For more information on the awards and saidWot’s official press release: 

http://www.dst.gov.za/other/techtop100

http://www.saidwot.com/2011/12/saidwot-wins-at-the-top-technology-100-awards/

The Top Technology 100 Awards are recognised as the premier business excellence awards in South Africa; a longstanding national program mandated to celebrate South Africa’s role-models in science and technology that acknowledges with fanfare the success that today’s organisations enjoy through their development and use of technology. More importantly, it encourages, measures and honours these organisations for the value their use of technology brings to the South African economy.

“We are proud to receive this acknowledgement in what is a highly competitive environment, maintaining focus in our product offering and excellence in delivery are key cornerstones of our success to date. Keeping up with ever-changing trends in the online space and meeting the needs of the client in our product delivery is a constant challenge to our team” says Ingrid Rubin, CEO saidWot Global.

saidWot (Pty) Ltd is a leading online monitoring, management and reputation strategy company. Offering a software application that can be accessed by clients globally to research their market and manage and monitor their brand reputation online. The tool supports the analysis and development of robust communication strategies for the ever-growing social media space, and allows the brand to report back on the Return on Investment from the campaigns implemented.  

Carla Jones – GM & Chief Strategist: South Africa and Armond Furmie – Technical Lead, were at the event to accept the award on behalf of the company.  “Winning this and similar awards is an important and well-deserved acknowledgment of success based on the focus and passion of our team”, says Carla.

To read more about the awards: http://www.dst.gov.za/other/techtop100

For further information about saidWot contact:

South Africa: Carla Jones – Carla@saidwot.com

United States: Ingrid Rubin – Ingrid@saidwot.com

Did he go on this rant out of pure frustration and used his opportunity of being on live radio wisely? Did he do this to draw attention and make a name for himself as a controversial and opinionated radio personality in the hope of following in the footsteps of the likes of Mark Pilgram and Gareth Cliff? Or did he really commit career suicide?

At this stage, public opinion seems to be that he was only saying what most of us were thinking anyway and most individuals are applauding him for this and, although some are questioning if it was truly necessary to swear so much, others believe that this is exactly what caused the huge impact. Additionally, with an initial 3568 followers to a growth of 453 on Twitter within a matter of 24 hours, I would say the impact has been tremendous.

However, some opinions on answerit.news24.com include that he is an “Attention seeking twazzer, he wanted his 15 minutes of fame and he got it. Silly, childish little boy” and “Certainly not very high ambitions. He was quoted as saying ‘all I ever wanted was for Gareth Cliff to read my blog’. That would be the pinnacle of success…?”

A Marketer’s Perspective on this:

Let us ignore the question of why he did what he did and have a look at the impact it made, and what marketers can learn from this.

Firstly, the incident took place at 1 am, a time that most media strategists would not consider for advertising their brands. This incident has proven that a truly impactful, unexpected message can take place at any time and that it can reach your market virally anyway. A Brand that applies this often is Nando’s. Their ads are usually only aired once or twice and their posters are only up for a day before somebody complains about them and they are removed by the ASA. However, by the time this happens, they have already made their rounds on the Internet by members of the public, through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or blogs.

Secondly, and this is widely known, but a reputation that takes years to build can be destroyed in seconds. Although, it is uncertain whether in the curious case of Mark Esterhuysen he intended to build his reputation with this outburst or if it was truly an act of insanity based on pure frustration; the rule still applies. It takes years of hard work and sometimes countless efforts to own a specific space in the minds’ of your audience and all this hard work can be instantly ruined by a silly mistake. There are many examples like this that are easy to find with a simple Google search, try it out with the keywords “car recall”.

So, in this world where incidents that take place in the early morning hours can spread like wildfire through the interconnected network that we take for granted every day, how can one ensure that the reputation that they worked on for years stays intact? Well, in my opinion you should use this interconnectedness to your advantage and constantly keep an eye out for what is being said about you. Consumers no longer only share their opinions with friends and family around the braai, but share this with the rest of the world.. And we all know that it is easier to share a bad experience than a good experience with your peers online. Therefore, keeping a close eye on what is being said about you and analysing the impact on your brand, makes a huge impact in terms of maintaining brand health. This can easily be done with the use of Online Reputation Management tools.

So, if you are planning on doing something outrageous, unexpected or shocking, or you are just interested to see what is being said about you, make sure that you contact saidWot for a free trial as your first port of call.

The Topsy foundation is a non-profit organisation which partners with rural communities empowering people infected with, and affected by, HIV and AIDS, through medical care, social support and skills development.

They aim to do this by providing free treatment at their Comprehensive HIV and AIDS Care Clinic, counselling and testing services, support for families affected by the disease and also empowerment through the provision of skills.

Topsy’s work is best displayed by the award-winning television advertisement, “Selinah”. This advertisement displays the true story of the dramatic recovery of an AIDS sufferer, over the period of 90 days. Although it is a touching piece of creative work, it is even more powerful because it shows just how the work of this Foundation makes such a large positive change in peoples’ lives.

Selinah

In an effort to support the Topsy foundation in making such a large difference, saidWot  offered to monitor Topsy’s online reputation through the use of our unique, near-real time Online Reputation Management (ORM) tool. This allows us to monitor how much the Selinah advertisement as well as other projects and campaigns by Topsy are being spoken about, and what the sentiment is around those campaigns. saidWot monitors all aspects of the brand online, on a continuous basis, keeping Topsy up to date on a weekly basis with Dashboard Reports. A full case study has also been compiled for Topsy – detailing the results of the saidWot analysis.

This is a perfect example of how companies and charities can collaborate to boost the positive results for South African communities.

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saidWot is an online media monitoring and reputation tool that allows brands to monitor competitor activity, brand reception and sentiment by the marketplace, as well as an overview of the required areas of opportunity to improve brand image and engagement online. In addition, strategic services such as audits, brand positioning, campaign implementation, reputation & PR strategies, as well as monthly reporting on ROI objectives are offered.

For more details – engage with us on Linked In, Facebook, Twitter or test.saidwot.com

Please also support the Topsy foundation: www.topsy.org.za

Issued:

Date: 23 August 2011

Place: Johannesburg

By: saidWot

Every year, for 67 minutes South Africans do something for somebody else. This is done in order to honour former president, Nelson Mandela, who gave 67 years of his life to build a better South Africa. This year, saidWot and Virtuosa teamed up to do something small for the community we function within.

There were some complaints about a piece of land near our offices that were littered beyond belief. Passers-by leave food wrappers and empty bottles and cans in the field, disturbing the birds that nest there and making that area unattractive. The saidWot and Virtuosa teams decided to tackle this problem by cleaning up this piece of land in order for the residents, and us, to function in a cleaner, less littered environment. So, late afternoon, armed with boots, gloves and refuge bags we started cleaning up the park. After 67 minutes, all the bags were full and the team was filthy, but at least we made a noticeable difference to the park. The residents noticed the change too.

Below is the full social media strategy presentation titled, “How to use your Social Media profiles successfully”.

Speakers from all walks of life will be sharing their knowledge and experience with the audience and offer them food for thought for future strategies.

From the saidWot stable, Carla Jones will be taking you through some of the key success factors behind a social media strategy and best practices to measure results instantly.

The main focus will be on the strategy behind any social media engagement, as well as the on-going monitoring of your efforts and the reporting back on the KPIs set.

In order for any company to do this successfully, reputation management needs to be put in place and changes need to be made when results are not achieved in the set time periods.

If you were not able to register for this conference in time, follow us on @saidwotorm and we will provide you with all the highlights from day 2 of the conference.

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.

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

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.