Of most extra-ordinary design

The 2010 Design Indaba might turn out to be the most memorable to date. Bizcommunity.com brings you the highlights of the third and final day, as well as Li and Martha.

Nussbaum talks Designomics

Design is already driving the changing world economy. This is the belief of Bruce Nussbaum, a speaker at the Design Indaba conference.

Eames Demetrios: open to every possibility

Eames Demetrios created another world to open us to the possibilities of this one. Bizcommunity.com talks to him at the 2010 Design Indaba currently happening this week in Cape Town.

Stefan Bucher: sailing through Cape Town

Stefan Bucher, author, graphic designer and the man behind the hugely popular online animation series Daily Monster, is a speaker at the Design Indaba conference this year. Here he talks with Bizcommunity.com about the advantages of staying independent, working with big agencies, and the many possible monsters lurking behind design awards.

Making our spaces more humane

The environments we find ourselves in, especially our urban environments, need to be made more humane. This is the message from three divergent speakers at the first day of the Design Indaba conference.

Biometric security introduced to Design Indaba

This year Design Indaba is introducing a biometric security system that will see delegates fingerprinted when they collect their access tags in order to prevent multiple use of single tickets. Bizcommunity.com asks some serious questions.

As budgets dry up online looks up

Despite the global financial slowdown – as nice a way of saying ‘global recession’ as anybody and CNN has been able to come up with – at least one marketing medium will expand its share of the revenue pie, even as others prepare to face cutbacks and closures.

After online ad revenue grew 24% in 2006, 27% in 2007 and 32% in 2008, World Wide Worx researcher Arthur Goldstuck predicts it will grow 32% in 2009. This will see revenue jump from R319 million in 2008 to R419 million this year.

An informal survey by AdReview of members of the Online Publishers Association (OPA) reveals similar optimism. Members forecast that online’s share of advertising expenditure will double from the current 1.5% to 3% by the end of next year, 7.5% by 2013 and 13.7% by 2018. Interestingly, the survey showed that while there seems to be wholesale agreement on the decline in the percentage of ad spend going to TV, cinema, direct mail and print, increases are expected for radio and outdoor.

This trend isn’t only a local one. Globally, eMarketer.com notes that revenue for the US newspaper industry declined 16.4% in 2008 to $37.9 billion. By 2012, spending will slide to $28.4 billion. Yet most researchers predict growth in global online spend this year of between 3 and 15%. And a survey by PermissionTV of 400 senior-level decision makers in the US marketing and media industry revealed that they believed their digital marketing efforts to be least affected by budget cuts.

While growth will continue, it should be noted that forecasters have indicated that the pace of growth will slow. Most analysts have already adjusted their predictions downward to take into account the global crisis.

Henry Blodget, a senior Internet analyst at Merrill Lynch, notes on news site CNet.com that, historically, advertising spending on “new media” does not decline before, during, or after recessions, it simply grows less quickly than during normal years. “This trend was clearly visible in the growth of television advertising during the recessions of the 1950s and 1960s, and in the growth of cable advertising during the 1990s. One explanation for this effect is obvious: during the development phase of any industry, there are two main revenue growth drivers: new buyers and increases in spending by existing buyers.”

New buyers will continue to come online and online budgets in South Africa are expected to increase this year because of the Net’s accountability, lack of wastage through effective targeting and user interactivity. Also don’t forget 2010, when the World Cup will mean increased spend in sectors using the online market, including the hospitality, communication, travel and tourism and car hire industries, not to mention the actual sponsor brands. International accounting firm Grant Thornton estimate that 483 000 foreign tourists will visit the country during the World Cup. The Net will be a primary vehicle for research and communication for these visitors.

“I believe there will be multiple reasons why we’ll see an increase in online ad spend,” says Diane Charton, Managing Director of Acceleration Media, a South African online media planning company. “I think that the measurability of the medium and the ability to track and monitor ROI will become more critical for marketers as they need to ensure their money is working that much harder for them. As a medium, online provides this, and as more marketers begin to understand this and are educated about the opportunities and benefits, I believe we will see greater investment of their marketing budgets.”

Charton believes that many local marketers have been using the medium effectively and understand the metrics involved. These are the marketers and businesses who have developed models that measure ROI and show the proven value of the medium.

“We are also seeing increasing pressure coming from international elements within an organization questioning the lack of online in the marketing plans and strategies,” says Charton. “I think this will further force marketers to become educated on the medium, understand the potential value for their organizations and utilize the medium.”

Online consumers meanwhile are expected to spend more time online researching purchases, seeking out special deals, the best prices and comparing product features.

OPA members expect dramatic increases in the time spent online and time spent gaming. They expect moderate growth in time spent listening to the radio. However, they expect a decline in time spent watching television, going to the movies (in spite of a growing middle income segment), and reading of magazines or newspapers.

A number of factors are working in favour of online. Affordable broadband is finally set to take off during the course of 2009. Growth will be stimulated too by the arrival of Seacom, which will relieve congestion on the SAT-3 cable, networks laying fibre networks in major metropolitan areas and the EASSy cable connecting up in 2010. This in turn will see bandwidth limitations diminish and user engagement increase.

“The Internet usage and activity boom of 2006-2008 will flatten in 2009, but easing of broadband limitations and international interest in 2010 will compensate,” says Goldstuck’s State of Online Media in SA report. In 2008, 4.5 million South Africans were connected online (a figure expected to grow to 5.1 million in 2009 and 8.4 million by 2013), 1.05-million of them already have access to broadband.

South Africans are also flocking to social media applications like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and this is driving increased openness to and comfort with online interactivity. It’s not all plain sailing, though – Goldstuck’s research shows an ‘Experience Curve’, which reveals that the average Internet user needs to be online for five years or more before engaging actively with high-level applications like online retail and interactive applications.

“The Experience Curve means that new users will still take five years to be integrated,” says Goldstuck, “meaning that the have-nots are more than ten years away from Internet integration – for online media, an ongoing growth path.”

By MarkLives editor Herman Manson
From Tony Koenderman’s AdReview, published with Finweek, May 1, 2009
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Mark Magazine Issue 2 – Blueprint

Read the second issue of Mark Magazine here.

Twitter to the people

Brands are venturing onto micro-blogging platform Twitter – with mixed results.

Twitter has a funny side – though you might not think so, considering the current media and PR push (into Google’s arms, if reports are correct) surrounding this very useful microblogging service.

Take this one-word piece of advice that comes as part of the lowdown on how corporates can use Twitter for marketing and PR purposes at http://howtousetwitterformarketingandpr.com. The one-word piece of advice is, of course, DON’T. Luckily, on Twitter, you get another 135 characters to discuss.

Just a quick note for the uninitiated: Twitter is a rather nifty broadcast service that allows users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters. You follow people, brands or news channels, and they have the option of following you.

Great resource

Marketers should embrace Twitter in a personal capacity, because it is a great resource for gathering news, picking up on industry gossip and networking across your industry. For media workers, Twitter is a tool to interact with their audience and provides another platform from which to disseminate their content.

Brands also have a role to play on Twitter, but brand owners should not expect it to happen on their own terms. Advertising is losing its edge as consumers increasingly demand two-way communication. Twitter is about communication, and people, which also means it’s complicated: not the technology itself, but the psychology, the interaction and the sense of humour and flexibility required to work with people in a fairly anonymous space.

Yet a number of brands are successfully using Twitter to answer questions, dispel misconceptions and engage directly with users.

Vida e Caffé (@vidaecaffe) has quite a vibrant Twitter community following. It addresses all sorts of questions relevant to Vida e fans, including the lack of credit card facilities at two of the shops, and discussions about the closure of three others. Or it’s used to announce special deals. It doesn’t do corporate speak here, that’s for sure.

Ian Jepson is the guy behind the Vida e account and he says the group initially joined Twitter after noticing there were numerous comments coming from Twitter users about the company.

“Quickly snowballed”

“Our plan was to simply join, get in contact with those people, and sort them out with a free coffee or two,” says Jepson. “This quickly snowballed (as things do on Twitter) and before we knew it there were 30 – 50 messages in our inbox from Vida-fans enquiring about the giveaway and all asking the same thing, ‘Can I have some too?’”

Vida e Caffé was now officially ‘on Twitter’.

“It’s an amazing platform, especially because of how easy it is to see what the average person thinks about your brand and products,” says Jepson. “We’ve had amazing compliments, polite criticisms and many, many mentions since we’ve joined. Twitter allows customers to instantly ask a question. We’ve gotten everything from business requests to ‘what time does your _____ store open?’ and we reply to every single one of them. Our account isn’t overtly active – we make about two or three posts a day – but we are constantly watching and listening to our customers to see what they have to say next.”

Not everybody is successful

Not everybody is successful. I find the @SteersFastFood Twitter feed, um, cheesy. Is cheesy really the Steers brand image? I always thought Spur had first dibs on cheese.

@Nedbank has only one post on its feed, which reads: “Need more info on Nedbank service? Want to complain? Want to compliment? Follow us, or DM us to tell us what’s on your mind.”

What, no news on how to ride out the financial crisis? No “Good news, folks, interest rates are dropping”? “Make things happen”, indeed…

Media brands are doing better, especially @MyNews24, which could be a case study in the successful use of Twitter by a media organisation. It has a human being posting breaking news updates, replying to reader queries and following followers. It has recognised that Twitter is about more than simply dumping headlines.

Key point

A key point to remember when venturing onto Twitter is that it is about people, not brands. Actually, that is also true about business, a point many managers have conveniently forgotten, but which is once again being brought home by the big noise that 140 characters can make.

First published on Bizcommunity.com

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Finding value in Web 2.0

Allowing employees to embrace these technologies can increase collaboration and information sharing.

The rise of blogs, micro-blogs and Wikis, to name but some of the new online tools now available to the enterprise and popularly referred to as Web 2.0, has seen lots of interest but substantially less implementation from business.

The reasons are numerous and range from inflexibility in large scale IT systems and blueprints that won’t allow wide scale implementation of these tools, to a fear that employees will misuse communication platforms to damage company reputation or that it will simply undermine productivity.

Let us clarify one important point upfront. Facebook is not Web 2.0. Nobody expects you to roll out company-wide implementation or even allow employees access in work time to social networks. A significant proportion of businesses ban access to social network sites from their offices and few executives would find fault with that.

That does not mean the tools available can’t be put to good use in the corporate environment. Also, face the fact that your employees will use these tools after hours regardless of your opinion on them. In fact, a recent report by Forrester Research indicates that if you wait too long with making Web 2.0 tools available internally, “employees may create their own collaborative environments on the Web”. This effectively means that if you don’t, they will, outside the structures you should have established to manage the processes in the first place, in the public sphere, and using disparate systems that ultimately won’t allow for easy IT integration at some future point.

The benefits of Web 2.0 for businesses are quite clear, if not always tested. For the enterprise the value lies in rolling out these tools internally for now – CEO and selected employee blogs being the exception – but more about that later.

Internal blogs encourage employee participation and foster a sense of community, research shows. Collaborative projects spanning various locations definitely benefits from better communication tools, notes Gino Cosme, founder of consultancy Cosmedia.

Blogs can also decrease e-mail usage, as only high priority messages would need to be sent out with other relevant content landing on internal blogs. Blogs are great tools to build up networks – something that could allow managers to survey talent for future recruitment.

A wiki (which content any authorised person can edit – think Wikipedia) is another Web 2.0 technology and can be used to collect workplace knowledge into a single source, which is especially important considering the lack of skills and knowledge many businesses face today. It keeps the collective knowledge of departing or retiring employees within the organisation.

Micro-blog services (where content is limited to around 140 characters), like the popular Twitter, allow for streams of relevant alerts to flow to employees – once again without the need for e-mail. Then there is company-wide social networks tools to replace typical employee directories, or as Forrester puts it, providing context to content.

Siemens South Africa has rolled out an intranet site tailored to its Web community of online marketers and communicators within the Siemens group. It provides the platform for idea sharing and education via blogs, wikis, citizen journalism, podcasts and streaming video.

“There are also plans in place to roll out an extensive Web 2.0 external approach as part of the new global corporate campaign, ‘Siemens Answers’, although we are awaiting final details,” says Dale Ladner, online communications manager at Siemens. The CEO, sector heads and divisional management communicate important information to staff via regularly updated blogs on the various intranet sites within Siemens locally. Streaming video and podcasts are also used for this purpose. Ladner says employees respond well to blogs and they are regularly in the Top 20 most visited pages on the Siemens intranet.

“We see an increase in efficiency simply because employees are better informed, often in real-time, or close to it,” says Ladner. “Moving forward, it will be about managing perceptions. We are trying to change the old-school, clock-watching mentality that views Web 2.0 technologies with suspicion. Quite frankly, we would not be overly concerned with how much time employees spent engaging on Web 2.0 platforms, provided they deliver on expectations. Indeed, these technologies can only help breed a discursive corporate culture and they are well aligned with our brand DNA as a technology company.”

A strategy for blogs and social networking services outside the protection of a corporate firewall tend to centre on communicating brand insights and engaging consumers in their preferred medium.

A number of South African firms have come up with successful external Web 2.0 strategies, including BMW South Africa – its Facebook page just passed 5 000 fans. “We’ve had fantastic feedback and interaction on our [Facebook] discussion forums,” says Scott Gray, interactive manager at BMW South Africa.

Its YouTube video channel, says Scott, has enjoyed over 1.4 million views, while the channel it hosts on local video-sharing site Zoopy is also growing. BMW doesn’t plan on rolling out any of these tools internally, at least not now. “I think that people are used to the way they do their daily work, and introducing systems and channels for them to share more information as well as collaborate on it is going to require huge change management encouragement and patience,” says Gray.

Financial services company The Unlimited World is rolling out an informal, but company-wide, education programme called ‘A Brown Bag’, where Mark Smith, the firm’s online marketing manager, takes staff through the principles of search, and then into blogging, PPC, RSS feeds, wikis, and social media. Smith says while employee blogs remain internal, he plans to help employees who wish to have external blogs with the tools and knowledge to set these up. An external CEO blogging strategy will be rolled out soon. Its marketing department is already using Basecamp to improve productivity and RSS feeds and wikis to keep project details in one place.

Internationally, service, creative and technology companies especially use employee blogs that have built up industry credibility to link back to their corporate sites. It gives business a human face: “Look, real people work there!”

Issues such as privacy, intellectual property rights and freedom of expression remain, but these can be dealt with if clear policies and guidelines are put into place. Rob Stokes, CEO of Quirk eMarketing, does note that if a corporate blog is totally sanitised by the PR or legal department, it will more than likely fail to connect with its readers. “The challenge, therefore, is finding a balance between voice and control, and this is different for every company,” says Stokes.

Cosme suggests that it wouldn’t harm employers to negotiate these policies with staff, which in turn empowers them. When done during the strategy development phase, this could provide further insight into how social media can add value to the company.

Strategies, like that being implemented by Siemens, are exciting. But as Ladner notes, it remains vital to stay mindful of who you are speaking to, your target audience. “We will not use any tool or technology just because it is popular, we will use it where it makes sense and it can add value to our stakeholders, customers and our organisation,” says Ladner. After all, “a fool with a tool is still a fool”.

* Herman Manson is a journalist and the editor of Mark magazine. He blogs at http://www.marklives.com. Follow him on Twitter. This story first ran on ITWeb.