PVR lands with huge implications for advertisers

When Multichoice unveiled its new Personal Video Recorder (PVR) decoder last night, Wednesday 9 November 2005, a lot of competitors and media buyers are going to think that they have completely lost the plot and will succeed only in shooting themselves in the foot. Because the PVR will not only allow viewers to pre-record 80 hours of content onto its massive built-in 160 Gig hard drive, but it will also automatically record the past two hours of whatever programme is being watched.

A little too much peri-peri for Nando's?

The controversy over a fake Nando's SMS advertising campaign poses some interesting questions for marketers who are fully aware of problems of getting through the clutter of conventional media to get noticed. Now, I have no doubt whatsoever that Nando's did not have anything to do with the SMS campaign that has "The Last Supper" as a theme under the slogan: "Jesus has had his chips".

Gautrain: Where's the marketing research?

With the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport openly suggesting that Gautrain is heading for disaster, there seems to be no doubt that from a marketing point of view it's an unmitigated disaster already. For starters, it is highly unlikely that the project team has spent much time and effort on market research.

The value in Superbrands

The launch this week of the first Superbrands book in South Africa has drawn predictable criticism from a number of quarters, mostly media and marketing purists, about the credibility of this project, despite it flourishing in more than 40 countries. The main argument is that companies don't get Superbrand status unless they buy into the Superbrands book.Now, while this argument might well be valid, from a marketing point of view one has to ask whether organisations such as Superbrands do offer some kind of value, in spite of imperfections. And the truth of the matter is that, particularly in South Africa, there does seem to be some considerable value.

Marketers lagging behind in transformation game

South Africa's marketers owe the ad industry a huge debt of gratitude for not only including them, but also giving them pole position naming rights, in the ground-breaking Marketing, Advertising and Communications BEE Charter. Frankly, the marketing industry's involvement in the drafting of the charter has been minimal.

Have seminars passed their sell-by date?

Up to about a decade ago, seminars were the 'in thing'. Particularly those featuring guest speakers flown in at great expense from overseas.

Will a new agency improve BMW advertising?

One of the most prestigious advertising accounts in South Africa must surely be BMW. Which makes one wonder why the people at TBWA Hunt Lascaris, who have had the account for 16 years now, decided not to accept BMW SA's invitation to them and four other agencies to pitch for the account.

Road safety marketing fiasco

Once again this Christmas thousands of South Africans will die on our highways as road safety campaigns inevitably crash as dramatically as they have in the past. And the reason for this is that the country's road safety authorities continue to avoid employing tried and trusted marketing principles to persuade the bulk of our population to stop trying so hard to kill themselves. Interestingly enough, there's very little being said about the once much vaunted Arrive Alive this year.

Open letter to Robert Mugabe

Dear Mr Mugabe, Confiscating the passport of Trevor Ncube yesterday was not only churlish, pointless, heartless and singularly childish, but your continued harassment of these independent media owners is an insult to all those journalists who put you in power in the first place. I am talking about those many journalists, me included, who suffered the wrath and ignominy of Ian Smith's government in their attempt to tell the truth to the world about the iniquities of his regime and the logic of installing a democratically elected government. Ian Smith gagged the press, banned the press and harassed the press.

Who is going to mess up 2010 for us?

Have any South Africans started wondering yet whether 2010 might be about a bit more than just soccer? That it might just be an event that could put this country firmly in the centre of the global spotlight for four years starting just after the 2006 World Cup finishes in Germany to the culmination of the final of the next one in 2010. With 350 000 visitors to this country for the finals and about 45 billion TV viewers, surely it would be churlish of any South African not to make the most of all this attention that is going to be focussed on us? But, there are some interesting questions that need to be asked.