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.

Writing workshop for bloggers

As the huge surge in blogging creates a battle for readers here's your opportunity to sharpen your writing at a workshop facilitated by three local writing/blogging legends. I will also be there as a minor curtain raiser.

To be held at 24.com on Saturday 18th April 2009 from 08h30 to 12h30 the workshop features my favourite columnist Chris Roper, local internet entrepreneur and blogger extraordinaire Charl Norman and Justin Hartman, founder of Afrigator which is currently taking Africa by storm.

During the workshop you will find out:
- How to create a fresh and distinctive voice;

- How to spice up your blog and sex life;

- How to make money blogging;

- How to promote your blog;

- How to attract and keep readership;

- About blogging trends in South Africa and Africa.

If you'd like to attend this workshop email community@sa.24.com.

A fee of R50 will be charged at the door upon registration.

WORKSHOP AGENDA - SATURDAY 18 APRIL 2009:

08h30 : Registration

09h00 : Mandy de Waal : A year of writing : News, truth, journalism and doing what you love.

09h40 : Chris Roper : Teaching an old blog new tricks: 7 ways to spice up your sex life.

10h20 : Charl Norman : Blogging all the way to the bank : Get your blog read. Make money blogging.

11h00 : Justin Hartman : How to promote and market your blog. Trends in SA and beyond.

11h40 : Discussion and questions.

12h10 : Refreshments and networking.

Social media for social change

Is the Jail4Bail campaign doing more harm the good? That's the question that was raised by Wezzo on BlackNotes (one of my fav blogs) and Muti after he felt that the autism campaign amounted to nothing more than a spam effort. He makes some very valid points which made me think about the 'rules' for social media when used for social change.

1. Context is king - With social causes it is crucial that the content is contextualised. It is the cause that drives the empathy and the message that supports the cause needs to be more important than anything else. Jail4Bail is not a message - it doesn't say what the campaign is. What is needed is a short phrase that supports this that does.

2. The rules still apply - If anything they apply more. Causes rely on public good will and empathy in order to get funds raised. During social marketing campaigns those empathy levels need to be enhanced, not alienated. Spam is an emotional issue because of the spam deluge that faces ordinary individuals online. Spam is still spam no matter whether you're saving lives, healing nations or changing the world as we know it. You have to entice and inspire people, and shoving causes down their throats will not do that.

3. The experience is the brand - Online the total experience is the brand. So people looking from the outside in will take the total experience they have online with the cause as the brand.

4. Enthusiasm can be misconstrued - How you see things is not necessarily the same as how your audience sees things. You're madly in love with your cause - that's why you take up the good fight. But this doesn't mean that your audience does too. Everyone's reality is different and the more evolved you become as a person you more you realise that - the more balanced your subject-object orientation becomes. Other people may not give a rat's ass about what's a life or death issue to you.

I reckon in this case it's a matter of people just caring too much. The people driving this campaign have good hearts and good intent, and perhaps just became over zealous. This is going to be a case study so let's see what happens in the end result, let's see if they have learnt from this exercise and objectively include what worked and what didn't. If they do that (include the good and bad) they could have a living case study of great use to other social causes who need to understand how to use social media.

Lastly, when using social media for social change the rules still apply - if not more - because you have an important brand to nourish. Your job is to up the love factor, make sure people get the message and get them to switch on (not off) to the cause.

Viral loops & Vincent Maher

Did you read Marc Andreessen’s take on viral expansion loops in Fast Company earlier this year? As you probably know Andreessen is the founder of Netscape, Ning and joined the Facebook board this June.

Viral expansion loops are part science, part instinct, part engineering alchemy. A phenomenon they enables unstoppable quantum growth or popularity explosions, a viral expansion loop is the holy grail of social marketing need. Supposedly a 'secret' shrouded by silicon valley, viral expansion loops enable you to build a business online from the floor up without extensive marketing or sales resourced. With very little in fact, and they have been touted as the ‘secret sauce’ of big number social marketing brands with huge valuations that venture capitalists are throwing money at.

The phenomenon is neatly explained in the Fast Company article which uses Ning as an explanation of viral loops: “Ning grows because each new user begets more users. Every time someone sets up a social network, he has no choice but to invite friends, family, colleagues, and like-minded strangers to sign on as well. The company calculates that each person signed up for a Ning group is worth, on average, 2 people, compounded daily: On day two, that individual brings in 4 group members and on day three, 8; within a week, she has brought in 128 people. Which is how Ning has been able to grow at a daily average of more than .4% and add 500 new groups a day, doubling roughly every 137 days.” The article adds: “Viral loops expand according to what's known as a Power Law Curve, which, for reasons no one can explain seem to accurately describe a dizzying array of natural and unnatural phenomena, from the size of planets to national income distribution to online commerce.”

Basically it’s not rocket science. Just Amway or multi-level marketing taken online. Unlike viral marketing which has a linear progression that loses momentum, viral loops are a multi-level, exponential and predictive. I was intrigued to find out what people make of this idea in South Africa, what with local social media brands squaring up to the big guns.

This is what Vincent Maher had to say: “A viral expansion loop is a descriptor for the phenomenon of exponential growth, via referrals, in a social network or other similar product or service.  What this means is that friends invite friends who invite friends and so the growth is exponential.  If one continues with the biological analogy, the long-term impact of the resulting infection is largely determined by the lifespan of the virus in the host.  A virus like smallpox is devastating but it works fast and 35% of the time the host dies, which is the reason why it could eventually be contained.  In marketing terms this means that applications that result in viral expansion loops can burn out quickly if the hosts continuously lose interest.  This is why Facebook and other applications are constantly working to bolt on new functionality to extend the period of infection and keep the host alive.”

You can catch the full interview with Maher in Brainstorm which will be on sale in a week. Called “Being Vincent Maher” the article looks at what other people think of Maher, what he thinks of himself, how he thinks, and his thoughts on the re-mediation of the world through digital technologies.

There are those who talk...

... bitch, moan, engage in lame flames.

Then there are those who do.

Interestingly enough it is the people who do that change the world. People like Rafiq Phillips, Charl Norman and the awesome okes at Muti and Afrigator who have jumped in to to raise awareness about autism and to support Gerhard Pieterse, Executive director of Autism Western Cape in his effort to raise funds for R1 million for autism. What Norman and Phillips are doing will become an SEO case study.

Smart guy Pieterse, he set up to have himself 'detained' and 'imprisoned' in order to show what autism is like. You can read all about this and watch the video by going to Pieterse's Facebook page. This has come in for criticism from the naysayers, but when you do something bold and controversial people will always complain. I reckon as the father to an autistic child Pieterse pretty much knows what the experience of autism is all about, although there are autistic people who object to the campaign creative.

But back to Phillips, Norman and Muti. The first time Phillips got on my radar it was because he was doing some or other thing to help a charity or cause. He's like that. He's a doer. A young guy at the top of his game who's giving back. Growing the world while he's growing himself. Norman's another young mover and shaker who's making a difference.

My view is when people make a difference they need to be applauded. They need to be supported. The tall poppy syndrom that's going on in this social media community is counter productive, disingenous, plain stupid and does nothing to grow the world. It's enough already.

Let's celebrate people who're rocking the world. Let's applaud the doers and and do what we can to help them achieve their dreams, help others and help build a better world.

Kudo's to Pieterse, Phillips, Norman and the okes at Muti and Afrigator (Stopforth, Duarte, Hartman, Stii, 'Thakadu'/Newey). You rock!

Other people/sites supporting the initiative include FNB's new online strategist Andy Hadfield, award-winning blogger ChrisM's imod, funky designer Nomad-One, Vincent Hoffman and online creative hot spot MoralFibre, as well as blogs like FeistyFemale (cool coverage here), LavaInk customised clothing, social media maverick Stopforth, Roxilla (some other good causes too), Yasser Buchana. This list will grow and grow and grow thanks to efforts by Phillips, Norman, Muti and Afrigator.  

Only connect

When I first got involved in the Internet (during the space cowboy days when everyone was throwing money at it even before it even had a business model) I worked with a guy called Rowan Brewer (brother to Grant Brewer). We both loved EM Foster and in particular his saying "only connect" which speaks so eloquently to the possibility and pain of the digital medium.

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."
- EM Foster, Howard's End 1910

What the heck has a Victorian drama got to do with the Internet, you might ask?

"Only connect" speaks to the imperative of connecting in a world where connection is confounded by capitalism, politics, religion, commercialism. In a world that accents what is different or unique or divisive about humanity, the internet and other convergent mediums sprawls like an expansive organic viral, connecting without judgement. Social media subverts ideology, educational systems based on categorical (Western scientific) thinking and just connects. Randomly. Beautifully. Seemingly with its own logic and concept of time and space. Social media "only connects".

It is like the rambling collective unconsciousness of a great mind that will not seek to be controlled. That seeks to connect anything and everything without discrimination.

Technorati Profile

Censorship, media and the power of perception

Context is a hell of a thing. That point was driven home to me today when Muti deleted a link without explaining how or why the post was deleted. A social bookmarking site inspired by reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa, Muti evolved out of a community that started swapping links and found this useful. Trusted people who are interesting and in the know read interesting things online. Muti enables everyone to see what’s hot or not. It’s like an online link library of what South Africa’s digital pundits think is worth looking at.

Today Muti deleted a post but did so without informing its community. The perceptual effect was that it looked like censorship. Although the content doesn’t belong to Muti (which is essentially a content aggregator) in a medium where freedom is championed and that pushes to open networks, the deletion caused a stir. When you run a social media business and you cock up, you do so directly in the public eye. Online media owners, particularly those of social media, operate in communities where everybody can have and will have a say. And so they should. Let’s face it social media is about leveling the playing fields. Citizen journalism is about restoring power balances that for decades have favoured everyone but the man and woman in the street. The internet makes everyone a publisher, gives everyone a voice. Which is cool and democratic, but it also gets messy.

Speaking to Dave Duarte he said that he agreed that the issue could have been better handled. I loved that. For me it’s always the mark of a great business owner. We all make mistakes, and when we do it’s a matter of putting them right and moving on.

“It is not the first time we have countered these criticisms and we have learned and grown. But everything we have done on Muti has been collaborative, so largely we were just listening to our community. Even our terms and conditions and logo have been co-created with the community. If someone asks us to remove what is essentially their content, we haven’t argued with them. In this instance we deleted without communicating and this is exactly where we admit we erred. In future we will build this into our policy.”

Retractions are a normal but irregular part of media ownership, but in traditional media this is well communicated. In social media less so. Then the social media space is fraught with issues that range from reputation, liable, censorship, privacy and the like. So for emerging media owners it can be a mine field to navigate. If there’s one rule it is that communication is the key. That’s the rock on which social media is built – engagement, communications, connection.

Telling your constituents what you are doing and why can change perceptions and avoid online skirmishes. Let’s face it debate can get hectic online. Social media seems to attract a fair amount of ego factor. Throw anonymity into the mix and there’s an explosive mix of agendas, views and intents. Where everyone is a publisher, but not everyone has to stand by their name there is potential for the darker or shadow side of personalities to emerge.

That’s why the task of social media owners can be fairly fraught as they navigate these and other issues. But the minor skirmishes are a small price to pay for winning the war.

The big battle, in part, is for freedom, connection, communication, information. The ability to connect with whomever you want when you want and engage in a meeting of minds. To say whatever it is you want to say and have the freedom to do so. To be able to compete with the most powerful businesses, brands and media in the world by the very virtue of the fact that you have a connection and the will to be heard.

In this arena censorship should meet with community derision. But when young digital projects err in the public eye, we (myself included) should be a lot more tolerant and forgiving of social media pioneers who are helping to build what could be a great industry for South Africa.

With three new sea cables coming, the telecoms industry facing a revolution, new players on the market and major investment in 2010 underway, access will deliver a boom to the local internet economy. By spending energy building that boom (instead of flaming each other) players in the market could share in a massive offshore market.

UPDATE: For further thought and debate on the Muti issue see Ismail Dhorat's blog: Has muti made a fundamental mistake in community management?

Vincent Maher on new media trends

"Mobile is the biggest, and it encompasses all the exciting Web 2 and Social Media stuff that is happening on the Web right now. The next big thing is the Semantic Web, this is really the next level and will pave the way for artificial intelligence and smart computer agents. The Semantic Web will bring a layer of data intelligence to online resources that we’re only starting to glimpse now and it will change the way search is used fundamentally. Check this post for more on how I see the whole thing unfolding.Vincent Maher is considered one of South Africa’s brightest new media minds. He has pioneered a number of highly successful projects for Mail & Guardian Online including Amatomu.Previously Director of the New Media Lab at the Rhodes University School of Journalism; the managing director of Digital Commerce; and a multimedia director at VWV Interactive; Maher is described by his peers as “a true founder of the blogosphere”, and “a rare breed of tech savvy, journo-trained, forward thinker who is perfect to have onboard any social media project”.

Catch the July feature of Brand Magazine which will feature an interview I did with Vincent in "Tea with the Editors". Loved his riffs. All I can say is that he's a smart, funny guy.

Facebook fakes

"You can actually convince yourself that you’re doing good. That, yes! You can make a difference! In joining these groups of mindless caregivers, you can truly believe that, like all the other hooting gibbons in their cages, you’re making a difference. Just don’t ask for money or, y’know, time…" - Comentary.co.za.

"FaceBook Humanism" is another brilliant blog from Commentary.co.za who highlight an interesting but disturbing new trend, the ability of social networks to create meaningless online cause groups that do more harm than good. The new trend can only be defined as ego activism - social networks that ease the human conscience, but that achieve nothing. Social networks enable to people to join groups and networks to "show that they care" about poverty, hunger, the destruction of the environment, xenophobia or any other of the plethora of causes trumpeted on social networks without actually doing anything about the problem. The result? Fake humanism or destructive humanism in which the human conscience is ameliorated with a click.

I've joined a couple of these groups but at the back of my mind there was always this haunting question: "What the hell's this actually doing to solve the problem?" The answer comes in the form of great advice from Commentary.co.za: "Humanism is a farce most of the time, but Facebook humanism elevates the bleeding heart mentality to completely new levels of idiocy. So the next time you get an invite for a group to “save the starving kwashiorkor babies of Somalia”, please click ignore, and then remove that friend from your list. It’s really the humanitarian thing to do."