All the big opportunities for 2011

First of all, there will be a great opportunity for anyone with absolutely no knowledge of the media industry to make complete idiots of themselves by seeking an appointment to the board of the SABC.

People who do know something about the media industry have for quite some time now been politely telling those who wish to nominate them for the SABC board to piss off. The SABC does not apparently require any form of expertise other than a penchant for good coffee and bran muffins and the ability to agree completely with the chairman.

Begging to differ

The empty spaces that are being filled on the SABC board in January 2011 are those vacated by people who thought they could make a difference but found out that their difference, the chairman's difference, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee's difference and the ANC's difference were all completely different.

So, the only way they had to make a difference was to quit in deference to their differences.

From an advertising point of view, there will be enormous opportunities for advertising agencies to lose buckets of money by being conned into expensive pitches.

In spite of its representative body, the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA), telling them not to pay fortunes on creative pitches, South African agencies are endowed with such eternal optimism that they believe quite firmly that spending gazillions of rands will win them the account when, in fact, it will probably be decided on the basis of which agencies clients feel they can screw into giving them the most for least.

It's who you know

Meanwhile, the real money in the ad agency business comes when the chairman or CEO of the client company appoints his or her mate, the chairperson or CEO of the agency.

That's the real way to make money in the ad business - not by wasting millions on futile pitches that you might well win but by the time you look like breaking even on your pitch investment, the client decides to put the account out for pitch again.

"It's a mug's game" was a phrase invented by the advertising industry in the early 13th century.

The biggest opportunities, however, will be with those ad agencies which have clients who still believe that changing their corporate identity every two years is best business practice. And that it is absolutely vital to have a completely new advertising campaign at least once a year and that such ad campaigns need to have a series of very long and very expensive television commercials.

In 2011, the average per minute cost of producing television commercials in South Africa will remain pretty much the same as the cost of producing Avatar. Only the on-set catering will be a lot better.

Big deals

One again, advertising agencies will sell gullible clients on "big idea" marketing which will probably increase the percentage of advertising that not only doesn't work but is inclined to bugger up the brand from 20% to 25%. Which will mean about R5 billion down the tubes.

Really stupid sponsorships will waste billions more but heck, if the CEO gets to take a few of his mates to the big game and share Johnny Walker Blue and enough canapés to fund a rural black school for a century or two, what's a couple of hundred million grand between friends?

Marketing opportunities for the cellphone networks will continue to roll in right, left and centre during 2011 as South Africans continue to bitch about call costs and expensive broadband access but nonetheless keep on buying the latest phones, upgrading contracts and chewing up gigabytes of data as though there was no tomorrow.

The same with the auto industry. Everyone will scream blue murder about our cars being a million times more expensive than anywhere else in the galaxy but, on the other hand, they'll just keep buying them anyway. South Africans are unique in the world for using their mouths to complain and their wallets to perpetuate profiteering.

Free-dom of the press

There will still be enormous self-destruction opportunities in 2011 for South Africa's newspapers as they continue to give their content away for free. They will keep wondering why no-one seems to be buying newspapers anymore. There is very little chance that local newspapers will actually get the idea of what online publishing is all about.

They will continue not to understand that what they are doing is similar to a cinema telling moviegoers not to bother to come and pay to sit in their theatres but to just log on to their websites and download movies for free.

There is an outside chance that, during 2011, some newspapers might actually discover that the word "freedom" is actually one word and not two.

I could go on forever about the incredible opportunities for people in the media and marketing industries to make complete asses of themselves in 2011 - but I won't because this is supposed to be a season of goodwill, good cheer and good wishes.

And of course, because, I am not a cynical person.