Platforms, integration and future consumption by Tanja du Plessis

Moderator SIYA SANGWENI Brand manager, CliffCentral.com

RIVAK BUNCE MD, United Stations MICHELLE RANDALL Sales director, Christopher Africa

LIVIA BROWN General manager, Posterscope

MERLIN NAICKER Group executive television, SABC

JD ENGELBRECHT MD, Everlytic

ISLA PRENTIS Intelligence lead at Tirisano Consulting, within The MediaShop

EBEN GEWERS Head of advertising sales and trade marketing, Arena Holdings

PLATFORMS, INTEGRATION AND FUTURE CONSUMPTION

BY TANJA DU PLESSIS

Integrated 360˚ omnichannel marketing campaigns that create touchpoints at every part of a consumer’s day – by combining traditional and digital mediums – is what it’s all about if brands are committed to boosting their sales.

But how do advertisers, media planners and agencies get multichannel marketing right? In a Future of Media event, the focus was on how to navigate the new media environment to prioritise the right amount of attention and resources to the various platforms – whether its social media, print, online, radio, TV, or OOH. The discussion was moderated by Siya Sangweni of CliffCentral.com, and the huge panel of experts included Livia Brown, general manager at Posterscope; Eben Gewers, head of advertising sales and trade marketing at Arena Holdings; JD Engelbrecht, MD of Everlytic; Isla Prentis, intelligence lead at Tirisano Consulting, within The MediaShop; Merlin Naicker, group executive for television at the SABC; Michelle Randal, sales director at Christopher Africa; and Rivak Bunce, MD at United Stations. Brown started the conversation by looking at a silver lining on how OOH has relearnt and transformed “None of us could’ve seen the pandemic coming, but the benefits to the industry have been that the industry has stood up and reshaped itself. We’ve seen lots of changes bringing online and offline together and among this huge disruption, there’s been a lot of positive change within the industry.”

The industry has stood up and reshaped itself

Prentis added that “2020 has taught us that we can’t predict the future. It apparently takes 21 days to form a new habit and that will inevitably change some consumers’ behaviour and buying patterns.” She said she believes that it’s not so much about what people are doing, it’s a reminder that we don’t know what everyone’s doing. According to Engelbrecht the key to personalisation and authenticity “is knowing what the relationship is between your customer wants and needs in relation to your business goals. Thereafter, it’s easy: put the right message up at the right time, leverage the most engaging channels and content options, and then use automation to follow it up with the next message.” The digital space has been placed at the forefront of where we are now, as it provides more access to data and is more agile to react and respond quickly. Randal said: “The challenges for media owners that are not a part of the natural three [Facebook, Twitter and Google] has been to show brands how to connect more meaningfully. There’s an opportunity for brands to look into other platforms that may be able to provide

The big take-out:

In order to bring the full brand experience to life, use all channels.

a more effective reach and relevant messaging, allowing them to break through the clutter.” Focusing our attention on the TV space, Naicker said that in-home media has been affected; they have found that TV consumption has remained quite high. “We had some of our highest viewing audiences during lockdown, but we know that this is because consumers were forced to stay at home. Outside of this, the story that is more telling is that the consumer is no longer home-bound and is seeking content driven by their needs.” Bunce said this is the most exciting time to be in radio because radio has managed to keep up with big digital changes. “Digital changes conspire in radio’s favour, pushing radio to thrive.” In his opinion, radio is finding new ways to leverage technology to spread its influences and grow audiences in different spaces. With people saying “print is dying” and with the industry seeing an immediate drop in advertising spending, why is it still so attractive? Gewers said he thinks print is enduring for a variety of reasons in this “post-truth” world. “Print has a lot of gravitas behind it. It’s still perceived as having a lot of truth behind it. I believe that in our current environment print is doing quite well simply because people want trusted information and good news with credible sources behind it.” With all channels having positives and negatives associated with them, and some being elevated or completely flipped upside down by the pandemic, at the end of the day the multichannel topic is not a new conversation. Each media type has its own role. It’s about understanding what you are using the media type for.