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.

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.

Ingrid Rubin features in the latest edition of the Journal of Marketing magazine. Get your hands on a copy to find out what guidelines she suggest for keeping your brand’s reputation on track in the digital world.

Ingrid Rubin featured in the latest edition of Journal of Marketing