#BrandManagerMonth: My brand is Cape Town

Maxine Case

What does brand management mean to you?

Maxine Case: Effective brand management is about making sure that your audiences truly understands your brand – its essence, its point of view. It’s about nurturing and developing your brand and ensuring that it surprises and delights its audiences in each interaction or touch point, so that you build trust and loyalty. The brand has to remain relevant to the consumer and the changing environment. If you do all of these well, your consumers will continue to choose your brand over the competition.

Tell us about a day in your work life.

Case: One of the things I really enjoy about my role is that it is so varied. While we invest a lot of time and energy in planning, we also have to be flexible in our approach, to pick up on new leads for stories or to react to urgent issues or requests that arise during the day. A large part of my job is to support my CEO, Bulelwa Makalima-Ngewana.

My day often starts with a meeting on the go – my team and I walk to our favourite coffee place and talk about our priorities and progress. Strategic concerns with a broader timeframe occupy a large part of my day, but my best-laid plans may be diverted by a story lead that suddenly arises or a brewing media issue that requires my attention. In addition, I also have to edit and sign off on all website content and outward facing communication.

What’s on your wishlist for your brand objectives for 2016?

Case: For the coming year, much of our brand and communications objectives will be geared to support our Placemaking for Equity campaign, which entails management of underutilised space in communities throughout Cape Town to repurpose these into safer, more attractive public spaces that are vibrant and active.

We’ve already begun communicating this, but my wish is that all stakeholders understand and support what we’re trying to achieve: stimulated economic development and job creation through the provision of mixed-use spaces that provide opportunities for economic activities, recreation and play and serve as meeting places in an attempt to bridge the real divides that persist in our society.

CT at sunset_Lisa-Burnell

Is your brand using content as part of your marketing strategy?

Case: Content forms a large part of our brand strategy. We have a hungry website and we are often asked by stakeholders in Cape Town’s creative industries to amplify their events. I draw up a monthly content schedule and try to cajole many of my colleagues into writing for our site – not only the communications team. We have high social media metrics and this is largely due to sharing our own content via our social media platforms. With a small team and a non-profit’s budget, the challenge is to produce sufficient high-quality content that will engage our readers.

What do you see currently as the main challenges and/or opportunities for your brand sector?

Case: Funding remains the greatest challenge for the non-profit sector. This is true whether yours is a large organisation in Geneva or a small operation in Addis Ababa. Non-profits are forced to diversify their funding models and social enterprise is a buzzword many of us are embracing. What excites me personally, is the idea suggested by our CEO, Makalima-Ngewana, that our communications team begins to see itself as a start-up. This same thinking can apply to any non-profit, at whatever stage of its lifecycle.

What do you love most about your brand?

Case: My brand is Cape Town. What’s not to love about this vibrant, exciting city, so steeped in history and culture? But more than the physical beauty, it’s the people who make the city so unique. The Mother City is my hometown and having lived in world capitals, New York and Hong Kong, one I remain very proud to call home.

What do you love most about the South African consumer?

Case: South African consumers are incredibly brand loyal. Many of us still buy the brands our mothers did, provided these brands continue to perform as expected. This doesn’t mean that the South African consumer is not adventurous though – he or she is still very willing to try new innovations and experiences, but my point is that once we are hooked, we tend to stick with the brands we trust and love.

What are your own personal favourite brands?

Case: I love the trailblazer brands – the ones that are brave enough to do things that no one else had done before. For example, I love The Body Shop. Anita Roddick started it in her Brighton kitchen, mixing potions and lotions in the seventies. Everyone talks about sustainability and clean, ethical supply chains now. But back then, it was the first personal care brand to engage the consumer in conversations about ethical supply and helping to empower women and marginalised communities in the developing world by sourcing ingredients from them.

What brand marketing campaign have you noticed and been impressed by recently or ever?

Case: I think that the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty was a game changer and it resonated with me as a woman. The power of the campaign is that it really gets women to ask themselves difficult questions about how they perceive themselves and to question their notions of what beauty means. P&G’s Always has followed this line of thinking more recently with its “Like a Girl” campaign, highlighting how girls are socialised over time into conforming to outdated stereotypes.

What inspires you, personally?

Case: I am inspired by the energy, attitude and conviction of the young people I mentor in my professional or personal capacity. I’m a published author, so often young people looking to break into the industry approach me for help. What I’ve seen is that South Africa really has so much talent and many stories to share.