The Smartest Event of the Year took place at Wanderers Country Club on Thursday 25 November.

All in all, most thought that the 2010 World Cup had a huge impact on South African Marketing and Media, but not as big as an uptake as everyone thought it would have.

All info is available on the emarketingtrends.co.za blog, and is well worth a read.

For stats on the World Cup, presented by Nielsen, as well as to find out more about the talks, click here.

Grand Prix winner:
New take on airport lounges – SLOW – The lounge for extremely busy people
Shelley Atkinson from GRID

Brief was to design two lounges, one based on the galleries concept, run internationally. They wanted to redefine the category, and conceptualized SLOW – leveraged it into every touch point of the brand.

Questions and answered:
A level of surface is expected, beyond what is known.
The concept feels very authentic, and execution is a 9/10.
Very good single minded execution, with a good clean feel
As an extension of the brand experience, making the connect is done by generating revenue from non-core, and making the brand stand on it’s own.

Advert 9:
Gold winner in poster design category
Agency: Switch
Client: FIFA

80% public vote saw this poster won, out of client brief to multiple agencies
Goal: To communicate that Africa is hosting the world cup, and all 53 nations will unite to make it spectacular
Implimentation: Used Africa as a background.
Africa was made to be the hero, with a man’s profile
Face represents every South African supporter
Colours inspired by the SA flag

Questions and answers:

• Expression of the face was to be positive
• ‘

Advert10:
POWA
Gold Award, for non broadcast category
Ogilvy
Renier Zanburg and Taryn Scher

• Was a real experiment
• The ad was about society who have made it acceptable to live with violence.
• 500 000 hits in the first month
• Other organizations have asked that the video be used as part of their marketing.
• Increase in calls to the call centre, have not been established yet.

Advert 11
Nike Football
Race you to 6
Agency: Isobar Trigger
Gavin Rooke

Nike is very good at focus, and they stick to that on a premium level.

• 521 405 fans on mxit
• Challenge was to identify the target market, and was set to 17 – 19 year old football fanatics
• Mxit was chosen , as it is the biggest Mobile Social network
• Digital product was a sim card starter pack, with a whole user experience
• Taught kids how to play football on their mobile
• Complete CRM strategy
• Highlight was the LIFE centre, was done by a three way agency partnership

Questions and comments:

• Target was to get 250k subscribers on mobile, but they doubled that. Thus building relationships with their target market, and maintaining that relationship.
• Ongoing, immediate communication is available within the field of Football.
• Every minute the content is consumed on either of the focused social platforms.

Advert 12:
Brandhouse
Jupiter Drawing Room Cape Town
Robin Nixon

Brandhouse’s problem was that the recession showed a downward slumber, in the premium whiskey market. They thus had to find a clever way of educating their market, and re-converting them back to whiskey drinkers after the recession.

Comments:
A win was a true Scotsman in the ad

Advert 7:
Endangered Wildlife Trust: Poster category winner

A poster from this campaign

Damon Stapleton – TBWAHUNTLASCARIS
Rationale: Campaign about letters. Soy ink and recycled paper printing was the prerequisite to use to photographers photos.
Simple powerful campaign.
Focus on pollution in wildlife
It had to show what litter does – and the photos show the impact beautifully.
Simplicity in the posters communicate the message perfectly
A lot of PR through environmental magazines was achieved
Overall sentiment that it is an extremely impactful campaign

Advert 8:
International Organisation for Migration
Damon Stapleton – TBWAHUNTLASCARIS

The mechanics of the campaign can be seen above.

False walls were put up all around the country before the 2010 Soccer World Cup, to create the illusion of people disappearing. It spread virally on social networks, and people, right at the centre of the message were made aware of it, through the correct medium, as being part of it, and in the midst of the message.

Call of action, was to call the toll free line. Traffic on the hotline shot up by approximately 15%
Advertising was done where the target market is.
Very powerful PR was generated.
The trick is to be WHAT the target market is interested in.

The Journal of Marketing Breakfast, at The Michelangelo in Sandton had a Loerie themed morning on Thursday 4 November 2010. Hosted by Andy Rice, the day’s topic revolved around ““Squawking About Winning Advertising”.

The eMarketing Trends blog, features the first four adverts that were discussed, but here are the rest:

Advert 5:
Tracker by Joe Public – Pepe Marais
Print campaign
The overall message: Cars can be replaced, family can’t.

Blue prints were done as a full 360 campaign.
The brochure campaign is running in dealerships, but it’s a brochure of a mom / dog / baby’s blueprint – with the idea that cars can be replaced, but family can’t.
They are one of the few companies that effectively make a difference.

Questions and comments:

• Purpose driven focus vs product focus is very interesting. Response from dealers haven’t been had yet, as the campaign launched in the last three weeks.
• The emotional edge and engagement is great. The Tracker link is a bit disconnected.
• Opportunity is to get them to be repeat purchasers, via an emotional connectivity.

Note: This campaign is still extremely new, and no artwork is available for display as of yet.

Advert 6:
Levi – Red for Life Campaign – Scrutinise
Carl Bruns and Paris Pitsillides from Matchboxology
Ubuntu winner

Levi’s wanted to make a big difference with a small budget.
They did that by understanding what the problem is with HIV, in order for the brand to integrate with that. The idea was to make condoms “cool” int he eye of the consumer. IThe Levi’s brand was printed on the condom wrapperand thus assisted with the condom brand image.
In the 1,5 years the campaign has run, it has created more impact than other HIV/Aids campaigns over the last 10 years.
The goal was to create change in behaviour.

Comments and questions:

• Was the fear of negative impact on the brand of Levi raised? Research showed that the brand reputation would not be negatively affected.
• Link to Levi’s seems very random? Campaign has rolled out over 4 years. 7 ads are running each with a specific message.
• The brand sells itself on sex – the question thus was, could safe sex sell? And the answer was yes. Taps into originality, and the sense of authenticity.
• Is this to stay a USA and Levi’s program? If enough awareness is raised within SA, then SA can take more ownership of the project.

This mornings the Journal of Marketing Debate focused on the topic of Social Networking. As always, the hour long debate was hosted by Jeremy Maggs and included a panel of experts from the digital industry.

Some interesting points from this mornings discussion:

Global numbers released about 6 weeks ago about Social Networking sites:

* 47% of online adults using social networking siteshttp:
* 1.5 million businesses have active pages on Facebook
* Average user is spending 55 minutes per day on Facebook
* 73% teens are members of at least 1 social network
* 50 million tweets sent a day on Twitter

Mike Stopforth – CEO – Cerebra
* Brands need to have a compelling business reason for being on Social Networks
* Problem with social media is that it’s not just applications and platforms. It’s actually more an evolving role of the consumer towards brands.
* I believe that we have to realize that consumers are no longer recipients of messages but are now participants
* People are going to complain because you are doing a bad job, bad service, not because of Facebook. So risks have always been there.

Ingrid Rubin – MD – Virtuosa
* Brands aren’t using the medium correctly because they are trying to advertise
* Use social media to the extent of integrating it into your business
* Take from social networks what is meaningful for your brand and filter out the rest.
* Not just about marketing, it’s about business processes and how you facilitate this online.

Arthur Goldstuck – CEO – World Wide Worx
* Facebook is the mainstream 6.6 % of South Africans are Facebook members – need to use a combination of services to get to your market.
* Social media is no longer a youth platform, the age curve is becoming older every day

Brent Shahim – MD – Aquaonline
* Brands don’t need to regain control of their brand, key opportunities to gain insight. Consumers can talk to each other and the brand can listen in on this.
* Real opportunity to gain invaluable insight into the brand.
* Social media is just visible word of mouth.

Toby Shapshack – Editor – Stuff Magazine
* Live in a brand new age, where brand belongs to consumers
* Brands have no choice but to be there listening to conversations

Pierre Odendaal – Creative Director Jupiter Drawing Room
* In the digital space you can cost effectively get your message out there and have a more profound effect on the brand
* Social Networking has a lot more punch then people think.
* Digital is face to face contact, it’s just in a digital world.
* Digital is the most dominant communication of our time and will shape our future.

For more from this mornings debate see Twitter and eMarketing Trends.