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Walter Pike

The founder of PiKE | New Marketing, consulting to Marketers and Ad Agencies about how brands develop in an always on, always connected world. AND The founder of The Digital Academy actively creating the talent pool we will need to be successful. ONCE an Orange Farmer, Racehorse breeder, Polo player, Consultant, Marketer, Advertising Man, Academic (Faculty Head) AND still a thinker, writer, commentator, blogger, flyfisherman, photographer and social media participant.

RECENT POSTS

• Selling yourself in the digital era: It’s still about spreading ideas

  When it comes to selling yourself or your brand, the real task is to spread ideas. Simply put, we want to spread the idea that our brand is amazing, or that you would be crazy not to come to our show or who would vote for anyone other than our party?Yes I know there’s also other stuff, like product development and research and innovation, but in the end it’s the idea of what that product is, what feelings it evokes ...

• Vodacom making huge progress towards losing the war with Cell C

  Although Vodacom has won the battle at the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), I think that it will lose the war. It’s fascinating how often the management of organisations get involved in their little skirmishes and lose total sight of the big picture.Although it seems to me that Cell C has in the past pushed its advertising and claims too far and has, by doing so, lost credibility, the reality in this case is that the Cell C offering is the ...

• Cell C had no choice but to like Nando’s ad

  Can you imagine the scene? Nando’s marketing team, agency, digital team and PR trying to work out the best time to release the Nando’s CEO parody campaign. Phone calls to lawyers working out the possible action should Cell C respond, as could reasonably be expected, with a court interdict.I can almost hear it: "The best time to launch would be mid afternoon Friday -- no time for Cell C to react and to get to the courts, so at least ...

• Nando’s CEO ad: Great fun, but is it effective?

  I love the Nando’s CEO campaign, but it’s still an old school advertising campaign in the 'interrupting the viewer' model. There is no doubt that it's witty and clever and it uses multiple channels effectively, but I am not convinced that it will retain appeal after the initial reaction from viewers.I have always been a fan of opportunistic advertising, and I love the new Nando’s viral ad. In tried and tested Nando’s style, it makes sure that it will be ...

• Woolworths: The shifting nature of brands

  It’s no surprise to me that brand after brand make the same mistakes when responding to online, and especially social media, attacks. From the famous Dell Hell, through the Kryptonite lock fiasco to the more recent Nestle and BP protests. The latest saga was the extremist Christian response via Facebook to the Woolworths' management decision to no longer stock certain Christian religious magazines in its stores.The standard corporate reaction is predictable and certain to meet with failure. It’s based on ...

• Is Cell C winning the reputation game?

  A friend remarked with surprise while watching the Chilean Mine rescue that the people-carrier transporting the miners to the surface didn’t appear to have a Cell C ad on it. I imagine that after spending R160-million in six months, finding new places to advertise must be increasingly difficult.Cell C has embarked on a massive re-branding strategy, which began with an "embedded" YouTube video of comedian Trevor Noah criticising the company, amongst others. It was later revealed that Noah had been ...

• Looking back at social media in September

  Social media is rarely out of the news these days, and it seems that everyone in South Africa is climbing aboard the Twitter bandwagon. I thought I would look back at recent events and see what lessons can be drawn.September has seen the #afrispam incident, which was reported on Memeburn by @andyhadfield. This was followed by a mindless Twitter Re-tweet campaign by @vodacom, inviting people to their iPhone 4 launch. Not to mention the @pigspotter storm in a teacup ...

• Cell C: Is it too late to course-correct?

  I had coffee with the real Cell C CEO, Lars Reichelt, last Monday. Our meeting went on longer than I had originally expected and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Nothing has changed in my assessment of the Cell C campaign but, paradoxically, what was articulated to me about the Cell C strategy makes sense. The strategy was solid, the execution, less so. Has there been a slip between the cup and the lip?Let’s review Cell C's goals for the new campaign.The ...

• Noah-gate: Lessons learned from Cell C’s controversial ad campaign

  There has already been reams written about the new Cell C campaign, including a whole raft of my own thoughts on the campaign. I wanted to step back and pull it all together after the ad campaign that launched and to look at what lessons can be learned from this whole saga.If you’ve missed it all, then let me recap. South Africa's third mobile network operator, Cell C, embarked on a new marketing campaign by creating a fairytale story about ...

• Cell C is ‘astroturfing.’ What a joke!

  Astroturf is stuff that looks like grass but isn’t. Cell C has been astroturfing. In case you missed it, here's how it happened. Cell C staged a stunt. They uploaded a video onto YouTube of a Trevor Noah performance ripping all the mobile service providers to pieces. Then they wrote a letter of apology to him, which was published in the Sunday Times last weekend.This was followed by a press conference, where Cell C announced that it was all just ...

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