Zakitumi, baby!

Thought you might want to share a few marketing lessons that I picked up from the Cape Times, when I went online to renew our subscription this week – actually I went on to upload a photo I thought they might like – of the side of Table Mountain covered in spring flowers – but could not find an option to do so.

I did find the letters page and could read a whole lot of entries but, sadly, no clear invitation to submit anything via the web : (. It reminded me of some of the old stories about design, for example, how even after electricity was invented, lamps were still shaped like gas lamps for decades even though they didn't need to be – because people couldn't envisage a lamp any other way!

There are many of these stories, if you want to know more, why not email me and we can discuss it?

Anyway, the same principles apply to websites – still mostly dishing up their offerings in the same old way instead of recognising that everything has changed. We have been reading for half a decade about the participatory or "customer-made" trend; Trendwatching.com vaunted it already in 2006, but the trouble with trends is that just knowing about them won't help your brand at all – identifying where and how in your business to apply them, will.

For example, a whole host of opportunities exists for the Cape Times to apply some hot and cooling trends to its brand offering via its web interface:

1. Freelove
   
   Leaping at the chance to renew my subscription while online, I was disappointed by the choice on offer: subscribe to OPTION ONE – the printed edition or OPTION TWO – the digital edition – either/or?!? Surely there must be some mistake – customers today don't want EITHER or OR, they want it all! They want to feel they got a good deal, like being rewarded for subscribing to the print edition by having the pdf edition thrown in at a special rate – on the glossy pokeable LCD display of their choice.
2. Transparency tyranny
   
   A trend from 2007 referring to the new transparent or fully informed marketplace. Adopting some of the above strategies would offer the brand the additional opportunity for transparency – COMMUNICATE WITH US – TO TELL US ABOUT IT – so no further chances for our fave brands to engage with us are lost.
3. Customer-made
   
   The opportunity to implement this trend perhaps exists, now that one's customer base is so enabled with every digital recording device known to man, to expand on the popular Cape Times letters page, as a critical point of engagement.

   How to do this? A simple, bold buttony thing up front inviting us to contribute our own letters and images. It's nothing major, just the old fashioned letters page – on steroids. Instead of feeding readers from the paper to the web, why not feed them from the web to the paper – offering the best of the online letters in a fat new printed letter section?

   While writing letters to the paper might previously be considered the domain of retired folk, the web is the very opposite, opening up the chance for whole new dialogues. Which kind of shows how using trends tactically need not necessarily mean reinventing the wheel, but uncovering what you have of value and repackaging it in new and relevant ways.

   You can still have the clever award winning brand building ads – but they need to dovetail with the strategic and operational stuff that the consumer interacts on their ground with everyday. It's the holistic, big picture thing.

4. Foreverism
   
   As one of South Africa's oldest and most beloved brands, the Cape Times is of as great a value to us, perhaps to the world, as the NY Times – we love it, we value it, we don't necessarily want to change much about it, but, as the co-stakeholders that we are, we might be invited to participate – there's that word again – in new ways – to ensure its presence for the future. Which of course in this instance goes perfectly with the above "Consumermade" principles.

What is a rather fab stroke of genius is the launch of the Zakumi cartoon exclusively on the web at IOL, by the Madam & Eve outfit – Stephen Francis and Rico [Schacherl]. The Adventures of Zakumi is just the kind of saleable, added value, engagement thing we need.

Have I been asleep or am I the only one who didn't know that Zak was designed by none other than Andries Odendaal? [You know Wireframe Andries; it's ok, Andries, we like him more now that we know it was you] But that the mascot's debut costume itself was produced by Cora Simpson of Cora's Costumes in Boksburg – go her!

Believe it or not, I gleaned these facts via the Jamaica Gleaner via Google. [Terry, Bizcommunity did report these facts too in 2010 FIFA World Cup Mascot unveiled ;) – assistant editor]

As if this is not bizarre enough, Zak even has his own, somewhat underrepresented, Facebook page. Awww.

So now that Zak's time has come, might he be on the verge of attaining icon status in the hands of Rico? Might he be getting a mate or kittens? Go leopard hunting at http://gallery.iol.za.org/v/cartoons/Zakumi/.