FCB South Africa has announced a powerful new brand marketing resource with best-of-breed creative, strategic and implementation capabilities.
The resource, named FCB !mpact 361°, has been created out of FCB South Africa's specialist sponsorship and promotions units and, according to Group Managing Director - Specialist Communication Companies Maserame Tshwaedi, is poised to further 'lift the bar' on the group's integrated marketing solution offering.
She said FCB !mpact 361°'s promise to clients was to conceptualise and execute comprehensive brand experiences using three key marketing channels – promotional campaigns, sponsorship/partnership marketing and event management.
As such, it would complement the solutions offered by FCB South Africa's other traditional full-service advertising agencies as well as those provided by its specialist communications companies working in areas such as web strategy and design, CRM, one-to-one marketing, financial advertising and investor relations and design.
Tshwaedi said FCB !mpact 361° was the culmination of a decade of ground-breaking promotional campaign, multi-media and eventing work completed by the FCB Impact team, which was formed 10 years. Today the team is one of the country's most highly regarded with tremendous creative and technical expertise across all promotional mediums and marketing channels.
"The philosophy behind 361° is that it will provide a complete 360° solution in terms of the media used – multi channel promotional solutions, sponsorship, experiential marketing, sampling, print and so one – to deliver the marketing objective," she said.
"However, the business philosophy is to stretch that all important one degree further to offer superior strategy ... in terms of ideas, higher quality ... in terms of work, enhanced delivery ... on brief, in budget, in time; and improved service ... a professional team working closely with the traditional agency's key account management teams to deliver truly integrated and media neutral marketing solutions to clients' problems.
"The FCB Worldwide challenge to all its agencies is to continually strive to 'lift the bar' creatively and strategically. When the standard is already very high, meeting the FCB challenge is sometimes difficult. However, I believe FCB !mpact 361° will excel and demonstrate that even the best can do better," Tshwaedi said.
FCB Impact, formed a decade ago when Mandy Croucamp and Mandy Morey joined FCB South Africa, is probably best known for the incredible marketing support it gave SAFA for its World Cup Soccer Bid. More recently, it added a South African broadcast package first to its credit when it launched real-time, virtual 3D-animation for television on the soccer enthusiasts' programme, Laduma, for Vodacom, the official sponsor of numerous soccer properties.
FCB Sponsorship's Annie Williamson is also well respected in the sponsorship industry both as a creative thinker, a sponsorship implementer and an awards judge.
As managing partners, Croucamp and Williamson will share responsibility for taking FCB !mpact 361° into the future. On a day-to-day operational basis, Croucamp will assume the role of executive creative director and Williamson that of managing director. Morey continues as operations manager. Their three main focus areas will be promotional campaigns, sponsorships/partnership marketing, and event management.
"Mandy Croucamp and Mandy Morey have always provided their clients with high quality creative and technical marketing solutions," said Tshwaedi. "When Annie joined FCB almost a year ago to head the sponsorship company, it quickly became apparent that combining her capabilities with those of FCB Impact would allow the group to offer an enhanced and more powerful promotional and sponsorship brand marketing solutions. I look forward to seeing the results of the synergy their closer working relationship brings."
