Mandy de Waal

*Have you seen our client's new blog?

*AKA: The Buzz Saw Slices into (rhymes with anecdotal but has only two syllables) Media... "Mmmmeeeeeeeooooooooowww!"

Ah. Just imagine THE SCENE: A chi chi office some where in the shadow of Table Mountain.

THE PLAYERS: Account executives scratching their heads about how to rationalise the big budget the client is paying for their services.

PR1: "Um. Laaaaik. Sheesh. Um."

PR2: "Cough. Cough."

PR3: "Why don't we just make them a blag site?"

PR1: "Nooit. Like a dinkum, full on interactive blag? Man, that's like revolutionary!"

PR2: "Holy shit PR3... a blag launch release could mean at least 20 billable hours."

PR3: "And we could charge them for creating and maintaining the blag at Wordpress.com."

PR1: "Nooit. You're a friggin' genius. We can now call ourselves us social networking media blagging experts and afford that holiday in Plett."

THE PUNCHLINE: The release. Below. Hold the presses folks...

PRESS RELEASE - BLOG SUSTAINS OUT OF HOME ADVERTISING CONVERSATION

Cape Town, 26 October 2009: Advertising professionals need to be on top of their game by being kept strategically informed on the likes of trends, tips and global campaigns in out of home advertising. xxxxxxxxxxx South Africa have done this with their interactive blog, www.oohsa.co.za , that not only inspires creative professionals by showcasing their latest work but gives insights to consumer responses to many of the 500 types of out of home advertising methods used in South Africa. 

Consumers spend over half of their days away from their homes according to OCS, the recent out of home consumer survey, thus entrenching the importance of out of home advertising, especially when it comes to getting it right first time.

“Much has been written about out of home advertising but the industry is dynamic and is constantly evolving,” said Ms Isigntheretainercheques Client, Managing Director, xxxxxxxxxxx South Africa, “Social media is a platform that everyone is using as a communication stream and this is by far the best source of current information that everyone can rely on. Our out of home advertising blog is an area where knowledge and learnings (sic) can be shared between marketing professionals.”

xxxxxxxxxxx South Africa is the leader in OOH in the country and has uniquely developed tools that add insight and value to the OOH industry. OOH includes billboards, digital networks, commuter media, brand activation, point of sale and sampling amongst others. It excludes TV, radio, print, online and cinema.

- ends -

For more information contact: PR1, PR2 or or PR 3 at rhymes with anecdotal but has only two syllables)Media.

Notes to Editors [MdW comment. Wow guys. You gotta love that optimisim. You really think a newspaper editor will read this far?]. xxxxxxxxxxx is the world’s largest out-of-home communications agency, with offices in 21 countries.  As a division of Xxxx Group PLC, the world’s leading marketing communications group, xxxxxxxxxxx is at the vanguard of cutting edge developments in out-of-home (OOH) such as digital, interactivity and experiential. In South Africa, xxxxxxxxxxx’s mission is to grow OOH to 10% market share of total advertising spend in the next 5 years (currently sitting at 4.6%). At present, the company has approximately 20% of South Africa’s OOH spend under its management, positioning xxxxxxxxxxx as an influential leader in this fast growing category. By helping clients understand what consumers are thinking and how they are spending their time, and by enabling them to communicate with consumers at the right moments and in the best way, xxxxxxxxxxx leads the way in enhancing the effectiveness of campaigns and increasing the media value that advertisers achieve. Furthermore, xxxxxxxxxxx has developed PRISM Benchmark, Forecast and Creative, a proprietary set of tools that ensures that xxxxxxxxxxx delivers the best price against tracked market movements gaining further advantage for their clients, whilst allowing them the opportunity of seeing their “Creative Design” in situ, pre-campaign. No one in this sector offers greater accountability than xxxxxxxxxxx.

Ms Isigntheretainercheques Client – Managing Director: Ms I. Client has unsurpassed experience and expertise in the marketing, advertising and media industries in South Africa. In 2003 she founded xxxxxxxxxxx – South Africa’s Out of Home communications agency – which she later sold to Xxxx, who own xxxxxxxxxxxe. Following xxxxxxxxxxx’s conversion to xxxxxxxxxxx South Africa, Isigntheretainercheques maintained her helm as the Managing Director. Prior to this, she was a founding partner in Big Name Agency (South Africa’s most successful strategy agency). Isigntheretainercheques’ other achievements include running the XYZ Media School in Cape Town, the role of Media Director of Another Big Name Agency South Africa, and the Head of Strategy for Biggest Name Agency Cape Town. Ms Client has continuously shown exceptional abilities as a leader in the OOH sector of the media industry and as one of South Africa’s top businesswomen, receiving numerous awards, which have further entrenched her prominence in the media/advertising trade.

Amatomu - anybody home?

Been having major hassles with Amatomu this week. Seems very buggy. I updated one of my accounts (new feed) and have subsequently not been able to log back into that account. Vince's email addy at M&G is still listed as support for "report a bug" and the only other contact listed on the site - abuse_at_mg.co.za doesn't yield any response. Created a new account at Amatomu which means my blog is listed twice there under the Media&Marketing section - shouldn't be able to do this, but there you go. I sent an email to the addys on Amatomu days ago. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

This morning I thought I'd test Afrigator's response times and got a reply from Mike Stopforth and Justin Hartman within minutes of sending off my emails to the support and other contacts listed at Afrigator. Now that's how to run an online service.

Eating humble pie

Chris Roper's a crafty devil. Great writer - I'll give him that. But I reckon he's a devious master strategist as well. For a long while I've held the opinion that there's slim pickings on them there blogs over at 24.com. I've even had strong (but highly civilized) exchanges with Elan Lohmann about this as well. My view - up until now - has been that there's not much creativity on that blog engine, and I wondered why Elan was making such a great fuss when I stated as much.

Bada-bing-bada-boom... The Roper emails to ask if will I judge the blog competition at 24.com. I smell a rat and gently enquire whether it involves my wearing cement shoes. Before I can say "cry me a river" I'm a judge and wondering how the hell I am going to wade through all those half baked blogs they will send me to peruse.

Now for the bit about me eating humble pie.Damn. The first round of entries were good. This is not the "cash for friends voting for you" or number pumping competitions that 24.com has had in the past to drive up blog counts. This is an editorial competition where quality content is selected in an effort to up the game at the social media hub. I was hugely surprised when I went through the shortlist this week, which was a search for the best photo blog. (I'm kind of hoping it's all downhill from here or else I'm in for week after week of eating humble pie. Saying: "Sorry. You okes were right. I was wrong." Damn. Did I tell you that Roper fella is as crafty as a fox?)

My personal favourite for this week didn't win - but my second pick did. There are three judges - the other two being Charl Norman and Lauren Beukes. I've written about Charl before - he's an incredible social media entrepreneur who's barely skidded past twenty and is already taking co.za by storm. In my books, he's one to watch. If I was an investor (of the Buffet school - it's the people not the company that counts) I'd certainly be in talks with him. Then Lauren is a great writer who completed her MA in Creative Writing at UCT and has just published Moxyland - a refreshing break from the normal genre you get from South African writers. But then Beukes is anyting but 'run of the mill'. Can't wait for my review copy to arrive - I'll be doing a piece on her for MoneywebLIFE.

But back to the blogs at 24.com. Do yourself a favour. Go look at James Nel's blog "Capturing the moment". It is inspired.

 

May the GForce be with you

Caveat lector: This piece has as much substance as cuppacino froth. It is, after all a blog about bloggers. Please bear that in mind before you get your Y-Fronts in a wrangle.

There was a flurry of debate before and after the MoneywebLIFE story I did about “SA’s Ten Most Influential Bloggers.” Much of it had to do with the subject of influence and whether local bloggers wield influence.

I am a great believe in innovation and the ability of imagination to change the world. After all how did Skype, Twitter, Word Press, FaceBook or Google start? Simply with an idea that turned into a disruptive technology or morphed into a viral sensation or took something that existed and made it infinitely simpler, better and speedier. It all started with a thought.

And blogging is the battlefield of ideas. That place where the cerebellum meets the cyber. It is nothing but ideas given form by virtue of words or pictures or videos. And what surrounds that is complete freedom. There are no editorial pressures, little legislative pressure, the liberation of anonymity for those who want that, freedom of speech and the ability to blog at your own frequency on the exact topic you desire. From love to lunchboxes, tyranny to titillation, politics to polony, design to deckchairs, the subject matter is whatever you want it to be. Then the audience is everyone. Your audience can be as big as the world or as solitary as a journal for one. All you need are the means - an internet connection and a device to blog from.

Give the liberation and democratization of publishing why hasn’t South Africa rushed headlong into the opportunities offered by blogging and citizen journalism? There’s money to be had in those there free blog engines – if so why aren’t we making it. More so why do local bloggers wield such minor influence. Why aren’t we taking on corrupt politicians, bad business deals, becoming online advisors to the world, story tellers to the globe?

The first answer is of course access. Telkom should be the most reviled brand in South Africa largely because their selfish and myopic stance robbed this country of the benefits of bandwidth. If we were a bandwidth rich country, things might be different. That said, the tide is turning and in two years we’ll be in another country from an access perspective. It will take a while for prices to level but the infrastructure investment for 2010, liberalization of the telecoms industry and laying of three more sea cables will bring a boom.

My intuitive answer to why we’re not on the global stage is that we are myopic. We are fools to the inward stroke. By this I mean that we are a nation of whingers and whiners who spend our time berating our lot, waiting for hand outs, and being blinded by our own reflection. That’s when we’re not serving self-interest or back slapping co-admirers in the legendary digital circle jerk.   

Our sight has become so myopic we see nothing but our selves, and because of this we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture. There is a whole world out there that is our market place. That is our audience. That we can switch on to if we merely adjust our focus.

But back to blogging. There’s no empirical measure of influence for local blogging (how do you measure the density of froth?), so I devised my own. I did because my last blog was gut. I wanted something more. I wanted to crunch a few numbers. I took the Google result (name) score for most of the bloggers mentioned in the last article, added a few more I noticed were missing. If I missed you or left you out, please let me know so I can post you a box of Kleenex. Then I took the Google News result (name) count, and the Google Blog (name) result count. I gave the news count a factor of 100 (x100) and the blog a factor of 10 (x10). This because the ability to affect the media agenda or get the media to talk about you indicates great influence. Then blog word of mouth is powerful, but much less so than the media.

By doing this I came up with a methodology* I call the “GForce” or the amount of Google influence you have. Here are the results (download the spreadsheet - Download The Google Meister ):

Rank	Name	GCount	GBlogs	GNews	GForce
Above God	Nelson Mandela	6730000	7954310	1215000	15899310
Satan	Robert Mugabe	5210000	6640600	2319700	14170300
God	Huffington Post	9270000	221630	328000	9819630
Not God	Jacob Zuma	650000	298580	688900	1637480
1. Rockstar	Adii	510000	2160	800	512960
2. Rockstar	Ryk Neethling	47,400	4690	33700	85,790
3. Rockstar	Koos Kombuis	66000	3220	1200	70420
4. Rockstar	Duncan McLeod	53400	420	2100	55920
5. Rockstar	Matthew Buckland	53000	2400	900	56300
6. Rockstar	Vincent Maher	48,880	280	400	49,560
7. Rockstar	SA Rocks	48000	190	200	48390
8. Rockstar	Skinny LaMinx	32700	3840	100	36640
9. Rockstar	Mark Forrester	34400	400	200	35000
10. Rockstar	CherryFlava	34100	320	100	34520
Pop icon	Mike Stopforth	28000	2660	500	31160
Pop icon	Eric Edelstein	26200	310	200	26710
Pop icon	Chris Roper	19700	240	2800	22740
Pop icon	Vernon Koekemoer	22100	270	200	22570
Pop icon	Vinny Lingham	18300	180	700	19180
Pop icon	Arthur Goldstuck	15900	80	2900	18880
Pop icon	Dave Duarte	17700	220	500	18420
Pop icon	Ramon Thomas	14200	2860	200	17260
Pop icon	Simon Barber	16600	120	300	17020
Pop icon	WoganMay	13300	70	0	13370
Lead singer	Nic Haralambous	12400	250	200	12850
Lead singer	Roy Blumenthal	12200	70	100	12370
Lead singer	Justice Malala	11900	70	500	12470
Lead singer	Steve Hofmeyer	9910	770	100	10780
Lead singer	2oceansvibe	8420	1920	100	10440
Lead singer	Michael Trapido	9770	150	400	10320
Lead singer	Charl Norman	9390	400	300	10090
Lead singer	Chumpstyle	9480	190	0	9670
Lead singer	Max Kaizen	7950	1040	100	9090
Lead singer	Sarah Britten	8410	210	100	8720
Niche/edge	Rafiq Phillips	7990	190	200	8380
Niche/edge	Ivo Vegter	7940	60	200	8200
Niche/edge	Ray Hartley	7840	110	800	8750
Niche/edge	Andy Hadfield	6410	130	100	6640
Niche/edge	Tertia Albertyn	5450	80	600	6130
Niche/edge	Richard Catto	5330	120	100	5550
Niche/edge	Eve Dmochowska	4270	60	100	4430
Niche/edge	Mark Keohane	3510	110	500	4120
Niche/edge	Ndumiso Ngcobo	3400	110	200	3710
Niche/edge	Damien du Toit	3190	10	0	3200
Bit player	Bolton DeVenter	2650	150	100	2900

* The methodology is fraught of course because specific names are at a disadvantage to generic names. I was more careful about weeding out non relevant results in the “News” and “Blog” results because these were more manageable. But wading through Google to see some responses one gets a sense that the heavyweights deserve their rankings despite the addition of irrelevant results. Then this is time bound – the figures will change in time.

 

The gods (Mandela/Huffington) and demiurges (Mugabe) are added to offer contrast. To show by relativity what real influence is in terms of numbers.

 

What is interesting with the GForce table is how the design heroes have become the gods of the internet (Adii/Mark Forrester). This picks up on something Simon Dingle tweeted today: “Web 2.0: transforming web designers into messiahs.” If you look at the local and global design heavyweights he’s absolutely right, and I bet that the design gurus will be the first to operate on a global platform. Then there are the suprises like Skinny LaMinx who achieve the numbers because of the extreme creativity and value offered. If there’s one person who deserves to be a global guru it’s the LaMinx because of her extreme smarts.

 

As expected those who are the most vocal on public forums are not necessarily the most influential.  Those who are influential offer value of some or other kind – they lead thinking, trends, news, opinion. Be it knowledge, information or advance sight to niche audiences – they lead content.

Then in terms of the categories:

• The rock stars – these are the people to watch, the thought leaders, the cultists.
• The pop icon – they cause waves of influence and attract interest, but don’t have the broad reach or influence of a rock star.
• The lead singers – They’re hot but either appeal to a specific niche audience or are still fledgling rock stars.
• The audience : Either they don’t give a damn about influence, are on their way up, on their own mission or are a lot less influential than they’d like to think.
• Bolton deVenter : A bit player invented by a rock star.

To confirm that the rock stars lead opinion by adding value I plotted a Blogopticon – which is an idea I got from VanityFair.

 

Given I do have a day job I only plotted the top ten, but you can download the file here if you want to take this further if you’ve got nothing better to do with your life. Download BlogOpticon

 

Lastly, I believe there is huge potential in local blogging (and local Web technology and services) but that the success of this will be determined by an ability to see beyond ourselves. By adding value to the audiences we want to reach.