Biz Trends 2015 Full

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2015 is a year in which momentous change will coalesce around rapid technological developments, economic reinvention, social revolution and political upheaval driven by rising social activism.

This era is akin to the moment in history when the horse-drawn carriage made way for the automobile, predicts our lead sponsor, Interbrand Sampson De Villiers.

As a journalist and B2B editor working for over 20 years in the media and marketing industry in South Africa, consumer and brand trends have always fascinated me. Curating the 2015 trends in partnership with Bizcommunity.com for #BizTrends2015 has been a real labour of love as it is a hugely creative undertaking.

Consumer insight and media and marketing trends are something every single person with a business and in business should be on top of. The accelerating pace of change in society today impacts on everything in work and play. We’ve done some of the work for you by curating the top trends from around the globe, locally, and from our generous industry influencers who participated.

We so appreciate our sponsor support in helping make this happen and taking this project to a whole new level: Interbrand Sampson De Villiers, Brand Alive, Millward Brown, Yellowwood, Meltwater, Branded Youth.

Thank you too to everyone at Bizcommunity who worked hard on making this special project work, with its apps, event, associated print products and social and marketing elements: Dries, Andre, Terry, Rod, Bev, Ilse, Megan, Jason, Leigh, David, Ruth, Lesley, Brandon, Mike and Graeme.

TOP TRENDS SA MEDIA & MARKETING TRENDS GLOBAL TRENDS DION CHANG EXCLUSIVE SPONSOR’S FORECAST

TREND CATEGORIES 1.ADVERTISING 2.AFRICA 3.BRANDING 4.CONSUMER RESEARCH 5.DIGITAL 6.MARKETING 7.MEDIA

Please do forward this PDF to your clients and network in the industry and in business.

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A very happy, bright and shiny 2015!

Louise Marsland Specialist Editor: Biz Trends 2015.

8.SOCIAL MEDIA 9.STRATEGY 10.YOUTH

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Your 2015: The consumer, content and collaboration Louise Marsland It's all about me, you and what we want. Now. No waiting around. This is the year the consumer and content will dominate and brands learn the meaning of true collaboration.

It is about tapping into the stories we all have to tell: individuals, brands, countries, continents. Our past, our present and the future we want. It is about our legacy, our craft and working together These are our top South African media, marketing, advertising communications trends for 2015 from all our interviews with the leadership of our local industry, research and the past year, following consumer and industry trends both locally and internationally.

This is what you need to keep on your agenda for this year (for more detail on each trend and links, click through to each trend category and the industry leader contributions):

Brandingstrategyinsider.com

Pattern: Human society is experiencing a fundamental shift in culture as the speed of change and technological innovation trumps even industrialisation.

Everything is up for review: our political and economic systems, religion, gender, family structure, race relations, culture, society... It is a time like no other to renew, refresh beliefs, start something.

1. ADVERTISING: Transformation The industry has had more than a decade since the first parliamentary hearings into lack of transformation in the South African advertising industry took place, to get its house in order. This year there are no more excuses as the Triple BEE codes take effect and pressure is put on agencies by their clients as regulations bite. It will be an industry "game changer" for 2015, warns Ogilvy & Mather South Africa CEO, Abey Mokgwatsane. A second trend for South Africa is true digital integration. We've lagged at international awards shows in recent years because we have fallen behind in this trend.

Influence: Become the creative powerhouse of Africa, producing unique, global, culturally-relevant work that truly reflects an understanding of consumer culture and nuance. Every global ad agency network is trying to gain traction in Africa. Let's show them how it's really done. The African way.

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2. AFRICA: Land of Opportunity One billion consumers. Burgeoning, aspirant middle class numbering 15 million in 11 of Africa's largest economies. Youngest population. Increasingly urbanised and connected via mobile. Africa's gross domestic product will grow by 50% to US$3.7tn over the next five years and Africa's consumer facing industries are expected to grow by more than $400bn by 2020. 93% have access to a cellphone and 334 million new smartphone subscribers are predicted in the next three years. A secondary trend is mobile adoption. The `timing needs to be right for brands launching into Africa and affordability is key. Listen to Africa.

Pattern: Growth. GDP per capita has grown 26% in the past decade. Incomes are rising. African consumers, many of whom have very little, are used to 'hacking life', coming up with innovative, makeshift solutions to problems. We are the original 'Maker Economy'. Mobile adoption is accelerating and the demand for home grown entertainment and content is insatiable. There is a new pride in African culture - look at the wholesale rejection on the continent of the latest sycophantic boy band/old rocker collaboration of that tired old ditty 'Do they know it's Christmas' to raise money for the fight against Ebola.

Influence: 'Made in Africa' - create home grown brands for Africa. We need to come up with solutions to our own challenges. Brands need to collaborate with consumers to find those solutions. A Nielsen analysis found that products developed or tailored specifically for Africa's consumers achieve a success rate of 40%, well above the standard 10%. It's our time. Now get on with it already.

3. BRANDING: Brand Personalisation

longer enough to understand each individual consumer. Data is the answer, analytics, the solution. "Your brand is no longer what you say it is. Your brand is what your customers tell each other it is," says Euphoria Telecom's CEO, George Golding.

Influence: Be really good: do good. Make a difference. Solve problems. Save the world. Be true to your consumer. Tell the truth. Keep your promises.

People actually care about such things. Really.

4. CONSUMER RESEARCH: The Experience Brand Conspicuous consumption is a trend damped down somewhat by the recession. Consumers have cut back radically on spending during the recession, particularly since food and petrol prices began rising locally.

Consumers are buying less stuff, but they still want brands to charm and entertain them, find solutions to societal ills. This time it is all about the experience a brand gives, how it makes their consumers feel, the positive impact on their lives. We may still have a dominant mall culture in South Africa, but we also go there to be entertained, which feeds into this trend.

Pattern: Consumers are gravitating towards source - they want to know the origin of ingredients, suppliers, the brand back story. It is why newer, craft brands or brands that hark back to their artisanal roots are doing well.

Influence: This feeds into the society we need to create after this apocalyptic recession, political and economic upheaval. Brands that come up with solutions to real problems, will win their hearts and leave a lasting impression.

5. DIGITAL: Mergers & Acquisitions

This is the era where humans are plugging into technology with wearables and brands are trying to become more human by listening to their consumers and taking on board the influence of the crowd. Brand personalisation is a current mega-trend which is fuelled by brand storytelling and purpose-filled branding.

Brands want to be seen to be good. We want them to do good.

As the media and agency land grab continues in Africa by the global agency and media networks, 2015 is the year the big mergers and acquisitions of 2014 need to prove themselves and perform. The measure will be in the integrated work that wins awards.

Pattern: Mass production, stereotyping, lifestyle measures, profiling is no

Pattern: The acquisition assault is not yet over, as the global networks pay

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attention to other media types such as out of home (Continental has been bought by JCDecaux, it was announced in December); merchandising (WPP acquired Smollen) and experiential (again, WPP, bought EXP.) Influence: Competition will be fierce locally as there are only so many clients to go around, but it does present an unparalleled opportunity for many of the younger, formerly digital-only agencies to head up North to opportunity that awaits in Africa. And of course there are some global brands that they will probably get to work on too, given that the talent in our local industry is right up at the top there with the best in the world, creatively and digitally.

6. MARKETING: Content Marketing

7. MEDIA: Programmatic Media Buying Programmatic Media Buying is being seen globally as the media buying tool that acts as a magic bullet to solve all online advertising issues. eMarketer predicts that advertisers in the US will spend $3.36bn on "real-time bidding," up from $2bn in 2012. "Programmatic is a catchall term that many people are using to categorise everything from behavioural and intent-based targeting to real-time bidding and exchange-based buying of inventory," Peter Naylor, former EVP at NBC Universal, tells AdWeek. "Programmatic is advertising's newer, better mousetrap." There you have it. But marketers still need a demand-generation strategy. It is not email marketing.

This will also be the 'year of content' without a doubt on the nitty gritty of campaign implementation. Almost every one of our contributors to this trends report has referenced content as a trend. The trick will be producing content that consumers want to engage with, share, and which will generate leads.

Because this is also the year content marketing becomes content selling. Great content can build a compelling business case for potential customers, can be targeted and results measured.

Pattern: The fact is, that marketers will continue to be confused by it, media owners will champion it, and media planners will rail against it. And it will dominate 2015.

Pattern: Yes, there is a difference between brand storytelling and content marketing. Brand storytelling is defined best by Aesop agency: "In essence, it's the application of narrative thinking and storytelling techniques to define brands, inform strategy and structure creative activity". According to the Content Marketing Institute. "Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action."

8. SOCIAL MEDIA: Hashtag Social Activism

Influence: Curating content is still a sought-after skill. Opportunities abound for brands which become owners of their own content channels as the media industry continues to implode and audiences fragment between different media and channels; and social media platforms keep changing the rules.

Brands have to work hard to engage their consumers for longer than 30 seconds in the places they are both comfortable with.

Influence: Anyone who actually understands it and can coherently explain it, will be our industry person of the year. Thankfully, AdWeek has done a Programmatic for Dummies series. I can recommend it!

Social activism is a growing trend as our world becomes more connected and physical boundaries disappear. "Hashtag activism" is a way for people to rally around a cause, an issue, or a "Bashtag" in which a person or organisation are trolled instead.

Pattern: In the early days of social media, brands made mistakes and were often on the receiving end of trolls, rightly or wrongly so. It is our current narrative as a society - this global trend to transparency and 'having our say' on everyone and everything, including brands.

Influence: Social media amplifies issues and people's concerns and causes. So social listening strategy and tools are key for brands to gain traction in this volatile space.

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9. STRATEGY: Brand Storytelling Brand storytelling across every channel, be it earned, paid or owned media, will dominate 2015. The same buzzwords will be thrown around: authenticity, transparency, narrative, content, collaborative, etc. It is the storytelling era: "People don't have 30 seconds to be interrupted - but they always have 30 seconds to hear a great story," reports SayQuarterly.com.

Pattern: The influence exerted on brands is immense. In this wired, networked, socially-cohesive world, where truth is everything - from fake-real reality shows to social media - people's lives, including their fantasy lives, are on show and that includes brands. In order to friend your consumer, you need to share too. Your values, your history, your craft, your 'family'. Brands will stop faking stories of fictitious founders and kindly uncles, or embellishing the narrative. It's time for the rawness of real life.

Influence: Brands that crack that rich narrative, provide the awesome stories and surround them with considered and informed content marketing strategies, will win 2015. No doubt.

Brands getting it right, including the ad everyone references, and everyone wishes they'd done: Coke Rainbow. Some more examples from eConsultancy.

10. YOUTH: The Millennial Effect We have been bombarded the last couple of years with reports and surveys on the current Millennial generation, also known as the 'boomerang' or '3G' generation (three generations) because they are having to move back in with their parents due to the recession - joining their grandparents who can't cope on their pensions. The most important point about millennials, no matter where they fall into the large age grouping - they are our first generation of truly digital citizens and they are currently in the workforce. They are the ones who have to fix things: economically, politically, culturally. So that is why what they do and say carries incredible weight. They have to try give us a future.

And they do have a need to want to leave their mark on the world.

Pattern: A key trend is that they are pushing back against brand marketing but do believe brands have the power to influence change and are supporting the ones which do make a difference. They expect a lot from brands; bravery, collaboration, authenticity. This is a generation hard hit by the recession and financial uncertainty they have witnessed or experienced. They are delaying many of the customary rites of adulthood as a result: marriage, parenthood, career.

Influence: Brands need to help millennials navigate this rapidly changing world. Work with them in creating new solutions to societal ills. They are the most educated generation in history, they see you, really see you. There is no space for brand confusion. Work with them. Ask them what they need. They will tell you. (A side eye here to Generation Z, the teenagers still at school, who seem much nicer, more empathic, philosophical, tolerant and entrepreneurial than their older millennial siblings. We expect big things from them in the next decade).

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15 global trends for 2015 Curated by Louise Marsland From the Sharing Economy to Virtual Reality Marketing, a Tactile Internet and Thought Control, these are some of the trends which will influence business and brands for years to come.

While there are very specific trends for 2015 in consumer insight for the South African and African market, we can't ignore the mega-trends and shifts in the marketing landscape internationally.

This is our list of some of the most interesting trends ahead, curated from top marketing, branding, advertising and tech brands and media, internationally, with all the relevant links for further information and sharing:

1. The sharing economy As the internet enables the efficient sharing of information with unprecedented ease, the idea of a sharing economy is potentially huge, says Ericsson Consumer Lab in its annual mobile consumer 2015 trends report. It basically enables consumers to enjoy the benefits of use without the hassle of ownership in areas beyond that of transportation only. "In our research we found that more than half of smartphone owners are already open to renting other people's leisure equipment, rooms and household appliances. 46% could even imagine using a smartphone app to book a dinner in someone else's home." Download 'Hot consumer Trends 2015' by Ericsson Consumer Lab.

2. Maker movement One of the mega-trends to note is the Maker Movement which has been credited with the rise of the Maker Economy - a more collaborative, creative economic model for the future. 'Maker culture is a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture, including art, crafts and creativity. 'Maker culture' emphasises learning-through-doing (constructivism) in a social environment. The rise of the maker culture is closely associated with the rise of hacker spaces, Fab Labs and other maker spaces, of which there are now many around the world, including over 100 each in Germany and the United States. Hackerspaces allow like-minded individuals to share ideas, tools, and skillsets.' (Source: Wikipedia).

Mainstream business publications like Time and Forbes, as well as marketing and technology media, are now starting to follow the Maker Movement and highlight this burgeoning substrata of mainstream business and culture.

3. Internet of Things With wearables going mainstream and the internet connecting our devices to everything else, there is the need for "deep knowledge" of smart devices and the "rise of DevOps" in advertising agencies, along with the acquisition of new talent in the form of hardware engineers to get involved in the development of product design and 3D printing and "prototyping products so that a creative idea may now be given some physical form," reports AdAge in its trend report for 2015.

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4. Predictive marketing JWTIntelligence's Future 100 report for 2015, reports that big data is enabling extreme personalisation and also predictive marketing and retail, to track "serendipitous discovery" which resonates with consumers and is what marketers need to unlock. "There's a tension between the convenience and opportunity offered by predictive retail and advertising, and rising recognition of the importance of randomness, chance and surprise. Innovators and technologists will increasingly focus on incorporating chance discovery to complement prediction and automation."

7. Tactical Internet JWT Future 100 describes the 'Tactile Internet' as a "Sufficiently responsive, reliable network connectivity which will enable [haptic technology, robots and the Internet of Things] to deliver physical, tactile experiences remotely." They refer to the Tactile Internet as a "true paradigm shift" which will be able to interconnect with the traditional wired internet, the mobile internet and the Internet of Things- thereby forming an internet of entirely new dimensions and capabilities." Watch.

5. Visual content marketing Visual content marketing is more successful than any other form of communication, says Reuters. Marketers who embrace visual content reap the rewards of higher returns - in terms of more fans, followers, readers, leads, clients and, of course, revenue. "Visual content drives engagement.

Neuromarketing science confirms it."

6. Wearables Ad Age reports that wearables will change how agencies operate, as wearables and smart devices will produce a lot of data and agencies need to know how those devices work and mine that data for insights. "Most importantly, wearables will provide marketers and agencies with data that has more situational context than adland has previously seen."

8. Virtual reality marketing Virtual reality is one of the trends from CES 2015 that could change advertising forever. While still mainly part of the 'trade show' floor, Virtual Reality Marketing got a shot in the arm with the cheap cardboard headset released by Google which could put it in reach of the consumer. It is envisioned that virtual reality "experiences" for consumers will contain advertising units, much like in video games and television advertising, reports Portada-Online.

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9. Cognitive technology It's not quite AI (Artificial Intelligence), but cognitive technology is about systems that "learn over time to predict and intuit human desires that are being integrated into consumer devices. With the advent of intelligent personal assistants like Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Google Now, we're moving toward a future in which mobile devices harness AI and the rich data contained in a phone - calendar, search history, payment history and social media activity - to anticipate their owners' needs, JWTIntelligence highlights in Future 100.

10. Third-way commerce "Charity and profitability have traditionally been viewed as mutually exclusive, but a new wave of business models is establishing a 'third-way' that combines social good with sales and marketing-and it's proving popular with ethically minded Millennials."

JWTIntelligence advises brands that rather than focus their efforts on selfserving content, brands should increasingly use innovation and social initiatives with genuine merit to tell their stories, and let social media do the rest.

patterns are no longer defined by 'traditional' demographic segments such as age, gender, location, income, family status and more. "Successful products, services and brands will transcend their initial demographics almost instantaneously. Never stop scanning all demographics for relevant new innovations."

13. Behavioural economics There needs to be a new research model that looks at the problem of why people have stopped buying your client's product. The Guardian reports that advertising and marketing are a little too fixated with changing the way we think about brands, rather than changing the way we buy and urges that behavioural insights could help agencies and brands stand out in a crowded category.

14. Collaborative creativity People will seek genuine inspired collaboration - and the chance to bring together the best minds, ideas and opportunities, predicts Added Value. "The connections people make will aim to give new perspectives, new insights, new stories, even new skills. They will be deep, rich and enlightening."

11. Culture of enrichment

15. Thought control

This year will also be the year that people seek to get the very best from themselves and the most from their lives, reports Added Value. "They will be increasingly aware that they only live once - and want to squeeze every last drop. They will want to be actively involved, deeply enriched and want to seize every single day."

A vast majority of consumers think we will be able to use our thoughts to control domestic appliances by 2020. Ericsson Consumer Lab found that over a third of consumers are interested in using a smart watch that conveys touch gestures or their pulse to others. Interestingly, 40% of smartphone users would like to use a wearable device to communicate with others directly through thoughts - and more than two-thirds believe this form of communication will be commonplace by 2020. 72% of those surveyed think we will also use our thoughts to control household appliances by 2020.

Download 'Hot consumer Trends 2015' by Ericsson Consumer Lab.

12. Post-demographic consumerism People - of all ages and in many markets - are constructing their own identities more freely than ever and post-demographic consumerism is one of Trendwatching.com's top trends for 2015. The outcome is that consumption

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Business and consumer trends for 2015

By Dion Chang

Trend strategist, Dion Chang, is the founder of research trend specialists, Flux Trends. He is an innovator, creative thinker and walking ideas bank. He takes the unique view of "trends as business strategy". Flux Trends - specialises in understanding the consumer mindset and identifying unexpected business opportunities within shifting trends. For more trends as business strategy visit: www.fluxtrends.com. @dionchang | View profile

"All rise for standing boardrooms."

Social activism and the underpinning of digital solutions to major market innovation will characterise this year, according to renowned South African trend analyst, Dion Chang, in this exclusive list of 2015 trends for Biz Trends 2015.

1. Active citizenry in South Africa - AKA 'Yes we can' Irritated, annoyed and fed-up with the lack of service from Government monopolies and parastatals, South African citizens are doing it for themselves.

Parkhurst, Johannesburg, was one of the first suburbs to get high-speed fibreto-fibre home broadband last year, supplied by a Stellenbosch-based start-up company.

And then there is the ongoing e-toll saga. The people of South Africa have spoken and rejected the implementation of e-tolls; creating debate, discourse and the rise of The Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance, the driving force behind the e-toll opposition.

'Privatisation' is the recurring buzzword as citizens seek alternatives for postal service, electricity and more. Not a new idea in the global space, the implementation of privatisation, involving a genuine transfer of public assets to the general population, would not only be a constructive solution to citizen frustration, it would also significantly help to create a real sense of participation and inclusion in the economy.

2. Social media commerce 2.0 the sociable way to shop The term Web 2.0 was used in the first Web 2.0 conference held in 2004 and defined as a second generation of technology development and web design.

Social media commerce is the evolution of social media - the next generation of online shopping - with the hot spots being Instagram and Pinterest joining last year's Starbucks' Tweet-a-Coffee and Amazon's #amazoncart.

Evolving into a shopping catalogue, Pinterest joined the social media ecommerce fray last year with the introduction of its Rich Pins feature. This enables brands and retailers to include metadata like real-time pricing, stock availability and a 'Buy This' link to product images to make pins more purchase-friendly. Categorised under the sub-heads: Place Pins, Article Pins, Product Pins, Recipe Pins, and Movie Pins, the Product Pins include real time pricing, availability and where to buy.

Over on Instagram, Curalate (a marketing and analytics suite for the visual web) have now introduced a "like2buy" app, which now enables users to buy directly, via an Instagram post with registered brands.

3. Click and collect. Fetch and go A survey from Which?, a company that reviews products and services, found that over 60% of people shopping online last year had problems with delivery.

Enter Click and Collect. A convenient solution for online shopping that offers customers the option of collecting their purchases at convenient locations like shopping centres or petrol stations.

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In the US, Amazon has installed Click and Collect lockers in shopping centres.

Pioneering Click and Collect in South Africa, Makro finalised an agreement with Sasol last year, which will provide nationwide access to Sasol's extensive forecourt network.

Makro is also acquiring access to other sites to enable click and collect delivery. Using a proven technology already deployed in other markets (a code sent to customers' cellphones opens the locker) these lockers will be located in safe and accessible locations including fast food restaurants, office parks and other Makro stores.

4. Wi-Fi - Maslow's new hierarchy of needs Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs most basic needs has been adapted to the new world order. Wi-Fi is now a serious contender as a basic need. As we live in a connected world, people feel vulnerable when they're without a Smartphone or can't access a wireless network.

Image via 123RF

5. Fast casual restaurants eat into fast food market share Just how intense is the need for Wi-Fi? Some Londoners unwittingly signed over their firstborn children in exchange for access to free Wi-Fi last year. An experiment was conducted whereby an unsecured, free Wi-Fi hotspot was set up in a busy London district so they could see who would fall victim to the "Herod Clause" and other forms of IT theft. The 'Herod Clause' was put into the Terms and Conditions of accessing the free Wi-Fi. In agreeing to gaining access to the free Wi-Fi, users had to sign away their first-born child. Six people clicked "Agree".

If you give people free Wi-Fi, they might not willingly give you their first born, but they'll happily give you their (increasingly rare) loyalty.

'Fast casual' is still a niche but it's the segment expanding the quickest. In the US, there are roughly seven times as many fast-food restaurants as fast-casual eateries-yet both categories notched roughly a $9.3bn increase in sales over three years.

Positioned somewhere between fast food restaurants and casual dining restaurants, the fast casual restaurant is a fast growing concept. Being a hybrid of the two concepts, they provide counter service and offer more customised, freshly- prepared and high-quality food than traditional QSRs (Quick Service Restaurants), in an upscaled and inviting ambiance. Brands such as Chipotle Mexican Grill, Panera Bread, Qdoba Mexican Grill and Baja Fresh are considered the top restaurants in this category.

As the traffic growth in the fast casual segment surpassed that of every other segment for the fifth consecutive year, Big QSR brands such as McDonald's, Subway and KFC have been facing a huge threat by the leading fast casual restaurants.

world, we discover there is still an entire offline life to live.

6. Wearable tech becomes 'computational couture' 2014 was wearable tech's big debut but 2015 sees a high tech fashion romance blossoming. Style met wearable technology with 'smart' jewellery at New York Fashion Week last year with novel accessories like an 18k gold-plated ring featuring semiprecious stones that connects to a Smartphone and alerts the user to any notifications.

But wearable tech is moving beyond smart watches and jewellery, and into smart garments and wearable textiles.

"Companies are making gadgets that are attached to your body. That's not innovation, really," says product engineer, Amanda Parkes, of Skinteractive Studios. She's designed a dress that uses piezoelectric material to generate electricity from wearers' body movement. The energy is then stored in a battery that can later be used to charge a device. The sports industry has been the frontrunner in using nano technology in textiles to monitor athletes' performances. 2015 sees this technology move from the laboratories and onto the streets.

Living in two worlds means that we actually work doubly hard - so at the end of the year, you've not worked 12 months but essentially 24.

8. Sit, stand, move. Agile action in the workplace With the high level of technology used to communicate and work, the concept that an employee needs to be positioned at the same desk in the same office every day is changing.

Agile working creates a flexible environment, which leads to greater productivity. By creating different working areas within an office, the staff has the freedom to work wherever they want, whenever they want.

7. Digital burnout. Mobile meltdown Recent research has found that we now spend more time on our devices (on average, eight hours and 41 minutes) than we do sleeping. This 'always on, always connected' lifestyle is what is fuelling digital burnout. It has rewired our brains to be in a permanent multitasking mode.

Our new default reaction to any spare time is to delve into cyberspace. No one simply stares into space any more. This leads to digital addiction, a new healthcare threat, which is being formally listed in some countries.

Digital addiction keeps our minds hyperactive. Once you're on your smartphone, you get tunnel vision: it's like delving into a cyber rabbit hole.

This not only blurs the boundaries between work and play, but we become less aware of the physical world around us. When we do come back to our physical

Image via smh.com

Giving the workforce the freedom and autonomy to make individual choices ignites creativity and fresh thinking. Fluidity creates new ideas and perspectives, improves communication and boosts productivity across diverse departments. Google and Unilever have adopted agile working with measurable results in productivity.

All rise for standing boardrooms. Nobody gets too comfortable and everyone is alert enough to be focused on setting a goal before they leave standing

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boardrooms. With no chairs, meetings are limited to a maximum of 30 productive minutes, after which everyone leaves with a specific plan of action.

the use of drones for commercial purposes without a special license, but the drone revolution is unstoppable.

9. Doctors go digital. Healthcare 3.0

Drones are already widely in use in South Africa for commercial filming and anti-poaching operations. The City of Cape Town have plans to test drones which would be used to monitor land occupations, crime, scrap yards suspected of harbouring stolen copper, shack fires and disasters.

Remote patient monitoring - a trend linked and enabled by wearable tech - is poised to revolutionise the healthcare industry. Cisco, a multinational technology corporation, presented their offering of remote patient monitoring at My World of Tomorrow in Johannesburg last year.

A system whereby a satellite clinic in a remote area run by nursing staff, is able to consult with a network of doctors for patients who have ailments that they can't treat or who need further diagnosis. A patient's vital signs are uploaded into a cloud-based system, which the doctor accesses in real time and via webcam, and allows the doctor to speak to the patient and nurse.

By March this year, South Africa will be introduced to My Doctor24, a local online service that puts you in touch with a doctor who will assess the urgency of your ailment, via remote consultation.

For healthcare professionals, 'Figure 1' is an app for discussing medical issues on a global scale, and is already proving invaluable in South Africa, connecting doctors in rural areas with city centres.

10. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's just another drone From delivering pizzas to saving lives, the sky's the limit for drone technology.

Ambulance Drone is an all-purpose medical toolkit that can be automatically flown to any emergency situation and used to guide people to make nontechnical lifesaving procedures.

A courier service in China is currently testing high-tech drones that can deliver packages to remote locations. With a built-in navigation system, these drones can go where trucks can't. Amazon has promised drone delivery by 2016.

Last year the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) clamped down on

Image via 123RF

A Pretoria-based company is developing a drone that could spray tear gas and fire rubber bullets at protesters. The company revealed that an unnamed mining company ordered 25 units.

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2015: On the cusp of a New Age Jez Frampton and Doug de Villiers "The future of business is personal."

Digital technology is ending the long reign of the book as a repository of knowledge and ushering in a world of interconnectedness, intelligent machines, vast data sets, and powerful algorithms, says Jez Frampton, global CEO, Interbrand and Doug de Villiers, Group CEO, Interbrand Sampson De Villiers.

It's sometimes hard to appreciate the power of a historical moment. An era isn't always defined by one seismic event, but sometimes by a thousand little tremors shaking - and reshaping - the world.

We are living in such a moment, quite literally on the cusp of a new age. As futurist David Brin theorised in late 2013, each century effectively begins in its 14th year. However dominant influences and technology from the previous century appear to be, new elements come to the fore and shift the mood. The Doug de Villiers arc of the riding century becomes perceptible. If that is so, then 2014 was no ordinary year.

Horses and cars In the early 20th century, life was changing at a pace never-before seen. From the introduction of electricity, indoor plumbing, and refrigeration to washing machines, telephones, and life-saving medical breakthroughs, modern progress was raising the standard of living on all fronts. And then there was the development that turbocharged modern civilisation's ascent: the automobile.

For thousands of years, the most efficient mode of transportation usually involved a horse. By revolutionising mobility, the car made things possible that simply weren't possible before. People now had more freedom to choose where they could live, where they could work, who and what they saw - and how often. It ignited a desire to travel, to explore. The car moved us collectively from a limited, static state of being, to a more dynamic, expansive one. It catalysed an evolutionary leap.

But did people at the time perceive it that way? When the car emerged, were they aware of its profound implications for society? Probably not. If they weren't, it was because the transformation, though rapid from a historical standpoint, was gradual - and the new, for a time, still mingled with the old.

Yet, among the most perceptive there was surely a moment, a "horses and cars" moment, when the trajectory of the future and magnitude of the oncoming cultural shift became evident.

In this transitional space, a period when horses and cars co-existed on city streets, a torch was passed. The long agrarian epoch that had defined and governed human life for so long was coming to a close, and a completely new chapter in human experience was about to begin.

For those of us in business, it may well have been a pivot point - a time to pause, connect the dots, gain a broader view, and align our visions and our plans with the unstoppable currents carrying us forward.

The shifting of the ages

But what will those currents be in 2015? Which great advances and ideas have already set the future of business in motion?

Given the rapidity and immensity of the changes we've witnessed since the dawn of industrialisation - and the degree to which these changes altered the way we began to live and do business at various points - our modern era can be divided into distinguishing features and events. Through the lens of

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branding, we at Interbrand have defined and reshaped business: the Age of Identity, the Age of Value, the Age of Experience, and the forthcoming Age of You. Many of us in business know that the term "branding" referred originally to a crude mark of ownership, literally burned into the hides of cattle. While this is an interesting bit of trivia, it also gives us some perspective and helps us realise just how far the art and science of branding has come and how sophisticated it has grown.

In the post-World War II era, this mark of ownership evolved into a powerful symbol of differentiation and identification in the period we refer to as the Age of Identity. Mass communication media like TV, radio, and widely circulated print material that characterised this age elevated the status and significance of brands among both consumers and business owners. Here is where a relationship was cemented, trust was built, and a symbiotic evolutionary process began to accelerate. In the Age of Value, beginning in the late 1980s, quantifying the intangible aspects of branding proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that brands had concrete value - and that leading companies needed to take these business assets seriously.

As products and services multiplied exponentially and businesses gained a deeper appreciation of the role brands play in delivering satisfying and differentiated experiences to consumers, a new age - The Age of Experience was under way. But coinciding with these deeper realisations about the importance of experience was the emergence of a phenomenon that would change the world forever: the internet.

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Benefitting immensely from the rise of digital and, later, mobile technology, savvy brands like Apple grew stronger and new category-killers like Google, Amazon and Facebook, soon reset customer expectations and significantly raised the bar for brand experiences.

Today, the multiplication of channels has pushed brands to strive for the greater levels of clarity and consistency across touch points; and necessitated the creation of ecosystems of integrated products, services, information, and entertainment: both physical and digital. And, due to another game changer social media - consumers are more empowered than ever before, more influential than ever before, and expect seamless interactions, responsiveness, 24/7 accessibility, customisation options, and high levels of personalisation. In a sense, they increasingly expect brands to know them.

The Age of You As digital technology continues to weave its way into every aspect of our lives, and more of who we are is captured on servers and hard drives, the Age of

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Experience is giving way to a new era - one of ubiquitous computing. The shift in this direction is observable nearly everywhere and virtually unstoppable. In fact, we have reached a "horses and cars" moment of our own. Think, for instance, of people casually reading in a train or in a cafĂŠ these days. Some are reading books and magazines, and a growing number are engaging with a device - smartphones, tablets, laptops and e-readers. The significance of this is greater than it appears.

The nearly 600-year-old innovation that kicked off the original information age, the printing press - widely regarded as one of the most influential events in human history - has surely passed its peak and is swiftly being replaced by text via digital interface. In the way that the automobile effectively ended the long agrarian period and ushered in the comforts, conveniences, and wonders of modernity, digital technology is ending the long reign of the book as a repository of knowledge and ushering in a world of extreme speed and efficiency, instant access, interconnectedness, intelligent machines, vast data sets, and powerful algorithms.

Like the printing press in its day, digital technology is revolutionising the way we live and process information, impacting modes of production, impacting traditional work processes, and increasing the demand for core devices that can do more things for us. And the key to getting our devices to do more for us in our data.

Now that the world is filling with devices and more people own not only one, but several (including wearables), the world is quietly being filled with someone elses: sensors. As ecosystems become more fully integrated, these sensors (on our bodies, in our homes, and in our devices) will be able to talk to each other in new ways. Already, our devices can check our pulses, count the calories we have burned, and calculate how close we are to our personalised fitness goals; they can save energy in our homes by controlling thermostats and lighting; they can allow us to pay our bills and remind us when our payments are coming up; they can track where we go and make recommendations based on where we are; and they keep us connected to everyone and everything we care about most.

All this activity, of course, generates massive amounts of data, which, if analysed properly, can reveal the insight brands need in order to understand who customers are and what they really need. As more of us come online as data repositories, machines get smarter, and all devices are working in concert, supply chains will reorganise around individuals. Ecosystems will become "Mecosystems" - ecosystems that revolve around and cater to you.

From the way we manage our personal brands and share pieces of ourselves through various social media platforms to the increasingly personalised world of commerce - which uses purchase histories and location-based services to tailor products, events, services, and offers to whoever we are, wherever we are - our data is creating value for ourselves, for brands, and for the system at large, every second of every day.

Brands that seek to lead in the Age of You, ruled by Mecosystems, will have to recognise the human in the data, uncover genuine insights, and create a truly personalised and curated experience.

To put it simply, the future of business is personal. *Interbrand Sampson de Villiers is the lead sponsor of Biz Trends 2015.

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TREND: Transformation Industry pundits across the globe and locally believe the industry is experiencing the greatest shift it has ever known, as the scale of change across business, politics, technology and consumer culture accelerates. In South Africa, this is also the year of transformation, as the revised Triple BEE codes take effect in April.

Abey Mokgwatsane, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather South Africa, emphasises that compliance with the new BEE codes will be a gamechanger in 2015. Coupled with a tough trading environment, agencies will have to "operate with a value mindset" and work with marketers in aiding transformation in the industry to reflect the reality of South Africa's diverse population, he adds.

This search for black talent is the biggest challenge facing advertising agencies and marketers and is already impacting on brand relationships, adds Neo Mashigo, co-executive creative director, Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg.

While the educators such as Dr Ludi Koekemoer, CEO of the Triple A, urge the industry to develop the talent pool; talent retention also needs to be encouraged within the agencies, emphasises Odette van der Haar, CEO, Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA).

Jonathan Deeb, executive creative director, FCB, says content seems to have killed the commercial, but what it really means for agencies is that there is an opportunity for agencies to create uniquely South African content with cultural nuances to excite and engage consumers.

In the end, it is also clients who are creating this paradigm shift in the agency model as everything speeds up and brands become "content", and agencies have to understand their clients' business and operations like never before, offers Felix Kessel, CEO of OwenKessel Leo Burnett. However, Brett Morris, CEO of FCB South Africa, warns the industry not to forget the basics of marketing communication - that the challenge is to still create that emotional work that moves people. *Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

The creatives are also all agreed on the fact that true integration of digital into South African advertising agencies has to follow global trends in this regard and that the industry has to deliver on it this year in order to start delivering award-winning and effective work of an international standard. Says Xolisa Dyeshana, Joe Public executive creative director (ECD): "Every year we have these kinds of polls and everyone talks about integration, but I don't think we have cracked it yet. Imagine how we could make our single idea live on all those screens? Now is Africa's time!"

And firmly on their radar is the need to highlight the good that brands do.

Purpose-driven branding needs to move from talk to action, says Pepe Marais, chief creative officer and senior partner, Joe Public Group. "The more the world feels devoid of meaning, the more people are attracted to brands that display a deeper sense of purpose." ECD of 1886, Stu Stobbs, is more blunt, saying 2015 is the year that "brands will grow a conscience and deliver work that shows they care". In some cases they really will.

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We need more magical thinking

By Xolisa Dyeshana

Xolisa Dyeshana is the executive creative director at Joe Public. @XolisaDyeshana | View profile

"This will be the year of survival of the most innovative."

Will this be the year of true integration, with digital woven seamlessly into campaigns and integrated into the fabric of all agencies? Xolisa Dyeshana, executive creative director, Joe Public, certainly hopes so.

"Every year we have these kind of polls and everyone talks about integration, but I don't think we have really cracked it yet. Imagine if we could make our single-minded idea truly live on all those different platforms?"

Dyeshana joined Joe Public in 2006 as creative director. He was chairperson for the Loerie Awards in 2014. He believes the industry has been changing things up for a while, but there is still much to be done. "We need pieces of work that look at old mediums in new ways and address the reality of South Africa, such as the Coca-Cola Rainbow campaign."

"If you look at the reality of SA - as much as the digital side of things is picking up - traditional media still has its space, but it's competing with a whole lot

more. Hence we need to evolve how we look at everything and ensure that we are always resonating and engaging."

For 2015, Dyeshana wants to see more of: • More people-centred digital solutions: "We are still grappling with overwhelming technology. We are not seeing enough of how technology enables humanity. We are missing storytelling on those channels, missing those connections. We start to put the technology before the idea, rather than the idea before the technology." • A truly South African aesthetic: "For a while now, our work has lacked a truly South African aesthetic - it wasn't based on truly South African insights, or solving South African challenges. I am finding we are now doing work grounded in insights that are uniquely South African. The net effect is that our work starts to have an identity, much like South America or India and I hope we go on to define that even more in 2015."

Dyeshana's advice to industry for 2015: "I think for me this will be the year of survival of the most innovative. We have to, now more than ever, be pioneering in our thinking, no matter which medium we are using. We need to give our clients more bang for their buck. For my peers and colleagues, hopefully this will be the year of calculated risk taking that leads to breakthrough business solutions."

His advice to clients this year: "I feel that to a large extent, what has transpired these past couple of years, because of trading conditions, is that marketers have become extremely cautious and a lot of the work we are seeing is extremely logical and there is very little magic coming through. That goes especially for the bigger mediums like television."

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"In this economy, the only way to stand out and to make people fall in love with your brand is to bring back the magic. Because when that is there, even price becomes a secondary factor, just look at brands like Apple. Clients need to allow us to do groundbreaking work and be brave enough to buy it." *Xolisa Dyeshana was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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This is the content era

On the brand side, Mashigo says we will see a continuation of genuine storytelling efforts and consumer engagement.

By Neo Mashigo

Neo Mashigo is the co-ECD at O&M JHB. @neomashigo View profile

"Stories need to feel real, fresh, consumers are demanding more honesty from brands."

The search for black talent to tell the real stories of South Africa is the biggest challenge facing advertising agencies and marketers in the next few years and is already impacting on brand relationships, says Neo Mashigo co-executive creative director, Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg.

Brands need to understand that a closer relationship with their consumers is now the current status quo - and those consumers will let you know, very publically, when they are dissatisfied, as brands have seen with public billboards and the like on social media in recent times, says Mashigo, who has worked across top brands at agencies O&M, Draftfcb, Network BBDO and at the SABC.

"There will be less dependency on music and dancing and shallow stuff, celebrities. Brands will find more ways to engage... to demonstrate why this brand is relevant to your life. As communicators we will have to dig deeper, to the brand itself.

"Most of that is driven by how much more we are engaging with online content, because content forces you to allow people into your space. It chooses when people engage online. It forces a closer relationship with people and the activities we have been seeing with FNB and Cell C, where consumers put up billboards to express their dissatisfaction... We will see more of it."

The real South Africa and African perspective will be visible, reports Mashigo.

"My sense is we have been working with a pretentious South Africa where we create a world in our ads that won't work anymore. That fake combined diverse lifestyles. Stories need to feel real, fresh, consumers are demanding more honestly from brands and to reflect more our reality.

"The era of sensationalising things is over. Our world is too close to us. If you are going to sell washing powder, your story needs to be more real than a laboratory demo, for example, how do you talk to three guys in a flat about washing their clothes?"

Talent search Mashigo says the closer consumer interaction is forcing brands in 2015 to be more careful about how they talk to their consumers. "We are going to definitely see consumers engaging on what they like and don't like about brands - vocally. Consumers never used to complain much, especially the mass market, but that has changed and it will force brands to be more careful and think through how they talk to consumers."

Mashigo also believes 2015 will be more interesting when data prices drop and people engage more on a mobile device and online.

"This is the era of content. Content requires more detail, a more genuine

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relationship. You are either my friend or not my friend. It is very difficult to come back from that. That is what is coming. It is a challenge for us.

"The biggest challenge for agencies is the need for black talent, in terms of getting into the core of consumer insights that are more genuine. The thing always driving a fake world, is when you don't know what to do with the real world... because we don't have enough talent to talk to the real world."

Mashigo's advice is that agencies need to be more open to people not traditionally trained in advertising: "We need to find room for them in our agencies or we won't be able to tell those real stories.

"Africa is no longer going to ask permission from the world to determine how we view and see ourselves. We will be seeing - from fashion to music - a whole new 'sound' from brands and consumers!" *Neo Mashigo was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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The year of transformation

By Abey Mokgwatsane

Abey Mokgwatsane is CEO of Ogilvy & Mather South Africa (www.ogilvy.co.za; @OgilvySA). Apart from being one of South Africa's Mail & Guardian top 200 young leaders in 2011, he was voted one of the country's top 25 "game-changers" in The Annual 2012. Mokgwatsane also founding of Young Business for South Africa, Think Tank Initiative and Experiential Industry Association of South Africa. Tel +27 (0)11 709 6600, email raeesah.moosa@ogilvy.co.za and follow @Abeyphonogenic on Twitter. View profile

"The biggest thing we get asked (by clients) is, 'where are the black creatives?'"

The pressure is on the local advertising industry in 2015 with the implementation of the new Triple BEE codes, warns Abey Mokgwatsane, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather South Africa. It will be a game changer, forcing the industry to redouble efforts to invest in black talent and gender diversity.

The B-BBEE Codes of Good Practice, according to the DTI, "are to be applied in the development, evaluation and monitoring of BEE Charters, initiatives, transactions and other implementation mechanisms. The Codes contain basic principles and essential considerations, and provide guidance in the form of explanatory material". The transition period for compliance with new BEE codes was extended to April 2015.

The emphasis on empowerment this year will be coupled with a tough trading market as only moderate growth is expected in the global and local economy, says Mokgwatsane, a seasoned marketer and agency stalwart who became CEO of O&M SA in 2011 and who headed up VWV after acquiring a majority stake in the company; previously having been part of the senior marketing leadership at SAB and VWV.

"If we get 3% growth in 2015, we will be very lucky. We will learn to operate in a low-growth market, which is strange for South Africa. Clients will be a lot more frugal, want more return on investment (ROI), they will be looking for efficiencies, more integrated solutions.

"It's going to be a tough time for us in the industry. I don't think it is doom and gloom, I think we are going to have to operate with a 'much more value' mindset."

With the new Triple BEE codes, Mokgwatsane says clients are now asking the questions they should have asked the industry 20 years ago, such as: "what is our scorecard, where is the black talent, how are we developing and training our staff, where is our sustainability plan?"

"Clients never gave two hoots before. So much black market work is still being produced by 'white agencies' where there is no black creative talent. The pressure is now on for 2015. Triple BEE is forcing clients to take empowerment more seriously as it is impacting on them now, more than us. Our marketing clients, the ones giving us the money, are now asking us the hard questions.

The biggest thing we get asked is, 'where are the black creatives?'"

He indicates that clients are happy to participate in developing staff and "getting the industry right".

"Agencies themselves can't take the risk alone. On the one hand, marketing is starting to take the BEE conversation seriously; on the other hand, marketers are realising that in order to create genuine diverse work that connects with the consumer, the industry has to be diverse too. The same 'okes' that cracked the work five years ago, aren't going to do it today."

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Integration

African footprint

Digital becoming mainstream is a massive point of friction for the entire industry, Mokgwatsane also highlights. "There are ECDs and CCOs who are going to be trying to understand what their role is in a modern marketing agency. They have to develop themselves, and their studios.

Mokgwatsane says agencies and brands were looking at a far more integrated African footprint, with the international agency groups building strong networks on the continent, and global brands building business capability across the continent. "More and more we will be asked to apply our craft across the motherland, Africa."

"Linked to that, clients will stop looking for digital solutions from only digital specialist agencies. It is about integration - digital has to be part of the agency environment. Clients will want to see one unified solution. That is why we merged with Gloo - we didn't keep them as a standalone business."

Mokgwatsane's biggest game changers for 2014 were the significant digital agency acquisitions by international agency groups such as VML, WPP and Publicis; as well as the "wake up call" for the industry on empowerment and transformation; and the focus on Africa.

"The digital acquisitions were significant in the industry this year: the Native VML deal happened, the WPP-Quirk deal, Publicis Machine, and our acquisition of Gloo. The next stage is how those respective businesses behave post-acquisition. Everyone has made their bets and we need to see how they materialise into businesses.

"We will continue the empowerment and transformation conversation into 2015. 2014 was the first time we had Government saying with the SAA tender, for example, that the agencies had to be 50% black-owned. The Empowerment Charter is going to be put into law and a committee will oversee the implementation. We are more progressive than most - the industry is at an empowerment level of 42% and O&M is sitting at 43% - we have credible black leaders as part of our management teams. Gender transformation is also part of that."

He also feels that there has been a bit of a lull in South African work being celebrated across the world, as it was a few years ago: "I want us to punch above our weight again. We used to dominate international awards shows. I want to see our work pushing us forward again."

Mokgwatsane believes the context in which we operate is somewhat to blame, with low bandwidth, but that the industry was also overtaken by "modern marketing".

"The digital evolution of our space overtook our own capabilities, we were still trying to crack amazing scripts and campaigns, when the world integrated. We were caught napping. Now that bandwidth has improved, we have an incentive."

Although locally, only 20% of brand spend is on digital, while globally, that number is 50%.

His advice going forward into the new year? "It is about investment in becoming agencies of the future. Becoming an employee of the future. We need to be hybrids: we need to invest in digital, training, research, analytics. As an industry we have forgotten to invest in our people... we need to create a diverse pool of digitally sussed talent." *Abey Mokgwatsane was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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The rise of brand worlds

Amstel, KOO, Business Day and MultiChoice DSTV campaigns.

These are Kessel's top trends for this year:

By Felix Kessel

Born a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, where writing was the only way to survive the suburban ennui of his homeworld, Felix wrote his way into a strange land called advertising. In 2008 he moved to a different universe co-founding OwenKessel and then merging with international network Leo Burnett. (www.owenkessel.com), to tackle the holistic communication needs of brands. Contact Felix tel +27 (0)11 705 0200, email felix.kessel@oklb.co.za and follow @FelixAK. View profile

"Clients today are reshaping entirely the agency model."

2015 will be a paradigm shift for agencies, says Felix Kessel, CEO of OwenKessel Leo Burnett, as the clients of today are entirely reshaping the agency model and will change the face of advertising.

Kessel says agencies have to partner with clients much more at a fundamental level to gain an understanding of what they need, so that agencies have the time to do great creative, as everything else speeds up.

"Everyone needs to be creative, to understand and work across digital. Writers need to shoot film, and so on. We need to be 'hybrids'.

"That is the final frontier for brands. As they become content, the rules that governed products and services and even brands, before the internet, no longer apply. It's a world with new rules. And we're writing them," says Kessel.

OwenKessel aligned with Leo Burnett, a Publicis Worldwide-owned entity, in April 2014, becoming OwenKessel Leo Burnett in South Africa. OwenKessel was launched by Vaughan Owen and Felix Kessel in 2008 with one client, Amstel. In 2014, they won numerous international and local awards for

1. Brand worlds: 'Consumerland' is about this need for guidance everyone out there is trying so desperately for betterment and brands that are going to play in this space need to offer valuable self improvement to consumers. It plugs back into this trend of brands now focussing on their own eco-systems, i.e., tech brands like Samsung and Nike have a brand world they invite you in to. What is your brand world? What is your brand eco-system? How can I become more participatory in your world? There is this chase for improvement."

2. Social currency: "There is a new kind of status in the world. We've always looked at status and as an agency we do some luxury brands.

Nowadays status seems to be driven by social media. There is a new kind of social currency that has to do with impact: how much impact I can create in a social space in a 100-character tweet. People are being chased down for their wit alone. Brands need to understand that more.

There is no money or fame associated. It is only about 'how much disturbance I can cause'. The EFF are pulling exactly the same trick, but in parliament. How much disruption and reaction they can cause.

Brands are going to have to try understand that space. We have heard for ages about brands becoming more human... I don't think that is quite true. Brands need to learn to interact better with humans so brands can facilitate the link between people in their own worlds."

3. Impatient culture: "One of the online e-commerce sites is claiming to deliver in Cape Town in under three hours. This is the impatient culture: people are tired of waiting for everything. People want speed. They want results now. The Internet of Things that has connected everything results in people being overloaded and they want it to be curated. They want to be satisfied now. Everything is doubling in speed, in terms of

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our lives and lifestyles. More brands will find ways into consumers' lives and experiment and discard what doesn't work."

4. Freeing of information: "We will start seeing people being a lot more free with their information. We have the right influx of millennials into the market who don't safeguard any of their info. The only way to function in the digital world is to offer up intimate information. People are becoming more and more risk adverse and more aware of the benefits of sharing. They start opening up more. More services will spring up focussed completely on you. Mega brands like supermarkets will do that with personalised retail products. People want to be known and want that personalised customer service."

*Felix Kessel was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Shifting the traditional agency model

content that appropriately brings their brand message to life. South Africa is far behind the rest of the world in terms of content creation. And with such a great opportunity to create content that is uniquely South African with cultural nuances and will engage and excite people with its relevance, this is an opportunity that can't be ignored.

By Jonathan Deeb

Jonathan Deeb is executive creative director, FCB, Johannesburg.

Follow @JonathanDeeb on Twitter. View profile

"Surround yourself with the best, most talented people."

Q: Your most significant industry trends for 2015?

A: • Different models of operation - the scope of offering of the "traditional" agency seems to be widening and shifting.

• Incorporation of production capabilities into agencies.

• The ability to be a more robust, nimble operation for our clients.

• CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT - Content killed the commercial.

Increasingly, we are exposed to the latest trending video to watch. A life hack or an inspirational story/video on Buzzfeed. We find them on all our social media platforms and this content has become so much a part of our daily lives that it is spoken about on radio, TV shows and sometimes even the news.

So, has content killed the commercial? No, I don't believe so... but it does present a huge opportunity for brands to take advantage of this content.

Either in terms of creation of their own content or utilising and sponsoring

Q: Your 'game changer' trend in 2014?

A: Brands utilising technology in communication, not for the sake of the tech side of it, but to enhance an emotive experience. BA Billboard Cannes winner was a good example of this. The Print ad for Nivea (Cannes Grand Prix for Mobile) - shifts from communication that people connect with, to communication that actually enhances people's lives. We need to see more of this kind of useful approach happening in communication.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: Less communication with no idea. Weak production... Advertising pollution doesn't achieve clients' objectives and isn't welcomed by the consumer... so let's put a stop to it. Then, speed and accessibility of tools to create communication has allowed for the creation of weak idea-less ads.

Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

A: More appetite for experimentation with the role that communication plays; more communication that leads initiatives that positively enhance lives; creative agencies taking back some power and producing more content they believe in.

Q: What advice do you have for your employees/peers for the next year?

A: Surround yourself with the best, most talented people and spend time and effort to build close bonds with your clients to forge true partnerships - with aligned objectives, because then you will truly make magic.

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Q: What would you like to tell your clients?

A: Continue to be more focused on the idea that will solve your business problem rather than a pre-determined idea of what that solution looks like/ The power of ideas these days is transcending what we associate with the traditional commercial.

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Newsflash: TV will not die

By Stu Stobbs

Stu Stobbs is executive creative director, 1886. Stobbs started in advertising in the 90s after a failed drag queen career. Worked above, below and all around the line - but never quite understood why it was there in the first place. Has won numerous local and international awards including Cannes, Caples and Loeries and has judged extensively, both locally and abroad. View profile

"Brands will strive to deliver work that shows they care."

1. TV will not die Every year, someone predicts the death of TV ads. They claim the evidence is everywhere, from rising digital media consumption to the increased popularity of the PVR, to the common (if not absolutely 100% legal) practice of downloading movies and series. The only thing is that no one seems to have told TV. In fact, I have created more TV ads in 2014 than I have done in the last few years combined. TV will continue to march on strongly through 2015.

2. Digital will not replace TV I have also heard many times that digital content will replace the TV ad. Nah. But brands will invest more in content, albeit off the back of TV shoots and big campaigns. So, TV and content will spur each other on with longer versions or offshoots, or out-takes or behind-the-scenes of the TV ad, running online. The two bounce beautifully off each other and the client and brand get so much more out of a single production.

3. Brands will invest big budget Despite the economic climate, some brands will spend more on bigger and more lavish productions. When I look around me, I see clients and agencies coughing up more than ever on big productions - be they brand or even product pieces. Clearly, both feel the investment is justified and the results forthcoming.

4. There will be greater emphasis on results Today, it's very easy to see when a campaign is working or not, because it is becoming easier and easier to measure performance regardless of the metrics.

In 2015, there will be more focus on results and campaign performance, so it will be important for the client and agency to agree on the relevant metrics from the outset. That may sound rather obvious, but in a sea of metrics, from net sales to Facebook likes or YouTube views, it's important to know just what will constitute 'success'.

5. Brands will grow a conscience In 2015, brands will strive to deliver work that shows they care about the environment, communities, South Africa and its people, or animals. The cynics will claim this is an easy way to buy goodwill (of course that is the aim), but I have witnessed brand custodians putting out these campaigns because they also want to do some good, and to find more meaning in their jobs. When the opportunity arises, they grab it with both hands and work beyond the call of duty to ensure these campaigns succeed.

In conclusion, like every year before it, 2015 will throw us numerous curveballs and land us with loads of hard work. But there'll also be amazing opportunities. We only need to grab them.

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Great talent is a driver

By Odette van der Haar

Odette van der Haar is CEO of the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA) (www.acasa.co.za), the industry body of the SA advertising and communications sector. She is also a current board member of Brand Council of South Africa (BCSA). Odette previously headed up Sentech's Advertising, Events and Sponsorships and worked for SAPO, Siemens, BP, Mutual and Federal. Contact details: tel +27 (0)11 781 2772 | email ceo@aaaltd.co.za | Twitter @odette_roper | View profile

"Creative effectiveness requires strategic partnerships."

Q: Your 'game changer' trend?

A: For a number of years, no Grand Prix was awarded at the APEX awards.

However, that changed at the 2014 gala event when DDB South Africa and their client, FNB, were awarded the coveted prize for their 'FNB Switch' campaign. The radio campaign drove creative innovation within the banking sector and, as the year progressed, other creative brand executions on radio drove not only consumer interest but also creative effectivity from an ROI perspective for the brand owners. Our industry witnessed Grand Prix awards in respect of Radio Campaigns later in the year at both Loeries and Cannes, where South African agencies won 21 of the 49 radio campaign awards.

Selecting the correct medium in order to avoid waste is key to any campaign seeking to provide effective creative results. In the case of the FNB Switch campaign, the creative effectiveness was not present simply in its execution, but rather it transcended this to envelop the entire creative process from initial concept through to strategic, media and budgetary planning.

This dovetails into the issue of education and training within the advertising industry, which is the key driver of a stronger and more effective industry

overall. Client approach is one of seeking business solutions; they have realised the benefit of investing more in education and training so as to better understand the industry and the business of advertising. We see greater levels of cross-consulting taking place as a means of getting more 'bang for their buck', which helps drive a more effective and professional industry. Creative effectiveness requires strategic partnerships between clients and agencies, and case studies such as the APEX Grand Prix award assists all parties to craft creative executions rooted within firm economic principles.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: The profession has had to remain quite dynamic and inclined to change as technology continuously drives new developments. There needs to be a change in the awarding of business where partnerships and deeper understanding of client as well as consumer needs and insights prevail. We have to strive to reduce the number of 'nonsensical' pitches and eliminate the scourge of clients asking for 'quotes' on a project-by-project basis. As a sector, we hope for less government regulation and greater reliance on self-regulation through the existing industry structures.

Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

A: Great talent is the driver within our industry and we will be doing more to attract new talent into the profession, encourage talent retention in agencies as well as continuous training and development of talent going forward.

Q: What advice do you have for the industry for the next year?

A: My advice to agencies is as follows: pay attention to the MAC Charter; respect and adhere to the ASA Code - self-regulation is better than Government regulation or legislation; and invest in talent.

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Create work that moves people

By Brett Morris

Brett Morris is the CEO of FCB South Africa. @brettwrote | View profile

"Do something that resonates on an emotional level."

There are shifts in the industry - this is the era of disposable content and a demand for high-value content - the challenge is to still create the emotional work that moves people, says Brett Morris, CEO of FCB South Africa.

Morris says that while everyone is predicting the big trends for 2015, it is important not to forget the fundamentals of what great work is made of.

Morris took over the reins of FCB South Africa a year ago after serving as executive creative director.

"As an agency, as much as we are exploring a lot of new marketing theory, we are also going back to our roots of what we do and a lot of it is emotional work. According to the Gunn report, emotional work is 11 times more effective than rational work. Emotional work moves people.

"We are in the era of disposable content. The trend is towards the need for more content, high frequency, high-value content, particularly in the digital space, but what I'm interested in is the challenge of marrying the world of

high-frequency content to the fundamentals of more powerful, emotional work.

"It is hard to do as we are having to produce it more frequently. What I find interesting about that is how everyone will have to change their models. Entire industries need to shift."

Linked to that, Morris adds, is insight. Big data. The key for him is what they do with it, as he believes the insights to be gained from all the data being collected is still being treated quite robotically, rather than with intuition.

"Clients are not embracing insight as they should - it is one thing having access to the data, but they need very smart people to marry the world of numbers and creativity. It will be interesting to see how big data impacts on our lives and who will crack the puzzle and make it come alive in an intuitive way. I'm very interested in how that plays out from a brand point of view."

Storytelling The 2014 game changer for him was without a doubt the trend towards storytelling, Morris recounts.

"There is a new marketing theory emerging: people making informed and intuitive decisions. We are going back to the fundamentals of storytelling, including more emotion. There was a study done by McDonald's in the US, in which they measured their award-winning campaign work with their stuff that didn't win awards. They found that the award-winning creative work was 40% more effective in impacting on sales than their other work.

"That is great for me - seeing creativity, emotional work, storytelling - those kinds of fundamentals for great work, becoming a part of the conversation.

Brands are taking the initiative with their agency partners and pushing that

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agenda because they can see the results. Cannes is always a good acid test and that was certainly on everybody's radar. It is part of the global conversation."

What he would like to see more of in 2015 is a conversation around value, rather than remuneration.

"Agencies are under pressure and I'd love us to be judged on the value we add, rather than commoditised. It is a difficult one to leave behind, we are in a tough economic period and I think it will get worse before it gets better."

Morris would also love to see digital content truly come of age in South Africa and take its place in the engaging content space. "Do something that resonates on an emotional level." *Brett Morris was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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A purpose-filled future

By Pepe Marais

Pepe Marais is chief creative officer and senior partner, Joe Public Group, ranked as the largest independent and fastest growing South African advertising group, including a brand design agency (Shift Joe Public), a business activation agency (Ignite Joe Public) and a PR agency (Engage Joe Public) in Johannesburg, as well as offices in Namibia (Cornerstone Joe Public) and Amsterdam (Joe Public TakeAway). @pepemarais | View profile

"People are attracted to brands that display a deeper sense of purpose."

The more the world feels devoid of meaning, the more people are attracted to brands that display a deeper sense of purpose.

Q: My 'game changer' trend in 2014?

A: My 'game-changer' trend for 2014 is very far from being a trend, but it sure as hell is a game-changer. There have been rumours of it in talks at Cannes since 2012. The ongoing recession simultaneously seems to be opening the minds of business leaders and marketers to this new idea. Yet, it remains something people just talk about, as they are not clear on exactly what it means. I am talking about the concept called Purpose.

It is becoming clear as we catapult into the future that something larger is at play. And the more the world feels devoid of meaning, the more people are attracted to brands that display a deeper sense of purpose. One business that gets this is Unilever. This can be seen in the way they are starting to market across their brands. It is my personal intention to take this concept forward into the business world over the coming year, because it's only through leading by purpose that your brand can add real value to your customer's life.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: Meetings. They are the number one destroyer of ideas and are mostly frequented by naysayers who add nothing. Meetings in their current form are holding our world back from moving forward. Look at Parliament. It's a prime example of a very long meeting with no galvanising outcome. If a meeting is not in place to find constructive solutions, then it will fast become the most destructive forum within a corporate structure.

Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

A: More creation. After all, it is what we are paid to do. Within an economic climate drenched in fear, where the growth rate of our country has halved in the last quarter, and where fat cats are renovating their homes at the expense of the masses, there can be only one rudder to weather the storm: Creativity.

Q: What advice do you have for your employees/peers for the next year?

A: Find greater meaning to your life. Yes, this may sound a bit deep, but it's when you dig deep that you grow as a human being. Search within and uncover who you really are. Remove the mask, the brave face, the smile you show the world, the "I'm fine" when you know you are not.

Be brave. Be brutally honest. Because honesty is the only path to greatness.

And hey, it's when you dig deep that you are more likely to strike gold.

Q: What would you like to tell your clients?

A: Start trusting your instinct. Trust your gut. Stop operating from your head and follow your heart. Yes, it may be easy to say, because it is not my money.

But your business is our business and your growth is ours. It's as a creative business person that I have learned that the power of the heart is much, much more likely to add bottom-line value than that of the head.

Remember, at the end of the day, after the countless meetings, the endless discussions, the briefs, the re-briefs and the research, the consumer only gets to see our ads. And if an ad doesn't emotionally connect with them, or move

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them towards your brand, then the entire preceding process was an absolute waste of time. Steve Jobs once said, "People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research." It's hardly surprising that Apple is the most valuable brand in the world today. It's time to read things not yet on the page. Let's become the Apple of our consumers' eyes in 2015.

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A new breed of advertising creative needed

By Dr Ludi Koekemoer

Dr Ludi Koekemoer is CEO of AAA School of Advertising and a seasoned academic and consultant in advertising, marketing and brand management. He is also a visiting professor of advertising at the University of North Carolina and California State University, USA, and professor of marketing at UJ and the University of Pretoria. He has authored six textbooks and co-authored another 10. View profile

"Many moons ago, advertising was fun."

A look into the future demands a look into the past. Many moons ago advertising was fun, agencies provided serious strategic input and media planning, they received 16.5% commission, made money and were respected for their knowledge, creative skills and traditional media expertise.

Today, ad agencies no longer provide media plans, they've lost their edge on strategic input, they have lots of pressure to be more effective and to provide measurable results and they have largely been reduced to suppliers of creativity. There's huge pressure on the bottom line and they have to deal with new technology in a media fragmented world.

They face more demanding clients with a new breed of consumers, lower budgets for classical media advertising and a changing legal and self-regulation scene. Just think of the possible impact on clients and ad agencies with a ban on alcohol advertising and foodstuffs...

The economy is under severe pressure, there are few job opportunities... but this is an industry that employs fewer, but better people.

What are employers looking for? Graduates with a sound knowledge and skills foundation, passion, that drive to make a difference, hard working, dedicated young talent that will be an asset to the employer. And new technology (digital) skills.

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TREND: Land of opportunity "With over one billion consumers - a number growing faster than that of any other continent - Africa boasts a wealth of potential."

Africa has unique stories to tell, its own problems, it needs its own solutions.

Brands need to understand this and collaborate to create homegrown brands in partnership with the African consumer to harness the opportunity presented by the fastest growing middle class in the world and the continent with the youngest population.

Since 2000, the middle classes of Africa's 11 largest economies have grown from 4.6 million households to 15 million today (Standard Bank, August 2014).

Africa's consumer-facing industries are expected to grow by $400bn by 2020, representing the continent's largest business opportunity, as the much referenced McKinsey Africa 'Rise of the African Consumer' research study revealed in 2012.

including the development of mid-tier cities; develop locally relevant, quality products for local markets based on an understanding of the preferences of their African customers in the various regions; and hit the right price point - reengineering products to ensure they provide the African consumer with affordable products.

These are the key curated African consumer and industry trends: 1. Growth potential: With over one billion consumers - a number growing faster than that of any other continent - Africa boasts a wealth of potential. The young and quickly growing population, paired with a rising gross domestic product (GDP) that has grown faster than the rest of the world every year since 2001, make Africa a vital market brimming with opportunity. Traditionally viewed as an impoverished continent with little discretionary spending, Africa's middle class is growing at an astounding rate and the GDP per capita (PPP) has grown 26% in the past 10 years. With its steadily rising incomes, Africa offers vast potential and rewarding growth opportunities. (Nielsen, June 2014) 2. The rise of the African consumer: Africa's consumer-facing industries are expected to grow by more than $400bn by 2020. That would account for more than half the total revenue increase that all businesses are expected to generate by the end of the present decade.

The world has caught onto the potential of this burgeoning consumer market. Africans are more optimistic, connected, discerning and brand conscious. (McKinsey, FCB, Jan 2015)

Image via 123RF

McKinsey urged companies to: focus where it matters in urban centres, AFRICA TRENDS SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

3. Digital usage is growing fast: In a 2012 study, 50% of Africans said they had accessed the internet in the past four weeks; a percentage on par with rural China and Brazil. This number is likely to have increased to well over 60% now. (FCB, Jan 2015) 4. Buying power: On average, half of all household spending in Sub-

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Sahara Africa goes to consumer packaged goods. (Nielsen, Feb 2014)

assets and true goodwill. It's no longer sitting in the cost column," Naidoo says.

5. Homegrown solutions: A Nielsen analysis found that products developed or tailored specifically for Africa's consumers achieve a success rate of 40%, well above the standard 10%. (Nielsen, Feb 2014)

It is not enough to "tweak" international campaigns and product launches for the African consumer. Marketers looking to learn about Africa need to engage at source, 'listen' to the "sound" of Africa, a continent entrenched in oral storytelling, movement and vocal expression, advises Sampa Diseko, strategy director, Y&R SA Advertising.

6. Made in Africa: African consumers want tangible, visible and wearable manifestations of cultural heritage embedded in African brands to celebrate their cultural heritage and favour products 'Made in Africa'. (Trendwatching.com, Dec 2014) 7. Price point: Quality and brand matter to the African consumer but they must be delivered at the right price point. Price and promotion sensitivity are high given lower income levels. Private consumption in Africa is higher than in India or Russia. (FCB, Jan 2015) 8. Optimism: Africans are exceptionally optimistic about their economic future; 84% say they will be better off in two years. (Source: FCB, Jan 2015) 9. Purpose-led brands: Brands need to ensure they also benefit the society they are selling to, to earn the trust and gratitude of the next generation of middle class consumers. (Trendwatching.com, Dec 2014) Wayne Naidoo, founder and managing director of agency, Duke, predicts unique Africa solutions born of new African networks: "Original, potent African solutions to African problems. Already we are doing things with mobile that are precipitating tectonic change. Much more will follow. Africa is rising.

"Hot new thinking is delivering hard business results. We now have the chance to combine inventiveness and understanding with technology and measurement. We can learn what works, what's useful. We can innovate upon it. For the first time, engagement with the market will yield platforms and AFRICA TRENDS SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

For Henk Swanepoel, CEO, MeMe Mobile, mobile will become the leading mass media channel in Africa as the continent moves to full adoption of mobile marketing.

"More people across Africa have access to a cellphone network (93%) than they do to electricity (64%), piped water (59%), or a police station (38%).

Africa's gross domestic product will grow by 50% to US$3.7tn over the next five years as the continent's rapidly expanding middle class helps drive faster rates of urbanisation and increased consumer demand for goods and services.

It is also predicted that the expansion of Africa's economy will see mobile subscription penetration grow from its current 72% to 97% by 2017, as the continent adds 334 million new smartphone subscribers over the next three years.

"The scope of a mobile media and marketing channel will offer enormous benefits, opportunities and value to African consumers. For some, these benefits are not available in any other way - or are certainly not as accessible, present and inexpensive. 2015 will be the year full advantage is taken of the mobile opportunity," says Swanepoel.

FCB's strategy team has this advice for brands in 2015 expanding into Africa on the strategies that need to be considered: • Focus where it matters: 53 Countries, 2000 dialects and over a billion people... Brands that view the continent as a single market are

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exceptionally foolish. Most marketers focus their efforts in the megacities of Johannesburg, Cairo and Lagos, but the "middleweight" cities of Abidjan, Khartoum and Rabat allow for faster growth with less competition.

• Get the timing right: Brands should focus on "hot zones" where disposable income is on the rise and demand accelerates between three to five times. Avoid the "chill zones" where incomes have peaked and market saturation has occurred.

• Build locally relevant, quality products: This does not imply launching entirely new brands but rather understanding local nuances. For example, LG removed the "frost free" functioning from its refrigerators in Nigeria as frosting is seen as an indication of proper functioning.

• Create strong value propositions at the right price points: Affordability remains critical. Brands should strive to reach optimal price points within their respective categories through a combination of price engineering, smaller pack sizes and lower cost operating models. *Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

Sources: 'The Road Ahead - Macro Trends Shaping 2015 & Beyond' (FCB, Jan 2015) '10 African Consumer Trends' (Trendwatching.com, Dec 2014) 'The diverse people of Africa' (Nielsen, June 2014) 'Why marketing to consumers, not the masses, is the key to brand success in Africa', Nielsen, Feb 2014.

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The 'sound' of Africa

By Sampa Diseko

Sampa Diseko is strategy director, Y&R SA Advertising.

View profile

Africa is entrenched in oral storytelling, movement and vocal expression.

Marketers need to engage with the source of that sound.

Some 'different' thoughts on Africa:

1. Reclaim the funk The South African electronic music culture is extremely powerful, influential and loved not only in Africa, but throughout Europe. An industry that often pumps some of the hippest, hottest and coolest beats is going un-credited.

'Gcom,' the KZN flavour with a heavier base has broken through the speakers and is truly representing a different flair, and this is only one of many. So often are these electronic and music trends layered with local vocals and appreciated by the crowds of 'cool' and those up-and-coming. The song is then ripped and repeated globally, but the vocals are stripped and removed.

Unnoticed and unaccredited.

The culture interest amongst Africans from different demographic backgrounds is strengthening and so is the integration between art forms, which will feed the 'African trademark of sound' so as to ensure to be recognised globally. Marketers looking to learn about Africa need to engage AFRICA TRENDS SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

with the source of sound, because we are entrenched in oral storytelling, movement and vocal expression. This avenue is increasing, with more cultural groups having the option to engage in this art form as a respectful avenue to build one's future.

2. The future of nostalgia The current speed and integration of technology is reshaping what we know about nostalgia and the degree of influence nostalgia has in relationships it forms with consumers. The current youth between the ages of 10 - 24 years old account for 1.8 billion of people in the world, and they are growing up in the age of instant communication and engagement. Nostalgia is generally framed and explained under a duration of time where a brand and consumer builds and establishes deeper connections. These relationships often have deeper meaning, not only because of the product, but the context of engagement.

Yet, with the speed of instant communication, nostalgic relationship building is becoming difficult. Brands that have been able to hone and create products that have been entrenched before this immense technological injection and necessity for instant gratification will be the brands that truly have an additional point to leverage off of, as a value-added point of difference. We believe we will be moving towards authentic nostalgia. Marketers must not get confused between heritage and old, neither should there be confusion between point of emotional relevance and repetitive consumption.

3. The gap between educating and communicating Southern Africa and Africa is on the 'list' for multinationals' expansion plans. In an economically lean market, supply, production and ease of operation is also lean. In the time of tighter marketing budgets, we see that global campaigns are tweaked ever so slightly so as to slip into the African market. It saves time,

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saves money and sure, it may make overall business sense, but it doesn't always make brand sense. Things cost more and the point of differentiation in FMCG is becoming increasingly tougher.

The next two years is in no way going to be financially easier, as we are expecting financial constraints. The constant strengthening of the middleincome bracket is growing rapidly and their behaviour and product purchase cycles are changing, but the degree of understanding and rationale on how to consume or use the product is lagging. There is still a big gap behind product knowledge amongst consumers, and running an advert that is merely based on a global campaign driving the 'feeling' of the brand, will do very little to shift and change usage patterns.

The magic will be between the traditional production function messaging and the brand-driven essence. Soft points of communication will assist in recalling the brand, and product knowledge will assist in driving conviction when the consumer is at shelf.

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Power to the have-nots

By Wayne Naidoo

Wayne Naidoo is the founder and managing director of South Africa's newest agency, Duke. He previously served as chief marketing officer at AFB and prior to that was CEO at Lowe & Partners SA. He served as chairman at the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA) and was also a board director for the AAA School of Advertising. Follow @WNaidoo on Twitter.

View profile

"Original, potent African solutions to African problems."

As conventional models of reaching consumers become radically undermined, initially by mobile, the very notion of what a consumer is will change. Before, we believed this was 'of products and services', now it is of new networks, ideas and alliances.

ideas. The hegemony of big brands using big media will fall away and their constituencies will begin to massively fragment.

Groups will form, break apart and reform. It's digital Darwinism. The digital divide is already a generational one. More people will be creating their own habitats, fed by news that interests them, people they like or admire, entertainment and information, which align with their own beliefs. Such personalised news may indeed constrict people's understanding of the world, rather than expand it. With so much selective information on hand, we'll choose and need to know less.

Recent clashes between the US police and the public suggest big powerful movements can swell into existence overnight. Issues, beliefs and value systems will be in contest, not just brands and corporations. Celebrity will be more potent than patriotism. The world will try to close down radical Islam's digital excesses.

Of course this has been fully anticipated, though the outcomes are uncertain.

Reputation matters I've spent the last two years working across several African countries. What began as a simple money-transfer solution between individuals has now become a socio-economic revolution. Money can be lent to the previously unbanked, almost anywhere, in seconds. All cashless. All via mobile money.

Millions upon millions of Africans can be uplifted, small businesses created, people employed. Almost nothing has been spent on advertising or media.

The meek are inheriting the earth.

The vocal audience Once mute audiences are transforming into cutting-edge digital experts, coauthoring and fearlessly vocal. The world is their mall. They're also buying AFRICA TRENDS SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

What is certain is the threat to that most valuable asset: reputation.

No longer concealed by the one-way-mirror of structured media, brands, businesses and the people which lead them will, for the first time, be subject to scrutiny and exposure. Whether Kim Jong-un ordered it, or it was the action of righteous, wounded patriots, or simply mischievous employees, a country with allegedly less than 2000 official URLs*, humiliated Sony and had the world's most powerful man spluttering.

Bigger than films, bigger than music, gaming's X-box and PlayStation were hacked and taken down. Sommer mos.

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Against such arsenals, how well defended are brands neatly placed on their shop shelves, in their showrooms and banking halls? Change will occur instantly, news cycles will shrink to seconds, there will be no time for a management committee to assemble and deliberate. Something stronger, less transient, will need to offset this.

Hot new thinking delivering hard business results. We now have the chance to combine inventiveness and understanding with technology and measurement.

We can learn what works, what's useful. We can innovate upon it. For the first time, engagement with the market will yield platforms and assets and true goodwill. It's no longer sitting in the cost column.

The role, reputation and actions of the CEO become increasingly critical. He and she is now vulnerable and accountable for every promise made by the business, every interface with once-loyal consumers. They need to get down 'n dirty. They may need to 'fess up. They'll need a bank of good deeds and good ideas from which to make withdrawals and new investments.

Top 2015 trends

What they once sold they will now have to consider giving away. Packaging will not be the box in which the product comes in, but the total experience around it, the stories, the engagements, the rewards, and the values which inform them; what needs they actually feed.

Inactive corporate visions, generic mission statements will collapse under pressure. Who you are, what you stand for, your reason for being, will be the real test of your survival and success. 'Content' is not a strategy or an idea; it's not a substitute for relevance. It still needs to compel and engage. The ability to persuade remains paramount. The primacy of brands within these formats is, however, less certain.

African solutions Original, potent African solutions to African problems. Already we are doing things with mobile that are precipitating tectonic change. Much more will follow. Africa is rising.

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• More oracles, more sound bites, fewer truths.

• More mergers and acquisitions, particularly in digital.

• Decoupling of long-term client-agency relationships.

• Agencies will seek to un-encumber themselves of staff and overheads.

• Greater ROI demanded by clients.

• The five-second ad.

• The victory of the 'vloggers'.

• Fewer and fewer will make more and more money.

• The foundation of low-cost supermarkets.

• Outsourcing of unique skills.

• Emergence of the effective, proactive, agile, accountable in-house agency, seamlessly knitted into the business.

• Unique Africa solutions born of new African networks.

• Platforms replacing media strategy as key means of delivery.

• Engagement, participation, customerisation, metrics and learning replacing advertising and promotion • The super-premium for BEE talent.

• Powerfully re-engineered corporate PR capability.

• New administrations in South Africa, Africa, the US, the UK, will be accompanied by a new electorate, few of which will ever visit the ballot box.

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TREND: Brand personalisation CreativeBloq.com calls it 'human era' branding, this time when the focus is all on the individual and their patterns and brands discover their 'human' side out of need. Brand personalisation, brand storytelling and purpose-fuelled branding all feed into this mega-trend for 2015.

"We've seen a fundamental shift from 'institutional era' to 'human era' brands.

Today's admired brands are flatter and less centralised than those before them. They listen to the world around them and are open to their customers' input. Their delivery is more intimate and personalised, and also more inclusive. They realise that customers seek not just to buy something, but to buy into something," reports Creativebloq.com in '5 big branding trends for 2015'.

Gaby de Abreu, creative director, Switch Brand Communication, calls it "mindboggling". "In brand communication, 'knowing your target market' will cease to be about drawing an average everyman in outline, but will rather be about speaking to every individual customer who comes into contact with your products. It's mindboggling.

"We have to tailor mass production to the individual. We can't just understand our target audience, broadly speaking, but have to try to find ways of speaking directly to every individual that makes up that audience. It's a daunting task, and one that requires us to be experts not only in branding, design and copywriting, but also in the media, social sciences and psychology, to solve problems in a global market of products and ideas," explains De Abreu.

Pavel Losevsky via 123RF The reason consumers are seeking out purpose-filled brands - that stand for something - is because they have the power to choose what to use and consume and the social conscience and social platforms to make their influence count.

"Consumers have developed a buying conscience and seek brands that vindicate their purchasing decision. Everyone is looking for more fulfilment and ways to improve their lives. This also applies to their choice of brands," says Ann Nurock, a former CEO of Grey South Africa and Grey Canada, and now South African partner in Relationship Audits and Management, which aids agencies and corporate brands on increasing the value, trust and thought leadership of their business relationships.

Higher brand purpose is a brand promise that truly improves the lives of the consumers it aims to reach, says Nurock. This also feeds into the current storytelling trend, as "how a brand conveys the narrative matters. Its success is dependent on its authenticity and relevance to the consumers".

For Giles Shepherd, chief executive, Brand Alive Group, understanding the

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power of the individual was a game changer in 2014 for both external and internal brand communications. "What's new is the realisation that the best form of promotion of the business is getting customers to passionately advocate the brand, due to the positive experiences they are having."

Shepherd's advice to brands is that they keep their brand promises: "Remember that brands are conversations, and those conversations are instant and global. Things won't always go well, but if you manage the conversation with integrity, even a bad situation can work in your favour."

George Golding, CEO, Euphoria Telecom, adds that brand power will continue to shift from the corporation into the customer's hands. "Your brand is no longer what you say it is. Your brand is what your customers tell each other it is. Ethical, transparent brands have begun to gain favour with consumers and this trend will continue to gain traction and momentum. The greatest brands of the future will be the ethical brands that deliver on what they promise."

Golding wants to see more South African brands standing by their brand promise in 2015, instead of just advertising it. "Brands need to start doing what they say, removing complexities and simplifying our daily lives. If your product has value, customers do not need to be tricked into buying it." *Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Trends with tension Every year, the planners at Y&R share insights about how the world around us is changing. But the reality is that it's never black and white. At a macro level, every behaviour, observation and perspective has an inherent tension. Every trend has a countertrend.

1. Brands BRANDS WILL SERVE US - we will become one with technology: The era of separate devices is over, as technology is embedded in everything we wear and potentially even ourselves - technological and human intelligence will become indistinguishable. Mainstream adoption of wearables is merely the beginning of a sweeping transition to technology that is no longer distractingly visible, but seamlessly invisible.

BRANDS WILL CONTROL US - brands will become the next generation of lobbyists: As public trust in government hits new lows, brands are encroaching on the roles and responsibilities of our governments. But instead of advocating on behalf of the consumer constituency, brands will become synonymous with the interests of corporations and shareholders.

Image via 123RF

2. Gender THE NEUTRALISATION OF GENDER - gender will soon become a defunct term: We're eschewing the typical 'male' and 'female' categories for a genderagnostic approach that allows for self-expression outside of traditional lines.

There's no doubt that men's and women's roles have become less strictly defined; many families have made the male and female roles more egalitarian when it comes to jobs, housework and childcare. From unisex baby names and toys to fragrance and clothing, we're clearly moving toward a world where gender will be an archaic distinction.

THE RETURN OF GENDER - the days of gender neutrality are over: In a world where men and women can be whomever and whatever they want, we see a future where each gender returns to the security and predictability of traditional norms - purely because they can. Whether it's men proving their manliness through Tough Mudder, or women electing to return to the days of bodice-slimming corsets, the future of gender lies in the past.

3. Technology

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TECH WILL ENABLE CONNECTIONS - technology creates and deepens meaningful connections that would otherwise be impossible: Grandma can be present at your Thanksgiving table, even when she's three thousand miles away. From shirts that help convey our emotions to operating systems that advise on relationships, technology continues to evolve in ways that fuel human relationships.

TECH WILL DISCONNECT US - in a hyper-connected world, we will become increasingly disconnected: As our virtual networks explode, our comfort with interpersonal intimacy plummets. Spontaneity and vulnerability are replaced by premeditated responses and painstakingly curated public personae. As technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, we will only become more and more isolated - leading to the demise of empathy and collective society.

Credit: The Y&R team who contributed to this article are: Mary Anthony; Vanessa Cameron; Juliette Cilia; Jeremy Daly; Tara Fray; Mary Mazza; Rebecca Menges; Susanne Raymond; John Swan.

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The power of the crowd

By Gareth Pearson

Gareth Pearson, CEO and shareholder of BMi Research (www.bmi.co.za), is a market research specialist with particular focus in the industrial and FMCG markets in various sectors, including the retail market. He serves as a member of the South African Institute of Packaging's Regional Committee and is involved with the South African Packaging Council. Gareth was responsible for the merger of BMi Foodpack and Adcheck Research during 2008. Contact Gareth on tel +27 (0)11 615 7000. View profile

Luxury please Consumers are still looking to purchase luxury goods, however, they want to get their hands on these items for less. Good margins and gross profits are achievable.

People's choice Consumers can influence purchasing habits thanks to social networks in realtime, so brands need to work harder to earn consumer loyalty.

"Consumers are actively trying to simplify their lives."

BMi market research chief executive officer, Gareth Pearson, outlines his consumer brand trends in brief, which will shape 2015, including the rise of eco brands; mychiatry services and product opportunity; and crowd-shaping product trends.

With the fast speed of change today, it is imperative for brands to track the trends driving the market:

Eco brands Consumers looking to connect with brands, business models and products that are environmentally or socially responsible.

Choice rich, time poor Consumers are actively trying to simplify their lives, some with financial security concerns, others questioning personal or career satisfaction and goals, against the constraint for having so many choices and selections to choose from.

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Just app it Unprecedented growth in apps for everyday use, helping consumers, but making them data and connectivity dependant.

Crowd shaping People will pool their data, their profiles and their preferences, in groups to shape new goods and services.

Mychiatry Consumer interest in 'quantified self' products and services will continue to grow, as smartwatches and other powerful tech products enter the market.

Omnichannel 'Always connected' consumers expect fast questions and answers or requests, meaning businesses will need to work extra hard to get in touch with shoppers across multi-channels.

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Mobility tipping points By estimated mid-2015, the smartphone tipping point will be reached in Africa.

This will drive M&E Commerce more than ever, making Africa a single screen market that is bypassing the online phase.

Millennial power Brands need to be cognitive thereof of what Millennials want and how they will shape brands and service usage.

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Brands need a higher purpose

immensely popular and successful 'Like a girl' campaign. Not once do they make reference to the functional benefits of the brand, or even to the brand itself.

'Cultivate a better world'

By Ann Nurock

A former CEO of Grey South Africa and President/CEO of Grey Canada, Ann Nurock is now the Africa Partner of Relationship Audits and Management, a global consultancy specializing in the measurement, risk mitigation and optimization of B2B relationships.

She also conducts workshops on Thought Leadership. These provide the skills to middle management in terms of adding value to their own/client's business, in order to find a higher brand purpose.

Contact details: mann.nurock@relationshipaudits.com | @annnurock | View profile

"Today, consumers want meaning and value."

Everyone is looking for meaning and fulfilment. Today, consumers want meaning and value that go beyond products and services. Consumers have developed a buying conscience and seek brands that vindicate their purchasing decision. Everyone is looking for more fulfilment and ways to improve their lives. This also applies to their choice of brands.

In his book 'Grow', Jim Stengel wrote: "Brands that articulate and activate a higher brand ideal/purpose are rewarded with especially high rates of growth." A great example is Coke, the brand that shares 'Open Happiness' in every single piece of communication, ensuring that it is relevant to the cultures of each market.

So what is a higher brand purpose? It is a brand promise that transcends merely the functional benefits or service of the brand. It is something that truly improves the lives of the consumers it aims to reach. It recruits, unites and inspires people to want to buy the service or brand. For example, the latest campaign for Always does that by giving young girls confidence via their BRANDING TRENDS SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

A higher brand purpose must be something that touches consumers in their day-to-day lives, reflecting their dreams and aspirations. Take Chipotle for example - the successful Mexican fast food chain that doesn't talk about the quality of their burritos or customer service, but rather about "food with integrity" and "cultivating a better world". This is manifested in buying vegetables that are organically grown or meat from farmers who do not use antibiotics on their animals and treat them humanely.

Brands that communicate a higher purpose do it best by telling a story. While storytelling in advertising is really nothing new, it is how a brand conveys the narrative that matters. Its success is dependent on its authenticity and relevance to the consumers.

According to Simon Sinek, author of 'Start with Why': "People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it." Most people know what a brand does and probably how. But how many know why they do it? 'Why' is the reason to buy into the brand/company's value and truth. This is not about making a profit that is a business imperative. But it is finding the 'why' that leads a brand to finding its higher purpose. A great example of this is the latest campaign for Intel, where the company created and taught people in Sudan how to print 3D prosthetic limbs for amputees. It was all about the 'why'.

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Elon Musk, one of the most influential business people in the world, who was born and schooled in South Africa, stated it most eloquently when he said: "Putting in long hours for a company is hard. Putting in long hours for a cause is easy." His cause is creating a cleaner environment via his Tesla electric cars.

What is yours?

*Ann Nurock was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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A brand promise

By Giles Shepherd

Chief Executive at Brand Alive, President of the Advertising Benevolent Fund of South Africa. @GilesShepherd | View profile

"A great brand is a promise kept."

Q: Your most significant industry trends for 2015?

A: A brand is a promise made. A great brand is a promise kept. It is people that keep promises, and they can only do so if they understand what those promises are, believe and buy into them and most importantly, understand how to deliver on them. • Inside out The idea of internal brand engagement - getting the staff of an organisation to understand, buy into and live the values and principles of the brand - is not new. What is new is real corporate commitment to this practice. Over the past decade, South African brands have dappled with engagement, some putting more money than others behind it, but very few investing seriously. In many cases, consumer-facing brands have seen it more as an opportunity to look good to their customers by displaying their supposed activities and internal communication campaigns loudly in branches and stores - yet the real engagement of the people behind the scenes is left sorely wanting.

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What's new is the realisation that the best form of promotion of the business is getting customers to passionately advocate the brand due to the positive experiences they are having - and that the only way to achieve that is to invest cleverly in the people of the organisation. And not simply by telling them what words and ideas have been crafted by the marketing department and expecting them to conveniently believe in them. Rather by involving them in the process of 'architecting' and articulating those words and ideas. By facilitating them on a journey and allowing their passion and contributions to reveal the uniqueness of the brand. People will naturally support what they have had a hand in creating - or even feel as though they have - and sensible businesses are realising this. • Short, powerful communication The age of the standard 'corporate video' has come to an end. In a world where time is of the essence and our every moment is bombarded with communication - from emails and SMSes, through television and social media to a multitude of advertising - we have become very discerning as to what we will pay attention to, and our expectations as to the quality of communication has risen significantly.

The ordinary person is very aware that powerful ideas can be communicated in a very short time frame - if conceived and executed well. And more to the point - they understand what constitutes quality communication.

What this means is that the 12-minute long, 'talking heads' style video, where executives describe the operation, principles, locations and other extraneous information, no longer has a place. Instead, the same principles that are applied to advertising and film work are the standard for corporate communication - both internal and external. Short, powerful 'concept' pieces that employ excellent photography, graphic styling and animation create a sense of a quality brand that is at the

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forefront. And even in these short pieces, a well thought-out story that can leave the audience imprinted with a memorable message. Most importantly, only one key message at a time, rather than everything the brand has to say in one piece of communication.

The clever brands are using these techniques and then creating a variety of versions to suit the various channels, and integrating them to work in harmony. So a version for YouTube, another as a presentation intro piece, one to send out on memory sticks, one for social media, and so on. Properly managed, this is the way they are making powerful and cost-effective use of the digital world.

Q: Your 'game changer' trend in 2014?

A: Understanding the power of the individual - creating ambassadors for a brand out of high profile people so that they advocate it on their social media platforms. Well managed, an extremely cost-effective marketing tool.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: The misunderstanding and misuse of social media by brands that believe that simply being there is what counts.

Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

A: Real industry collaboration - rather than just window dressing by fancilynamed organisations suggesting that the industry is working together to improve and advance itself. Real activities and real commitments by agencies that honour their undertakings.

Q: What advice do you have for your employees/peers for the next year?

A: Remember that brands are conversations, and those conversations are instant and global. Things won't always go well, but if you manage the conversation with integrity, even a bad situation can work in your favour.

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Q: What would you like to tell your clients?

A: A brand is a promise made... A great brand is a promise kept... We need to ensure that you have a compelling, differentiated and relevant promise, communicated excellently both internally and externally, and that your people are impassioned and equipped to deliver.

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Your customers hold the power

By George Golding

A natural-born entrepreneur, George is as fervent about IT as he is about affordable communications services and business integrity. He is driven by a burning ambition to see the promise of cloud computing translated into tangible business benefits, and to providing fellow entrepreneurs with better alternatives to the services of South Africa's landline telecoms incumbent. George has a postgraduate diploma in Distributed Commercial Information Systems (UCT) and BCom Honours in Information Systems (UCT). @ smeSpark | View profile

"Your brand is what your customers tell each other it is."

2015 will continue to be all about the customer, for brands.

Q: Your most significant industry trends for 2015?

A:  Brand power will continue to shift from the corporation into the customer's hands.  The continuation of the rise of customer-centric, ethical brands.  Skilled employees leaving exploitative job positions for ethical companies where they are engaged with purpose, enjoyment and within a healthy company culture.  Mobile payment solutions, the provider agnostic mobile wallet is around the corner. More of the unbanked will have mobile bank accounts with lower banking fees.

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Q: Your 'game changer' trend in 2014?

A: Your brand is no longer what you say it is. Your brand is what your customers tell each other it is. This was undoubtedly the year South African brands realised the easy days are over. They need to start doing what they say because in the internet age, the truth is quickly revealed. Ethical, transparent brands have begun to gain favour with consumers and this trend will continue to gain traction and momentum. The greatest brands of the future will be the ethical brands that deliver on what they promise.

Advertising and marketing can no longer be designed to trick the consumer into buying something, but instead should tell them the truth about the offering and let them choose it. When this occurs, the brand has won a new customer and a brand ambassador at the same time.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: Load shedding, broken promises, corruption, crime and poor leadership.

Political issues aside, I would like to see less of authorised credit providers providing loans to the poor at excessive interest rates. It is the most exploitive and damaging practice in society. Fuelled by greed, it is entirely out of control and urgently needs to be regulated.

I would like to see less of business service providers overselling to customers, especially in the IT and financial services sectors. Sales consultants should be selling what the customer needs - based on their analysis. All too often, I see quotes filled with smoke and mirrors with line items that are vague and confusing to the customer. The role of the service provider is to look after the customer's interests and not the interests of the specific commission-based sales consultant.

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Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

A: I want to see more SA brands standing by their brand promise instead of just advertising it. I want to see brands taking ownership of the precious trust their customers put in their hands. For example, ensuring food products are safe for consumption, rather than using the cheapest ingredients regulation demands. Brands need to learn to have empathy towards a customer's specific circumstance. Brands need to start doing what they say, removing complexities and simplifying our daily lives. If your product has value, customers do not need to be tricked into buying it.

I want to see businesses investing in cloud-based IT services from reputable providers. Enterprise class business cloud services remove complexities, automate processes and simplify everything. This allows businesses to focus on their core service offering instead of their IT infrastructure.

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The rise of 'me'

By Gaby de Abreu

Gaby de Abreu is creative director at Switch Brand Communication.

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Mathias Rosenthal via 123RF

"Quality is now associated with things that are handmade."

In brand communication, 'knowing your target market' will cease to be about drawing an average every man in outline, but will rather be about speaking to every individual customer who comes into contact with your products. It's mindboggling.

The customer has become king like never before. In the past, this used to mean that when things went wrong, shop assistants had to offer sympathy and solutions. In 2015, this will mean that every customer's wildest whim will have to be satisfied - individually.

There has been a big shift in the way that consumers consume. In the past, big brands with big marketing budgets and corporate clout offered a degree of gravitas that consumers associated with quality. The hipster, organic, bespoke crowd have pushed back against this in recent years, and quality is now associated with things that are handmade, to order, from small companies.

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It took a while for big corporates to catch up, but catch up they have, and now they're throwing their big budgets at providing the kinds of individualised experiences that consumers crave. We've all watched as Coca-Cola released bottles and cans with people's names on them onto the market. We lapped up the campaign, searching for our own names emblazoned in red and white on a can. Now Coca-Cola Israel has taken it a step further, allowing Diet Coke drinkers to design one of two million bottles for production.

This customer engagement and involvement in the process creates a great bridge between big brands and their individual users. This is a trend that will gain momentum in 2015. We already see big South African retailers packaging their mass-produced products in brown paper and string to create the illusion of deli shopping. And Magnum stores now allow customers to create their own version of a global ice-cream product.

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Big data Another tool that the corporate giant has in his hands as he quests to individualise his customer experience is the ability to analyse big data. The ability to gain insight from the mass of data that customers generate every day, in real-time, means that brands can start responding to consumer needs on an individual level, almost at the moment that they are imagined. We are years away from that yet, but big data is already helping corporates to deliver individualised services.

Consumers are even demanding individualised associations with the places in which they live. They don't want their city to offer the same global services and attractions as every other city, but would rather be proud of the specifics and idiosyncrasies. Vancouver and Melbourne have launched campaigns to announce their brands, quantify what they stand for and make their residents proud and their non-residents wishful.

All this presents a challenge for brand communications specialists. We have to tailor mass production to the individual. We can't just understand our target audience, broadly speaking, but have to try to find ways of speaking directly to every individual that makes up that audience. It's a daunting task, and one that requires us to be experts not only in branding, design and copywriting, but also in the media, social sciences and psychology to solve problems in a global market of products and ideas.

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Changing consumer behaviour

By Yegs Ramiah

Yegs Ramiah joined the Sanlam team at the end of 2012 as chief executive of Sanlam Brand. Ramiah is responsible for Group Brand, corporate affairs, marketing and communications at Sanlam. Prior to her appointment at Santam, Ramiah spent 12 years of her career at Merrill Lynch. View profile

Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

A: More brands that are focused on making a real difference in the lives of consumers with the aim to create lasting value. From a financial services perspective, there should be a responsibility to connect consumers with their money which will lead to more responsible and considered financial behaviour.

Q: Your 'game changer' trend in 2014?

A: Sanlam's new payoff line, 'Wealthsmiths,' which is a simple description of what we do and what we believe in. Described in a word that did not exist, it is a word that has a sense of familiarity and one that we will give meaning to over time. It represents our roll-up-your-sleeves, pragmatic approach to doing things, our ethos, and our appreciation for the raw materials with which we work - our clients' money.

"Brands need to be less about themselves."

Brands need to help consumers make better choices by focussing on the real issues consumers face, ahead of the bottom line and marketing plans.

Q: Your most significant industry trends for 2015?

A: Self-awareness. Getting people to connect with who they really are, to understand their needs and their means and to enable them to make better choices by creating awareness and incentivising people to change their behaviour. Self-awareness will result in true insights of what it takes to lead a happy and fulfilled life and what real wealth is. Brands need to be less about themselves and more about the real issues that consumers face and in this way create affinity with consumers.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: Fewer people spending money that they don't have. People need to be savvier with their money, they shouldn't spend beyond their means and they should aim to save more.

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Q: What advice do you have for your employees/peers for the next year?

A: If we want to make a difference in the world and in our country we all need to follow the simple advice of Colby Loucks, Deputy Director of the Wildlife Conservation Programme: "What we can, and must do, boils down to three words: Make. Better. Choices."

Q: What would you like to tell your clients?

A: To spend smarter. South Africans need to understand that their opportunity for a better life in the future is completely dependent on their current relationship with money. People need to save first and spend later, rather than save what is left after spending, because the latter approach will always see them saving the minimum amount, if any at all.

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TREND: The experience brand "Instantly accessible information, globalisation and social media have accelerated the pace of trends exponentially." - Lucie Greene, worldwide director of JWTIntelligence From 'Me' brands, to category collapse in the retail sector, mindful business and new definitions of power; and design-led experiential public spaces, JWTIntelligence has produced a superlative vision of current consumer culture and expectations in 2015.

The dominant theme is what brands can do for consumers, in terms of experience and purpose, not advertising. Consumers have hacked into brand culture and made it their own. The shift towards personalisation and craft and artisanal food, remembered skills and a caring culture, makes the influence of the individual within a broader community very powerful.

JWTIntelligence this year launched 'The Future 100: Trends and Change to Watch in 2015', with original insights on 100 cultural shifts expected in the year to come.

As industry trends such as 'brand storytelling' and 'content marketing' feed into and reflect consumer experiences with brands, much of JWTIntelligence's 100 trends break down those cultural shifts and provide fascinating examples of consumer and brand collaboration and brands and technology partnering to provide ultimate consumer experiences.

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Source: JWT.com According to JWTIntelligence, the 2015 report is an "evolution of JWTIntelligence's flagship '100 Things to Watch'... connecting the dots between the 'what' and the 'why', by including a 'Why it's interesting' analysis with each item." The full list of categories covered in the report includes: culture, beauty, brands, food and drink, innovation, lifestyle, luxury, retail, sustainability and technology.

Reports like this one are critical for brands to understand change, when "instantly accessible information, globalisation and social media have accelerated the pace of trends exponentially," said Lucie Greene, worldwide director of JWTIntelligence, when the report launched shortly before Christmas 2014.

"The ubiquity of the web has accelerated the pace of trends, the spread of information and the sophistication of consumers, who are increasingly confident and expect brands to work around them rather than dictate to them.

Other consumer expectations are also shifting in this new landscape, under influences as diverse as the vast range of information available on the internet, globalisation, environmental change and difficult economic times. As a given, not a bonus, brands are expected to deliver experiences, be hyper-transparent

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and achieve sustainability. They're expected to produce beautifully designed products and environments. And they are also increasingly expected to be societal leaders, benefactors, innovators and philanthropists."

Ricard invested the capital and supplied a global recipe, which is adjusted to include local ingredients," writes JWTIntelligence.

Brand trends On Brands, 'Do' brands; 'Me' brands and 'Third-Way Commerce' allow consumers to take centre stage. Third-Way Commerce is a movement started

by Toms that "combines social good with sales and marketing and includes the entire marketplace, whereby you 'buy one/give one away' and includes everything from meals to a week of water for the needy. "Consumers, particularly Millennials, are increasingly discriminating between brands by looking for ethical behaviour and sustainability. They are also looking for brands and companies with clear values," reports JWTIntelligence.

'Do' brands are those which focus on 'doing' rather than 'talking' as a marketing platform, "using activism, innovation and philanthropy projects to connect with consumers and inspire marketing content".

Example: Kenco sources coffee from areas where unfortunately there is strong gang culture, hence Kenco offers training programmes for those at-risk who work in coffee farming'. Their advertising showcases the project, not their coffee.

Then, 'Me' brands are where consumers are invited to create local brands in their own image - part of the sharing economy and an increasing desire for "personalisation, collaboration and consumer entrepreneurship". Pernod Ricard Our/Vodka campaign invited their customers to create their own local version of the brand in a business partnership. The end result was Our/Vodka micro-distilleries in various cities around the world, like Berlin and Detroit.

"Local stakeholders receive 20% of the profit in exchange for investing their time and managing the distillery as well as marketing and events. Pernod

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Source: JWT.com

Retail trends The focus on retail prophesises category collapse and the mass boutique - plus Amazon's very first offline bricks and mortar store - it has signed the lease on premises in New York. JWTIntelligence says it is interesting because Amazon is the latest in a slew of online retailers opening up physical stores: "while consumers increasingly shop online and via mobile, they also seek compelling in-store experiences.

Technology is a gem, with ethical smartphones, clever fabrics, cognitive technology - and going invisible online - off the grid, so to speak.

JWT Future 100 These are the additional highlights from JWTIntelligence:

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• In its Culture section, the report spotlights the rise of the 'Mipsters' (Muslim + hipster) and the growing number of Teetotal Millennials. It also looks at Experiential Public Spaces-the transformation of public spaces via creative immersive projects-and Experiences Going Dark, the advent of unsettling experiences as entertainment.

opportunistic. There's an opportunity for brands to connect with real subcultures, but they must tread a careful path or risk looking cynical."

• Beauty trends include South Korean Beauty: a look at how the axis of influence is changing in the beauty world as the global appetite for South Korean products grows.

*Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

• The Food and Drink section includes Cold-Pressed Everything (consumers are increasingly fetishising cold-pressed and unprocessed foods); Guilt-Free To-Go (healthy, ethical fast food will gain momentum as a raft of virtuous brands appropriate junk style for the Millennial generation); and Haute Vegan (a new wave of hip restaurant concepts departs from the hippie vibe associated with meat-free dining).

• In Innovation, the report notes the rise of the Tactile Internet as innovators play with haptic technology, wrapping in digital connectivity with physical action, among other trends. And in Lifestyle, the report examines the rise of new centres of influence (for instance, Los Angeles is reinventing itself as a fashion, tech and innovation hub) and the new Adventurist Impulse, as well as the crash in Helicopter Parenting.

• The Future 100 also looks to the worlds of Luxury and Retail, where the sharing economy is increasingly aligning with business and luxury, Amazon is launching its first store, and retail experiences are channelling BuzzFeed surveys.

A word of warning from the team at JWTIntelligence: "Social media has sped up the rate of trend and niche discovery, and its path to mass exposure, but some celebrities and brands are doing this too fast, and in an inauthentic way, creating a backlash among connected, sophisticated Millennials, who view it as CONSUMER RESEARCH SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

Source: JWTIntelligence. Download the full report 'The Future 100: Trends and Change to Watch in 2015'.

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Shopper marketing

By Dr Sarah Britten

Dr Sarah Britten is strategy director, Labstore South Africa. Labstore collaborated with Kantar Retail and Y&R to bring you these 2015 trends. Labstore is part of Y&R. Follow Sarah on Twitter (@Anatinus) and read her blogs at www.nicolandsecond.com and www.thoughtleader.co.za/sarahbritten. View profile

"The solution for integrating the digital and physical worlds lies in finding a real shopper need and answering it."

The era of consumer marketing is over, and now we're in the age of shopper marketing. With retail as the new centre of marketing gravity, agencies, clients and media across the spectrum need to get to grips the new marketing reality.

Mall culture With approximately 1,780 shopping malls and over 1 million square metres of floor space, South Africa has more retail space than the rest of Africa combined. With more malls opening and in development - especially in underserviced areas - malls will continue to dominate the local retail landscape. At the same time, South Africans prefer to shop locally, so the catchment area for malls has shrunk. Malls are also an important entertainment destination which means that they will need to recognise and get better at understanding the process and behaviours of how of people are 'gathering' - which can be physical (in a mall) or virtual (on a social platforms) and how both of these converge.

Malls will continue to be the places where more South Africans gather to shop, eat and play. Understanding how individual malls plug into their local communities will be key to attracting shoppers and building programmes that create value for shoppers, retailers and brands.

Authenticity chapter

It's a common misperception that "shopper marketing" refers only to in-store activity. In fact, it's about understanding the entire path to purchase and how the right message in the right place at the right time will result in a purchase.

In social media, the hashtag has become as much a part of US retail campaigns as the key visual.

In-store displays are supported by product information on retailer websites and apps, while conversation is generated both on social media platforms and with bloggers and other influencers.

Marketers that understand how to use social media to engage shoppers before they even walk into the store - and continue the conversation after they buy and use the product - will be the winners.

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The corollary to the growth in malls - and their inherent "sameness" - is the quest for authenticity. Hipsters have shown us the way, and now more mainstream shoppers are discovering the joy of buying artisanal margaritas at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning. The success of the Maboneng Precinct, Neighbourgoods and the Old Biscuit Mill are testament to a hunger for more tactical, personal shopping experiences built around discovery of the local and the handmade.

Many shopping malls are now bringing the market experience to their shoppers, with varying degrees of success.

The new Watershed market at the V&A Waterfront, with its curated, handcrafted products, is a good example of how markets are providing more

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high quality goods with a good story. The steady gentrification of Braamfontein near the Johannesburg city centre is another indication of a search for authentic urban spaces outside of the contained, somewhat artificial limits of shopping malls. However, this will remain niche.

shopper's lifetime value. Finding ways to personalise products, prices and offers while driving profit and without excessively complicating the rest of the business, will continue to be a major trend in 2015 and beyond.

Along with the shift in emphasis from consumer to shopper marketing, media owners will have to look at how to offer a proposition to advertisers that moves beyond simple awareness to engagement and an impact on behaviour.

For example, the Daily Sun carries a weekly supplement of cash and carry offers to help shoppers buying for spaza stores and stokvels. It's simple, but useful for shoppers, and an incentive to buy the paper. Media channels able to offer platforms that take the path to purchase into consideration will be able to offer the kind of innovative packages that advertisers are looking for.

• Mobile has been the star of the story of digital in Africa for years now, and the cellphone has a natural place in the store - after all, it's the digital device that almost all shoppers have with them all the time.

Finding ways to integrate mobile into the shopper journey will continue, whether it's about providing coupons or making the process of finding the things you want just a little easier. Snapscan, the Payment Pebble and other mobile-enabled payment devices are making it easier for shoppers with credit cards to purchase outside of formal retail spaces.

Personalisation

Mobile apps can help in multiple ways such as list writing, prompts and ideas, and giving location of products in stores. 'Anticipation' will be a key theme as retailers rise to the challenge to connect shoppers with the items they want to buy quickly. Price comparison apps are growing in popularity globally. Memeburn did a useful overview of the 2015 prospects for mobile retail apps in South Africa.

Major trends for 2015 include: • Personalisation is a major trend expressing itself in multiple ways. The success of something as simple as putting names on Coke cans is a reminder of how even a very basic level of personalisation can impact on sales. South Africans are queuing to try out personalised ice-creams at the Magnum pop-up store; while at Bite Lip Labs in the US, it's possible to customise your lipstick down to the colour, the finish and the flavour.

Personalisation does not only apply to product. Shoppers are becoming more willing to trade their own personal data for a more specialised (and even localised) service or offer or price. Loyalty programmes will be part of this, as retailers look to make their loyalty programme knowledge bases work harder to influence shopper behaviours. How retailers reward loyalty in the future is already starting to emerge internationally though the principles of 'dynamic pricing' tailored to a CONSUMER RESEARCH SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

Hype around mobile technology in retail will continue to be par for the course. RFID tags, NFC and now beacons have all promised to revolutionise the shopping experience. We expect to see South African retailers experiment with new ways to add value to shoppers, but it will be a while before we see anything on a large scale.

• Once upon a time, online retail was going to render bricks and mortar irrelevant. That hasn't happened; instead, online retailers like Bonobos are opening physical showrooms that allow shoppers to try on merchandise, which they then buy online. "There's still growth on the internet, but there's more growth in fitting digital into the physical world," says Kevin McKenzie of leading mall operator Westfield.

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Shopper need The solution for integrating the digital and physical worlds lies in finding a real shopper need and answering it. For example, online grocery retailing remains tiny in South Africa. Rather than isolate online retailing as a specific vehicle for growth outside of physical retailing, the key in online will be retailers who can help shoppers with particular tasks, such as making routine replenishment of regularly purchased items easier. The investment into home delivery (Pick n Pay TukTuks) and Click and Collect (Walmart/SASOL) services is a strong indicator that 'making routine replenishment easier' is getting attention in online strategy discussions.

Marrying the best of the digital and physical worlds in a way that increases emotional engagement for consumers and shoppers will continue to be a major driver of innovation.

will continue to attract retailers, brands and investors - and there will continue to be losers, as well as winners.

This is impacting not only on retailers and brand owners, but the agencies that service them. With the South African economy under pressure, many South African agencies are expanding into the rest of the continent, either by buying agencies in Nairobi or Lagos, or servicing clients further north.

Understanding the nuances of shopper behaviour - and how it intersects with consumer attitudes - in different African markets will become more and more important to getting shopper strategies right. Given that information and tracking in most African markets is still a major challenge, researchers that are able to offer practical, affordable and fast access to shopper insights and data will be the winners.

Shoppers typically make three investments when they enter a store:

Reducing clutter in-store has been a long-term strategy of South Africa's big retailers. At the same time, brand owners are less willing to spend on point-ofpurchase material that gets damaged or displayed incorrectly. (The FSU graveyard is still a common sight in many larger supermarkets, where free standing units are lined up like tombstones in a corner of the store, ignored by shoppers). Simplicity and ease of navigation are major drivers. For example, Pick n Pay together with Y&R has instituted new rules for displays. Everything in store must do one of the following four things to justify its presence: help shoppers navigate, educate, inform or inspire.

Brands that are able to collaborate with retailers to come up with simple, robust and attractive displays will be the winners.

Africa allure With the South African economy under pressure, the allure of growth in Africa CONSUMER RESEARCH SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

1. Money - looking for a good deal doesn't discriminate across LSM. South African shoppers love broadsheets and the magic word 'sale' is still a major trigger.

2. Time - they want to save time and retailers are looking to convert those seconds into sales.

3. Angst - the emotional capital spent when shoppers can't get what they want or are confused by the offering available (too few or too many choices).

Retailers and brands that can minimise the first and second factors and maximise the third will win. This means keeping shoppers front of mind, understanding how to make their lives easier, and not losing sight of what matters to them in the quest to innovate or maximise profit. Help shoppers to find the value they want while making the experience as enjoyable as possible.

This has always been true of shopper marketing, and always will be.

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One consumer culture "72% of those surveyed think we will use our thoughts to control household appliances by 2020!"

smartphone users would like to use a wearable device to communicate with others directly through thoughts - and more than two-thirds believe this form of communication will be commonplace by 2020.

All around the world, internet users are increasingly sharing one culture. In the most recent Ericsson Consumer Lab survey of 23 countries, they found that more than three-quarters of consumers browse the internet and half use social media every day.

These are the major consumer trends: 1. The streamed future: Media usage patterns are globalising among consumers and they are shifting towards easy-to-use on-demand services that allow cross-platform access to video content. 2015 will be a historic year, Ericsson predicts, as more streamed content will be watched than broadcast TV. 2. Helpful homes: With continuously rising fixed broadband adoption and the fast global uptake of smartphones with mobile broadband subscriptions, our lives are becoming more connected than ever before. However, despite this connectivity, houses are not increasing in intelligence at the same pace. This is now set to change, as consumers show a strong interest in having their homes help them. 48% of smartphone owners asked were also interested in a bathroom mirror that shows data about how well they have slept, and displays a calendar, news and reminders. 47% would even like their toothbrush to give advice on how to brush effectively.

3. Mind sharing: 72% of those surveyed think we will use our thoughts to control household appliances by 2020... New means of communication will continue to appear, offering us even more ways to stay close to our friends and family. Over a third of consumers are interested in using a smartwatch that conveys touch gestures or their pulse to others. Interestingly, 40% of CONSUMER RESEARCH SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

4. Smart citizens: 76% of smartphone owners want traffic volume maps for streets, pavements and public areas to report how crowded the area is. 70% want to compare daily household use of gas, electricity and water with their neighbours, and 66% say a smartphone that checks the water quality of public facilities and compares it with similar facilities nearby would be useful. Over 70% think that these concepts will be mainstream by 2020... We are becoming smart citizens. Through our changing behaviours, efficient practices and smarter social norms are developing in our cities, and in the process they are making cities organically grow smarter too.

5. The sharing economy: As the internet enables us to efficiently share information with unprecedented ease, the idea of a sharing economy is

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potentially huge. It could enable consumers to enjoy the benefits of use without the hassle of ownership in many other areas.

6. The digital purse: Of the smartphone owners we surveyed, 48% say they would prefer to use their phone to pay for goods and services, while a third believe that smartphones should replace cash.

7. My information: 56% of smartphone owners would like all email, chat and other internet communication to be encrypted. Over half agree that using fingerprints would be better than passwords for this.

8. Longer life: Wearable technology has been popular among consumers for some time, but now it is time to shift the emphasis from the novelty of wearing technology to what the advantages may be. Important benefits include the ability to monitor and regulate activities. Urban consumers think wearables regulating stress levels could give them an extra two years of life on average, and wearables that help with physical activity will have the second largest potential impact, with an addition of 1.9 years on average. However, help with monitoring goes beyond wearables: cups and plates that measure the intake of calories, salt and unhealthy ingredients are believed to increase

CONSUMER RESEARCH SPONSORED BY INTERBRAND SAMPSON DEVILLIERS

life expectancy by 1.8 years. Pillows and sheets that monitor sleep patterns and medicine jars that regulate medicine intake would potentially add 1.1 years each.

9. Domestic robots: Of those open to the concepts Ericsson tested, 64% thought all of these robot types will be common in households by 2020. With artificial intelligence becoming cloud-based, the cost of making smart robots is set to decrease dramatically, so the next five years could potentially see drastic changes. 57% of consumers wanting a domestic robot to do their laundry 10. Children connect to everything: Children will continue to drive the demand for a more tangible internet, where the physical world is as connected as the screens on their devices. 46% of smartphone owners say that those who are exposed to tablets as babies will expect all objects to be connected when they are older. Using information technology will be less abstract in 2020 and beyond.

Source: Ericsson Consumer Labs. Download the full report, '10 Hot Consumer Trends 2015'.

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TREND: Mergers & Acquisitions Visual content will dominate the digital and mobile environment in 2015, as rich media and video are expected to increase exponentially. And this in a digital agency environment in South Africa that has been dominated by mergers and acquisitions in the last couple of years.

It is now the time to see how the digital agencies, bought or merged into global agency networks, perform - both in South Africa and further afield on the African continent, which of course is what the 'media and agency land grab' in South Africa is mostly about: gaining a valuable foothold for development and growth on the continent.

"2014 was characterised by the massive acquisition spree, of which we were part of. All acquisitions need to now bed down and become real propositions," says Adrian Hewlett, CEO of Publicis Machine, acquired by the Publicis group last year.

For Hewlett, it is the end of the standalone digital agency and for him, the biggest trend for 2015 is which of the top 10 advertising agencies next year will reveal themselves to be truly integrated, despite all the acquisitions and new alliances.

Image via 123RF For Gil Sperling, chief technology officer, Popimedia, the digital marketing environment heralds "explosive disruption" in 2015. He cites the fact that video consumption is on the rise; the surge in mobile phone subscriptions in Sub-Saharan Africa; and multi-screening.

"We must accept the consumer's growing preference for video, the behaviour of multi-screening, and the explosive growth of mobile devices. By combining these with a content strategy that adds value, while effectively targeting the right audience at the right time via algorithmic tools, 2015's trends can be manipulated to your advantage."

Andrew Kramer, VP sales, Mxit SA, says this will be the year, globally, that mobile ad spend overtakes print. "By 2018 it is expected that mobile will claim almost 40% of total paid media spending in the UK, with estimates that mobile will account for nearly 30% of all UK digital ad spending this year, with this figure rising to more than half by 2016. From our vantage point, it's a natural progression that South Africa will follow in the wake of these mobile advertising trends."

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And of course, it all comes down to content again - customised content is one of Gustav Goosen, CEO of The SpaceStation's trends for this year. "The need for credible branded content has leapt forward in South Africa. Good, engaging content that builds brands is a win win scenario for all. We have seen this first hand with our 'pop up' websites."

There was a definite trend, Goosen said, for consumers to be more discerning about the content they wished to consume and when and how they wanted to consume it.

Kramer's comprehensive trends focus on how mobile is phenomenally successful in education and the political landscape in SA, and the fact that rich media will remain one of the biggest mobile advertising trends in 2015.

"I anticipate that advertisers will move towards campaigns, content and creative that will assist them in promoting the consumption of relevant, cool and engaging rich content including videos, graphics and music downloads.

Ads focussed around rich media achieve increased engagement, higher perceived value and is the driver behind generating top-of-mind awareness in driving sales."

Both Goosen and Vincent Maher, chief innovation officer at Kagiso Media, highlighted programmatic media buying as a big trend for digital media.

Said Goosen: "The IAB says that approximately 20% of all digital advertising is sold by one machine talking to another. This trend is still fairly new in South Africa although I anticipate an interesting uptake in 2015. Its popularity lies in its efficiency because it greatly simplifies media procurement and is designed to be highly targeted."

Maher also highlights the fascinating growth of e-Sports, which in terms of spectators, prize money and growing coverage in mainstream media, is providing an audience for gaming, bigger than any other sport in the world.

Marketers need to be aware of the opportunities this trend presents. *Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Synchronised messaging for all channels

consumers use while watching. Brands will be able to reinforce their TV message with targeted reminders during the ad breaks. Car ads will be followed up with test drive messages, for example, as more and more media owners roll out the capability to match messages across desktop, tablet and mobile.

By Andrzej Suski

Andrzej Suski is head of media solutions, Millward Brown, Africa & Middle East. He heads up the Media Solutions practice at Millward Brown in Africa and the Middle East and his role focuses on helping clients optimise their communications budget allocation, calculate and maximise ROI both across and within channels, for both traditional and new media. View profile

The continued development of digital infrastructure and the ensuing change in social behaviour patterns continue to gather pace in Africa.

Adopting some of the tried and tested solutions from other markets and blazing our own path in some areas (like mobile), enable consumers to participate in the all-encompassing digital revolution.

This in turn will allow marketers to commit a larger share of their budgets to new media and new business models, facilitate better planning (with more data) and force more rigorous evaluation of ROI - creating a perfect storm to further accelerate the pace of change.

Most successful marketing organisations are those that can best anticipate the forms that change will take. Here are some of the key trends for 2015 from Millward Brown's annual Digital & Media Predictions: • Perfect timing will be critical. The new, new thing in 2015 will be synchronised messaging across TV and the other devices that

• Social and mobile silos will be broken down. Brands need to understand the synchronised impact of cross-platform and cross-device behaviours to justify continued (and increased) media investment. To facilitate this, in 2015 social and mobile media will start to deliver insights into how brands and their media agencies can best harmonise their overall social and mobile strategy.

• Insufficient data will become big data and increasingly, intelligent data. In 2015, marketers will start to appreciate the importance of their data: they will streamline their assets and invest in the analytic talent they have been lacking to identify the metrics that are actual predictors for brand and sales growth.

• Native more often gets it right. In 2015 native advertising will become an established part of the advertising landscape. The key for brands will be to partner with publishers that strike a proper balance between brand messages and editorial, clearly identifying sponsored content and matching the site's tone and style.

• Marketers get savvier about 'Multi-Generational Multi-Screen Marketing'. In 2015 smart marketers will optimise across devices by aligning branding objectives with learning about how screen usage varies by generation and contextual task.

• Programmatic will improve with better quality behavioural data but it will also increasingly contemplate brand. Marketers will question whether programmatic optimisation is damaging or enhancing brand

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building. The best programmatic providers will increasingly differentiate themselves based on their ability to manage cost effectiveness on behavioural metrics while delivering campaigns that build brand metrics.

• Programmatic also gets creative. Creative agencies will design smart, engaging and customisable creative "elements" (rather than ads) which merge seamlessly with programmatic media buying algorithms. The best of these executions will enable a new kind of dynamic, relevant storytelling based on when and how they are delivered.

• Micro-video is propelled into the mainstream. There will be more opportunities to build reach in the micro-video landscape with paid messages. Brands (and agencies) will succeed by understanding the nuances of micro-creativity and the different roles fulfilled by platforms such as Vine and Instagram.

• Analogue will become digital. Every channel will be digital, even if it's not. Marketers will add digital responses such as interaction via smartphones to channels that remain analogue in order to digitalise them. Going digital in every channel will allow brands to put consumers in control.

• Location-based marketing blooms. This will be the year that brands focus on consumer needs to deliver messages and services that are meaningful and relevant to specific locations. In 2015 the ability of brands to give consumers what they want, at the right place and the right time will be a key differentiator.

• Successful organisations will structure for success in the digital age by courting innovators, focusing on digital training and becoming more collaborative. The very best will step back and take stock by examining the impact of digital campaigns on the hearts and minds of consumers.

*Millward Brown's full Digital & Media Predictions for 2015 are available for download.

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The acquisition spree

By Adrian Hewlett

In 2004 Adrian Hewlett founded The Habari Group, a media and marketing communications company. The company was the partner to MSN in Africa for seven years and then went on to launch the commercial operations for Facebook in Africa in 2010, while counting the likes of the BBC and LinkedIn amongst its partners. @adrianhewlett | View profile

"It is the end of the stand-alone digital agency."

Mergers and acquisitions of agencies across the digital, media and FMCG industry in South Africa continued unabated in 2014 and has revealed a much changed industry landscape for 2015 as the push into Africa is consolidated.

"2014 was characterised by the massive acquisition spree, of which we were part of. All acquisitions need to now bed down and become real propositions," says Adrian Hewlett, CEO of Publicis Machine, acquired by the Publicis group last year.

The shake ups are inevitable, Hewlett says, after the talent acquisition drive that agencies like Ogilvy & Mather South Africa have been on, merging with Gloo late last year, beefing up their leadership across the spectrum; and the aggressive investment by international agency networks WPP, Omnicom and Publicis, in South African over the last few years.

He wonders out aloud whether the two big advertising agency independents left - King James and Joe Public - will be able to resist the lure of international investment and further growth into the 'promised land' of Africa.

For Hewlett, the biggest trend for 2015 is, which of the top 10 agencies next year will reveal themselves to be truly integrated, despite all the acquisitions and new alliances.

"It is the end of the standalone digital agency. Some agencies are producing integrated work, but most cannot claim to be totally integrated, with digital thinking at the core. The measure of that will be the work - delivering fully integrated work out of the mothership, not having to pull in sister specialists.

"It will be so interesting to see how the top 10 agencies play this out in 2015 and who will be able to call themselves a full integrated agency at the end of it.

Diversity is also an issue - Ogilvy & Mather SA are by far the most diverse agency, the rest of us have to work harder on that front."

The new buzz The buzz in the industry is no longer all about digital - that is a given. It is now about shopper marketing over the past couple of years, and now content marketing, says Hewlett. "This could be the year when you finally start to get PR shops having a bigger say in the value proposition around content marketing. If you consider what brands waste on media that doesn't work for them, when content marketing works, ad costs are so much less."

Hewlett believes we are at the start of a few very interesting years in the current industry landscape. "Who will be the next breakthrough agency? The next big independent buy out? Could RGA open up here?

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"From a client perspective, the past year has been a tough trading environment. Brands have cut back spend. From a media perspective, the whole industry is in flux, it is not an easy environment, the media world is tough right now."

Brand growth on the African continent is the one to watch right now, Hewlett believes, particularly the rise of local tech and Chinese brands on the continent. *Adrian Hewlett was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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The big online advertising trends

November 2014, clearly showed that especially with the astounding amount of content available online, South Africans respond particularly well to relevant and meaningful content that engages.

Content over clutter

By Gustav Goosen

Gustav Goosen is the CEO of The SpaceStation digital media sales company. The SpaceStation is a partnership between 24.com and DStv Media Sales, both members of the Naspers group.

Representing over 60 of Africa's websites, mobi-sites and mobile apps, the company offers advertisers a launch pad for reaching more than 12 million connected South Africans each month. @gustavgoosen | View profile

"Video ad revenue will increase."

As always, it was a highly competitive space but this year that seemed the case more than ever - especially when it came to online advertising, fuelled by the continued growth of digital, but also because clients want more bang for their buck. Budgets are tight and tangible results are essential which has given rise to some worthwhile trends.

Customised content The need for credible branded content has leapt forward in South Africa.

Good, engaging content that builds brands is a win-win scenario for all. We have seen this first hand with our 'pop up' websites. These microsites are brand specific platforms that were populated with content created by awardwinning editorial teams.

Our most recent platform was Men24, sponsored by Nivea for Men, and the over 300,000 Unique Browsers consuming almost a million Page Views in

In line with the above trend, South Africans are becoming very astute and demanding online consumers. CTR (Click-through rate) is not the only measure of success and never more has this been true than at the tail end of 2014.

Online advertising offers so much more value in terms of brand building, which is why less is becoming more in the online advertising space.

Publishers are opting for quality, clutter free, content rich advertising options.

Creatively, this means we need to be moving towards greater use of tech innovations, like large format advertising, such as the Rising Stars, which the IAB has shown more than doubles interaction rates and user dwell time.

Programmatic buying The IAB says that approximately 20% of all digital advertising is sold by one machine talking to another. This trend is still fairly new in South Africa although I anticipate an interesting uptake in 2015.

Its popularity lies in its efficiency because it greatly simplifies media procurement and is designed to be highly targeted (if done correctly). There is still some controversy around whether it is as effective as punted, but I believe it will play a very important part of SA's digital advertising landscape in 2015.

Video: fast growth A US based report from BI Intelligence states that online video is growing faster than any other advertising medium aside from mobile. They project that

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video ad revenue will increase at a three-year compound annual growth rate of 19.5% through 2016.

Contributing to this staggering estimated growth rate is that online video ads have the highest CTR of all digital ad formats (1.84%), add the uptake of programmatic tools to this and you have a force to be reckoned with. Whilst the majority of statics and reports are based on US data, South Africa is certainly taking notice and following the international trends as seen in PwC's latest Entertainment and Media Outlook 2014-2018, which says that video advertising is expected to grow at a CAGR of 43.7%.

Predictions...

According to PwC, "internet access will generate more consumer spend than any other media product or service in the next five years". The same report shows that internet advertising will generate R4.4bn in revenues by 2018, which is a CAGR of 22.7%. (2013's revenues were R1.6bn). And more specifically, South Africa's display advertising market will grow by a CAGR (Compound annual growth rate) of 18.8% to R1.2bn in 2018.

SA may be a little slow in adoption of online advertising but the growth is definite and inevitable and we will see many more marketers incorporating digital into the marketing mix in a more meaningful way. By and large, South Africa still relies on television commercials, however, if we look at the international trend, linear TV is on the decline. Consumers today are inundated with content, they are choosing the content they wish to consume and even more importantly, when and how they wish to consume it.

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Mobile advertising is 2015's 'media giant'

Interestingly, according to eMarketer, mobile ad spend is to overtake print in 2015 and by 2018 it is expected that mobile will claim almost 40% of total paid media spending in the UK, with estimates that mobile will account for nearly 30% of all UK digital ad spending this year, with this figure rising to more than half by 2016.

By Andrew Kramer

Andrew Kramer is vice president of sales at Mxit South Africa, having joined the Johannesburg sales team in October 2012. Mxit is a home-grown mobile social network with 4.9 million monthly active users. Kramer has over a decade's executive experience in media strategy, marketing, advertising and sales. @MxitMedia View profile

"I'm under no illusion that 2015 will be any easier."

Mobile advertising has been steadily forging a stronghold in the media industry throughout 2014. Looking ahead to 2015, I forsee the continued trend of positive gains and ROI in the mobile social network ad space, given the burgeoning success and repeat business commissioned by leading brands including MTN, Vodacom, Nandos, KFC, SAB, Coca-Cola, DStv, Samsung, Microsoft and Unilever, to name a few.

Mobile social network advertising has proven time and again to trump engagement and awareness levels offered via alternative advertising avenues.

For B2C brands, mobile has transitioned from being an isolated channel to playing an integral role in the marketing mix. Consumer trends and business models have rapidly evolved and will continue organic growth alongside strides in mobile technology. As a marketer, it's vital to anticipate what to expect in the sector so as to have in your armoury a mobile marketing plan and content strategy ready for the future.

From our vantage point, it's a natural progression that South Africa will follow in the wake of these mobile advertising trends. I anticipate these key trends looking into 2015:

Trend 1: Seeing but not believing Mobile social network advertising continues to present phenomenal opportunities for brands to reach and engage with target consumers.

However, there is still a large portion of the marketing, media and advertising sector, which don't yet fully understand the powerful and affordable potential of the platform. Many brands and marketers are trapped in traditional mindsets because "it worked before", and as a result, have not taken the time to elevate their repertoire to include trending customer acquisition and engagement practices. As it has become the norm for so many local brands, in 2015, mobile advertising will become the norm for many more brands in tandem with contextualised real-time content becoming an indispensable component of digital marketing and content strategies.

Trend 2: Rich media centre stage Although rich media is already here, in my opinion it remains one of the biggest mobile advertising trends into 2015. I anticipate that advertisers will move towards campaigns, content and creative that will assist them in promoting the consumption of relevant, cool and engaging rich content including videos, graphics and music downloads. Ads focussed around rich media achieve increased engagement, higher perceived value and is the driver

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behind generating top-of-mind awareness in driving sales.

Trend 3: Push selling gets ignored Sporadic, tactical selling is good, no doubt about it. However, when brands relentlessly sell to customers all the time, they risk becoming spam and an aggravation factor. As a result, they land up being ignored, overlooked and dismissed. To avoid advertising fatigue, your content plan should be a balanced combination of selling, rich content, engagement mechanics such as polls, competitions and live chats as well as value adds and freebies with no strings attached.

Ask your consumers what they want, when they want it and make them feel like they have a say in what content they receive. After all, mobile is about building an engaging community for the long haul.

Trend 4: Mobile - Education's helping hand Witnessing the evolution of education through our Cape Town-based technology client Rethink Education, we've unlocked the power of mobile education. Launching an app aimed at reaching our youth, especially those disadvantaged Grade 8 - 12 students studying Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Natural Science. The Rethink Education app provides access to the school curriculum in both English and Afrikaans, with its learning platforms and aids having received national acclaim.

Today Rethink Education has had over 180,000 active users since launching the app in 2013.The success of this new innovation was thanks to the average high school pupil being far more engaged when using social chat-styled community platforms. The application leverages this preference by delivering bite-sized portions of content in conversational bubbles.

Mobile enables anywhere, any time learning. As our world changes at a rapid pace, we will continue seeing technology maximising on how students learn, communicate, socialise, connect and purchase. Mobile learning is a reflection of the world we live in. We're just at the adoption phase of education harnessing the possibilities of technology in keeping content relevant and accessible to the masses. As more mobile-savvy marketers seek to incorporate technology into the schooling system, I anticipate this trend to be prolific across a host of brands and initiatives going into 2015.

Trend 5: Mobile - Political gateway to youth In 2014 we witnessed how political parties bolstered social mobile network presence in the lead up to the elections on 7 May, with some developing new specialised apps on Mxit to take election engagement to a new dimension. In future I have no doubt that we'll see our political parties embark on robust campaigning, especially on mobile social networking as one of the critical arenas, particularly in terms of accessing the youth vote.

Let's be honest, 2014 was tough. I'm under no illusion that 2015 will be any easier from an economic perspective. Advertising and marketing budgets will continue being under scrutiny and reduction as the relentless drive to deliver profit and sustainability hang around the necks of South Africans. I believe, however, that mobile social network advertising's saving in cost, time and unsurpassed ROI will provide welcomed relief and alliance to marketers and advertisers.

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Full adoption of mobile marketing in Africa

present and inexpensive. 2015 will be the year full advantage is taken of the mobile opportunity.

By Henk Swanepoel

Henk Swanepoel, CEO, MeMe Mobile. @tokoloshy View profile

"Mobile... to become the leading mass media channel for Africa."

The impact of the mobile phone is one of the most important changes to have taken place in Africa in the last century. It has changed people, societies, communities and relationships. It has enabled millions that were incapacitated, and it is difficult for anyone in the developed world to even contemplate the impact of this technology upon Africa.

In 2015, mobile will become a premium advertising channel that offers advertisers a unique customer interface opportunity for their brand. Combined with the next evolution of mobile advertising by means of, for instance geographical subscriber targeting and unsurpassed measurability, mobile is set to exponentially gain market share in Africa from traditional media channels, and to become the leading mass media channel for Africa.

The scope of a mobile media and marketing channel will offer enormous benefits, opportunities and value to African consumers. For some, these benefits are not available in any other way - or are certainly not as accessible,

Image via 123RF

More people across Africa have access to a cellphone network (93%) than they do to electricity (64%), piped water (59%), or a police station (38%). Africa's gross domestic product will grow by 50% to US$3.7 trillion over the next five years as the continent's rapidly expanding middle class helps drive faster rates of urbanisation and increased consumer demand for goods and services. It is also predicted that the expansion of Africa's economy will see mobile subscription penetration grow from its current 72% to 97% by 2017, as the continent adds 334 million new smartphone subscribers over the next three years.

Reliable data in Africa is scarce and in most places non-existent, and traditional media's measurability is very limited. Mobile is set to play a fundamental role in shaping consumers' consumption of media and therefore, marketing messages. When we review the devices people use to access the internet around the world, Africa stands out as a mobile continent. This means when consumers engage, they engage using their phones.

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Mobile phones offer the most direct, most personal, most measurable way for marketers to connect with consumers, using content that is relevant and impactful. Consumers in the developed world are saturated by media content and filter out anything that does not add immediate value to their lives.

Conversely, emerging market consumers look to media, content and brands as entities that enrich their lives. They look for opportunities to learn, engage and better their own lives and the lives of their families, peer groups and friends.

The right content, wrapped the right way, has enormous impact.

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Explosive disruption for marketing

By Gil Sperling

Gil Sperling is the chief technology officer at Popimedia. An electrical engineer by training he is also skilled in software engineering which helped him earn Facebook's Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) badge, the only one in Africa at present and one of 260 such companies in the world. The PMD Badge is awarded to developers that build the highest quality products for Facebook Pages, Ads,

Consuming content on mobile devices is the medium of choice. And while locally we have a lower smartphone penetration and are far more conscious of the cost of data than those in wealthier economies, the growth remains rapid. Incidentally, the number of subscriptions is set to increase to 930 million by the end of 2019, which leads into the next highly influential trend - that of multi-screening.

3. Multi-screening. 99% of media is consumed in front of a screen, whether these are phones, TVs, computers, or tablets. Via multiscreening, users use multiple devices sequentially and simultaneously predominantly via hand-held devices. If marketers and advertisers adequately understand their target audience, this consumer behaviour can be extraordinarily effective in their endeavours to engage.

Apps, and Insights. www.innovations.popimedia.com | @gksperling View profile

"2015's trends can be manipulated to your advantage."

2015 will be the year that disruption becomes explosive on the marketing and advertising landscape. Organisations that fail to adequately understand and embrace the coming trends will be surpassed in the market.

Three elements have conjoined, which deeply impact on the way organisations will need to communicate with consumers: 1. Video consumption is on the rise - significantly. The Ericsson Mobility Report predicts that globally, 55% of mobile data traffic will come from video by 2020. Already, video accounts for 45% of the global mobile data traffic. Locally, World Wide Worx's South African Social Media Landscape 2015 report states that YouTube has an active South African user base of 7.2 million.

2. The surge in mobile phone subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa is touted to top 635 million by the end of 2014 (Ericsson Mobility Report).

Multi-screening, for the first time, allows us to create incremental reach to users with targeted content (for example, a woman aged 32, with children, who watches a TV ad for a car, and while on her mobile at the same time sees an ad for the same car - but this time saying there is space for a baby seat - due to the targeting available).

Consumer preferences dictate effective marketing and advertising strategies.

Social media platforms are already on board with these peaking trends, with Facebook and Twitter already tackling tech problems that don't yet exist these platforms are investing in upgrades to cater for the heavier demand on their infrastructure. Facebook is directly taking advantage of the increased demand for video by creating products justified by organisations' investments in brand lift and direct response through video.

And organisations are seeing strong returns on both their direct response and brand lift video campaigns. Simply, if you adequately understand your audience, and thus produce video ads that offer value to them, they become a highly effective medium. If we run a video on Facebook, we see on average that 75% of people watch that video to the end. As an outreach tool, it is extremely cost effective. And, through a medium such as Facebook, combined

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with sophisticated algorithm tools available, the spend can be finely targeted, ensuring that you appear only to those who are genuinely interested in what you are marketing.

We must accept the consumer's growing preference for video, the behaviour of multi-screening, and the explosive growth of mobile devices. By combining these with a content strategy that adds value, while effectively targeting the right audience at the right time via algorithmic tools, 2015's trends can be manipulated to your advantage.

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TREND: Content marketing Content marketing will dominate 2015 in the marketing environment as brands increasingly use digital platforms and data gathered from consumers to create and curate relevant content to bolster brand engagement and brand loyalty.

There isn't a marketing plan that won't have content marketing at the heart of its marketing process - whether it is paid, earned or owned content - or whether you call it content marketing, native advertising, PR, storytelling or advertorial. The chapter and verse is to touch the consumer on an emotive level so that they share your content too.

The consumer's insatiable desire for cool content to share to their networks hasn't abated and in fact recent global and national events in the massive news year that 2014 was - seemingly a disaster, a war or a global issue to 'hashtag' every week - only proves how more engaged the individual is online and how more prepared they are to share relevant content; content that adds value; and content that makes them look good.

The next evolution of content marketing for 2015 is predicted to be 'content selling' according to Hubspot's marketing blog, which provides a handy graphic explaining how content marketing can transmute to content selling, as well.

South African marketers need to download this infographic and pin it to their desktops as a reminder.

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In our exclusive Biz Trends 2015 reports, there isn't a contributor who doesn't have content on their trends list for 2015, no matter which trend category they commented on. David Blyth, group MD, Yellowwood Brand Architects, pegs content marketing as the industry's "hottest topic" at present. Consumergenerated content is at its peak and marketers are contributing to the content overload with stories and campaigns for consumers to share and engage with.

"In 2015 we will continue to witness the rise of curated content and infographics, but good curation is still a rare skill and even infographics are becoming pervasive and invasive. We will see the increasing use of video. And we will also see more people unsubscribing from everything they don't find valuable," Blyth warns.

Marketers need to really understand what their consumers want, when they want it and it needs to offer solutions to problems, Blyth adds.

Brands are becoming publishers of their own content, seamlessly integrating content of value for customers and native advertising (advertorial - paid for content), says Melissa Attree, director content strategy, O&M CT. Attree also urges brands to build their own communities on their own platforms. "It's not enough to just create good content - we need to pay attention to how that content is packaged, repurposed and, most importantly, distributed to ensure that it really adds value and builds an audience in the long-term."

Heidi Brauer, chief marketing officer, Hollard Insurance, does not believe the game changer in the industry in 2015 is digital integration or data. She believes agencies and clients need to work harder at collaborating on the brands they are responsible for to create that "beautiful work" required. Marketing convergence/integration and a single currency for industry research are also on her wishlist for this year.

and will no doubt continue. It fits into the whole 'transparency and authenticity' movement. Basically we have to act like the human beings we are: with more humanity. We certainly can't tell those authentic stories if we don't. You can't fake authenticity for very long.

"Truth, purity and organic content are the big trends for 2015 for Di Charton, managing director, Red & Yellow school of branding, Cape Town. Strong content will gain social capital and be shared by consumers. Paul Scanlon, MD, Pernod Ricard SA, highlights the trend towards "brands with providence" brands that have a compelling story to tell, in collaboration with their consumers, as part of that organic content.

Cecile Missildine, EMEA regional director, Text 100, wants public relations agencies and ad agencies to work closer together to get the owned, earned and paid content model working as it should with fully integrated communications. In fact, Bridget von Holdt, MD, Glasshouse Communication Management, advises PR agencies to really focus on creating compelling content as the media industry shrinks in South Africa and the rest of the world.

This includes visual content. "The rise of the so-called second screen phenomenon, in which users log onto the internet on their tablet or smartphone while watching TV, is creating a new mind-set where consumers and business will grow more willing to interact with brands through social channels in the coming year."

And again, content is referenced by Keri-Ann Stanton, head, Joe Public Engage: "Great content across the correct platforms that shows that brands and corporates themselves have realised and acknowledged that their consumers and influencers and stakeholders live in more than one place, and need more than one message." *Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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It's integrated communications or bust

By Cécile Missildine

Cécile Missildine has more than 20 years of communications experience working for global brands in the United States and in EMEA, focusing on technology and innovation-driven companies such as IBM, Skype, PayPal, SanDisk, AMD and Philips. As executive vice president and regional director EMEA, she looks after Text100's operations and key clients in Europe, Middle-East and Africa. @cmissildine | View profile

"It is looking at campaigns holistically. Where you look at a campaign or story and see how you can best disseminate that message, through: 1. Branded, owned content: Whether it is online or social media, content can also be pushed out through paid activities through sponsored links, sponsored tweets, paid SEO, and media relations elements.

2. Earned media: Supplement other campaign elements or advertising campaigns with a story in the publication to make it rank higher in search or to pin it to the top of a page.

Missildine firmly believes that the human element is fundamental in all communication campaigns and that audience behaviour should be at the centre of any storyline or strategy. This is at the core of making integrated campaigns work in 2015.

"The big trend for 2015 is the actual move into integrated communications."

South African communications agencies need to evolve and adapt their skill set to match global expectations and the global industry transition across the media and marketing communications industry towards fully integrated communications.

This is according to Text100 regional director for EMEA, Cécile Missildine, who was interviewed in South Africa on a visit in November last year.

"The big trend for 2015 is the actual move into integrated communications and I think this is a key point for companies and agencies in South Africa and Africa.

There needs to be a reflection on how to make all communications campaigns integrated. I still see people thinking in terms of traditional media and then adding on social media or digital media," she explains.

Missildine emphasises that integrated communications is not doing public relations with "a little bit of social" in it.

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"We, as humans, have specific behaviours and we are not dictated by the demographic we fit in - I see very little use of research into the psychology of consumers inside PR agencies. How do we tap into this reference point so we can engage with them and change their behaviours? Those are the questions we need to be asking."

In 2015 she would also like to see less publicity for the sake of publicity: "I often see clients putting their CEO on the cover of a magazine - just getting your name out there is not engaging people."

Top trends In addition, her trends for 2015 include: 1. Thinking 360: Evolving towards integrated communications means that agencies, especially in South Africa, look beyond traditional and social - they need to think 360 and they need to get closer to their

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marketing clients.

2. Engagement: Engage people in a difference way, think about human element.

3. Branded content: Media relationships are sacred and PR people do not tell journalists what to write, so PR agencies have been slow in pushing branded content. But Missildine emphasises, this is a totally different strategy and you don't deal with the same people.

4. Creating new audiences: This is an area communication agencies will be going into in the future.

She says there is an opportunity for communications agencies to work with advertising agencies. "We should not sit back and see the digital and ad agencies eat away into our PR budgets. We have to work with the ad agencies and there should be a clean, clear definition of the advertising dollars, vs. the softer, media relations dollars. There is a grey area and that is mostly online.

That is where the opportunity lies for the PR agencies. We suffer as PR people of a massive inferiority complex - 'we can never be as sexy and shiny as the ad guys' - of course we can!

"In the past we were the implementers, executing communications campaigns, now we are part of the thinking: that strategic conversation. There are still meetings and discussions happening on bigger campaigns that we are not part of, that the advertising guys are part of, but in the coming years, we are going up the 'food chain' and will be brought into the conversations happening [with marketers] earlier, to define the insights," Missildine concludes. *CĂŠcile Missildine was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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A return to brands with providence

By Paul Scanlon

Paul Scanlon is the managing director of Pernod Ricard South Africa and Namibia. View profile

"Consumers are looking for premium brands."

Consumers are returning to products that have distinct origins, providence and have stories to tell, says the newly appointed managing director of Pernod Ricard South Africa and Namibia, Paul Scanlon.

Scanlon, who has worked on almost every continent in the world in various marketing roles, became regional director: North America of Chivas Brothers in 2002. For the past seven years, he has been based in London in the capacity of Chivas Brothers commercial director. Pernod Ricard's brand portfolio comprises premium brands, including Chivas Regal, Absolut Vodka and Jameson.

"There is definitely a global trend for consumers to go back to products that have distinct origins. In some of the most advanced spirits markets in the world, such as the UK, consumers are moving away from faddish, brightly coloured brands, with no history, towards brands with a rich history, stories, craft brands that have authentic stories to tell or a real place to show MARKETING TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRAND ALIVE

consumers where it's made. We've had a big upsurge in visits throughout the world to our distilleries in Scotland and Ireland to see where product is made.

"Beefeater Gin (established in the 1820s) rebuilt its distillery in London and opened up in May 2014. You can touch and feel the juniper berries, see gin being made, there are limited edition bottles available... It is all about having real stories to tell about brands and their providence.

Scanlon says there is no slowdown in demand for super premium brands in South Africa, which is mirroring international trends which have seen growth in the market for champagne and high-end spirits. "The high-class consumer wants to be seen to be drinking the right product - from Soweto to Cape Town nightclubs."

He said consumers in South Africa are becoming more knowledgeable on products and are very aspirational, so they are seeing the top end of their brand portfolio flying off the shelves. "We can't keep up with demand. We are seeing a lot of premiumisation. People want to show that they have made it..."

He is positive about growth in his premium brand category in 2015. "I am very positive about premiumisation. Brandies and low-end Scotch whiskies will have a hard time. Consumers are looking for premium brands. I definitely see more consolidation of wholesalers and grocers becoming stronger in the trading environment, independents being squeezed."

Regulation Scanlon does feel that South Africa is going down a dangerous route in terms of regulation and it is becoming a real challenge to try recruit international expertise to help out. "SA has to continue as an open economy to try develop and compete. South Africa can't expect to have experts in every single field.

This is a 'watch out' for me."

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The mooted "dark market", which will result from a ban on alcohol advertising of every type, needs more open dialogue between the industry, business and government, he says.

The other 'watch out' for him on South Africa is GDP growth. "We have seen GDP growth halve in the past year - that is obviously having a squeeze on consumer's pockets. The growing middle class, LSM 5 and 6 are emerging and we are having incredible volume gains. The middle class are not just looking for cheap and cheerful local products, but are looking for premium products.

Definitely the premium brands are looking good."

"I'd be cautiously optimistic about 2015: companies with premium, aspirational, top brands will do well."

*Paul Scanlon was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Convergence marketing

By Heidi Brauer

Heidi Brauer is the chief marketing officer of Hollard Insurance. @heidibeeee | View profile

acknowledged. I have been on a hobby horse for a long time, wanting an award that celebrates a great collaboration with agency and client.

"When I talk to my teams and agency partners, I say it takes a village to raise a brand. For me, the game changer has to be the gift of a real adult partnership between the client and agency.

"More and more I'm going back to psychology 101 and transactional analysis and parent/child relationships. Since when did we need intermediaries to moderate our relationships with each other? It is a diminishing of respect.

"Relationships are the game changer."

Heidi Brauer, chief marketing officer of Hollard Insurance, believes solid client/agency relationships based on mutual respect, trust and collaboration is at the heart of industry growth going forward into the New Year.

"I don't think the game changer is digital or data. I think it is back to the basics of relationships: trust, respect, collaboration. I want an adult-adult relationship with my agency. We are parenting this brand together. If you don't want a client with opinions, you have the wrong client. I want to be challenged. We immersed our agency in our business so they could hit the ground running and make beautiful work with us - not for us, with us."

This is important for Brauer, who has worked both sides of the marketing and advertising agency fence, for independent and global brands, most notably Ipsos Markinor, Kulula and recently, Halo agency.

What was special for Brauer in 2014, was to finally see awards shows such as The Loerie Awards acknowledge marketers and not just the agencies. "This year at the Loeries, clients went up to the stage with the agencies to be MARKETING TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRAND ALIVE

"I need my agencies to be the very best they can be, but I can't expect that from them unless I liberate them and let them know as much as I do about my business and not be intimidated by it. Of course, it also comes down to the calibre of marketers out there. Relationships are the game changer. And a little bit of humility goes a long way," Brauer emphasises.

What she doesn't want to see more of in 2015 is the "global gobbling and amalgamation of all the independent agencies into global giants". This is because it gives her less choice as to who she wants to work with.

"No matter how much they tell me that it won't change anything, it does. I am sorry for me as a client and sorry for them as independents because it means that South African brands are not thriving, we are giving ourselves away. I'd love a little less naivety and a little less gobbling, it is anti-competitive and it is bad for the consumer and bad for brands."

Brauer is also tired of seeing marketers being gullible about digital. "Just because you can measure it, doesn't mean you must do it. I'd like to see people choosing media for the feasibility to deliver to the audience. I'd like to see marketers more informed and less gullible."

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Brauer's top trends for 2015 are: 1. Marketing convergence: As in "proper convergence". In the current economy, there is less to spend, yet it is so important to spend, Brauer says, so marketing has to be fully integrated. This means applying a creative solution across the best channels in an integrated way, converging and joining up all the agencies involved. It doesn't mean taking a piece of work from another media channel and sticking it on a billboard.

2. Single data currency and source for planning media: Marketers will get a shock in 2015 when they realise that the SAARF AMPS data is no longer available after all the drama around measurement in the South African industry, says Brauer. "Marketers are not aware that they will soon not have AMPS as a measurement and they don't seem to know what is coming next, nor do they seem to care. I want focus on a single currency that is properly moderated that we can do our planning on, or media owners will be pulling the wool over our eyes in a big way."

3. Multi-layered brand building: Planning brand communications is like making a multi-layered chocolate cake, recounts Brauer, using a favourite analogy. "Different marketers and different audiences will like a different layer. Some of the layers will be common to the market.

Then we have to interleave that with local business milieu and local cultural layers so we end up with the right kind of slice of cake for that market. But it is still our 'Hollard' brand cake. We need to be adaptable and flexible as markets are different, but you can't be so laissezfaire that no one knows what you stand for. Some markets will like it sweeter, some with fresh cream, some with strawberries, but it is still a chocolate cake. In putting layers in, that is when it becomes nuanced and layered and brilliant."

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4. Continue brand spend: "I see marketers being smart and being able to convince their peers around the boardroom table to continue to invest in brand communications even when the economy is tight. I see marketers being as proud of their strategic business communications plans than they are of their events. We live in hope... Spend is shifting and we have to spend differently, through retention/loyalty spending, direct marketing and lead generation, not just blasting money at a TV strategy," says Brauer, admitting it's probably more of a wish than a reality. *Heidi Brauer was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Don't be scared of advertising

By Diane Charton

As managing director of Red & Yellow, Diane Charton steers the strategic direction of the business. She strives to empower and educate the SA marketing communications industry through a myriad of traditional and digital educational platforms. With a unique combination of marketing, leadership and engineering experience, Charton brings a multifaceted approach to using marketing trends and insights to innovate and empower the industry as a whole.

Follow @DiCharton on Twitter | View profile

"It is often ordinary people who start something; build a following with truth and purity, organic content."

The brands that will stand out in 2015 will be those that leave the "herd" behind. This is the view of Di Charton, managing director of the Red & Yellow School, who adds that the shape of advertising will continue to change.

An international example of a brand that stood out for Charton in 2014, was Newcastle Brown Ale's Superbowl campaign including 'storyboard'. "What Newcastle Brown Ale did at the Superbowl this year, 'stole it'. It is a great brand that is true to its core essence. It knows exactly who it is. Its advertising message is consistent - from coasters in a pub, through to what it does online.

The whole 'no bollocks' attitude... And their numbers and sales support that."

A local example of a brand that stands out from the herd, for her, is Yuppie Chef. "We must remember that consumers are quite happy to be advertised to MARKETING TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRAND ALIVE

if they get value."

In 2014 Charton oversaw the implementation of the merger between Quirk Education, which bought the Red & Yellow School of Logic and Magic, adding a whole suite of online digital marketing courses to the advertising school's curriculum; a new brand identity, Red & Yellow; as well as a move to trendy new premises for the school in Cape Town's Salt River. These are Charton's top trends for 2015: 1. Stop apologising for advertising. Consumers are savvy and brands and agencies must stop trying to hide advertising and messaging in different ways.

"We mustn't be scared of advertising. If it is valuable, relevant, people will respond. Stop apologising for advertising to people - our role is to add value."

2. Good content marketing will continue to grow, bad content marketing will die. "People want useful content and valuable content. That will increase dramatically. Filling up the web with useless stuff... Brands that go that route will find they have invested a lot for zero return. Brands need to create content that results in engagement. Too much content marketing is from a broadcast-led mentality rather than a customer-led strategy."

3. Social capital. Embedded in our content marketing is a 'build it and they will come' mentality. "People are needing to increasingly pay to get visibility. The shifts within social media platforms to cut down on organic visibility of brands means brands will have to pay to get visibility of their content. It all comes down to someone creating a great piece of content, which we then share because we get social capital out of that. People are very happy to share great pieces of content - even with a strong marketing message with a brand. We will continue to see that. Social capital is not on the decline. That is on the increase."

4. Seamless integration of spend. The 'siloed budget' cannot continue, Charton warns, as people move seamlessly between devices. "There cannot be

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a TV budget, a digital budget, a mobile budget, etc. A consumer doesn't sit in those different brackets." What is required is different thinking from marketers and media agencies. Content creation needs to move seamlessly between devices and platforms to allow for a journey to take place. "Don't just repeat what I've seen on my mobile device - enhance it."

5. Mobile-first thinking. The question is still asked: 'how do I add mobile onto the backend of this...' says Charton. But mobile is such an incredible tool, people need to start thinking of mobile first, not last, she says. "It requires a different type of thinking. Brands that will win will get proximity thinking."

6. Cross-device attribution. "I've been talking about this trend for a long time.

Within the digital space, I can attribute a purchase to various touchpoints and the associated consumer behaviour. We haven't done that particularly effectively - a lot of that was cookie led - now we are working consistently on different devices, plus exposed to TV advertising, different experiences in store. The importance of analytics - human analytics - will see an increase next year. Cookie-based tracking is something we are seeing a shift away from. It is now very device-oriented. It is much more about me as a user."

7. Content partnerships. Charton says the industry has always known the power of partnerships and influencer marketing in a content-led strategy was going to be very important. This led to the rise of online influencers, such as celebrities. "How we view celebrities is changing - it is often ordinary people who start something on YouTube or Instagram or Pinterest and build a following of millions with truth and purity, organic content, and then the brands notice and come on board. You have to see what is coming, what is influencing people. It is not brand-led, it is people-led, customer-led, content that is meaningful for a customer."

8. Wearable tech. The Internet of Things, wearable technology will exert influence in 2015 as more and more wearable devices hit the market. "As marketers, we need to get our heads around it - not to advertise, to build MARKETING TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRAND ALIVE

relationships. It will be interesting to see how people adopt it, use it, how we as brands create value in that exchange and usage."

9. Rise of storytelling. Storytelling is "real-life amplified" explains Charton, in one of the best explanations given to date. "It is about what people relate to.

Look at the things people share online. It is a good indicator. The things that people absolutely relate to are real." Here Charton references the Coke 'First Parenting' commercial from Argentina; and the Wren 'First Kiss' campaign, which was the most viewed advertising video campaign in 2014, and one of only 19 campaigns that have surpassed 100 million views. "Again, it comes down to great storytelling," Charton emphasises. Sharing great content gives people social capital and provides rich human connections. This past Christmas, both the Sainsbury and John Lewis campaigns stood out, once again, for the richness of the human connection, she adds.

10. Making a real difference. Consumers know when brands are doing something for the sake of doing it. Marketers need to understand what motivates consumers and for Millennials especially, who are hyper-aware of the world around them, what motivates them is brands that make a real difference. "We will see a lot of attention paid to that this year," Charton concludes.

*Diane Charton was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Winning the marketing race

By Johanna McDowell

Johanna McDowell counsels clients and agencies around expectations in the advertising, marketing process. She is CEO of the Independent Agency Search and Selection Company (IAS), a division of black-owned marketing services group Mazole Holdings.

Contact Johanna on tel +27 (0)10 594 0281, email her at Johanna@agencyselection.co.za and follow her on Twitter at @jomcdowell | View profile

"Social media has produced a more elusive consumer with short-term thinking."

While the fundamentals will always remain the same, 2015 will also bring 'silobusting', 'agility marketing', and advertising decoupling and recoupling.

1. Consumers will become more and more involved in marketing and will continue to exert power and influence over brands. Transparency will become the most important tool of marketing - and the opportunity for brands to take the lead in this area will be significant. This means the best brands will not be those with the fictional or made-up stories but those that will give an accurate, real-time picture of what they are doing for consumers, at any given time.

2. Shareability. Campaign successes will be measured by how much they are shared by consumers. This will be a key factor in the ever more powerful social media stratosphere and will be one of several significant measurements that agencies and clients will need to consider when evaluating the success of a campaign.

3. CMOs will become Chief Simplifier Officers. Companies, by nature, create MARKETING TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRAND ALIVE

complexity and if the environment they are in is becoming more complex, companies respond by creating more and more vertical structures which will in turn lead to further complexity. CMOs will need to make 'silo-busting' a top priority in order to ensure that the company's brands are clearly positioned and understood both internally and externally if they want to succeed. Internal communications will be a vital part of this 'silo busting' drive.

4. Shopability. Digital marketers are realising that every screen, i.e. computer, smart and feature phones, digital outdoor and ambient as well as classical TV screens, all need to be shop-able. Commerce and transactions from those screens will become more common with greater linking and accessibility to solid sales measurements.

5. Advertising decoupling and recoupling. The trend has been happening overseas for some time and there are marketers in South Africa who have decoupling in place. Decoupling is separating the creative concept and production work so that an agency produces the creative concept but client (marketer) has a direct relationship with the production companies and therefore produces and prints their own work.

This has happened for some years with printing and has moved into press advertising material as well as occasionally broadcast materials, e.g. TV and radio commercials. However the complexity of producing TV commercials is ensuring - to a certain extent - that commercial production stays with agencies. For the rest, this potential loss of revenue (mark-ups on production are traditionally part of agency income) could have a significant effect on agencies.

6. Snackable content. Time-poor consumers - and business people - will be doing less and less long emails and more and more shorter communication and snackable content - emoticons are already used extensively by a few veteran digital users. This will increase.

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7. Search for talent. All over the world, agencies and marketers are searching for the 'holy grail' of marketing and advertising talent. These days they are competing with the large digital channels such a Facebook and Google in order to secure the services of marketing technologists - those with a deep understanding of technology who will be able to use that knowledge to drive marketing strategy.

8. Media agencies will step up and lead. Traditionally, media agencies have been the planners and buyers of advertising for clients. They will continue in this important role but with their increasing knowledge and access to consumer trends and big data, much stronger than the creative agencies, they will become far more important as a key strategic partner to marketers. This is happening extensively in the US and I can predict that our local media agencies will tap into this trend and earn their much higher place in the level of importance that they have with clients.

9. Winners will be adept at 'agility marketing'. Social media has produced a more elusive consumer with short term thinking. This means that marketers have to follow 'likes', 'shares' and 'tweets' as well as click-throughs, which produce immediate - but not necessarily useful - data. Marketers who can select and manage this data and adapt their marketing strategies more quickly will be better placed to win the marketing race.

10. Procurement's powers will increase. Greater levels of accountability, financial sustainability and transparency will increasingly motivate marketing procurement within companies. Procurement will maintain their cautious approach but will become more adept and removing any road blocks within the procurement chain. In addition they will be more involved with agencies in producing better efficiencies and operations, not just fee and contract negotiation.

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PR's conversion rate

By Bridget von Holdt

Bridget von Holdt is managing director of Glasshouse Communication Management and a stalwart of the PR Industry in South Africa. View profile

"PR can be more effective than branded content."

PR is evolving at a rapid rate: these days, 'public relations' encompasses everything from social media to content marketing. According to Fastcompany.com, "PR's data shows that PR generates conversion rates 10 to 50 times that of advertising conversions".

PR can be more effective than branded content. This is the case in the US and the UK, and South Africa isn't that far behind:

Written content is the way to go Like the rest of the world, the media landscape is shrinking in South Africa, with newspapers and magazines struggling to meet advertising targets and restructuring at every turn. Journalists too, are changing from being reporters to becoming content generators, and in turn many are attracted to content writing and looking at PR as a new career choice.

Creating compelling content that is informative, yet pleasantly consumable and user friendly, is what PR agencies should be focusing on for 2015. After all, MARKETING TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRAND ALIVE

we have already seen how social media and digital media (Facebook, Twitter, Mxit as well as bloggers), have changed the face of PR campaigns in 2014.

Visual content no longer a nice to have Visual content has become an imperative. Consumption of video across the incredible array of available mobile devices and social media platforms keeps on growing and mobile devices will also continue to transform the news environment. The rise of the so-called second screen phenomenon, in which users log onto the internet on their tablet or smartphone while watching TV, is creating a new mind-set where consumers and business will grow more willing to interact with brands through social channels in the coming year.

Social media grows up The disciplines of public relations and social media will be housed under one functional silo. PR professionals will use a mix of traditional, digital and social media, blended together and tailor-made for companies to reach their target audiences. PR professionals will be able to make deeper connections and to build relationships, loyalty and advocacy through any number of channels this side of digital is growing up quickly.

'Media' is all media, including print, radio, TV, digital platforms, journalists, bloggers, radio, TV as well as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, WeChat, YouTube and more. These media are all doing well and growing at a rapid rate in South Africa, but there are new innovations that will pop up sooner than you expect that will be used to deliver valuable content to audiences.

Upskill in digital media South African public relations practitioners are under-utilising digital media

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and the industry needs to catch up fast. Social media is now fully integrated into most businesses at some level.

Businesses have long realised they need social media representation because more and more consumers are searching for them on Facebook, sending tweets, posting pictures on Instagram as opposed to interacting with their websites. PR needs an aggressive push for better use of digital media which is a powerful and effective tool. The industry will grasp the effectiveness of this tool and upskill their employees in 2015.

Talent pool becomes specialised Creative and analytics skills will be in greater demand than ever before. The PR talent pool will become more specialised simply because of new developments in monitoring and measurement. PR will be able to gather and analyse data effectively and accurately to assist innovative communication, relationship building, reputation management and crisis management.

PR agencies will employ younger thinking specialists who have an understanding of the effective use of the many digital platforms available to them. Another specialist will also emerge - one who understands strategy and these specialists will lend their skills to monitoring client needs, unravel data measurement and provide innovative factual data to hone in on the right target media to promote the message to the right audience to fuel the client's campaign.

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Mega-trend: Overt customer obsession

By David Blyth

David Blyth is CEO at Yellowwood. His focus at Yellowwood to date has been on building thought leadership and a pan-African client footprint. David is a prior chairman of 'think' (South African Communication Design Council), the Digital Interactive Media Association and is a current director of the Brand Council of South Africa (BCSA). Follow @dvblyth on Twitter. View profile

"Content marketing is the industry's hottest topic."

The fundamentals of marketing excellence will never change. Just like the shopkeepers who earned their customers' trust before the age of branding, powerful brands are those that understand and relate to people, listen and respond with high emotional intelligence and generally make the customer feel good about him or herself.

However, the ways in which marketers can do this are changing fast. Here are our top four predictions for marketing in 2015 and beyond - and they're all agreeably alliterative...

1. Content contradiction Content marketing is the industry's hottest topic these days. Consumergenerated content is everywhere and, as Eric Schmidt pointed out, humanity now produces more information every two days than we did from the dawn of history until 2003. Marketers are getting serious about this content tsunami MARKETING TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRAND ALIVE

producing interesting, useful and entertaining stories and campaigns that consumers want to engage with and share.

But we are approaching the point of sensory overload. Most of us are drowning in emails, we get irritable when things are too long to read or review. We are looking for quick answers, insights and entertainment - not more demands on our time.

In 2015 we will continue to witness the rise of curated content and infographics, but good curation is still a rare skill and even infographics are becoming pervasive and invasive. We will see the increasing use of video. We will also see more people unsubscribing from everything they don't find valuable.

What it means for marketers • Create better, more punchy content - it's not just about 'more', but about more relevance.

• Serialise your content - smaller, more regular doses.

• Be smart and offer solutions to problems.

2. Overt obsession You can't create great content without understanding your audience's interests, passions and problems. The second mega-trend of 2015 will be overt customer obsession. Marketers will need to invest in truly understanding more about their customers and potential customers - through traditional research, but increasingly also through ethnographic research and real-time data from transactions, movements and conversations.

What it means for marketers • There is a fine line between observation and stalking - respect privacy while hunting for insight.

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• Consider forums and panels that reward customers by showing them how their feedback makes tangible changes to products and campaigns - it's not just about financial incentives.

• Customer collaboration can provide great insight that does not feel intrusive.

3. Economical experience Brand experience is the next wave of change in marketing. What started with global retailers and carefully crafted immersive experiences (think iStore or the models at Abercrombie & Fitch) have now crossed into product and service brands and multimedia experiences. The shift has been stunted by the difficult economic times, but smart marketers are using participation to create memorable and unique experiences. The Magnum pop-up store in Johannesburg, for example, lets customers create their own perfect Magnum and these kinds of participatory experiences also provide ideas for new product development.

What it means for marketers • Find efficient ways to create memorable experiences - it doesn't need to cost a fortune to strike a chord with customers.

• Don't redesign the entire customer journey - focus on the right moments for maximum impact.

• Wearable tech is worth watching, but for now, human experiences beat tech in Africa.

4. Functional fortress Brand purpose and positioning are hugely important, but many brands have tipped too far into the emotional and esoteric space without any connection to reality. In our difficult economic climate, marketers need to ensure that their brands connect emotionally but that they also make rational sense; that they MARKETING TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRAND ALIVE

provide value for money. We will see a return to functional proof points that help customers navigate and close the value equation loop. Brands in the food and beverages categories will be first to make the switch, and other categories will follow.

What it means for marketers • Build resilience into your brands by highlighting your functional proof points.

• Think about how quality intrinsics, such as taste or durability, can be linked to factual information like provenance, chain of custody and awards for quality.

• Be wary of positioning yourself on heart alone.

2015 will remain a tough year for marketers focused on domestic markets, and attention will continue to shift towards regional economic growth in the rest of Africa.

Staying focused on customer needs, ensuring there are strong functional benefits to your products and creating content and experiences that are relevant, simple and attitudinally engaging, will allow marketers to build resilient and powerful brands that weather economic storms and position them for growth on the continent.

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It's not all about the money

online before you even get in the car. Shopping centres have a great opportunity to play a leading role here, unlock several revenue streams and embrace online/omni-channel to stay relevant for the modern shopper.

By Doug Mayne

Doug Mayne, MD of Primedia Lifestyle, founded his marketing and

Trend 2: The customer experience

advertising career at Ogilvy Durban, where his leadership qualities ensured his progression from account executive to group account director. Joining Primedia Lifestyle in 2007 as KZN regional marketing manager, Doug was appointed MD in July 2011. His particular area of interest is the digital and CRM space within retail, and the use of mobile, social and loyalty tools to drive customer

I know we've heard this before, but brands and retailers that focus on taking the shopping experience to another level will win. As human beings, it is our nature to want to touch, taste, feel and interact. It makes sense then that no matter how amazing an online experience is, we will still want to engage with people, and retailers should leverage that.

engagement and personalised retail experiences.

Malls are crazy places where anything can happen. Most importantly, the bulk of this country's retail spending takes place in this environment. Here are some of my key trends for 2015:

An example of really focussing on customer needs and great customer experience that I've noted in the banking world is FNB, because of several reasons. They deliver their banking cards free of charge to customers who'd rather not stand in an actual banking queue at lunchtime. They also offer the consumer a host of other benefits including being able to switch your account online in 'under 10 minutes'. It's clear that this is a key focus area for the bank, and this, along with aggressive marketing, is definitely improving market share and customer acquisition numbers.

Trend 1: Omni-channel in malls

Trend 3: Mobile retail marketing

I believe that the malls that are more forward-thinking and innovative see the opportunity in this space and will benefit financially. The more astute mall owners will be able to encourage online retailers to rent physical space in their malls. Alternatively, malls should work with them to increase their offerings, like offering a 'click and collect' service, for example.

Mobile and phones ruling our lives will be in every trend spotter's report. The major opportunity for landlords is to capitalise on this by embracing the mobile revolution, especially with regard to mobile payments. This would include a move from physical loyalty cards to a mobile application. The advantages of doing this are numerous: the card can't be left behind at home and malls can make e-vouchers available for shoppers.

Website www.primedialifestyle.co.za. @Darkwing555 | View profile

"Consumers expect marketing solutions to be tailor-made for them."

Other opportunities for malls include integrating their current offerings into omni-channel platforms. For example, allowing consumers to manage certain services online before they even enter the mall. Good examples include being able to book your parking spot, buy a gift card or book a dinner reservation, all MARKETING TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRAND ALIVE

As mentioned previously, parking spots, movies, dining options, etc. could be booked ahead of arrival. That's not to mention all the analytics that come with

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the reporting, which will make a world of difference in showing shopping centres who is spending what, where and how often.

Trend 5: It's all about me!

Mobile payment options such as FlickPay and SnapScan are also becoming increasingly popular. These allow shoppers to scan their credit cards onto their phones through an app and use QR codes to make payments at participating merchants. Apple Pay is another option recently launched.

We are no longer dealing in a world of USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) but in a world of MSPs (My Selling Proposition). Consumers expect marketing solutions to be tailor made for them and retailers and landlords should be taking note.

Trend 4: Social media

It's no longer just what we as marketers or landlords think, it's about what the shopper wants and thinks. The recent Coca-Cola name campaign was a resounding success because the brand made it all about the consumer, personalising each product with a different name. The Nike website is another brand that has achieved 'me marketing'. The website allows consumers to personalise their shoes. Superga recently ran a campaign at The Zone that allowed shoppers to purchase a pair of shoes and give them to an artist to customise. As a further example, the Magnum Pleasure Store that recently opened as a pop-up shop at The Zone allows shoppers to customise their own Magnum ice creams.

Reuters reveals some interesting upcoming trends for social media. These include that people may be able to send money to each other from Facebook's Messenger; the birth of (potential) new social networks including Ello and Nik Yak; wearables and household devices sharing notifications to Facebook and shopping finally coming to social media.

This last trend will allow consumers to purchase goods directly from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter through a 'buy' button, without losing any crucial browsing time. Deals could also be time-sensitive, which urges consumers to act fast - clever! We can expect a lot more online retail therapy coming our way next year, especially given the analytics and reporting that comes with online.

Pinterest and Instagram shouldn't be discounted - these platforms are being utilised to great effect by marketers that realise these platforms are being used more and more by consumers and marketers alike. YouTube is another under-utilised platform, considering that shoppers around the world and in South Africa are demanding more video content as bandwidth becomes less restricted. Vine is increasingly being referred to as a 'go-to' for creating video content. This platform allows the user to create short videos and even provides editing software. For me, it's about a strong engagement level, not the amount of followers or likes that a brand has.

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Brands that truly understand their shoppers and provide solutions that make shoppers feel unique and appreciated will once again be the winners.

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Trend 6: Doing good as well Globally, marketing efforts are already embracing mobile retail marketing and there is an increased awareness by marketers and retailers to do good within the communities they operate in. The Exchange Campaign, recently executed at Cavendish Shopping Centre, where consumers could only purchase clothes if they became an organ donor, or the Empty Shop (second hand clothes are donated and used to dress mannequins on a daily basis) concept in Sandton City, mirrors this trend.

In conclusion, the retail landscape is an incredibly exciting one that keeps moving forward - and it's doing so at an incredible rate. Retailers and landlords have a host of new marketing opportunities at their disposal. The race is on to see who can do it right, and make it sustainable.

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Brands vs Publishers

ensure that it really adds value and builds an audience in the long-term.

Brand as (vs) publisher

By Melissa Attree

Melissa Attree, director: content strategy, Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town, is a creative digital and marketing consultant who has worked on many major brands, including ABSA, Adidas, Big Blue, MasterCard, Nando's, Nedbank, SAA, SAB, Toyota, Vodacom and Woolworths. Attree began her career as a copy writer, before managing the local strategic transformation of the KĂŠrastase brand for L'Oreal and then providing the social media strategy for 5FM for four years. @MelAttree | View profile

"Smart brands are starting to work with publishers."

We need to start making better long-term decisions when it comes to building communities with real social business and CRM strategies.

Buy or rent?

There's a concern that brands are building large communities on islands that don't belong to them. Brands are renting space but I feel that we need to supplement this with our own dedicated spaces. I do believe that platforms like Twitter and Facebook are necessary in the marketing mix - I just don't feel that we should be placing all our faith and community-building efforts in them.

What happens if they decide to close those platforms? Where do all those customers go?

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We need to accept that brands are no longer just competing with other brands, but rather competing with publishers (the smart brands are starting to work with publishers to understand what content consumers want and how to develop that.) This links to another trend of 'brand as publisher'; by trying to adopt an integrated approach to communications it means that more brands than before are trying to extend their typical campaign thinking by publishing content that customers choose to spend time with.

Native advertising (advertorial) In the interests of #savingyouasearch, let's call this 'advertorial'. The trend for brands to adopt paid-for content that seamlessly blends with editorial is a big one in the digital space (it's something we've seen in print for many years so it seems odd to call it a trend, BUT I do think that the New York Times and brands like General Electric, in particular, have changed how we present paidfor content and have it blend seamlessly with editorial content.

Watch this!

Taking its lead from the 'snackable' trend, like Danny de Vito, the most successful videos are short and funny, like #runtoOldNavy, starring Amy Poehler and now Julia Louis-Dreyfus; BUT we have also seen a move towards longer, more film-like, beautifully shot and produced commercials, like the Johnnie Walker Blue Label campaign starring Jude Law.

Location-specific storytelling It's been spoken about previously as a trend, but 2015 I do believe will see us

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using geo-targeting to categorise and tag content to deliver very specific added-value messages in specific locations. The layered content opportunities in this space are exciting, where we can deliver personalised 'click and choose' stories.

Understanding dark social A lot of the best content is shared via platforms that analytics typically cannot track, think about how much content you share via email, SMS or instant messaging apps. This massive use of 'dark social' is not going unnoticed by the big publishers and Buzzfeed has even started to hire people whose job it is to focus on how to best distribute media through direct messaging apps.

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Back to basics communications engagement

By Keri-Ann Stanton

Keri-Ann Stanton heads up the PR division at Joe Public, bringing her experience of local and global corporate and consumer brands, across all platforms, to the table. The chosen name for the division is called Engage, with a vision to grow brand belief through authenticity. @KAmuses | View profile

"Be careful which space you choose to play in."

Q: Your 'game changer' trend in 2014?

A: Growing brand belief. Not spin-doctoring. Not launching then disappearing.

Not campaigning then falling off the radar. The core of public RELATIONS is developing meaningful, relevant, sustainable relationships with media, influencers and consumers. Relationships that will see you through the bad times, as well as the good times.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: Badly handled reputation management scenarios: from corporate investor relations level to consumer. Yes, the consumer has become more and more powerful, but equally, that does not mean that brands need to be at their mercy, especially when there is misinformation and plain bullying involved.

What is needed is communication - quality communication.

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Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

A: Great content across the correct platforms that shows that brands and corporates themselves have realised and acknowledged that their consumers and influencers and stakeholders live in more than one place, and need more than one message.

Q: What advice do you have for your peers for the next year?

A: PR has asked for a seat at the table. Now prove your worth as communication specialists.

Q: What would you like to tell your clients?

A: The word 'campaign' does not belong in PR. Where is your stakeholder engagement plan? What is your communication vision for your company and brand? A campaign is just one tab on that plan.

Q: Your most significant industry trends for 2015?

A: • Writing - we need a return to good, clear, concise writing. Sad that this is noted as a trend, but Twitter didn't help us, and the myriad of bad press releases haven't helped. Ironically, Instagram is showing us the way back to good storytelling via great copy accompanied by visuals.

• Engagement versus influence versus manipulation. It's called public RELATIONS for a reason - be careful which space you choose to play in.

• The return to the stakeholder plan - there cannot be one message across one medium, we know that. But there also cannot be just one message across a stakeholder plan, there are segments within segments: right down to employees who have been with a company for 20 years versus employees who have been there for only six months.

• The rise of EQ over IQ: if you are in communications (at board level or at brand manager level) and you can't read a situation or pick up on the unsaid, IQ will not save you.

• Actions are where it is at. It is no longer about what you say or how

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you say it, but about what you do. Leadership that sits behind a desk and is too terrified to engage with their fans (or their foes) are doing themselves out of so many learnings • Time to think. Clients, suppliers, peers who send emails followed up by a call, do no one a favour. We ALL need to become clearer about what is important versus what is urgent.

• Integration no longer belongs just in an agency or agencies collaborating on a brand or a solution, it belongs in the company/corporate itself - integrating across corporate, product / services and employees.

• We have seen the effects of the new switching economy - brand loyalty is nowhere and nothing any more, and that will only be exacerbated by the rise of the Millennials who have seen what recessions have done. The challenge is to try turn the tide, or how to play in a non-brand-loyal space.

• "The best stories come from the people you are trying to reach..." we really do need to get back in touch with the man on the street.

• More PR teams will add designers and videographers to their team: it is becoming necessary to be able to develop content on the go, reactively and proactively, just as one would issue an urgent media statement.

• In a nutshell, the industry does not need a saviour, a new platform, new tools - it simply needs to go back to basics.

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TREND: Programmatic media buying Programmatic Media Buying is the local trend that will dominate in 2015, although revitalising their businesses for growth is also what most media owners will be focusing on this year.

Media owners are mostly in agreement that 2014 was a shocking year as brands cut spend due to the economic downturn, rising costs due to rising fuel prices, a slowdown in consumer spend and national events like the miner's strike which hit satellite towns hard.

We've heard of big media contracts being cancelled and profits down at media agencies. Of all the interviews we did, the media owners were the most cautious about the operating conditions in 2015 and those that seemed to be in need of a holiday the most over the festive season! They hope for a better trading conditions in 2015, but are not sure they will get it.

Media owners like Jacques du Preez, MD of Provantage Media Group, don't pull their punches when talking about 2014 as one of the toughest years in the business, when brands cancelled contracts and pulled back on spend during the Platinum Miner's strike, etc, and the recession.

Image via 123RF

His major trend for 2015 is the fact that the investment by the international agency networks in media and agencies in South Africa, is creating an international playing field overnight and tight competition.

It is programmatic media buying that will continue to evolve and we see more private ad exchanges playing a role in the market, says John Bowles, co-MD, NAB. Paula Raubenheimer, MD, SouthernX, explains further: "Programmatic buying has been a learning curve for South Africa in 2014. While there are no meaningful statistics available on the quantity of revenue flowing through real time bidding (RTB) platforms in SA, based on discussion with buyers in the industry, there has already been huge growth in programmatic buying in 2014, but that is off a very low base in 2012 and 2013. With the global trend, as always, dictating South Africa's way forward, the market is poised to see a growth of spend in this area at a steeper curve in 2015."

While brands are still allocating small budgets to this, many major media buyers are adding programmatic buying to the marketing mix and including it in their strategies, she says.

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The Media Shop had a list for marketers on what not to do with programmatic media buying, by digital strategist, Dylan Roberts: "Though programmatic buying has exploded with expected growth numbers in the billions, too many marketers are at risk of falling short when it comes to implementing and using these tools. There's no denying the power of programmatic - but it isn't a magic formula that will instantly solve all your issues."

This is his advice: 1. Have a documented strategy: Be sure your strategy is in line with the company's overall goals and with the tactics and activities you're going to be using. Programmatic media buying tools are a means to execute the strategy - not the strategy itself.

2. It is not a glorified email marketing tool: Email marketing can be incredibly effective, but programmatic media buying tools like Cadreon, for example, also do SEO, lead scoring, landing page tracking and metrics and reporting.

3. Include other teams: Setting up an effective lead nurture campaign can't be done in a silo. You must talk to your counterparts in sales, content marketing and even customer relations. Getting better insight into your audience, leads and customers is essential for crafting campaigns that will ultimately convert visitors into customers.

4. Selling instead of nurturing: Stop selling, and start nurturing... Lead nurturing is one of the most powerful aspects of any programmatic tool and is designed to help move people along the sales journey to purchase. An effective programmatic tool will allow you to identify who needs to be nurtured versus those that may be ready for a more direct approach.

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5. Not producing enough targeted content (creative): Getting demand generation teams and content teams to work together is a key element of programmatic success. Too often, content teams live in isolation, without much interaction with their demand generation counterparts.

6. Tracking the wrong metrics: It's easy to get stuck in analysis paralysis.

At each stage of the funnel, identify the key metrics that matter.

Initially, it might be email opens and click-through rates, but as people move deeper into your sales funnel, customer conversion is all that matters.

7. Running on autopilot: Despite the name, programmatic doesn't mean you can go on autopilot. A good demand-generation strategy will focus on continually optimising everything from email marketing workflows to lead scoring and even landing page layouts. A good demand-generation marketer will also dig deeper into the database and uncover leads that need to be re-engaged or leads that should be passed along to the sales team.

*Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Brand safe programmatic environment grows in SA

than before. It is a case of working out how best to use that data to make intelligent buys that requires a deeper understanding. So it is just a new way of purchasing an already tried and tested product.

By Paula Raubenheimer

Paula Raubenheimer is managing director of SouthernX, a recently launched local private ad exchange made up of a coalition of local publishers, intent on creating a media marketplace. SouthernX has partnered with AppNexus and is part of the WPP Group. The customised platform allows both publishers and buyers to intelligently sell and buy with custom categorisation, rules of engagement for sale and purchase, granulated targeting, reporting and hands-on support. @paularaub | View profile

"Programmatic buying has proven that it's not a fad."

Programmatic buying has been a learning curve for South Africa in 2014. While there are no meaningful statistics available on the quantity of revenue flowing through real-time bidding (RTB) platforms in SA, based on discussion with buyers in the industry, there has already been huge growth in programmatic buying in 2014, but that is off a very low base in 2012 and 2013. With the global trend, as always, dictating South Africa's way forward, the market is poised to see a growth of spend in this area at a steeper curve in 2015.

While most brands are either testing or looking to test the programmatic waters, they are currently allocating small budgets to many major media buyers in South Africa to add programmatic buying to the marketing mix.

Those who are not spending at the moment are certainly including programmatic spend into budgets and strategies to be implemented in the New Year. While the medium is no different to digital buys they have been making to date, programmatic buying allows buyers access to far more data MEDIA TRENDS SPONSORED BY MILLWARD BROWN

Image via 123RF

From the publishers' perspective, while spend differs depending on the goals of the advertiser and the media mix created by the media buyer, any publisher which is not offering this as a solution is already losing digital budget. In 2015, as more media buyers equip themselves with the tools to make programmatic buys, they will be losing out on even more digital media spend. A very important aspect for publishers is that they have the technical know-how to retain control of the data collected from their users and then leverage that data to provide valuable, data-rich inventory to buyers.

We hope to see, as we have in developed markets, that publisher-digital sales teams use the efficiency of programmatic to sell the commodity of impressions and then enhance their premium sales offering by selling more creative digital solutions.

With the launch of very private (between single buyers and sellers) and private

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(a number of publishers and specific buyers) ad exchanges in the local environment, mitigation of risk is possible to avoid low CPMs for sellers and unsafe brand environments for buyers. Controlled, more exclusive marketplaces that local buyers and sellers can tap into will allow South Africa to grow programmatic buying in a safe environment.

The benefits of buying media in a brand-safe programmatic environment (speed of sale, impression price determined by the market and safe, accurate user data) will bring with it investment into the skill, technical ability and experience that is required for effective programmatic buying. There will be agencies or even brands that either invest time and money into creating skilled teams or make the decision to rather outsource to experts.

Either way, programmatic buying has proven that it's not a fad. We believe that an increase in understanding will grow programmatic spend as a portion of digital spend in 2015, but more importantly, grow the digital spend as part of the full marketing mix.

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International networks shift SA media landscape

By Jacques du Preez

Jacques du Preez is managing director of Provantage Media Group.

He is the founder and a shareholder of the group, which is one of Southern Africa's leading out of home and transit media and marketing companies. View profile

"It's back to the coalface - we need to sell product."

Almost overnight, local South African media owners and advertising agencies have become global players as international agency and media networks continue their acquisition spree in southern Africa, preparing for a stronger push into Africa, the last continent for true growth.

This is the view of Jacques du Preez, founder and managing director of Provantage Media Group, which dominates in the out-of-home and transit media environment in southern Africa.

Media owners like Du Preez don't pull their punches when talking about 2014 as one of the toughest years in the business, when brands cancelled contracts and pulled back on spend during the platinum miners' strike and the recession.

"We reduced our own visibility, putting our marketing spend into pitches and direct client events and presentations. We applied a lot more focus in our own business, understanding the environment we work in. In this economy, we had MEDIA TRENDS SPONSORED BY MILLWARD BROWN

to fight a lot harder for the business."

So it became a year of introspection for them, in which they relooked at their own business model. "It was a pitiful year for most media owners. No one could control the economy. Business underestimated the impact on the midLSM consumers. Brands are definitely spending less, taking longer to spend, want more for their money."

Du Preez believes, unfortunately, that 2015 will see another round of retrenchments, this time at media agencies, which were some of the hardest hit, he believes, losing multi-millions in turnover, as well as continued retrenchments at media owners nationwide.

He counts his business fortunate in that they began their digital conversion and investment early on in the curve and are set for expansion into Africa and other opportunities.

Within all of this, there are always opportunities, says Du Preez. "In today's world where nothing is certain, where things are in flux, we look for resourcefulness. If you are resourceful and entrepreneurial, there are lots of opportunities. It's about keeping positive. " Du Preez's key trend predictions for 2015 are: 1. Globalisation and business unusual. The South African media landscape is becoming part of the global set up very quickly, with WPP, Publicis, VML and others, buying into local agencies and media houses.

They are changing behaviour. WPP used to be an advertising agency owner, now they have bought into Smollen merchandising and field marketing, and experiential agency, EXP. So how far are they buying down the media value chain? Where is this vertical integration trend going? Africa is the last growth continent left in the world. If you are in the industry, you can't say it will be 'business as usual' going forward. It

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might be that they change buying behaviour and marketing overnight.

These are mega-trends. And now I'm not competing against local companies, but with global players. Overnight. There is no doubt it will lead to further consolidation as smaller players will have to align with larger players to be competitive.

2. Scale up North into Africa. Clients are expecting a sub-Saharan Africa footprint, they don't want to deal with 17 different businesses in each company. It makes sense to establish a hub in South Africa, with a footprint up North.

3. Smaller budgets: Budgets are smaller and commitments shorter. It is rare to get an advertising contract longer than three months these days.

4. Broadband will get a lot better and that will change consumer patterns.

5. Integration: What we haven't seen properly done is integration with other media types and online media.

6. Budgets under pressure: Consumer and advertising budgets will remain under pressure. There will be a slow recovery over the next 24 months, depending on our political leadership.

7. Media consolidation: We will see consolidation of media ownership.

More print titles will die.

8. Mid-LSM going online: With the broadband access a lot of cities are rolling out, we will see a lot of activity on the web from smartphone consumers. They will be more skilled at using the internet on their mobile devices than higher-LSM consumers. It is a big opportunity for brands and retailers.

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9. Top-end TV viewers will fragment as broadband to the top-end market will become what it is supposed to be. That market will fragment.

10. Media agencies are under pressure with smaller budgets and shrinking margins. I predict they will be pulled back into advertising agencies - that scenario has been coming for a while.

11. Advertising direct: advertisers will almost want a back to basics approach with campaigns. They want hard-working campaigns to move product and talk to the consumer at grass roots levels. It's back to the coalface - we need to sell product.

12. Total media transformation: It will take two years, but SAARF will be gone and there will be new measurement models across media.

*Jacques du Preez was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Invest in communication and content

By Dawn Rowlands

Dawn Rowlands is the of CEO Dentsu Aegis Network SSA. She has over 20 years of experience in the media industry and has most notably been a shareholder founding partner of Nota Bene, a strategy agency in South Africa, and is also the founder of Posterscope SA. Contact Dawn on dawn.rowlands@aemedia.com.

View profile

Content counts: Having your content stand out amongst the ever-present media formats that are converging, with digital leading the way, increasing the number of times and ways that a single brand can be experienced by audiences in the same place - from highly interactive and immersive contentrich mobile experiences, to stimulated visual engagements on digital networks in airports and other high-dwell time environments. Quality content partnerships that allow you to leverage a consistent brand story across your media ecosystem will count! Quantity won't. Content is everywhere and consumers want and need a relevant custodian. Make sure you are that custodian in order for your message to penetrate the market.

Q: Your 'game changer' trend in 2014?

"Truly innovative and uniquely African concepts and ideas will place your organisation in the driver's seat."

Q: What do you hope to see in 2015?

A: Make a mark: Brands that stand out will create commercial success by attracting more users, more often. Brands that make it easy for consumers to recognise them (and love them) will win. Truly innovative and uniquely African concepts and ideas will place your organisation in the driver's seat and stand out amongst the rest.

Invest in communication: Organisations need to speak one language and integrated communications is the way to ensure two-way engagement and interaction, both internally and externally. Brands that invest at a lower rate than their market share in the trade and on communication will decline faster than ever before. You'll need to be available at multiple points 24/7, as will your brand content.

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A: In 2014 we saw that applications no longer act in isolation, they are now integrated. Apps behave more like the 'www', for example, Uber has an API that lets other companies put an Uber button into their own apps. The Starbucks' app has an Uber button on the page to find a Starbucks - so that you can immediately call a cab to take you there. These integrations have made it possible for different apps to talk to each other; likewise we began to see last year that Mac started making its software more compatible with other technologies and programs, allowing for convergence and ease of communication.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: Clients/marketers who ask us to generate Facebook likes and not a fully functioning communication ecosystem that delivers results.

Q: What advice do you have for your peers in 2015?

A: Incubate ideas: Incubation of technology ideas that provide rich brand experiences will create a massive competitive advantage. The creative use of technology in a retail environment will enhance brand love and drive sales. Up-

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scaling will become less difficult as the cost of technology declines. This can be seen at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where the prices of 4K resolution TV screens have previously been extremely expensive. This year it is expected to see more affordable versions in more realistic sizes. This is just one example of how organisations will be able to up-scale using technology as they come into your consumers' reach as well as that of your business.

Creating stories: Data alone, without insightful and consistent brand stories and ongoing management, will deliver poor results. Data centres, made up of layers of data, will help brands refine their story, create immediacy/relevance and reduce the cost per contact dramatically. Your data needs soul. Data is available to everyone, but captivating an audience with the data which you release is the challenge.

The future: different and better: Looking to the future and the type of talent which DAN SSA needs to attract clients to our business, as well as the manner we communicate and approach clients, is of utmost importance, we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can be different and how we can be better... so if we've got the best people with the best tools, we can win.

Q: What would you like to tell your clients?

A: Challenging conventions - ensuring that our clients are completely mesmerised by our offering is one of the facets that's of utmost importance. It is crucial for our employees to question briefs, as this is ideally what clients want from us - they want us to take them on a journey, to an end destination that gives them a really solid business outcome. We cannot simply be mediocre in order to be better than our competitors. Standing out will be crucial to our success in 2015.

Q: Your most significant industry trends for 2015?

A: Within the 2015 plans, consistency is one of the key driving forces MEDIA TRENDS SPONSORED BY MILLWARD BROWN

discussed. Having sporadic peaks of excellence in certain regions or average performance will only view DAN SSA as inconsistent. I would like to see our talent focussing capability, curiosity and be determined to drive change.

Capability to drive consistency. Curiosity to inspire innovation and enough drive to bring that change about.

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The consumer is in control

the back-end of all of this, there will be a lot more development around retailer apps, mass customisation, and harnessing the big data behind that. It is time for retailers to take centre stage, he says.

By Craig Page-Lee

Craig Page-Lee, is managing director of Posterscope SA, an Out-ofHome communications agency. He is an architect and retail designer by qualification. With 21 years' experience across the fields of marketing, branding, advertising, media, retail and design, he has

Page-Lee's further trend predictions for 2015 are: • Connecting retailers to consumers: Retailers will be in the 'always on' space too. Connecting retailers to the consumers and having more of that purposeful, meaningful dialogue.

worked on some of the world's leading brands, including managing the Vodafone and Cannon global brand accounts while living in London. View profile

"More consumer groups will start bartering with their data."

The consumer has to be at the centre of brand decisions because they are in control, at the centre of the experience and information flows, says Craig Page-Lee, MD Posterscope SA. "There is an overarching concept, a turn of phrase we are using more: 'fluidity of time, place and platform'. This is about putting the consumer in control or at the centre of brand decision and brand experience. Really plugging into the 'always on' concept. Not in the sense of a technology platform, but literally managing the experience around brands.'

"Consumers are able, through technology, to conduct conversations on social media, purchase food online, live seamless lives, from machine to machine, from device to machine, not just from laptop to desktop to mobile to tablet, but also with, for example, mannequins in-store pushing data to you in the future as you walk past into a store... A seamless integration of product, machine and data," explains Page-Lee. All of this comes down to experiences, not just product, which means that at MEDIA TRENDS SPONSORED BY MILLWARD BROWN

• Virtual world: Augmented reality has had a good run. It will be coming into play at the shelf. In some catalogues these days, you can point your phone to the catalogue and then point it to a wall and see the product in situ, see the product come to life, see your product in your life...

Awesome stuff. We will see some dabbling in that in South Africa. It is on the up in Europe and America.

• Wi-Fi, utility of Wi-Fi, free Wi-Fi for consumers in any long-haul spaces, from parks to malls and transit areas... all provided by cities.

There will be rewards systems around that.

• Consumers definitely understand the value of data: More consumer groups will start bartering with their data and getting further rewards.

• Brands of association partnering: No brand exists in isolation and powerful brands will link up with other powerful brands and create cross-marketing platforms because they understand the power of supporting their brands, but while budgets are under pressure, smaller brands will come together to collaborate.

• Real time bidding on the back-end of digital banner space will appear in the TV space and OOH space, as the world is demanding more and brands will be able to bid in real-time based on consumer behaviour at

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the time, to buy networks and buy space to push a product, based on real-time trends.

• Good behaviour: Organisations with a social conscience will remain relevant.

• Content creation: We are all content creators and aggregators, connected consumers need to be at the heart to enable the construct of fluidity of the time-space platform. *Craig Page-Lee was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Media/brands on demand

Trial. "It didn't attract advertising, due to the controversial nature of the content. But it's likely that other pop up channels will come along, with more ad friendly content, for the 'bite sized' consumption trend."

By Chris Hitchings

Chris Hitchings is chief executive officer of DStv Media Sales.

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"We need braver clients and braver agencies."

After an exceedingly tough year in 2014, it's important for media owners and brands to continue to explore innovative ideas. In the TV environment, we are investigating new commercial opportunities within guaranteed trading, video on demand; second screening; and long form content to maximise viewer engagement, says Chris Hitchings, CEO, DStv Media Sales.

What stood out for him in 2014 was the shift downwards in consumer and business confidence; and the resulting shift downwards in advertising spend.

"Consumers are under pressure and that knocks on into business, it has become a tough environment. South Africa was (to some degree) protected economically from the global recession by the 2010 World Cup being held in our country. Post 2010 there has been a slowdown in adspend, and 2014 has been a particularly tough year for many media owners. Television seems to doing better than most, now taking over 50% share of total adspend in South Africa."

Another trend they did well from a viewership perspective was the introduction of 'pop-up channels' the best example being the Oscar Pistorius MEDIA TRENDS SPONSORED BY MILLWARD BROWN

What Hitchings would like to see less of in 2015, is regulation on advertising.

"The latest move to ban or restrict high fat, high sugar product advertising affects a huge category. I'm hoping that there will be realistic "soft touch" regulation, not draconian, over the top implications."

Central to success in 2015 is more commonsense planning - less paint by numbers, he emphasises. "Data is important, but it has to be current, accurate, and correctly used. Data should be used to support intellect, common sense and gut decisions - not replace them. There has been a bit of a shift away from that and we need braver clients and agencies.

"Media planning and strategy has become a commodity and that can only be corrected within the client-agency relationship. It's a perennial, sensitive, issue and it's really important: clients need to value what their media agencies do and paying them accordingly. It is not a commodity, it is a skill."

Ahead in 2015 Hitchings' trends for 2015 include: 1. Guaranteed Trading: We're now offering a variety of packages whereby we guarantee audience delivery against an agreed price and target market. This eliminates risk and takes out the guess work for the agencies and their clients.

2. Second screening: In SA I think we've paid lip service so far to the second screen trend. I am not sure any brand has yet grabbed opportunities in this space to push content and engage viewers via multiple devices.

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3. Brands on demand: We are working on commercial opportunities within our Catch Up and other VOD (video on demand) services and will soon be launching an exciting new service called Brand on Demand essential a catch up service for brands. It'll be a place where we can host long form content, competitions, deals of the month, special features for brands etc.

4. TV/digital collaboration: TV remains the best way to build and make a hero of a brand - and it's interesting that many digital brands are now using TV to grow acquisition and usage. Digital is providing an excellent way to activate. TV and Digital can work in tandem for brands in building awareness, and then getting a response.

5. Take up of over the top (OTT) players like Netflix will obviously depend on the evolution of broadband speeds and costs - as well as the content offering. South Africa has seen the launch of various players in recent month and we are obviously watching these trends and considering our own options in that regard.

*Chris Hitchings was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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e-Sports outstrips mainstream sports

By Vincent Maher

Vincent Maher is the chief innovation officer at Kagiso Media. Read more on his blog at vincentmaher.com, follow him on Twitter at @vincent_maher or connect on LinkedIn. View profile

1. Growth of e-Sports Online gaming is now recognised internationally as an e-Sport due to its ratings, viewership and prize money. This is a fascinating trend as various stats in the last couple of years show that viewership of e-Sports is doubling yearon-year, with over 70 million people now counted as viewers, according to new research released in 2014 by Super Data Research and NewZoo, reports Ongamers.

Maher predicts that in 2015, e-Sports will overtake mainstream sports audiences on television. Popular contests include games such as Dota 2, StarCraft, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft.

"Majority of media buying will switch to programmatic buying."

While big data, content marketing and the cloud are up there in his trends for 2015 too, Vincent Maher, chief innovation officer at Kagiso Media, has also highlighted the growth of e-Sports (competitive online gaming), programmatic media buying and a tapering off of the mobile apps market as trends not to miss.

Maher was appointed chief innovation officer at Kagiso Media in the latter part of 2014. He has worked in the online media industry since 1996 at mobile operators, start-ups, print media and universities. During the past decade he has focussed on product development in the social media and mobile apps space in emerging markets, including at Vodacom and Mxit. In 2010 Maher cofounded Motribe.

This is what he particularly wanted to highlight for 2015:

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"The prize pool for the international Dota tournament was $10 million," says Maher. "They have become real online and offline spectator sports. And a lot of the emerging genres of games fit into the sports category. What makes it a sport is that the environment is static, there is a predefined map - like football or rugby."

As broadband becomes more mainstream, it has become a spectator sport online, but also, Maher says, a stadium sport. In June 2014, a former world cup football arena in Cologne, Germany, hosted an ESL1 tournament. "Audiences are becoming physical audiences, digital audiences are growing and broadcasters are starting to broadcast the games as sport on TV." Ongamers.com reports that the massive growth in online gaming as an e-Sport provides the opportunity for advertisers to connect with affluent males, although female gaming numbers are increasing, as players and spectators.

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2. Programmatic buying Maher believes that the majority of media buying will switch to programmatic buying. "The media buyers and media strategists are disintermediated, which now means that digital advertising is bought through dynamic platforms and you are not dependent on having a large audience any more to sell advertising.

But the thing that fundamentally changes, is that there is an additional commercial category or piece of that transaction - the data aspect to the financial transaction where the source of the demographic tagging gets a piece of the transaction, too.

"You have a website, someone comes on your website and you tag them. You publish your data into the advertising engine and someone else books an ad using your data, but the ad is delivered on another media site, but as you tagged that user, you also get a piece of the revenue."

It has been brewing with the ad networks for a long time, but is becoming the predominant trend in media buying, he says.

3. Mobile apps market plateaus The apps market on mobile is going to start plateauing in terms of volume of adoption, Maher says, as the novelty wears off in the apps space. "We are starting to see increasing reports of people limiting the number of apps they download - either the level of variety is tailing off, or people are forming habits around the apps they use and are not that experimental any more." The barrier for entry for new apps is also getting harder as an app developer and there is increased reliance on digital advertising to grow app audience sizes, Maher says.

*Vincent Maher was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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The disruption of media models

By Omar Essack

Omar Essack is the group deputy CEO of Kagiso Media.

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"There will be nothing that can't link into the one screen."

Traditional media models are broken and new business thinking is required going forward, urges Omar Essack, group deputy CEO of Kagiso Media.

"We are looking at our business very differently. There will be real shifts in our business model and our business thinking for this year. The game changer within our company is the appointment of a chief innovation officer (Vincent Maher). Everything else has been evolutionary and incremental."

The outdated traditional media model consists of weighty head offices, permanent staff, provident funds, and so on, Essack explains. Content creation going forward will be more creative and require vast talent pools, not narrow talent pools.

The traditional media model has excess installed capacity to support the organisation, when things are moving towards a shared economy. Here Essack references services such as Uber and Airbnb.

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"People will produce and share content all the time. A lot of it is bullsh*t, but there is a lot of amazing stuff as well. To change our environment, we need to find out what our customers are doing, and what they are willing to do."

Essack became the youngest managing director of a private radio station in South Africa in 1998 at 32. He devised and led the strategy to make East Coast Radio the first station in South Africa with a multi-ethnic audience mix. After a successful stint at East Coast Radio, he was promoted to head up the group's broadcast media assets in 2004. He developed the group's digital media focus, and in 2013, spearheaded the launch of Kagiso Media's first wholly owned free-to-air TV channel, Glow TV. He was promoted to deputy group CEO after a 10-year stint as CEO of Broadcasting.

"The current trend is that we have excess installed capacity in business. That is what companies like Uber respond to and what the sharing economy is all about. That is creating the disruption. The excess installed capacity as regards Uber, is the fact that I live and work in the same city, yet own a car. It is wastage, inefficiency. Cloud responds to the fact we have these huge servers installed. We buy this capacity as business, but we are not using it in an efficient way.

"We create all these huge buildings to house workers - but many of us are knowledge workers and there is so much tech to allow us to communicate. We could work from home more. The 'sharing economy' is a progression of these trends. We need to create efficiencies in the world today - there is too much installed capacity. All of that creates the problems we have in our environment: a lot more wastage, a lot more pollution. The whole efficiency of resources, it is born out of the recession we find ourselves in."

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Business disruption Essack, who recently completed an advanced management programme in media and entertainment at the IESE Business School, with UCLA Anderson, says he can see the sharing economy gaining greater momentum. He is already reconsidering whether he needs a second car in his family, since he lives and works in the same suburb.

It is all about creating efficiency without more waste and technology is the enabler in the developed economies, where there are apps for everything and responsive technology makes it possible for people to connect for shared dinner in places like New York where restaurants are expensive; to share their homes through services like Airbnb, which only started a couple of years ago, but is becoming a global phenomenon; like Uber, teething problems aside, recounts Essack.

This disruptive trend has an impact on business in most sectors and Essack says he is looking at how his business can respond to this trend and other innovations.

"The most obvious way, and all media businesses are doing this, is that it's all in the cloud - on-demand video, music, and so on. Previously we had capacity issues, now we do not need to keep anything on site any longer. The cloud is the best way to deliver. You don't need a PVR. Now people are streaming music into their cars - it happened to me in a car in Spain where broadband is cheap and fast. Radio has to respond to that.

"Our problem in South Africa is still high broadband costs, but when we overcome that, many of our devices will become obsolete. This generation doesn't want to horde. How will business respond to that?"

The shifts are inexorable, says Essack. Cars, which were a bastion for radio

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companies are under pressure, the cloud is there for everything now, including music, which will render some devices obsolete. "Radio was responsive, we did a lot of things that worked in the past decade. We have to now work out what's next...

"DStv, Xbox, Sony Playstation all want to 'own' the home. The large screens in our environment in the future - as walls or wallpaper - will deliver TV, internet, calls, gaming, news, music, everything. There will be nothing that can't link into the one screen. It will be all about personalisation, recommendation, access. We need to be ready."

*Omar Essack was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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The African digital revolution

BMW i8 in South Africa, shows that while the user has control of the vehicle, the smarter car will be able to make accurate and faster decisions for you.

By Ravi Bhaya

Ravi Bhaya is managing director of The Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG). He recently moved to South Africa from the South East Asia region markets where he spearheaded operations in Indonesia and Vietnam. In his role as the MD, SMG SA, Ravi is responsible for the P&L of SMG South Africa and the Africa RHQ as well as the integration with Lighthouse Digital, South Africa's largest digital agency that SMG acquired in 2014. @Bhaya View profile

"2015 could be the tipping point for the African digital revolution."

Q: Your 'game changer' trend in 2014?

A: Facebook Autoplay - especially the impact it had on the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, and Uber that has made its presence felt, globally impacting commercial transportation as we know it.

Q: Your most significant industry trends for 2015?

A: As the world gets more inter-connected, the Internet of Things will become more of a reality in the emerging markets of Africa. We have moved into the information space where it needs to be useful, organised and accessible. And I am not talking about 'search', but a continued trend towards home automation, auto-mation, healthcare and transport in the African region.

• Healthcare (+wearables): Samsung Gear, Fitbit, Apple Watch will continue to revolutionise the industry. A health-conscious user directly contributes to the sporting attire and shoes industry - Asics, Adidas, Nike, etc.

• Transport: Uber (a $40bn valuation company), which has become integral to our offline lives, will continue to revolutionise the commercial transportation business in spite of the flack they have taken towards the latter part of 2014. Things will start to get interesting when Lyft, Sidecar, Flywheel etc. make their competitive presence felt in our region and the diversity of their expanded service the users will benefit from.

• Big data: Though still a buzzword, this will soon become a standard requirement for/from organisations. With the above-mentioned trends in home automation, healthcare wearables, transport, and soon mobile payments, data and information will be required to be better mined and structured. This data will also become more accessible allowing organisations across industries such as media, entertainment, telecommunications, finance, etc. to enhance the personalisation of services offered to the end-user.

•Home Automation: Apple and Google are both transforming themselves from handheld devices to remote controls, putting the power in the hands of the users to connect and control home appliances from their mobile phones.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: Although radio, TV and OOH will continue to play a pivotal role in the media mix for clients, social and digital should not be seen as isolated channels of media distribution.

• Auto-mation: Nissan Leaf and the soon-to-be released BMW i3 and

Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

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A: With Facebook's plans to provide free satellite internet access across Africa (part of the internet.org plan), and the governments' plans to build more pipes, 2015 could be the tipping point for the African digital revolution. The opportunities will be immense from a communication, content and consumer perspective.

Q: What advice do you have for your employees/peers for the next year?

A: Consider every day as a new learning. Work hard to up-skill yourselves since there is a plethora of information, tools and resources available to do so.

Understand how consumers are evolving their consumption of media and content across devices, enrol in a Google certification programme, ensure your Facebook news feeds are serving the information that you find relevant (although their algorithms are working hard at knowing this better than you)!

Q: What would you like to tell your clients?

A: Let's create magic in the African region. Let's create benchmarks that the world takes note of and imitates and build stories that are award-winning.

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Programmatic media-buying surge

By John Bowles

John Bowles is the joint managing director of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau (NAB). With a combined newspaper print order of over 3.4 million copies freely distributed/sold across South Africa, and over 1.3 million copies distributed weekly across Southern Africa, NAB enables advertisers to communicate with the critical mass and economically active in Southern Africa. @Bowlzeee | View profile

"More channels and less reach for media buyers."

John Bowles, joint-MD, of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau (NAB), predicts more private ad exchanges playing a role in the market.

Q: Your 'game changer' trend in 2014?

A: The convergence of digital and traditional in the media landscape. For too long these two worlds were separate silos for agencies, marketers and media owners.

Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: Poor consumer confidence, political instability, recessionary talk, negativity, negativity, negativity!

Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

A: Change in attitude and renewed passion. Love to see a clearing of the slate and a back to basics approach on marketing strategy. No jargon, no uninformed self-opinion, just a revisit of what businesses want to achieve out MEDIA TRENDS SPONSORED BY MILLWARD BROWN

of their marketing investments.

Q: What advice do you have for your peers for the next year?

A: Forget the past, worry less about the future - LIVE IN IT NOW! Q: What would you like to tell your clients?

A: Let's try and understand the path to purchase better. Let me help you reach buyers where they live and tap into their multichannel lives. Help them help shoppers shop!

Q: Your most significant industry trends for 2015?

A: 1. Local, local, local. 2015 will be the year that there is less fuss about pure play e-commerce and a focus on the nuts and bolts for retail and brand custodians. Brick and mortar stores will be accepted as the primary destination for shopping and marketers need to drive market share or sales, area by area, to win the battle. Therefore national brands will get more scientific about local battles.

2. Fragmentation overload - more channels and less reach for media buyers. This year will see a move to more relevant sites than simply to big numbers.

3. Customised video serving will grow.

4. Mobile search and display will continue to grow but emphasis will be serving for local call to action.

5. Programmatic buying will continue to evolve. We see more private ad exchanges playing a role in the market.

6. Daily and weekend circulation will continue to decline, with ad revenues following suit. Local newspapers should remain relevant and stable, catering for local communities while rolling out their digital assets.

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TREND: Hashtag social activism "Mediums like Twitter give people the platform to amplify their concerns, demand authentic storytelling and create dialogue."

Social activism is a massive social media trend and doesn't just pertain to global events as we saw in early January 2015, but can also target brands. And the influence and reach of social media and those who know how to use it correctly, will only increase, particularly as another 2015 trend grows: that of mobile social media marketing as more people access social media from mobile devices.

According to Statista, there are already about 1.79 billion users in social media in 2014. And it is projected to reach about 2.44 billion by 2018. Social media is becoming the most effective platform to get your message out, across the globe.

The question of whether social media is being used and measured correctly in order to derive maximum benefit from it, is another question. There is no doubt that social activism is on the rise because of the popularity and global reach of social media.

So-called "Hashtag Activism" has gained popularity worldwide. 2014 will be remembered for the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, among others, and 2015 is already trending with #JeSuisCharlie, referring to protests over the Paris attacks on a satirical newspaper.

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Image via 123RF

Social media is an opportunity to spread the word about various causes at a faster rate, to a bigger number of people, than through traditional methods, reports the Huffington Post, which describes social media as one of the most powerful forms of activism.

The reasons are simple: social media allows more people to be reached, and around the world. There are no boundaries, no borders, no perceived freedom of speech issues, no overt censorship, no bias. Everyone gets a say, good or bad. And when an issue moves people - like any other great content that engages them emotionally - they share it. Again. And again. Until it trends around the world.

"Social media gives people the power to call out injustices, inaccuracies and misrepresentations and brings about better understanding of other cultures and people. Mediums like Twitter give people the platform to amplify their concerns, demand authentic storytelling and create dialogue that may eventually dispel stereotypes," reports the Huffington Post.

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Social investment For brands and services, it takes investment in specialists and software to ensure their brand message gets across in the manner they want it to, to achieve a return on investment (ROI).

Socialmediatoday.com's top trends for 2015 are: • Social media will be designed more for mobile devices.

• Images will be used in a more extensive manner.

• Short videos will be more in use.

• Companies will go for viral marketing.

• Real-time marketing will rise significantly.

• Instagram and LinkedIn will be the most popular platforms.

• Creativity will be the need of the hour - content needs to be visual and creative.

Visual content will in particular have a major impact for marketers and video marketing in 2015 will be big. "The use of visual content on social media is not going to be limited to images only. Companies are likely to create short but informative videos on their products and services. And this is going to be one of the best ways to connect with the target audience within the shortest possible time. Interactive videos are also expected to rule the roost in 2015.

Sites like Instagram, which offer excellent video marketing opportunities, are likely to become more and more popular during the year," reports SocialMediatoday.com.

Innovation Social media growth is also being fuelled by innovation: • Mobile payments: Facebook has built a hidden (for now) payment feature inside its Messenger app, which will allow people to send money to each other using debit card info, free of charge, SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS SPONSORED BY MELTWATER

reports Time magazine. Mobile payments are a huge global trend.

• Social shopping: Both Twitter and Facebook began testing 'buy' buttons to allow users to purchase from brands online. (Time) • Investment: More money will flow into social networks as social media companies become more than just networks, to fully fledged digital platforms, reports Techrepublic.com.

• Smart social: The explosion of smart devices collecting data and pushing it wirelessly to various apps, including social networks. The smart marketing of that data and harnessing it is another chapter yet to unfold. (Time) • Converged media: Social media will integrate into live events, including television. Tweeting while watching shows, television, live events, etc., can push them to the top of ratings (Techrepublic).

• Content marketing: "In 2015, marketers will finally realise that there are two core pillars of a content marketing strategy: publication and distribution. Marketers will learn that social media is the most effective method of expanding the reach and visibility of their content, and because of this, will come to view social media as more of an 'amplifier' for their published content rather than as the content itself," reports Forbes magazine.

What is always very interesting is that internationally, much of the research done into social media comes from public relations companies - quite the opposite in South Africa, where the PR companies are largely being sidelined by the digital agencies as regards championing social media, both in research, solutions and implementation.

Measurement is a huge trend this year. Heidi Myers, Meltwater's head of marketing and communications across Central Europe, Africa and the Middle East, poses this question: "If a tweet falls in a forest and no one is around to share it, does it make a sound? The short answer is: nope. If your content isn't shared socially, it simply isn't social marketing. It's long-format advertising. As social media marketers, driving word of mouth (going viral) is our primary goal.

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"We want people clicking on our content to share it. Once they share it, that's viral word of mouth - and that's what we're after. Top tip: don't be the guy with the megaphone. We as marketers decided on a static target message, and we broadcast it to a target audience. This is fine for traditional advertising and some PR initiatives: basically, if you want to control the message and that's more important than having it shared, this broadcast model works," Myers says.

However, the traditional monologue marketing model doesn't work for social media, she says. "You can't just broadcast a message at an audience and hope it resonates, because we're trying to start a conversation. Social media is a dialogue marketing model." *Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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The importance of social listening in 2015

By Heidi Myers

Heidi Myers heads up marketing and communications for Meltwater across Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She was formerly managing director of Meltwater San Francisco and opened the Meltwater Wales office as managing director. Meltwater specialises in software for organiations to help master the social business environment and increase online intelligence. @HeidiMyers | View profile

Social listening is arguably the most significant technology to hit marketing since social media itself. It will be a huge trend in 2015. So, what is social listening and why does it matter? Social listening informs better business decisions.

But marketing isn't the only department that can utilise social listening: your entire business organisation can use social listening to inform its programs, products and business decisions. If you want to learn more, download Meltwater's free e-book.

Put simply, social listening is a way to see what people are saying on social networks. Think of it like traditional news clipping for PR. By effectively listening on social media, we are able to easily and consistently find information on our company, competitors, customers and industry.

Big data is really, really big: there are billions and trillions and gazillions of conversations happening online at any given time on worldwide social media channels. So how do you keep track of all those conversations, and more to SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS SPONSORED BY MELTWATER

the point, how do you find actionable insights in all the noise?

There is no way to keep track of the billions of conversations happening at once: really good insights are dependent upon really good tools. You're not superhuman, so you need a tool to sift through the noise and find the joyful nuggets of business intelligence that will make you a hero to your boss. (And then you can wear a cape.)

Social search The better your social marketing tools are, the easier your job is. Social media monitoring, at its core, is a social search. And our tools are our search engine.

What we do with the search results is what makes us mighty.

Ideally, you want a comprehensive social media marketing tool that does four things: 1. Monitor conversations on all the major social media networks AND blogs, comment fields and message boards.

2. Publish content and engage with influencers - engagement.

3. Segment people - community management.

4. Measure results of your social efforts - analytics.

Interesting question: If a tweet falls in a forest and no one is around to share it, does it make a sound? The short answer is: nope. If your content isn't shared socially, it simply isn't social marketing. It's long-format advertising. • As social media marketers, driving word of mouth is our primary goal.

"Going viral" is just another term for word-of-mouth marketing. What that means for us as social media marketers is that we want people clicking on our content to share it. Once they share it, that's viral word of mouth - and that's what we're after.

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share it through their social channels.

Top tip: don't be the guy with the megaphone.

The main difference between a social community and an audience is that they talk to each other: they engage one another in dialogue.

Whereas an audience is attuned to a singular content source, a community is attuned to each other, and they share content among themselves.

Social share gives us word-of-mouth, and that viral word-of-mouth gives us earned media on the personal broadcast network that is someone's Facebook page or Twitter stream.

But the big question that people have been asking about social media is: where's the ROI?

We as marketers decided on a static target message, and we broadcast it to a target audience. This is fine for traditional advertising and some PR initiatives: basically, if you want to control the message and that's more important than having it shared, this broadcast model works.

However, the traditional monologue marketing model doesn't work for social media: you can't just broadcast a message at an audience and hope it resonates, because we're trying to start a conversation.

With that in mind, social media is a dialogue marketing model.

Dialogue marketing as a principle is a really big shift from traditional marketing, in which we broadcast a static message to a target audience and hoped it resonated.

Dialogue marketing is about finding and starting relevant conversations within target social communities (as opposed to an audience) so that its members SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS SPONSORED BY MELTWATER

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And this is just another way of asking, "Why does word-of-mouth matter?"

Here is why: • A typical sales funnel starts with awareness and ends in purchase, but an ideal customer journey ends in advocacy.

• Relationship marketing disciplines like social marketing and PR typically touch the customer at the top and bottom of this funnel.

• When people share your content, their social community may or may not be entirely targeted in terms of your usual target audience demographics, but that community is hyper-targeted in terms of attention span.

• People are simply more inclined to pay attention to someone in their online community than they are to a pesky marketer trying to sell them something.

• So, with that in mind, it's crucial that social marketers be part of the community by providing value. Content that is engaging, helpful or entertaining in some way is the key to success in starting a good social conversation.

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Online influencers are the billboards of 2015

By Mike Sharman

Mike Sharman is the owner of Retroviral Digital Communications, an online communications consultancy specialising in communication strategy, social media and content creation. @mikesharman | View profile

"The kids play in dark marketing spaces."

Influencer marketing, Africa and reaching the Millennials in the hidden, dark spaces they inhabit online, means brands need to enhance their cult status to win over Generation Z. Q: Your most significant industry trends for 2015?

A: Influencer marketing will continue to grow exponentially, globally; better video content, more South Africans are consuming video on the go; Millennial moola - the kids have more cash to burn, but they play in dark marketing spaces - IM apps and closer knit groups. Penetrate the closed groups by enhancing your cult status.

Q: Your 'game changer' trend in 2014?

A: Influencer marketing and the monetisation thereof. A game changer for previously 'amateur' publishers, which now have the opportunity to professionalise the passion through which they have built engaged communities. In this revolution of media... online influencers are the billboards of 2015.

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Q: What do you hope to see less of going into a New Year?

A: Less talk about 'this year being the year of mobile' and agencies/clients truly understanding the right handset to talk to the right audience. Less of Africa being referred to as a country. As we continue to target more consumers across the continent, we realise how diverse each state is. Africa is not an individual so let's stop being arrogant/ignorant South Africans and make an effort to dive into learning about the amazing cultures that populate this continent filled with opportunities.

Q: What do you hope to see more of in 2015?

A: Continued investment in online video - with high production quality and greater commitment to purchasing the media to support remarkable content.

Campaigns need to be seen and the only way this will happen is with media support.

Q: What advice do you have for your peers for the next year?

A: Consider the sales funnel more and how you can continue to create remarkable content that elicits emotion/consideration and develop the rationale for consumers to purchase the product featured within the content.

Our job as marketers is to connect people with our brands. Let's be more awareness plus consideration plus commerce.

Q: What would you like to tell your clients?

A: Hold my hand and let's continue to create tomorrow what didn't exist today. Thank you for being more friend and less client.

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TREND: Brand storytelling One of the biggest shifts in marketing communications recently has been the shift towards telling the authentic stories of brands and their consumers.

Brand storytelling is a result of a shift in consumer behaviour, driven by the transparency of a socially connected world.

Changing consumer behaviour and improved data analytics is dictating strategic brand change, while at the same time, marketing fundamentals such as using authentic consumer insights to build brand resonance through storytelling, must be embraced by marketers in 2015, top brand and marketing strategists urge in exclusive opinion for Biz Trends 2015.

In the insightful 2015 macro-trends report by FCB, published first by Bizcommunity.com, strategy director, David Smythe, is optimistic that despite an economic downturn in South Africa, opportunities exist for brands on the continent of Africa; and for those brands that are open to the rapid change in the market, which includes transparency, authenticity and consumer engagement - primarily through brand storytelling.

Source: Distilled.net

"The best brands will not be those with fictional or made up stories, but those that will give an accurate, real time picture of what they are doing for consumers, at any given time," says Johanna McDowell, founder and managing director of Independent Agency Selection (IAS). Transparency has become the most important tool in marketing today.

In her key trends piece, McDowell provides a smorgasbord of top trends for the industry, including a new role for media agencies in the data race and the need for "agility marketing" from marketers to manage that stream of data.

She urges marketers to engage in "silo-busting" and to simplify their internal structures in order to become those agile deities who know every move of their consumers before their consumers know it themselves!

The key take out for 2015 for expert contributor, Adene van der Walt, executive strategy director of agency Ireland Davenport, is that brands need to deliver products that are up to date and innovative whilst remaining true to

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their brands' core values. Transparency, authentic consumer insights and emotional connections through campaigns, both earned and paid-for, will drive brand resonance and value, in consumers' minds, she says.

It is this emotional connection with consumers and a movement back to the origin of things: craft skills; brands with a back story; authentic products; real food with ethically sourced ingredients and packaging, that is driving the artisan trend of the maker movement. It is these inventors and creators who are creating a new economy around the 'maker culture', predicts Alayne Reesberg, CEO of the World Design Capital 2014: Cape Town. This deep need, particularly among the Millennial generation, is to "live a more sustainable life" with purpose. Brands that tap into this zeitgeist have a future.

Yegs Ramiah, responsible for group brand, corporate affairs, marketing and communications at Sanlam, says brands need to help consumers make better choices by focusing on the real issues consumers face, ahead of the bottom line and marketing plans. Coming from a financial institution, this is a distinct shift in thinking.

Not to be missed in the Strategy trend category is one of Bizcommunity's most popular columnists for over a decade, strategy guru Sid Piemer, who tells the industry to relax because "no one will see the next big thing coming". Even the current big things, like Facebook and Twitter, started as something else before evolving into what they are today. That's the thing about the speed of change and evolution of current business thinking and strategy - the only thing that will save you is your strategic thinking ability. *Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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FCB's 20 macro trends for 2015

By David Smythe

David Smythe is strategy director of FCB Cape Town.

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"The relationship consumers are having now with brands has shifted fundamentally. Brands that tell credible stories to the target market will be positioned better in the future, rather than brands that ram functional messaging down the consumers' throats. Storytelling is a very powerful way to get across brand messaging."

More brands will start playing in this space and this trend is expected to play out over the next five years.

Purpose-driven brand building Secondly, at the top of the marketing check list is purpose-driven brand building. "What that links to is the fact that consumers expect brands to stand up and hold a credible place in society," says Smythe.

"Africa's consumer facing industries are expected to grow by more than $400 billion by 2020."

Brand storytelling, purpose-driven brand building and increasing choice are some of the mega-trends for 2015 identified by FCB Cape Town's strategy team in this exclusive presentation published on Bizcommunity.com first.

FCB strategy director, David Smythe, told Bizcommunity.com that they spent the last quarter of 2014, isolating 20 macro trends, which will shape 2015 and beyond, in four key areas: Social; Economic; Tech; and Marketing. "We have taken a fairly optimistic view and of the three most powerful that we have highlighted, two of them play directly into the marketing space and one into the tech space."

Brand storytellers and curators The first one is the role brands play as engaging storytellers, qualifiers and curators, says Smythe.

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The sub-trends linked to that are: • Consumers expect brands to sacrifice on their behalf, i.e., brands stripping out ingredients; and sacrificing a portion of their profits to help causes. Millennials in particular are expecting brands to play in this space.

• Radical openness is another trend in this regard isolated by the FCB strategy team. "Brands are expected to be candid these days... about how they managed their supply chains, source ingredients, their suppliers. It is in the brand's best interests to be as open with consumers as possible, IP and trademarks notwithstanding. Brands have a responsibility to build trust with their consumers," Smythe explains.

• The pursuit of 'healthiness'. Helping consumers create healthier lifestyles is also linked to purpose-driven brand building.

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Connectivity creates choice The third key trend highlighted by FCB falls into the tech space and it is all about how connectivity opens up choice for consumers.

"It is a simple human truth: we are incredibly globalised and the world is a connected space. There is an abundance of choice open to consumers and they are really putting brands under the microscope before they make their choices."

In the presentation, titled "The Road Ahead", the 20 trends are listed as follows for 2015 and beyond: 1. SOCIAL: Connectivity opens up choices and consumers no longer go for brand name only when making their purchases.

2. ECONOMIC: The rise of the African consumer - Africa's consumerfacing industries are expected to grow by more than $400bn by 2020.

Brands need to build locally relevant, quality products with strong value.

3. ECONOMIC: The continued rise of the East includes the development of a rural middle class, which is fuelling consumer demand.

4. TECH: Technology continues to define convenience as information and knowledge impact on shoppers and online retail growth becomes a prerequisite for transacting with consumers in the next two to five years.

5. SOCIAL: Guilt-free status/brand sacrifice: consumers are looking for brands to make sacrifices for them so that they don't have to.

6. MARKETING: Community is increasingly the new trusted source and peer-based networks continue to exert influence on purchase decisionmaking.

7. SOCIAL: The rising creative class are influencers and problem-solvers and want their brands to focus on finding innovative solutions to global problems.

8. TECH: e-Mobility is a mega-trend that will gather momentum as STRATEGY TRENDS SPONSORED BY YELLOWWOOD

societal demand for sustainable energy solutions gathers momentum.

9. SOCIAL: The pursuit of healthiness. Consumers want products that aid their health and enable them to make smart, sustainable choices.

10. MARKETING: The diminishing importance of brand heritage means that international brands have to adopt a local flavour.

11. SOCIAL: Radical openness means consumers want to know everything about the products they use and consume: ingredients, sourcing, manufacture, distribution. Smart organisations and brands will build bridges to their consumers rather than walls.

12. MARKETING: Brands as engaging storytellers, qualifiers and curators reflect a powerful trend.

13. MARKETING: Value and price justification means true innovation must hold real tangible value.

14. SOCIAL: The ageing consumer - brands are ignoring the ageing consumer because perhaps marketing to them isn't 'sexy' enough, but they are extremely loyal consumers and the baby boomer generation have an enormous amount of discretionary spend in some cases.

15. TECH: e-Listening. Brands need to invest in the right tools to track what their customers are saying about them online.

16. TECH: Retail develops a sixth sense as data becomes a prominent trend. Learning how to analyse it correctly produces endless possibilities.

17. SOCIAL: Millennials 'push back' as the financial insecurity created by the global recession creates scepticism towards brand marketing.

Brands need to collaborate with this generation to reach them.

18. MARKETING: Purpose driven brand building gives brands a bigger reason for being and it is what matters to consumers, fuelling deeper connections between the consumer and their brands.

19. MARKETING: Poly-cultural luxury sees the emergency of homegrown luxury brands.

20. MARKETING: Neuromarketing comes of age as psychology and the science of the brain is used in analysing consumers and behavioural patterns.

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Smythe concludes: "I think brands need to become far more focussed and clients need to become far more focussed. When times were good, brands were able to employ enormous innovations, have brand programmes over the year... now marketing budgets have shrunk; they need to do things properly, rather than stretching resources too thin."

View the full presentation for further reference (pdf).

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Empathic work that solves problems is critical

By Alayne Reesberg

Alayne Reesberg is the CEO of Cape Town Design, NPC - the implementing agency for the World Design Capital 2014. Reesberg followed a career in diplomacy and after a Master's degree in Communication studies, moved into management consulting. She joined the Microsoft Corporation at its Seattle headquarters in 2001, where she worked for six years in Bill Gates' Enterprise Division. @reesberg | View profile

"Design needs to be human user-focused instead of policy-focused."

The future relies on the youth of today, creative people who can 'make', crafts from the past and a commitment to get involved and solve problems from the ground-up, predicts Alayne Reesberg, CEO of the World Design Capital 2014, Cape Town.

These are her trends for the coming year: 1. Youth tsunami: Pay attention to the youth, says Reesberg, and find a way to tap into the exceptional potential of more than half the population of South Africa, and Africa. "Not empowering them in a paternalistic way, but meeting them where their needs are. This is Generation Y or Why Not? They will challenge everything... look at Julius Malema. Get over yourself, they will dig us out of this hole we are in, this global recession. This is a youth tsunami."

2. Rise of the maker movement: The global maker movement is gaining

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traction. It centres around creative people turning their hobbies and talents into businesses, inventing things. 'Makers' and the maker economy spurred on by a more collaborative Millennial generation are predicted to assist the global economy in recovering after this recession. In Africa 'making' is a way of life, Reesberg points out, and that in some ways, Africa was here first and is primed for 'maker culture'.

3. Artisan food: The reinvention of craft products and services, skills that were lost, is driven by a "deep need to live a sustainable life", Reesberg explains. Becoming a creator and inventor gives joy, releases one from the treadmill of consumerism. "In a way it is a return and remembering of the past, honouring the memory of skills and relearning. I would argue that the way it also resonates so deeply, is because politicians and governments are not going to solve problems, we have to get on with it. Self reliance is a core frontier skill. This is a frontier country."

4. Urban equality: More people are now living in cities than rural areas and the younger citizens of cities are demanding better amenities: public spaces, public amenities, etc. These new citizens want a quality of life in urban centres, and are driving the need for affordable housing, transport, entertainment and crowdsourced events to tap into that need for an enhanced quality of life in the city.

5. Urban greening: Parks, farming co-ops - where there is a patch of green land: plant something.

6. Cross-silo collaboration: Cross-silo collaboration is becoming a norm rather than an exception. "We have an active and engaged citizenry who are willing to show up. Citizens can voice their need and demand what they need. The World Design Capital created inspiration. 2014 for me has forever banished any kind of idea about Afro-pessimism. When

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you focus on something at the human level, it gives you perspective," Reesberg recounts.

7. The core of good design is empathy: Design needs to be human userfocused instead of policy-focussed. It restores a sense of agency when people can act effectively, locally. It is dangerous for politicians, as an engaged citizenry is critical, Reesberg reiterates.

8. Celebrating handmade, homemade: The texture, the care, the joy...

"For artists, instead of merely producing the way they do, they need to create less expensive, but affordable art."

9. Collaborations: The development of created curricula to train designers in terms of their problems solving capability, is going ahead in Cape Town, Reesberg says. "It is a combination of developed market knowledge and expertise, technology transfer, using deep knowledge, but challenging global solutions with our frontier knowledge and needs."

10. Design as a problem-solving discipline: People need to move from an activism role to an implementation role. "There is an urgency to resolve things definitively. Keep iterating on the ground and that will eventually impact up, on national government. At the Policy Design Conference last year, academic Hester du Plessis, asked the question: 'What if we took the National Development Plan and turned it into a set of design challenges?' What if, indeed.

*Alayne Reesberg was interviewed by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Avoiding 'Infobesity' and harnessing opportunity

By Sid Peimer

Sid Peimer is a freelance strategist resident at www.stratplanning.com. @sidpeimer | View profile

and that resides with the experts. In-house people just aren't weird enough.

3. More DIY for social There is already a trend towards harnessing employees with employee advocacy programmes gaining traction, so the outsourcing of social media as a percentage will probably decrease as this function goes DIY, with numerous vendors supplying the required software. However, there will always be place for focused outside expertise.

4. More three-letter words Acronyms will get a whole new lease of life. We'll see a whole bunch of new titles, like the CDO (Chief Digital Officer) and DCO (Digital Communications Officer), amongst others.

"No one will see the next big thing coming."

When asked if I have a crystal ball, my response would be: "No, it's just the way I walk." Predictions may not make us walk funny, but we certainly need to know where we're going. The problem with life is that you can't live it backwards, so we need to have some idea of what's waiting for us down the road. These are 10 twists and turns that may greet us in 2015:

1. The next big thing No one will see the next big thing coming. Not even the person who invented it. Facebook and Twitter both began as something else - the end result was an evolution of circumstance and opportunity.

2. The out-house remains Contrary to popular opinion, there will not be a move away from digital agencies to in-house departments. It's still about ideas and production values STRATEGY TRENDS SPONSORED BY YELLOWWOOD

5. Page 1 of Google... Yeah, right!

Organic SEO will still remain somewhat of a challenge. Everyone seems to have a theory about 'how to get on page 1 of Google'. Brands want some certainty, so we'll see more direct methods to attract traffic, which will boost the PPC market (like they need it).

6. Data fundis to the fore With the proliferation of available data, we will need people to decipher it and get the numbers to tell a story. So if you're a digital analyst or data fundi, increase your asking price by 20%. Trust me.

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7. You need to pay to play Social media reach will become (or maybe it is already) a common goal for brands. With organic social platforms like Facebook tweaking their algorithms, many have started to turn to paid social and content marketing.

8. Google a plus?

Google+ could go either way. Going against it is the fact that it is somewhat of a ghost town compared to the Big 3. Going for it is that Google can increase the SEO score on all G+ posts. If that's the case, then I think we can expect Google+ to experience a gold rush. It also helps to have parents with very deep pockets.

9. Infobesity No one seems to have noticed the fact that if everyone is delivering content then we're going to see exponential growth. That means there's going to be a lot of stuff out there that won't get consumed. When last did you read the Encyclopaedia Britannica? That's infobesity for you.

10. Get the picture Because of infobesity, we need to consume information in the easiest and quickest way possible. Visuals, whether static or moving will be the de rigueur of online communication. We have had explosive growth in social media in 2014, and fast growth often hides things, so it will be interesting to see what happens in the year ahead. Crystal ball notwithstanding.

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A return to marketing fundamentals

By Adene van der Walt

Adene van der Walt is executive strategy director of agency Ireland Davenport. View profile

digital marketing as a separate discipline but rather need to place emphasis and focus on the fact that we are now marketing in a digital world.

2. Demonstrate customer-centricity through tangible actions Transparency is key to this. As consumers continue to exert power and influence, it is vital for brands to demonstrate this. It will allow for an accurate and real-time picture of what the brand is doing in the interest of its consumers. Communication can work hard to demonstrate a customer-centric proposition, but unless consumers can actually see the tangible benefits of your brand having their, and the broader community's, best interests at heart, the opportunity for consumer churn is that much more likely. Marketers and brands should be thinking about how they can implement real, meaningful change in society, which in turn will increase brand care and loyalty.

"Successful brand activities need to be based on powerful, authentic consumer insights."

3. Enabling feelings to be turned into actions

There are five key strategies that marketers and advertisers need to embrace in the following year. The key take out: deliver products that are up to date and innovative, while remaining true to your brand's core values.

Humans are emotion-driven... and emotive communication drives brand resonance and stand-out value in consumers' minds. Brands and marketers that develop ideas that allow for consumers to feel proud of their brand for contributing to a greater cause, whilst still advertising themselves, will drive greater brand ownership and resonance.

1. A return to marketing fundamentals Successful brand activities need to be based on powerful, authentic consumer insights in order to build brand resonance. Campaign elements need to work in harmony in order to leverage and build seamless brand stories. Technology today has reformed the way consumers behave. Shopper marketing no longer refers to consumers walking into stores.

In an age of e-commerce and m-commerce, any consumer can be a shopper and marketers need to focus and discover what the emotional drivers are to influence consumer purchases. With this in mind, marketers cannot view STRATEGY TRENDS SPONSORED BY YELLOWWOOD

An excellent example of such an initiative is the newly launched Unilever "Bright Future Speeches" corporate-branding TVC campaign. It's an inspiring campaign demonstrating that Unilever is dedicated to a cause greater than just selling its products.

4. Rewarding good behaviour We know we live in a digital world and in a time where wellness, strength, acquisition of new skills and superior knowledge is actively being sought out by

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consumers. We will see a trend emerging whereby consumers seek devicefuelled rewards that incentivise improving behaviours. Marketers and brands will need to evaluate and decide what behaviours they are trying to encourage in their consumers and how best to reward these behaviours. (i.e., personalised rewards, incentives, discounts).

5. It is (still) about personalisation and innovation This is not a new trend... it is here to stay. As consumers continue to resist homogenisation, marketing will need to become more localised and even individualised. We can no longer rely on the old segmentation model of age, race and household income.

Consumers are fast defining their own identities due to rapid increase and innovation of technology and marketers need to delve deeply into this to understand who our consumers really are today and what their specific needs are. What is clear and important to note, is the prevailing consumer desire for brands to modernise and evolve but with the equal desire for these brands to stay true to who they are.

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TREND: The millennial effect "Millennials look to rework - not reject - the rules and status quo in order to put their mark on the world".

Cynicism and skepticism by the millennial generation towards brands' marketing efforts can be explained by the constant feeling of financial insecurity that has become their way of life over the past few years. However, the majority of Millennials believe that brands have the potential to be a force for good.

FCB reports in its 20 trends for 2015, 'The Road Ahead - Macro Trends Shaping 2015 & Beyond', that Millennials are increasingly becoming difficult to convince, pushing back against brand marketing. The impact on brands is as follows: 1. Adaptability. The ability to adapt to economic uncertainty is their life skill. So brands should show empathy for their circumstances.

2. Creativity: They expect brands to be brave, succeed, don't settle and give back.

3. Collaboration: They thrive on collaboration and brands are expected to give to them fully and authentically.

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Image via 123RF

FCB quotes from a global research study, 'Debunking the Millennial Myth', which was conducted by London-based creative agency, Initiative, among 10,000 respondents (25-34 years old) from 19 different markets, released in September 2014. Many have been hit hard by the recession in recent years and modern Millennials are delaying the customary rites of adulthood, such as marriage and children. The study found that: • 72% suffered significant personal setbacks in the recession • 36% have had their income reduced • 65% are employed full-time • 28% have experienced job loss • 69% have already significantly changed their career path or are planning to do so • 47% are happy with their current job • 59% worry about not having enough money to retire • 32% are single • 59% don't have children • 35% are still living at home with their parents • 52% don't have enough money to cover their everyday living costs

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IPG Media Lab says, "Millennials look to rework - not reject - the rules and status quo in order to put their mark on the world". Giving them the power to co-create with brands and products, in their own way, builds ongoing trusting relationships. Millennials have surpassed simply wanting to help in supporting causes and are starting to demand that others, especially companies, do their part. Millennials are prepared to reward socially responsible companies; they are more likely to trust these companies and buy or recommend their products to others. According to the 'Cone Millennial Cause' study, after learning that a company is socially and/or environmentally responsible: • 83% are likely to trust the company more • 79% are likely to purchase that company's products • 74% are more likely to pay attention to that company's message A study by Pinta warned against stereotyping millennials. As Fast Company reported, they are "multifaceted, savvy super-consumers, who happen to be the most educated generation in history". In fact this generation understand the conversion game and have access to more information than any other generation too. "Our on-demand, segmented media landscape makes it easy for prospects to tune you in or tune you out altogether," Fast Company added.

The report states that brands do not win over the Millennials with broad strategies, they will win by "micro-targeting sub-segments" of the Millennial audience. *Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

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Keep an eye on Generation Z What marketers also need to keep on their radar is the approaching 'Generation Z', who it seems have 'wised up' about the future somewhat after going through the global recession with their families.

"Generation Z have developed their personalities and life skills "in a socioeconomic environment marked by chaos, uncertainty, volatility and complexity", a research report by agency Sparks & Honey states.

Titled 'Meet Generation Z: Forget everything you learned about Millennials', the report unpacks this more enlightened and confident generation of youngsters: "They have also grown up in a diverse environment, where modern families come in all colours and sizes, where gender roles and norms are blurring, and they live in multi-generational households. Generation Z share many of the same values as the 'Great Generation', living as they do with their grandparents and older siblings ('boomerang' Millennials moving back home)."

Snackable content They are the ultimate consumers of "snack media" as research studies suggest that "their brains have evolved to process more information at faster speeds, handling bigger mental challenges as a result. They are also less active, spend more time in front of a computer, but are also more concerned about the world's social problems than previous generations.

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Image via 123RF

They are gravitating to live-streaming media, such as Twitch and Ustream. This is how agency Sparks & Honey advises marketers to connect with Gen Z, because they are: more tech innate, able to use five screens; think in 4D; share judiciously; are active volunteers; blended (race and gender); believe in togetherness; are mature; communicate with images; make stuff; have humility; are future focused; realists; want to work for success; and have a collective conscious.

In order to connect with them, marketers must: 1. Depict them as diverse (ethnically, sexually, fashionably).

2. Talk in images: emojis, symbols, pictures, videos.

3. Communicate more frequently in shorter bursts of 'snackable content'.

4. Don't talk down... talk to them as adults, even about global topics.

5. Assume they have opinions and are vocal, influencing family decisions.

6. Make stuff - or help Gen Z make stuff (they're industrious).

7. Tap into their entrepreneurial spirit.

8. Be humble.

9. Give them control and preference settings.

10. Collaborate with them and help them collaborate with others.

11. Tell your story across multiple screens.

12. Live stream with them - or give them live streaming access.

13. Optimise your search results (they do their internet research).

14. Talk to them about value (they care about the cost of things).

15. Include a social cause that they can fight for.

16. Have your house in order (in terms of sustainability).

17. Help them build expertise... they want to be experts.

18. Tease (think: ephemeral, puzzles, surprises and games).

19. Feed their curiosity.

20. Feed them.

Future plans The majority of Generation Z are still teenagers born in the mid-90s or later and at high school, under the age of 18, but this generation are already planning their futures because they think they may not get jobs and aren't thrilled by the prospects of crippling student loans. These are some of the highlights from the research by Northeastern University in the US, released in November 2014, as reported by Fast Company: • 60% of respondents are concerned about having enough money, and 64% are worried about getting a job. They have no illusions about corporate job security and over four in 10 think they'll work for themselves in their careers. 63% of respondents also think entrepreneurship should be a college subject. 55% plan to live or study abroad in the future.

• They think college is important, but are not keen on the idea of college debt. They are also not that optimistic about online degrees.

85% said they want to be taught practical skills in college such as financial planning and saving for the future. 79% believe their college education should include some form of professional experience such as

YOUTH TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRANDEDYOUTH

internships. 61% said the gap between rich and poor is harmful to their generation.

• Interestingly, Generation Z seem to be more tech-adverse than Millennials, interested more in human interaction than talking to their friends via social media. Researchers thought this might be because over half these kids have been cyber-bullied or stalked online.

• They are liberal about social issues, believing trans-gender people should have equal rights and that everyone should have the right to marry or become a citizen. Two thirds think health care should be free for all.

• 69% said their parents are their top role models.

• 29% indicated their main source for information about major events is online news sources such as CNN.com or NYTimes.com, compared with just 12% who said they get news from what their friends post online.

• 38% already make most of their purchases online.

More information is available at Northeastern Innovation Survey and via download (pdf). *Trends curated by Louise Marsland, specialist editor of Biz Trends 2015.

YOUTH TRENDS

SA youth lifestyle and culture

By Bradley Maseko

Bradley Maseko (@brandedyouthsa) is the Founder and Youth Marketing Strategist at BrandedYouth. A Johannesburg based youth marketing agency which facilitates relationships between brands and the youth market. email: bradley@brandedyouth.co.za office: +27 11 326 5108 mobile:+ 27 72 853 7011 twitter: @brandedyouthSA website: www.brandedyouth.co.za View profile

From personal brand differentiation, spending and media behaviour, to the trend of visual domination, 2015 will be an impactful year for the youth of South Africa.

The following is a list of 10 youth trends identified from the 2015 Youth Psyche Report by Branded Youth conducted in December and early-January 2015 in a bid to understand youth lifestyle and culture in South Africa. These trends relate to young people aged 18 - 34: LSM 7+: both urban and township youth:

1. Personal brand differentiation Young people have a need to constantly set themselves apart. This is resulting in the increased number of youth who now seek to define themselves through either their lifestyle or dress sense. Now more than ever, the youth have become more image-conscious and therefore more attentive and selective to information being shared over their social media platforms, as this contributes immensely to their personal brand building.

YOUTH TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRANDEDYOUTH

Note: Social media platforms are no longer being used to post random information or reposts from peers, but rather specially selected information that contributes to the overall image of the individual. 2015 will see an amplified shift from using social media as a platform to connect and share with peers and family, to a platform to market personal brands and increase personal brand equity.

2. Fear of being irrelevant (FOBI) More than just the fear of missing out, there now exists a greater fear within the youth culture and that is the fear of being irrelevant. With so much information readily available everywhere, young people often ask inappropriate information sources for updates and are likely to use this inaccurate information to contribute to the discussions both online and offline.

Note: In a bid to be relevant, young people often enter discussions or comment on topics without fully understanding the merits of the subjects. This trend will continue in 2015, and as a result there will a notable increase of unreliable information being shared through either word of mouth or over social networking platforms. It will therefore be important for individuals and brands to verify information before sharing.

3. Spending behaviour With personal social media accounts being more effective than paid advertising, social media has played a huge role in how the youth spend and save. A lot of youth have been exposed by their peers to different types of holiday resorts, both local and abroad, as well as different types of restaurants and hotspots. There is an increased need to want to set themselves apart by doing stuff that most of their peers are not doing. This has led to young people trying out new things, but also bearing in mind those good experiences are

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costly, which has contributed to the need to save.

Note: There's the occasional reckless spending that is associated with young people, but more young people tend to want to save up so as to afford similar experiences as their peers. The spending behaviour in 2015 will be influenced by the experiences being shared on social media and how these spark the need for other young people to want to do the same, but doing the same entails saving and spending responsibly. In 2015, spending by youth will shift to focus on increasing their social currency.

4. Socio-economic interest This all started with a larger number of (first time) youth voters in the 2014 elections, in a country with high illiteracy and unemployment levels, especially in the youth market. Young people have come to the realisation that whatever is discussed by those they voted into power has a direct impact on their future.

They have now chosen to engage in both online and offline discussions about socio-economic issues they otherwise would have previously chosen to ignore.

Note: There has been a major change in the political scene, with parliament, for example, now becoming an interesting topic for young people, the youth are now more interested in how parliament is run, what is discussed and how these proceedings affect the country and ultimately their future. 2015 will see an increase in young people watching shows that deal with current affairs as well as an increased interest in parliamentary affairs.

5. Media habits The rise of social media was watched cautiously by those in traditional media with great fears of an adverse effect; however, this has not been the case.

Most shows have over the past two years had their highest ratings ever and most of this has been attributed to the social media hype around them. Most YOUTH TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRANDEDYOUTH

young people are now tuning in to watch what their peers are watching and talking about on their social media platforms.

Note: In 2015 there is going to be a continued rise in the number of people driven to tune into traditional media platforms such as radio and television, based on what's trending or being discussed on social media. On the local scene, Muvhango is a great example of a show that has benefited greatly from the social media pull. After the demise of Generations, most young people admitted to crossing over to Muvhango after noticing it trending continuously on social media, as they were eager to be part of the discussion and hence started to actively watch it.

6. Visual domination The best way to explain the visual vs written content war is to simplify it.

Young people don't like to read unnecessarily, as written content is often seen as time consuming. The beauty of platforms such as Instagram, which has now become the favourite with most young people is that it allows them to showcase themselves, what they like doing, who they do it with and where they do it. It allows the youth to showcase their lifestyle in the highly competitive world where everyone is competing with the next person.

Note: Instagram now has 300 million monthly users, picking up 100 million since March 2014. The photo- and video-sharing app has surpassed Twitter's official user count of 284 million. The same manner in which Twitter become more active than Facebook amongst the youth market, is the manner in which Instagram is becoming more active than Twitter. 2015 will see a further rise in visual content being shared amongst the youth and this will be aided by the fact that Facebook is also shifting to video due to increased demand.

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7. E-commerce Young South Africans are now becoming comfortable with transacting online, previously they chose to buy goods and make payments in person. The main issue being that of security; there has always been the issue with putting credit card information and personal information online that most young people have reservations about given the level of online crime in the country.

However, the different payment systems and banks have been working to ensure people of the safety of transacting online and are now gaining trust with the youth market.

Note: With TFG bringing some of its brands such as Sportscene online, following the success Mr Price has had in this arena and coupled with international brands such as H&M choosing to enter the South African market online, e-commerce is certainly growing in South Africa. 2015 will also see Kalahari.com being folded into Takealot.com to create a massive one stop online experience for consumers. Notably, South African internet usage grew to at least 48.9% of SA's 50 million population having internet in 2013. A figure which without doubt increased in 2014 and will be a contributing factor to ecommerce flourishing in 2015, especially amongst the youth market.

8. Retail The influx of international clothing retailers has meant that young people now have a wide variety to choose from. More than just that, it has meant that they change their spending behaviour with regards to clothing, since most retailers that offer accounts are local retailers and the international retailers have cash options only. The quality of the international retailers is also considered by most youth to be a higher grade yet almost evenly priced with local retailers.

Note: With Edgars bringing in a variety of top international brands in-house, YOUTH TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRANDEDYOUTH

and international brands such as Cotton On, SuperDry and Zara providing the quality and style that the young people have always wanted, young people now have more options of choosing exactly what they want according to their pockets. 2015 will see a continued increase in the support for international brands by the youth market. As long as the pricing strategy remains similar to that of local retailers young people will continue to grow their support for international brands.

9. Reality TV The idea of the youth knowing that they have some influence on the results of a show, or perhaps knowing that their comments and words of encouragement can motive the participants, has led to a large number of young people taking great interest in reality shows. This interest is not only limited to watching but also voting and taking to social media to encourage their peers to do the same.

Note: There was a lot of support for the underdogs in 2014 reality shows, and the fact that most of them excelled has kept most young people eagerly waiting for the 2015 instalments of the different reality shows. From the tuck shop owner who won Big Brother South Africa and the former street kid who won Idols SA, to the domestic worker who was the runner up in Masterchef SA. There is a greater need by young people to support the underdog in reality shows as their success also inspires them. Reality shows like Idols SA andBig Brother are thus set to have more youth viewers and voters for 2015.

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10. Music South Africa is rich in culture, taking not only from the local culture but from all the other African nationalities that have relocated to the country; however until recently the youth have been somewhat conservative with regards to their uptake of music from other nations instead choosing the 'Proudly South African' route and mostly supporting local talent.

YOUTH TRENDS SPONSORED BY BRANDEDYOUTH

Note: While it's beneficial for local artists to spread their wings and venture into the huge West African market, it's also encouraging when the collaborations are well accepted by the youth locally. 2015 will see more young people opening up to West African music, and subsequently more collaborations between South African and West African artists. With top South African musicians such as Mafikizolo and Cassper Nyovest having successfully worked with top West African artists such as Davido and Ice Prince, this has led to more collaborations of this kind being expected by the youth for 2015.

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