Gloria Ruhrmund commented on 2010 mobile advertising boom in SA, Africa?

There is no question about the demand for mobile advertising, the problem is South African inventory. SA has a huge appetite for mobile advertising, we are just not able to fill the demand as there is still very little local inventory, which means that international mobile sites are the ones making all the money.

Linden Birns commented on Toyota will survive in spite of PR foul-up

Chris, great analysis.

How much do you want to bet that Toyota's Public Affairs/Communications team were held hostage by the company's lawyers?

I am continually amazed by CEOs and legal advisors who continue to confuse acknowledging a problem and expressing regret with admitting liability.

Basic rules of crisis communications:
1. Acknowledge the problem
2. Say sorry
3. Tell people how you are addressing/fixing the problem.

Basic rules for lawyers:
1. Say nothing
2. Admit nothing
3. Do nothing

Practicing and planning crisis communications requires striking a balance between these BEFORE the crisis, so that the reputation managers can get out quickly and do their work.

Linden Birns
Associate Director, Crisis Communications - Africa
Kenyon International
Worldwide Disaster Management
www.kenyoninternational.com

Kate Elphick commented on Four digital milestones for your business in 2010

Great article Andy, there are two trends I'd like to see that I fear we're going to wait a while for because many businesses still regard web marketing as an inexpensive experimental channel.

Integration into the real world

The more virtual we are, the more real we need to be. Companies need to start integrating their business processes throughout the organisation into their digital applications. No matter how easy it is to dialogue with your community, delivery is the "last mile" of digital.

Even if you can order something on line, or communicate with an organisation on line to get a problem sorted out, the organisation has to be geared up to actually deliver the right good quickly or actually sort the problem out.

Often, the digital initiatives reach only as far as the marketing department and not deep enough into the operational machinery of the organisation to make things happen. In this example, delivery and problem solving processes need to be mapped and built into the solution. All departments throughout the organisations need to participate in and budget for the digital strategy implementation.

Findabilty

There are many organisations who are preaching Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) so that when consumers are looking for your offering, the search engines deliver your website at the top of the search results.

SEO is only part of Findability. What happens when your consumer doesn't know that your offering exists, or doesn't realise that he needs it? This is where the hard work begins, managing your Digital Footprint in such a way that it is dynamic and educational and presents itself to the right audience at the right time, even if it is off website. I know that FNB is experimenting with this, but I am afraid, you are in the minority. In many organisations, marketers are trying to work out how to sell this requirement to EXCO.

Large investments into Digital Community Management, Avatar Maintenance, Blogging, on line campaigns, brand and customer advocate profiling and digital branding are required to ensure that you have created sufficient awareness and depth of relationships with your target markets. Companies have recognised the value of on line advertising, but few of them understand that there is much more to the modern web.

These investments are resource intensive and many organisations leave this essential component of findability to junior resources or omit it all together.

In the future, we are going to see a trend towards making digital actually work for customers as well as a focus on the bottom line returns of digital footprints.

Simone Puterman commented on M&C Saatchi Abel opens for business

Keep it clean. Personal attacks are not permitted.

Michael Goldman commented on Green sponsor for 2010

FIFA’s announcement this morning of an additional World Cup Sponsor should be lauded from both an immediate and longer-term commercial and sporting perspective. For 2010, FIFA should gain somewhere in the region of $65m (R 488m) from Yingli Solar as they join Budweiser, Castrol, Continental, McDonalds, MTN, and Satyam as official FIFA World CupTM Sponsors. This amount, however, is probably less than 2% of FIFA’s revenues for the period around 2010 (estimated to be close to $3.5b), and thus the possible additional TV rights and income from CCTV and others in China may be more lucrative to the Federation than the immediate change to their bank balance.

Increased broadcast rights have partly been responsible for FIFA’s significantly enhanced revenues for the period around the 2010 World Cup, as opposed to that around the 2006 World Cup in Germany. FIFA is reported to have received around $2.8b from the 2006 tournament, of which less than $1b came from the specific tournament’s sponsors. For 2010, these two levels of sponsors (tier two and three) are contributing close on $600m. The main European broadcast rights for 2010, for example, are roughly double (at $1.2b) those for 2006, with the tournament not even being hosted in Europe – something FIFA president Sepp Blatter described as hugely significant. In India, the top bidder (Ten Sports) offered $30m for the rights to 2010 on the sub-continent – more than three times the fee paid for the 2006 tournament ($9m) and ten times that for 2002 ($3m) - and that’s without India even playing in South Africa.

The longer-term commercial and sporting priority for any international federation is to look East – at India and China. The International Cricket Council has already done this and even moved their head office. They have a stated intention to use the 20-over format of cricket to penetrate the US and China. For FIFA, the development of soccer and the commercial appetite for soccer in India and China is critical as they look beyond 2010. There is also the opportunity to build on China’s successful hosting of the Olympics to bid for the World Cup for 2026, when according to the Chinese Football Association, “the conditions are mature.” Although China's national men's team is ranked in the high 90's in the world (we are in the low 70's), the over 1b Chinese love soccer - average game attendance at their PSL equivalent last season was over 16000. FIFA's "landmark" 5-year broadcast deal with CCTV last year also brought FIFA's soccer events to over 1b people a day.

FIFA made alot in their press release about their green credentials and how this sponsorship was part of their "green goal". It makes sense that the Federation moves at pace to think about the carbon footprint of the game, but I have a stronger sense that the deal is more about access to China than reducing a few tons of carbon (as important an objective as that is). On their side, Yingli has spoken about their "strategic marketing initiatives worldwide", suggesting that they will hope to use the global media coverage and official hospitality opportunities to drive their business deals in the US, Europe, and Asia.

So, congratulations all round to FIFA for inviting Yingli Solar and China to invest in world football. It is especially encouraging that the partners have come together for the first African World Cup, demonstrating China’s increasingly important role in Africa and reconfirming FIFA’s belief that an African World Cup will be extremely beneficial to the commercial and soccer development priorities of the Federation. I am also delighted that my colleague, Dr. Martyn Davies, from the GIBS China Africa Network, played a role in facilitating this important deal.