As business sectors continue to implode, morph and warp, I'm sure we're all agreed that standing out from the mundane has never been more critical. Here're 10 easy key trends to differentiating yourself, your company, your brand or your region and to achieving enhanced global marketing clout and job creation opportunities.
HEART-felt: bringing genuine good feelings and intentions into every single commercial initiative, no matter how small, will go a long way to weeding out irrelevant or resource wasting endeavours. Happy customers and much-loved products and services start within a company's DNA. Attracting and maintaining a skilled, contented and empowered workforce in a well designed environment, is the only foundation for the successful company of the future. Included under the “heart” way of doing things are: giving back, adding value, respecting human and environmental health, job and skills creation, recycling, reinventing and activism.
LEADERSHIP-ship: a natural follow-up to the above - classic management techniques will be making a comeback - strong, visionary leaders are required to lead strong, motivated teams and as a hedge against the lack of corporate direction that is continually needing to ask customers what they want and calling it a trend. Tribes do not continually want to be asked where they want to go; they want to be confidently led where they are supposed to be - they are of one mind, they move forwards like a school of fish.
CONFUSION-ism or asking why. For example, if a plastic housing is a plastic housing, why are well-designed cellphones and appliances expensive and the ugly ones cheap? Perhaps this will be the year when manufacturers and brand owners realise that the bottom [and very wide] end of the market is as aesthetically appreciative as the top and that catering to them might bring unexpected rewards - call it inverse luxury.
HOW WE BOW TO WOW: every company's secret weapon of the future and one that may be applied freely. HWBTW uses design and strategy to question where aesthetic and experiential value can be added into products, services, brands and retail interfaces for the good of all.
REGION-alism: global trends show that consumers have had enough of boring multi-national brands (BMBs). Brands of the future have heart and soul, and reflect, celebrate and promote a desirable local and lekker reality.
AFRIQUE boutique: following on from the above, still a potentially untapped resource and the antidote to the above-mentioned BMBs, local products will increasingly incorporate the awesome innate design vocabulary of our region into mass production models and make our region an even more saleable item. What has been the point of BEE policies if we have brought no real African culture into our boardrooms? The Japanese, the Americans, heck, even the Indonesians, sell their unique cultures globally. If we have the production capacity to produce everything in South Africa where are our local mass-produced versions of anime, Disney, the Muppets, Thomas the Tank Engine, Tellytubbies etc etc empires? What happened to the District 9 merchandise?!? [insert tantrum here]
ME-dium: everyone is a medium - online 24/7 self-expression will continue to proliferate and this is all good. John Vlismas summed it up very well (in an interview with The Media Online 01/12/09) when he said, “I don't think you can ever write enough, no matter what walk of life you inhabit - it's a great skill to sharpen... writing is really just forcing the voices in your head to speak clearly and say something worth listening to.” It will be up the existing media to keep their edges sharpened.
RE-novation: it is an understatement to say that everything mostly needs upgrading [look around you]. Renovation can add value to any products, objects, items of clothing, buildings, personal or corporate value system. Review, revise renew, renegotiate, replenish, rethink... What's your favourite RE-word?
FUN-istocracy: funny is the antidote to everything that's wrong with the world, real or imagined. Like court jesters of old, funny people will be sought out as consorts of the highest and mightiest. It doesn't pay to take yourself too seriously; it's bad for your net worth.
EDUCATIONALISM is the new capitalism: none of the above are worth a bean without it. Education will move out of the classrooms into the streets. Brands and benefactors will pay for public spaces and play areas that inspire, educate and delight. Every interface is potentially a medium to engage an enquiring mind and ideally should be incorporate 1-9 above. We are probably one of the countries in the world most deprived of inspiring built public spaces - when this changes, we will see huge mindset changes.
Terry Levin is the custodian of Off the Shelf Marketing (www.offtheshelf.co.za), whose mission is the development of new global African empires via the creation of iconic Pan-African product and brand development solutions. Terry is a regular contributor of events coverage and opinion to Bizcommunity.com. Email her at and follow her on Twitter at @terrylevin.
Yes, it seems that finally South Africa is catching up on creative, effective marketing. It seems that marketing could even sell some values back to society too. It’s all about society reclaiming the individual and the personal after the recent technological explosion. We seem to be moving with the computer pace, and starting to remember that we’re human too.
I like what you say about us becoming an Afrique Boutique. We definitely stand to lose our “Proudly South African” image if we do not truly embrace who and what we are.
Most of our South African youth are ‘with the program’ in all these ways; in my opinion we are a little slow on the uptake (and I’m only 30). So your comment on ‘educationalism’ is also apt. Posted on 19 Jan 2010 16:56
So much is written about new models for ad agencies etc, where arguably some of the countries most creative minds reside - why spend millions only on ads, when budgets can be applied to groundbreaking projects that garner international awareness and respect - that will really give us something to advertise about - it's not about finding resources, it's about channeling them into initiatives that are really going to make a difference and inspire individuals and even whole regions. Posted on 20 Jan 2010 08:57
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