be ones that I would want to become a part of?”

Global research and advisory company, Gartner, has just released its latest research on employee experience (EX), surveying 150 HR executives and over 3 000 employees in 26 countries.

“Managing talent today presents fundamentally different challenges for organisations than in the past. Employees aren’t contributing the same level of discretionary effort, have higher expectations for their work experience and are more vocal about workplace dissatisfaction,” the researchers said in the introduction to the Modern Employee Experience: Increasing the Returns on Employee Experience Investments report.

Gartner defines employee experience as “how employees internalise and interpret the interactions they have with and within their organisation and the contexts that influence those interactions”.

It reported that its customer experience research found that “two-thirds of the drivers of customer satisfaction are due to ‘feel factors’, or how customers feel during and about their experience”.

This means HR leaders should take this same approach to employee experience, “focusing on influencing and improving employees’ feelings about their overall experience through the use of psychological, motivational and social principles. Improving the way the experience feels can lead to a boost in employee engagement and support a positive company culture”.

And this, it says, positively affects a company’s bottom line. “Our analysis also shows when organisations have a high level of employee experience satisfaction overall, they’re also more likely to realise better business outcomes. Organisations whose employees are largely satisfied with their experience are 48% more likely to meet organisational customer satisfaction goals, 89% more likely to meet organisational innovation goals and 56% more likely to meet organisational reputation goals”. The white paper can be downloaded here.

In the piece below, employee experience strategist, DENNIS SMITH, writes that EX is the new battleground for increased productivity and competitive advantage.

Want better customer experience? Start with your employees

This devastating COVID-19 global pandemic has forced companies across industries to make tough decisions. Some have had to shut down their operations, while others have pivoted to a new business strategy and reconfigured their workforce.

As companies move towards the ‘new normal’ caused by the pandemic, many leaders are taking alternate routes and changing their business models. Leading companies have recognised that the employee experience (EX) is the new battleground for increased productivity and competitive advantage. Remaining competitive with a highly productive workforce now means creating an EX that excites and engages.

The parallels between a superior customer experience (CX) and employee experience are striking. An optimised CX generates loyalty and additional sales, while a stellar EX attracts talent, boosts workforce engagement, productivity and retention. This, in turn directly improves a business’s financial performance.

EX is not just about feeling good at work. Numerous published studies (Deloitte, PWC, Accenture, IBM) have shown links between employee experience and retention, discretionary effort, and work performance.

According to an IBM and Globoforce WorkTrends Survey, increasing the Employee Experience Index (EXI) score by a margin of 0.25 (on a five-point Likert agreement rating scale) corresponds to 0.86 percentage-point improvement in ROA and a 1.81 percentage point improvement in ROS.

For example, imagine if a company with sales revenue of R600 million with ROS at 15% in 2018 and an average EXI score of 3.50, could increase its EXI score by 0.25 (from 3.50 to 3.75), its ROS could increase from 15% to 16.81%. Assuming the same sales in 2019, the associated increase in operating income would be R11 million.

Linking employee experience to organisational business outcomes

Employees increasingly expect their workplace experiences to match those they have as customers and are often disconcerted when they don’t. What creates a positive, motivating experience at work? Mainly, it’s the meaning and growth people find in the work itself, and to improve that, the entire organisation has to be involved.

Employee experience should be approached with data in hand, just as big business decisions are. Ask yourself, are your actions making an impact? If not, change your actions, and see what happens to the metrics.

Employee and customer experiences are certainly linked and organisations need a blended focus on both; to do so, organisations need to rethink how effective their existing silos are.

There is a need to measure the ‘new normal’ as Covid-19 has changed all the perceptions of what employees see as important and the results of this measurement will form the basis for future strategic planning, strategic intent and organisational alignment.

It is common knowledge that to have an industry-leading CX, there needs to be an established infrastructure supporting it. Similarly, to attract and retain the best company culture, organisations must make intentional efforts to encourage EX. Those brands that do prioritise EX on par with CX are setting up a culture bred for success.

As EX ascends to its rightful place next to CX as a driver of business impact, the question of how to measure and analyse it becomes even more critical.

The answer is not as simple as just cross-applying the metrics one would use for CX. Employees spend nearly half their waking hours at work and especially, in the current environment, they’re looking for purpose and meaning at the office, not just ping pong tables or free food.

Internal feedback loops

Just as external feedback loops are used for CX, internal feedback loops are employed to gather the feedback from the internal team. This data is used to maintain a consistent level of performance across the organisation, providing insights while fostering a sense of collaboration and cohesion. It is essential to start afresh and identify how employees see the strategies under the new normal.

EX metrics your company should be measuring

Workplaces have different generations of employees in different life-stages. The needs of young, single employees differ from those of new parents, for example, who in turn have different needs to people whose children have left home. Employees’ needs may also differ from department to department and from geography to geography. This has been well understood for ages. What is new is that demographics aren’t enough.

Established behaviour science research offers guidance on how to measure organisational EX, which is defined through behaviour, and is evidenced by the alignment of the elements inherent in all organisations [Pryor et al., (2007)] i.e. purpose, principles/values, process, people and performance.

Based on the sound theory and established best practice the Stratview EX System measures the degree to which people in the organisation (the actual implementers of strategy) make sense of the organisational environment, providing an integrated approach to EX measurement. This allows leaders to take quick and substantial results to manage organisational effectiveness.

Identifying and taking advantage of major strengths can dramatically reduce costs and generate new income streams, in the shortest possible time.

BIO: Dennis Smith, a senior consultant at Stratview Management Systems, is an accomplished, award winning management development professional with an extensive background in marketing, strategy development and implementation, as well as managing cross-functional business operations, locally and internationally. His current research focuses on how organisations manage disruption in order to remain relevant in the eyes of their consumers. Smith is a Chartered Marketer, holds an MSc degree from the Da Vinci Institute and has served as adjunct faculty at various business schools for a number of years. He serves on the CPD panel for the Marketing Association of South Africa (MASA).

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From quarantine culture to mainstream, social is open for business

24 August 2020

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That’s the word from Swift, a WPP “creative agency for a digital world”. In its latest Global Social Conversation Report, Swift says as countries emerge from various levels of lockdown “the world of social has been reframed”. In fact, it has been reinvented, ensuring a new role for brands and culture.

Chief strategist at Nfluential, Anne Dolinschek, agrees, saying there was a big shift in people’s behaviours during the pandemic too. “Instagram became more real…to some extent, it moved away from the polished images and showing the best parts of lives. We started seeing people sharing their experiences being at home 24/7, the good and the bad. The platform saw a spike in engagement because we’re all in the same boat and content became a lot more relatable,” she explains.

Dolinschek says TikTok saw a surge in sign-ups and engagement too, even in South Africa. Suddenly it wasn’t just Gen Zs, but Millennials started using the app too. “It is a great entertainment platform and I assume that’s why so many turned to the platform during the pandemic,” she says. “In South Africa, it’s mostly a younger audience who are on the app, however. Some great South African brands also started creating fantastic content on TikTok to engage with their audiences.”

Founder of HaveYouHeard, Jason Stewart, says relevance of each social media platform for your target market and message is important. “Instagram is very much the prominent platform for influencer marketing (and has been for the past few years). However, TikTok has exploded globally, and is now an important channel in South Africa, albeit for a younger audience. And, then there’s Twitch, a relatively unknown powerhouse and a platform HaveYouHeard and its agencies often use, predominantly for eSports,” he says.

Twitch and TikTok

Where TikTok and Twitch are concerned, users are embracing the future of entertainment, which, says Stewart, is almost certainly going to be more interactive and social with audiences able to engage with the content, the creator and the audience – all at the same time.

“…Because of the negative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic (causing much fear and uncertainty and leaving too many people with too much time on their hands), TikTok and Twitch both provided the perfect form of escapism into worlds far from the burden of reality. It was also a time when consumers were forced to create new habits and find new ways of being entertained, shopping and even influenced,” says Stewart.

And he rolls out the numbers, courtesy of WARC’s Global Ad Trends report (May 2020).

“Before Covid-19, social media was expected to grow by 9.8%. In our Covid-19 world, its growth has almost topped this – 20%. Online video growth was expected to increase by only 5% on the previous year, but has exploded to 20.2%. TikTok had 315 million downloads in the first quarter of 2020, the most of any app in history. As for Twitch, well, there were 1 790 million hours of video gaming watched on Twitch in April of 2020, up from 1 000 million hours at the start of the year. The growth experienced in the first three months of 2020 was equivalent to that of the previous six years,” he says.

Nano and micro influencers

All this spurred the use of influencers although not in the way most would expect. “During the pandemic, brands were pushed to move away from superficial campaigns. People want to be able to relate. This has led to brands using more nano and micro influencers instead of the macro ones purely because the former tend to be authentic and have incredibly loyal audiences who are highly engaged,” says Dolinschek.

“These influencers are great to drive campaigns with call to actions a lot more effectively. In order to add reach to these campaigns, macro influencers are often used to organically boost the content by sharing it with their much bigger audiences,” she says. “Another tactic that’s gaining momentum quite quickly is including performance media in campaigns. It’s used to target bigger audiences with authentic content created by influencers. Engagement and reach are not enough to report on anymore; many other measurements are available in influencer marketing these days to demonstrate ROI to brands.”

Pieter Groenewald, CEO of influencer agency The Salt, agrees there has been an uptake in the utilisation of nano influencers. “… They are perfectly paired with brands and in most instances, represent existing brand fans, who we then utilise to amplify brand conversations both on and offline in a very authentic manner”. The Salt continued to operate during lockdown. “The type of campaigns was dependent on the type of lockdown restrictions. Initially, there were a lot around food and FMCG related products, which was open for trade, and recipes and home cooking was very topical at the time.

“Then when e-commerce opened up, our influencers were used to activate a lot of campaigns around e-commerce e.g. driving online sales and opening of new customer accounts.”

He points to a campaign by a client in the financial sector as being particularly effective. #TheOlympian (a Sanlam campaign featuring gymnast Caitlin Rooskranz), he says, “was a great opportunity for influencers to start the conversation in an authentic way within their tribes around the special initiative. From an influencer perspective it had everything in it, user generated content, macro influencers tied to nano influencers, timing strategy and amazing brand follow through on the conversations”.

Celebrating TikTok

Stewart believes the type of content you create is what makes video so important. “The richer, the better; hence the success of video and the type of content created on TikTok and Twitch. What is important is that the expectation is for the platform to provide interactive entertainment where the user can take part,” he says.

So, what do we celebrate about TikTok? Stewart has a list:

TikTok is a space that celebrates quirky fun instead of what many perceived as the superficial aesthetics of Instagram’s #BestLife.
Influencers and their audience on TikTok seem more willing to engage with brands in fun, novel ways – anything, as long as it is entertaining.
While TikTok is very young, its content is slowly permeating into adult audiences as pop culture influence rises up from the youth to older siblings and parents. (Over 70% of TikTokkers are under the age of 25, compared to only 30% of Facebook users. The average age of active Twitch users is 21 years old, so it’s a pretty young – and also mostly male – audience.)
YouTube beauty videos are starting to be regarded as ‘too long’ and Instagram ‘too boring’, which has seen many of these beauty influencers transitioning onto TikTok. TikTok provided a way for these beauty influencers to showcase their looks in a fun way in 15 seconds. Some used this to push viewers to go to fuller and deeper video back on YouTube.

And who is using TikTok in South Africa? “A local streaming platform in South Africa is using influencers on TikTok to promote new shows being released. Similarly, music labels and independent musicians are approaching TikTokkers to use their music within their videos to bring attention to their songs,” he says.

“In fact, TikTok has shown immense power and influence in pop music. Most artists now release their chart-topping songs along with a dance challenge on TikTok. The first example was a dance challenge by Drake for his song ‘In My feelings’. Other examples:

Doja Cat – Say So (Three weeks as No.1 on the Billboard charts)
Kanye West with Nicki Minaj and Ty Dollar $ – New Body (Nicki Minaj’s verse went viral)
Megan the Stallion with Beyonce – Savage remix

South Africa’s top TikTok influencers include:

Wian Magician
Daniel Vermaak
Chane Grobler
Jessica Ballinger
Troy Shepherds
KingBerto
Witney Ramabulana
Damian
Connor Weyer
Kelly Kikx

Case study

For Dolinschek, a campaign she enjoyed seeing come to life and which attained great results was an awareness drive that aimed to push customers to specific deals for a local mobile network provider. “The premise was that because people need to connect more than ever during this time, they wanted to create awareness of their great deals that saved people money. The response was incredible and proved that the brand tapped into a specific need South Africans were faced with.

The strategy was to use existing brand customers as nano influencers to spread the word and drive audiences to the deals. They did this by telling their own stories of wanting to be connected and how they’re saving money through these deals. It worked exceptionally well because it was authentic conversations by real customers. Because nano influencers don’t have massive reach, although have highly engaged audiences, micro influencers were used to tap into bigger audiences.

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Beauty marketing in the age of influencers

24 August 2020

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“Beauty brands in South Africa are still doing very generic social media campaigns, using influencers with no real differentiating qualities. Brands want a little video tutorial ‘this is my morning skincare routine’ and a flat lay post of products. It’s contrived and I don’t know how effective it is because they all blend into one after a while,” says Mathahle Stofile, independent beauty editor and founder of The Matte Project (@thematteoproject).

Democratising beauty

As technology moved us into a world where everyone who had a smartphone and an internet connection had a voice, the conversations about beauty expanded. For the first time in history, the conversations weren’t just happening between beauty editors, marketers and models.

Voices that had not been considered before were all of a sudden bringing up realities that millions could relate to.

“I always though black girls can’t wear red lipstick.”

“I was made to feel ugly as a little girl and spent a chunk of my childhood avoiding the sun.”

“My 4C curls don’t look like the girls on Tumblr, somebody help.”

The response was a resounding, “Girl, me too.”

In one of the Asante Blush sessions we host with various women of ranging backgrounds and age groups, democratising beauty was one of the main themes that emerged. With many options presented to them, the women say they take great care in deciding how to physically represent themselves.

There is a push to be beautiful in your own way, natural or not. This growing trend aims towards celebrating all kinds and levels of beauty. It’s about beauty no longer being exclusive.

The desire for authenticity and a realistic view on beauty is something that is becoming increasingly demanded by consumers. Women know what is real and what is manufactured. Now that we have tools in our own hands that allow us to filter, edit and colour correct our own feeds, there is a tacit agreement that we all know where reality stops and filters start. The illusion has been shattered and thankfully so because girls can now know that even their faves don’t look like their filtered versions.

Influencers are not apolitical

While the shift in power being given to influencers, there are some concerns about that model as well. There is a tendency of brands going with well-known influencers while not delving deeper into whether or not the person is the correct fit. Even though micro influencers are growing in demand, brands can do more to find voices that match their stance.

That a brand manager doesn’t know a certain influencer cannot be the measure of whether someone fits the brand or not. There are amazing influencers who are going unnoticed when they have the potential to really elevate certain brands.

The issues that have always plagued the beauty industry, like colourism and conventional beauty being hyped as the highest ranking, have not disappeared despite the shifts in how beauty is marketed.

“The South African influencer tends to be very generic. It’s the same type of look, same hair, same complexion, same Gucci belt, same Dior perfume, same eyebrows. The content is not targeted or niche in any way – except the hair influencers.

“Sinovuyo Mondliwa is a great example of an influencer who sticks to one subject, produces helpful and practical content and always puts her reader’s interest first. Because of this, she has real influence, people go out and buy what she says is working for her,” Stofile adds.

When tech & IRL collide

The line between real life and digital life keeps fading. That is extending to influencers too.

As a business, Asante Blush started engaging with South Africa’s first virtual human, Kim Zulu. She’s making her mark as an influencer and because she is an anomaly in a sea of influencers, she and other virtual humans will also affect beauty marketing.

Kim Zulu believes that tech is bringing brands ever closer to their consumers.

“The global pandemic has hastened our pathway to more technology driven solutions, we see it across all consumption of media. Brands dealing directly with influencers enables them to get to the consumer faster in a wider variety of platforms. South Africa has some amazing tastemakers who engage their audiences consistently and authentically. They are an inspiration, giving me the confidence to express myself. Impact is always important as I believe that most want to make a difference in society,” she says.

The bottom line can never be excluded from beauty marketing or any kind of marketing. As budgets go to influencers instead of publications, the status quo is shifted.

Many local influencers are making a good living off their platforms, which is a positive shift towards financially empowering female entrepreneurs. The thing that remains to be seen is how sustainable this will be. It’s also important for marketers to be smart about their influencer selections. You want to go with people who will lead to campaigns converting into sales. You also want to create content that is authentic and interesting. Consumers will not be accepting generic feeds that look the same for much longer.

As beauty marketing decisions continue to be made in boardrooms across the country, there is an exciting conversion that is happening in South Africa that will give big brands a. run for their money.

Young entrepreneurs like Vuyi Zondi, who is the founder of Corium Beauty, and Mbali Sebapu, who founded cosmetics brand Hermosa Flor, are making their presence felt.

Whether big brands view these local brands as competition or not doesn’t change the fact that these brands are getting Rands that used to go to the powerhouses. Everyone, no matter how big and reputable, has to level up and has to connect with their consumers. That evens out the playing field in some ways and encourages excellence in how brands move forward.

BIO: Zama Nkosi-Mabuye and Cuma Pantshwa are the founders of Asante Blush, a women-led marketing agency with a strong focus and specialisation on female consumers.

Pantshwa started her career path in the field of television producing after completing her Journalism and Drama degree at Rhodes University. Her career was kick-started in one of South Africa’s iconic production companies, Urban Brew Productions in 2001 where she co-produced some of South Africa’s biggest television shows such as Yo.TV, Shift, Road to Riches and South Africa’s first live interactive show, Wildroom.

Nkosi-Mabuye is a creative director who has had a career in the publishing, ideation and marketing industry. Her love and dedication to storytelling, building genuine connections between brands and their consumers, as well as women-centric issues have been the common thread in all the roles that she has worked in.

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Hello Lucy. Please solve my marketing problems

24 August 2020

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Categories: Newsletters

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the creation of human-like intelligence that can process, learn, reason, plan, and discern natural language.

AI uses, among other technologies, natural language processing, speech recognition, robotics, machine learning (ML) and computer vision. An example of AI that you may already be engaging with is SIRI, presently available on Apple iPhones, who reacts to your voice on command. SIRI has the ability to ‘learn’ from you as you request information in the future.

According to Carolyn Frantz (Microsoft’s Corporate Secretary), AI will have a major influence on business and will equally have a dramatic impact on jobs. Frantz asserts that in the future, AI will make as much as 75 million jobs disappear in the USA but will be replaced by 133 million more challenging and less repetitive roles.

Besides its impact on HR, AI will also influence operations and production, inbound and outbound logistics, supply chain management (SCM), finance and as importantly, marketing.

One of the ways that AI is influencing marketing is with AI marketing assistants such as IBM Watson’s Lucy, a cognitive problem solver (in contrast with emotional), which acquires knowledge through a determined learning process.

Lucy can be used to determine market segments, develop products, conduct competitive or market analyses, media planning, providing the numeric marketing data needs in writing a marketing plan, assist with salient information in developing a marketing strategy, creating structured marketing content through a process called Natural Language Generation and so on.

According to IBM, Lucy is a powerful tool marketers “…can use for conducting online research, segmentation and planning and it is so powerful that it can do more in a minute than an entire team of marketers can achieve in months”.

Needless to say, the advantage of a marketing assistant like Lucy is that it can digest and analyse literally all the data a company possesses and once it has absorbed all of this data, marketing personnel, according to Watson, can ask the following questions, when attempting to solve marketing problems:

What are the personality characteristics and attributes of the organisation’s target audience based on a set of predetermined variables?
Which segments, towns or regions should be targeted first in order to maximise sales?
What content mix should be created for the target audience to maximise the attainment of the marketing and promotional mix objectives?
What is the current competitor activity and how can the organisation use such data to make better marketing decisions specifically within environments like retail channels?

The above are questions that companies need to answer in order to formulate marketing strategies that achieve the marketing goals as set by the enterprise. Lucy and similar AI marketing assistants can, therefore:

Create viable segments of a company’s target audience so that it can develop highly personalised content that is designed to appeal to such an audience (target market)
Assist in the planning of marketing strategies by interrogating the needs and wants of the target market and how best to maximise sales and profits because of such market intelligence through programmatic targeting as an example
Implement and control the different strategies so that the firm’s objectives may be realised based on data feedback loops put into place
Create promotion content that is customer-specific so that the organisation’s strategy and promotional mix can be directed specifically at satiating customer and organisational needs and wants.

According to MIT’s Brian Bergstein’s article, which was published in the MIT Technology Review in February 2020, AI as it currently stands:

Cannot question decisions so it is basically led by data which could be incorrect
Cannot explain the decisions it has made to qualify or quantify the decision
Cannot understand causation (why things happen following on from an occurrence)
Cannot measure psychographic typologies
Cannot reason qualitatively, e.g. how people feel about a brand; and as importantly
Cannot understand the concept of, for example, customer loyalty outside of quantitatively ‘crunching’ numbers

So, from the above points, AI must not be seen as a cure-all for an organisation’s marketing woes but rather a tool to assist the firm in achieving better results in the marketplace.

Application of AI in marketing

AI, and systems like Lucy (there are numerous others), will undoubtedly have a huge impact on content marketing as they become more affordable and more popular. They will help companies better understand their audience, and the data garnered by means of AI will allow marketers to position brands more effectively in the minds of current and future customers and put together more effective strategies so that organisational objectives may be attained.

AI will also help them understand what outcomes they can expect by pinpointing accurate customer expectation so that customer-specific targeting can be better planned based upon more reliable forecasting and market intelligence. According to the publication Smart Insights: The Financial Brand (March, 2018), the applications of AI in marketing can be found in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1: Application of AI in marketing

At present Cookies and other engagement tools follow customers as they interact with websites, products, and applications by providing various data sets that will form a personal ‘ecosystem’ that is programmatically targeted by tools and systems. Here relevance is the key to successful engagement by the consumer with variable pricing bases upon the propensity of interest and purchase.

AI can have an explosive impact on marketing throughout the organisation’s relationship with its customers… from demand generation through to the instilling of customer loyalty. It can therefore be used to cement strong and mutually rewarding relationships with customers and help to maximise the lifetime value of the customer.

The IMM Graduate School’s Dr Myles Wakeham is a motivated and well-connected academic and businessman who was instrumental in introducing and adopting CIPS at CPUT as a series of qualifications. He has consulted to a variety of institutions and organisations, such as the South African National Treasury, National, provincial and local government. He is also involved in international research, and with an academic consortium has researched the impact of IT on university education.

Carl Wakeham is a semi-retired ex marketing executive specialising business and brand strategy based on the Wild Coast. He is an ex director and shareholder of a marketing company based in Johannesburg. His special interests are brand development and positioning and has had the opportunity to work throughout Africa with businesses within the Naspers Group and many others He has had the opportunity to gain experience in the Far East and selected countries in Europe where he has lived. He has a BA/MBA and studied other business related fields whilst living in the Philippines and Ireland. He provides a consultancy service to various clients based on project work specifically in the communications /digital fields. He is actively involved in a digital media company where he is a shareholder.

BIO: The IMM Graduate School’s Maria Hamman has over 17 years of combined market research and CX consulting experience. She has worked on both market research projects and customer experience improvement projects with a broad knowledge of research due to working with multiple research methodologies both qualitative and quantitative.

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