marketing Archives

Cape Town brands look to profit off hashtags #CapeStorm and #KnysnaFire
By Julia Breakey on 8 June, 2017
With every tragedy comes an outpouring of love and support from social media. Thoughts, prayers and tangible help are all offered to those in need. But with the good comes the bad too, and businesses and social media opportunists often look to cash in on destruction with profit and likes. These users take a hashtag, which others can view for information on events or for calls to action, and use it for their own personal gain, disregarding lives lost or homes destroyed. Take, for instance, this Instagram post using the topical #CapeStorm. Happy Thursday!!! Hope you have a good one and that...
Uk’shona Kwelanga review: if only it weren’t an ad
By Julia Breakey on 8 June, 2017
With the rise of digital media comes a host of interesting ways for storytellers to express themselves. We've seen the likes of movies told exclusively on Snapchat, and television shows enriched by the fictional social media lives of their characters. And now we've seen a WhatsApp drama. Uk'shona Kwelanga (or Death of Langa) is an innovative ad campaign by Sanlam about a family dealing with the loss of its patriarch. Told entirely as if the viewer is part of the family's group chat, Uk'shona places you front and center for the drama that a family death inevitably brings. Unfortunately, what is an intriguing and exciting concept...
McDonald’s ‘Dad’ ad trends on YouTube again after global backlash
By Andy Walker: Editor on 18 May, 2017
When Pepsi suggested that its product could solve the world's problems with the help of Kendall Jenner, you might've thought it would be the most ridiculed brand of the year. But nope. McDonald's just joined that competition. The global fast food company this week pulled an advertisement it first aired on 12 May, featuring a boy and his mother chatting about the former's dead father. Although the ad is well filmed, adequately paced and genuinely touching, McDonald's too makes the mistake Pepsi made, suggesting that a Happy Meal (or in this case, a filet-o-fish) can help you forget about dead loved...
‘Disaster’ Fyre Festival likened to ‘that alien movie in South Africa’ on social media
By Andy Walker: Editor on 28 April, 2017
If you pay US$12 000 for a ticket to a music festival, you'd probably expect... well, a music festival, right? That's not what attendees to Ja Rule's Fyre Festival experienced this weekend. The new luxury music extravaganza, which was supposed to kick off in the Bahamas this weekend, was met with a cascading comedy of errors. According to reports by attendees on Twitter and Instagram, festival goers arrived in the island country to find a "a disaster tent city". "So Fyre Fest is a complete disaster. Mass chaos. No organization. No one knows where to go," tweets William N. Finley, who's documenting...
Burger King’s ‘Connected Whopper’ ad is genius, but Google doesn’t agree
By Andy Walker: Editor on 13 April, 2017
Burger King just couldn't let Pepsi and United steal all the attention this week, could it? The fast food chain published an advertisement this week, touting the "fresh ingredients" included in its Whopper burger. Sounds fair right? Sure. But as the employee notes in the ad itself, 15 seconds is hardly enough time to sell a product. Burger King solved this by using seven sneaky but utterly brilliant words: "Okay Google, what is the Whopper burger?" This short line activated any Google Home devices within earshot of the ad, and read aloud the Wikipedia page for the burger. Some people labeled the ad intrusive...
Artificial intelligence: how is AI changing marketing?
By Charlie Stewart on 22 March, 2017
2017 is set to be the year of artificial intelligence (AI). With companies such as Amazon Web Services offering AI on tap -- including image recognition and natural language understanding -- an increasing number of machine learning powered services will be finding their way to the consumer. Those involved in marketing and retail might have already seen offerings filter through, with the following pointing the way the AI winds are blowing. Elementary, my dear In the world of AI, Watson is one of the best-known names out there. Built by IBM, this computer system is able to learn from massive amounts of...

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South Africa, you can now Shazam this fragrance using Bluetooth technology
By Staff Reporter on 17 February, 2017
You can Shazam a song, sure, but what about a fragrance? The music recognition service has now partnered with fragrance brand Azzaro to let users do just that -- let fragrance-shoppers Shazam a scent. From tomorrow, South Africans will be able to use the service to detect Azzaro Wanted's scent using Bluetooth beacon technology. The press release claims that spraying the fragrance, and tapping the Shazam button will allow "their phone will automatically identity the fragrance and offer them a unique page of Azzaro ‘Wanted’ content". Unfortunately, the app doesn't detect the fragrance itself, but rather the Bluetooth beacon. Nevertheless, the spritz...
Facebook’s ad tracking system now updates in milliseconds
By Julia Breakey on 13 February, 2017
Facebook announced Friday that it would be providing marketers with in-depth analysis on the ads they pay for. Over the course of the year, the company intends to detail to buyers the milliseconds an ad is on screen -- that is the milliseconds 50% of an ad was on screen, and the milliseconds 100% of an ad was on screen. The company also intends to offer buyers more choice in how they pay for ads. The three new options are completed-view buying, two-second buying and sound-on buying. Completed-view will allow advertisers to pay for video ads that have been viewed in...

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Real-time interaction management: how can it benefit you?
By Dianna Hope on 19 December, 2016
The ability to interact with consumers in real time was once the stuff of science fiction. Having the capability to see what customers are doing on a site or in an app at any given moment, or having a timestamp on when an email was opened (or deleted), is fairly technical but fascinating stuff. The technology to reach out and actually connect in real-time with consumers offers an even greater opportunity above and beyond delayed analytics for effective sales. This real-time interaction has the power to make a sale where one may have been abandoned in the past. So what is...
The one thing digital marketers don’t use enough
By Larry Alton on 13 December, 2016
There's a lot of room for interpretation in digital marketing, but there's one thing you absolutely cannot and should not leave out of your strategy: A/B split testing. A/B testing is the answer to all of your marketing woes and can quickly and effectively transform everything from content creation to web design. The Value of A/B Testing While you've certainly heard the term dozens of times, don't be ashamed if you find yourself asking, "What is A/B testing?". If you've never done split testing on your own, then you may be intimidated by the idea. However, with the right tools and understanding the...

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Kansas City Diaries: the art of organic search
By Natalie Pool on 21 October, 2016
Kansas City Diaries is an exclusive article series by Natalie Pool as she goes undercover at VML's global agency headquarters in Kansas City, USA, to find out how organic search, Snapchat and other technologies are changing the advertising and marketing industry. At the heart of many digital agencies is a Paid Search department. But how many agencies and brands give Organic Search the love and attention it deserves? Not that many in South Africa, is almost certainly the right answer. VML’s headquarters in Kansas City is one such company whose Organic Search team is growing and slowly taking over the world...
Are South African brands ready for augmented reality?
By Johan Walters on 7 October, 2016
Although augmented reality (AR) technology is not new, it is only now beginning to gain the attention of media and marketing professionals. The big question remains: Are South African CMOs ready to include AR into their brand strategies? AR has moved away from its early days when it was reliant on expensive, specialised hardware. The rapid adoption of smartphones and even faster evolution of their AR capabilities means that AR is now well within reach of the average South African. However, CMOs who choose to go the AR route without integrating it into their holistic brand delivery strategy will miss out...

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Instagram fast becoming a powerful marketing tool in SA
By Felix Erken on 22 September, 2016
Facebook-owned Instagram has grown exponentially over the last few years and brands are adopting ways to utilise this social media platform to tell a visual brand story and sell products or services through appealing imagery. In fact, Instagram has seen the fastest growth of any social network in South Africa over the past year, according to the South African Social Media Landscape 2016 study. It grew an impressive 133%, from 1.1-million to 2.68-million users. Taking our own experiences with the platform into consideration, and we have some experience as our communities range from motorheads to job-seekers and enthusiasts of just about...

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How to advertise your brand, products and services to Millennials
By Anton Koekemoer on 15 August, 2016
If your business relies on being online to sell services and products, it's important that you understand how to advertise to Millennials. This younger age group can potentially be your clients in the future. They are on top of their game digitally and are tomorrow's CEOs. This generation is quite unique and completely different than any before it, so you have to shape your traditional marketing methods that have always worked in the past to cater for this crowd. If you are interested in marketing to Millennials, here's a couple of tactics I've used that's working with my digital marketing campaigns. Focus on trust Millennials look up...
5 bite-sized tips for using video in your marketing campaigns
By Emma Donovan on 4 August, 2016
The art of digital story telling is constantly evolving, and 2016 is the year of the video. It makes the cut in almost every article you read, whether it’s trends to look out for or tips to improve your marketing mix. So what’s the big fuss all about? And how can you incorporate it in to your digital marketing strategy? The sheer volume of online content means that your story needs to be compelling, carefully crafted and strategically placed to even reach your target audience, let alone encourage them to engage with your brand or purchase your product. A well...