Global media planning agency launches in SA

Comments Martyn Rattle, president of Vizeum Global Management, “Since our launch in 2003, the Vizeum network has rapidly expanded across Europe, Asia and the Americas; Africa was naturally identified as an important region for our network's continued growth. With the launch of Vizeum South Africa, we can truly say Vizeum is a global network offering clients, existing and potential, our challenging approach to media.”

Vizeum currently has 49 offices in 41 countries globally and bills US$3 billion and employs 935 people.

Robert E Lerwill, CEO of Aegis Group, adds, “This launch also underscores Aegis's commitment to our clients in SA; a country that ranks high on our investment agenda. South Africa is a dynamic economy undergoing rapid changes – with both mobile and Internet growing fast, and transforming the communications landscape. This is an exciting time to be launching here, and we have high expectations of Vizeum's future success in SA.”

Set new standards

Procter says that they decided to leave the corporate ad world to launch Vizeum based on the belief that the organisation would set new standards in the industry. “Its point of difference lies in an underlying philosophy called ‘Motivation to Media'.”

Schreuder continues, “It's a media company that does not start with media. It aims to put brands and consumers first, to understand their motivations, and then only to apply media strategy. Vizeum understands motivation, the force that drives the lives people lead and the brands they buy; we marry this to our media knowledge to create innovative ideas across all channels and build measurably stronger connections.”

“We are very excited about the union of our philosophies to media strategy and that of Vizeum. From the start we were inspired by their fresh approach, which mirrored our thinking – something we had already started to adopt as media specialists. It is clearly our differentiator, backed by the media negotiation muscle of Aegis Media SA,” says Procter.

“We see ourselves as a new generation of strategic media thinkers; we are passionate about this business and not afraid to look at new ways of approaching a strategy, embracing the ever changing landscape of media, new media and find new connection points to touch our consumers.”

Logical approach

According to Schreuder, Vizeum's approach is a logical one of left/right brain thinking adopting the marketing principal of outside-in (how to break-through) vs inside-out thinking (how can we be welcomed in).

“It follows a three-step process, with the help of 18 user-friendly proprietary tools. Importantly, it does not discard sound media planning principals – these will always be necessary – it's Vizeum's aim to just do these better than anybody else as well as offer our USP of ‘Motivation to Media',” she says.

In addition to Schreuder and Procter, Kelvin Storie has been appointed as senior media strategist.