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MarketingMix S T R AT E G I C
MARKETING
INSIGHT
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Vol22
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MTN’s Santie plans to
paint the world yellow
Our exclusive interview starts page 12
Vol 22 No.2
CONTENTS
PROPRIETOR AND PUBLISHER: Systems Publishers (Pty) Ltd. Tel: (011) 789-1808 I Fax: (011) 326-0156 Email: mmix@systems.co.za 372 Jan Smuts Ave, Craighall
Santie Botha’s Yello Summer
PUBLISHER: Terry Murphy
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Colin Browne Email: colinb@systems.co.za MEDIA EDITOR: Daniella du Plessis Email: daniellad@systems.co.za ADVERTISING SALES: Stephen Bunyard Email: stephenb@systems.co.za DESIGN: inkFLOYD inkfloyd@eject.co.za SUBSCRIPTION ENQUIRIES: Thiloshnee Vythilingham Email: thiloshneev@systems.co.za SUBSCRIPTION DATABASE ENQUIRIES: List Perfect Tel: (011) 482-3540 I Email: heyre@pixie.co.za PRINTED BY: Ultra Litho 4 Repens Road, Heriotdale, Johannesburg The opinions in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of the publisher.
I 06 I Letters I 10 I Makes and Breaks Stu Stobbs from Net#work BBDO takes us through the best and the worst of local advertising in the past month.
I 12 I Cover Story: Santie Botha interview. MTN's marketing guru reveals how the company is shaping up, what the plans are for the future and how she plans to make our future yellow.
I 16 I Marketing News A look at some recent campaigns and how they have pushed the boundaries of conventional marketing, creating some tough new challenges in the mean time.
MarketingMix Subscribe 11 issues at R 250.00 including VAT. Simply log onto
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MarketingMix I Vol22 No.2
I 18 I Sponsorship Mix Sports sponsorship is an area with constantly shifting goalposts which marketers interested in this space had better take the time to learn about. It is a multi-billion Rand game but the returns aren't always obvious.
CONTENTS
Sponsorhip Mix
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Research Mix
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KZN
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I 23 I Expert Opinion: Richard Duncan Richard takes a look at how cut-price airlines are shaping a new form of cut-throat marketing.
I 24 I Research Mix What makes people respond to ads anyway? Research Survey's Neil Higgs reveals some new research which should give marketers pause for thought.
I 39 I Loyalty Programmes Or rewards programmes ‌ whatever you choose to call them, there are a number of exciting new marketing vehicles out there for your company to get involved in now.
I 45 I Media Shorts| A 10,000 mile high look at the most significant
I 41 I KZN Intelligence
media stories of the past month.
The forgotten province refuses to remain quiet in the face of increased tourism, a rise in capital
I 47 I Business Media
investment and soaring property prices.
All were invited to respond, but only eight did so in the end. Our review of the nation's business
I 44 I The HEAT is on
media is designed to put everything into
The latest release into the women's media
perspective so you can make better advertising
space is aimed at "FHM readers' girlfriends,"
decisions.
according to the PR. But does it shape up, and on the whole, does it really matter?
I 56 I
Editor's Column
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by Stu Stobbs
MAKES & BREAKS
Makes & Breaks By Stu Stobbs; group head; Net#work BBDO
TV Green Mweb. 'spam'. Ha ha. Funny ad. Great script (or improvised performance). Great fun. It really hits on the old human truth that most of us hate being sold to. Ironic as the ad itself is doing the same thing. The lines are delivered perfectly and the scenarios he chooses to tell us are really funny. Nice one.
Red Bioslim - 'Fat Attack'. I guess it's kinda unfair to even mention Verimark type ads in this forum because they are in their own class of crap, but this one is so bad that it deserves special mention. The scary outtake is that if you use Fat Attack, you too might end up like Jason who's lost 33 kilos and, apparently, his mind.
Radio Green Toyota Tazz - 'Telepathy' I have spent a while listening to the radio to try and find a good one and haven't had much luck. So I looked back at some ad of the month winners and found this gem. The Tazz campaign is one that has been doing well for a while now and for good reason. Once again, great performance and a funny script. It's silly for sure, but life is more fun with radio like this.
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Red Colgate 'one squeeze leads to another administer mouth to mouth'. Voice 1 tells us to perform step 1 (which is something like 'rinse mouth'), and then voice 2 answers with step 2, which is ; 'administer mouth to mouth'. We then hear voice 1 again telling us about step 3 and the same answer comes back from voice 2 ; 'administer mouth to mouth', then step 5 and so on and on. Tiresome isn't it? The voices at best sound like nails on a blackboard. What's more they have purchased every second of airtime available so we get to hear it over and over and over and over. Step 1 should have been 'Administer gun to head'.
MAKES & BREAKS
Out of home Green VW Beetle Cabriolet - 'Rainbow' Beautifully shot and art directed. We see the cabriolet beetle with its top down and a perfect rainbow where the roof should be. Simple idea, very well executed. Perfect for outdoor. The best ones shine through. Red Hollard 'with Hollard it's sorted'. I guess we can congratulate the agency on actually selling this campaign. The concepts are poor to say the least clumsily representing some clichĂŠ like 'you've landed with your bum in the butter' or attaching a nappy to a bull's ass
or putting a snail on a skateboard. It feels like these kinds of ads have been done a million times before and weren't great then either. Knowing my luck they'll actually work.
Print rather different to most of the other shoe ads out there. These guys are just going balls to the wall in their Oakley's. What better reason to buy a pair? Rock on.
Green Oakley - 'Ozzfest'. This was a tough one. It was a toss up between an NSRI call for donations where we see a rescue boat shooting up a flare - nice and simple - and an Oakley ad that's an actual shot of a hectic band (in Oakleys) performing at Ozzfest. I went for the one that instantly sprang to mind the next day. Oakley. I just thought this was a cool spin on an endorsement and
Red Deloitte - 'formula' Paging through the financial section of The Star (as I do), I came across this rather confusing ad. I am the first to admit I'm no financial genius but I do feel it is wayyyy too complicated. The headline is a mathematical formula and below it are the values for each variable. If you take the time to work it out, it says something to the effect of 'When Deloitte's auditing, consulting and financial advisory arms get together, they blah blah blah'. Then the body copy tells you that Deloitte specialises in blah blah and solving complex issues. If that's their job then why are they making us work so damn hard already? I suspect that 99% of the business audience couldn't be bothered with this ad.
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by colin browne THE BIG INTERVIEW
In early January, Marketing Mix editor Colin Browne paid a visit to MTN executive director Santie Botha to discuss the shape of MTN's marketing in the aftermath of the Yello Summer campaign. It was a revealing discussion involving brand integration, owning the colour yellow and what Botha really thinks of MTN's rivals' marketing campaigns.
Santie Botha:
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THE BIG INTERVIEW
Marketing Mix: So Yello Summer has come and gone. How did all work out? Santie Botha: The whole emphasis was on integration. It was brand-led instead of just being a retail promo like everybody does during the cluttered time from end October onwards. There needs to be a golden thread running through everything and I think that Yello Summer worked tremendously well in doing that. A big issue with MTN at the moment from a positioning point of view is to have a consistent global brand positioning. MTN South Africa has a pay off and positioning which is different from Nigeria, and Nigeria has one, which is different from Uganda and so on. Every country had a different positioning for MTN and that has been cleaned up. So Yellow is the credo if you can call it that, and we are making it universal in terms of how we speak internally, how we speak to our consumer. MMX: What is the difference in how you are speaking internally?
MTN has grown so fast. You know if you think about it, the brand is only ten years young. People think ten years is a long time but it is unbelievably young and every country was focused on getting things up and running and positioning it for that country specifically. But the orientation has changed now and we are talking about a global brand today. It might be regional at the moment, but the philosophy has to be global. MMX: and how is that going? SB: We have launched a six month project across the continent to ensure the customer experience is the same when somebody sees a commercial, calls a call centre, walks through a shop whether a franchise, a dealer or a service centre. The first thing is ensuring the look is the same, and the second is to ensure that everybody is trained in the MTN way. That the way they dress, talk, and walk says 'this is MTN.' But the first six months is the really big one. We don't want to see any of the old pay off lines. We want to see an MTN, which stands
say, is that it was a campaign theme which was a champion for the youth market and for subsections of the youth market because obviously it didn't appeal across all races. In future, MTN is the champion brand, and everything we do by sub segment will support the champion brand. So Free 2 Speak can be a campaign theme but at a far lower level in terms of visibility. MMX: I think it inevitable that there were disparate marketing budgets across an organization the size of MTN. How are you addressing this to get a better overall branding bang for your bucks? SB: You know what the major difference is? In MTN there is huge enthusiasm. It is very young and innovation is at the core. If it were possible to put new products and new things on the market every week, they would do so. For me it is a matter of focus. Less is more. If you are going to do something, do it big. Integrate it properly and build the brand. Because I also think what has happened at MTN over the past nine years is there
the big interview SB: Our intranet is called yellow.com and Yellow MTN is our internal publication. That sort of thing. There is a golden thread running right through it so each of the countries will have this sort of thing as well. It is just consistency in the approach. This is phase one and there are many more phases to come. MMX: Were you surprised when you joined MTN that there were so many different brand messages in the different territories, or is that the sort of thing you would have expected? SB: No. I think the major issue is that
for particular values. And the values in terms of the business have been defined which is pretty unique. MMX: What have you learned from the various campaigns and how they have worked? Yello Summer was very different from the Free 2 Speak campaign for instance and seemed to appeal to radically different people. SB: Yes I think that is a very important point because that is once again a brand approach. What has happened in the past, and the whole Free 2 Speak campaign was prior to my arrival I have to
have been many marketing directors, and everyone wanted to put their own stamp on things instead of saying it is about the brand and not about the individual. What I am trying to do is to say when you are serious about the brand, irrespective of the individual at the top of the marketing organization, this brand will continue for the next 50 years. MMX: It sounds like a very outwardly focused strategy. Do you pay any attention to what your competitors, Vodacom and CellC are doing? SB: No, well I have to say if I compare
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by colin browne MARKETING SHORTS
Marketing shorts A look at a set of new and recent campaigns that have challenged the rules.
SABC 3BEE campaign
Ford's 'fresh' campaign Ford is going through something of a revival of late with a catchy advertising campaign to highlight an almost complete refresh of its car line up. The campaign makes reference to the 'freshness' of the line-up, marking a shift in emphasis from the usual marketing of individual models. Says Ford, the focus should be on the new line in its entirety and the fact that Ford is a refreshed company with a host of new models rather than the virtues of one or other car in particular. In fact however, the campaign was more a solution to a problem than a matter of capitalising on an opportunity. "We ended up in a situation with four new cars - a Ford Focus TDCI, a
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4-litre Ford Ranger, the Ford Mondeo ST220 and a new line of Ford Fiestas. All needed to go to the market at more or less the same time," says JWT Johannesburg creative director Paul Strappini, who was responsible for the concept. "But given that we are at year-end, when people traditionally have no cash for new cars or want to wait until the New Year to get the later registration date, we were faced with a problem. The client also made it clear that postponing the roll out any further would not be acceptable." The result was what amounted to a branding campaign centred around the new line-up and the freshness theme became the central message.
SABC 3's latest SMS/on-screen integrated campaign is the latest to showcase the potential of SMS as a marketing tool. Through February, the campaign has used SMS technology technology as the platform to communicate with and reward viewers for watching SABC 3's programme line-up. There have been three opportunities every night for viewers to win prizes valued at up to R250,000. "Not only is the format of the programme unique in terms of loyalty programmes in South Africa, but it is also a novel means of interacting with our viewers," says Savannah Williams, SABC 3 marketing manager. "By using text technology, viewers are encouraged to watch SABC 3 and to interact with the channel by participating in the promotion. They're also enticed to stay tuned so as to find out if they have won a prize. What's more, the format of the programme gives us the means to encourage viewers to watch selected programmes, and to extrapolate the number of viewers from the entries received." While new to South Africa, the use of SMS technology for interactive marketing purposes has already enjoyed phenomenal success elsewhere in the world. "The first-ever opt-in SMS TV
MARKETING SHORTS
African Marketing Festival The MFSA is testing the notion of its grandest master plan yet: the bringing together of its impressive array of awards programmes into one mega-marketing weekend. The event, being touted for now as the African Marketing Festival, is set to take place during the first few days of October and will see awards sections such as the Raptors and the Assegais take on the 'Loeries' mantle. The proposal is to rename them the Loeries Sponsorship and Loeries Direct awards, with the traditional Loeries being renames the Loeries Creative Awards. The Marketing Excellence Awards will also take place that weekend and the whole shebang is to be run alongside a set of seminars and conferences. Game Show -Game Ka Na Ba became the highest rated game show on prime time TV in the Philippines. It was driving SMS traffic of 20 million messages per month and really creat-
ed a whole new way in which television channels interacted with their viewers," says Wayne Nelson-Esch, marketing director of Starfish Mobile, the technology supplier behind
ABSA 'Access The Money' Access The Money was a live television game show broadcast weekdays during November and December 2003, just before SABC 3's popular soapie Isidingo provided contestants with the chance to win cash prizes up to R1 million. "This was ABSA's way of rewarding our clients, while at the same time highlighting our products, services and benefits directly to our target audience," says Luigi Magnelli, general manager of products and pricing, ABSA Group Marketing.
The competition was open to anyone using ABSA ATMs for cash withdrawals, transfer of funds, electronic account payments, statement enquiries and prepaid cellular phone top ups, as well as ABSA clients who made use of their ABSA credit, debit or Garage cards. The next step was to watch the Access The Money programme on weeknights in case your name was called out. Participants invited to take part won an immediate R5000 from ABSA.
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by daniella du plessis
HEAT
So how hot is it? In a 'People' kind of way, Heat hits all the right buttons. It's glam, it's star-struck, it's gossipy, trendy and well thought out. But it's also the ideal cliché of basic, animal instinct kind of nosy reading. From cover to cover it's unashamedly in
and approachable read. And so it may just sell. As the editor, Melinda Shaw says in her introductory letter to readers, "We've imported the title because we believe that it's a formula that South Africans will love just as much as they do
"…Everybody knows that sex, stars and surgery sells and there's no audience like a South African audience that can lap up that kind of nonsense."
the face of plastic Hollywood boobs, nose jobs, who's dating who, and which star has found true love. I can see, from the outset, that it's going to be a hit in this country. My justifications? Well, if You/Huisgenoot mags do so well, with half the gossip, and a quarter of the glam - then something which goes the whole hog just has to sell…like hot cakes. It's not for everybody, that's a given. It's not for businesswomen, busy women, or women averse to all things scandalous and unnecessarily probing. But it will be right down the alley of housewives, bored wives and those stereotypical rumour and 'skinder' devourers in SA. It'll also appeal, wethinks, to pre-teens, teens, and perhaps even a few lonely post-teens - but that's about it. Which is not bad. These people are a good, solid, well-oiled market. They have money, mostly…but most of all, if an ad tells them they'll lose 30kg in 2 weeks, they'll generally fall for it. And that's an advertisers dream! That said and done, when it is claimed to be the sister title of FHM, I feel a small niggling sensation of scepticism overtake me. It ain't FHM. Not by a long shot. It's not particularly clever, it's not witty, it's not tongue-in-cheek, and it sure ain't about boys in g-strings. But it is a good, friendly
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in the UK…(where) it is bought by 565 000 people very week." Now that's hot. So when you receive your preview copy of Heat, or start evaluating it on March 2 when it'll be officially launched, keep an open mind. It really isn't everybody's cup of tea. But everybody knows that sex, stars and surgery sells - and there's no audience like a South African audience that can lap up that kind of nonsense. So although it doesn't do it for me, I'd say that Heat looks destined to become pretty hot, so be warned.
MEDIA SHORTS by daniella du plessis
Sweet TASTE of success Woolworths and publisher New Media Publishing appear to have produced a winner with the popular new Woolworths magazine, TASTE. In September and October last year, 15 624 copies of the first issue of TASTE were sold (84% sell off rate), and 12 000 of the second issue had been snapped up by the first week of January after appearing on the shelves in early December. New Media Publishing's Irna van Zyl says each issue takes on a life of its own: "I have lost count of the number of positive emails and phone calls from advertisers and readers, and we look forward to showing off our Easter issue." Indeed.
Good Hope – It’s all good Good Hope FM have catapulted themselves into South African cyberspace with a cracking new website that is every bit as sassy as the station and city it calls home. Not only beautiful to look at, but bleeding-edge technology allows visitors to interact like never before and tune in to Cape Town's #1 radio station from anywhere in the world over the web. "We're ecstatic!" says Good Hope FM acting Station Manager Brendan Ficks, "The
new site is simply incredible and allows us to engage with our listenership on another level. The streaming audio broadcasts mean we can attract new people from around the globe to Good Hope FM's unique brand of radio. "Technology like this opens up so many new options to explore and improve what we do. The Good Hope FM website is part of our passion to run a radio station that serves Cape Town like no one else can!"
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MEDIABYTES
What’s on MediaBytes? MediaBytes, Marketing Mix's weekly e-newsletter is available free to subscribers: Go to subscribe.systems.co.za and sign up for your weekly media fix. Gauteng first to get Sentech broadband Gauteng has become the first province to receive Broadband Wireless (BBW), high-speed, no-limit Internet access via regulated high-powered radio frequency. Sentech, better known as SA's TV and radio signal provider, has now launched its MyWireless service in and around Johannesburg. Switch-on in selected areas occurred on January 19. Durban will be MyWirelessenabled on February 19, while the Cape Town CBD and suburbs go live on March 19.
Clear Channel and Yfm against AIDS Clear Channel Independent and Yfm have joined forces in acknowledgement of the on-going drive to raise HIV/AIDS Awareness levels across South Africa. Yfm will be running a campaign in memory of the station's DJ Fana "Khabzela" Khaba who died from AIDS in early January, while Clear Channel Independent will be donating approximately 10 sites for the outdoor component of the campaign.
New mag for SA A new, large format glossy magazine showcasing SA property and lifestyle is scheduled to launch in South Africa (Cape Town initially) in April this year. The bulk of the copies - 45 000 - will be distributed to selected homes, hotels, tourism centres, airlines in the Western Cape, consulates and embassies worldwide. An initial 5 000 copies will be sold at newsstands throughout the country targeting those with an interest in Cape properties. NAB claims Durban The Newspaper Advertising Bureau (NAB) has recently acquired the advertising contract for the Rising Sun newspaper group. NAB now delivers a penetration of over 300 000 households each week into the Durban area.
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Editorial comments, ideas or news Daniella du Plessis Tel: (011) 789-1808 Email: daniellad@systems.co.za
Advertise or request rate card Stephen Bunyard Tel: (011) 789-1808 Email: stephenb@systems.co.za