Has the changed SA caught marketers with their pants down?

Over recent years, many marketers have said they found the growth in the emerging black middle class dramatic and unexpected. The rapidity of change caught several automotive manufacturers with stock shortages and saw demand in most other sectors increase at a pace beyond capacities.

We are hearing about dramatic market share changes of well-established brands - changes equally as dramatic as the drop in Coca-Cola sales volumes when it copied the Pepsi formulation and impacting as negatively as when Castle changed its packaging years ago. Such dramatic market share changes are rare in marketing literature, as they reflect huge shifts in market profiles and sentiment.

Brand new South Africa

Today, South Africa is brand new - as a country, as a people, as a lifestyle! In 1994 we all, everyone of us, emigrated to another country. Our new country has a population that is positive - surveys show that over 80% of our population, including whites, are confident about our nation's future. There is little evidence of racial tension, and the cafés and shopping malls, once the enclave of the white upper class, are filled with a wonderful mix of people, having fun and building a new future. Apparently Aston Martin sold 70 vehicles before it even opened its new showroom in Sandton!

The latest All Media and Products Survey, conducted in the same manner today as in the seventies, shows a huge change in the affluence of the population, and the profile of that affluence. South Africa has enjoyed a dramatic increase in millionaires - dollar millionaires! We are respected globally, and Finance Minister Trevor Manuel is ranked amongst the world's top five finance ministers. Maria Ramos is ranked amongst the international 100 most influential businesswomen.

Many other changes are evident - we display our new wealth, we are proud of who and what we are, and are brash about the brands we wear. There is little room for being apologetic when you are successful. These are all amazing signs that few could predict before 1994.

Are we ready as business and marketers?

That is all well and fine, but are we ready as business and marketers? My feeling is no, we aren't ready - we haven't grasped the magnitude of the changes, we adapt brands incrementally rather than dramatically, we do much of what we have done before, and we apply the old rules, believing that consumers do not like rapid change.

Do we actually know how the market has changed demographically? Psychographically? How consumers view brands in their lifestyles, in their free time and travel patterns, and in their attitudes?

We do not know - we make decisions based upon what we think, always believed, unaware that the basic premise on which we base our decisions has shifted. Surveys showing that executives make business decisions based on "gut-feel" are legion. Gut-feel is a function of frame-of-reference. Our market has changed so fast that our frames-of-reference are still perched on 'Rubicon's Finger'; we have to abandon gut-feel, be realistic, accept new context based on fact not sentiment. There are no indications that a new paradigm exists in how marketers approach markets, advertise, use media, or any other marketing disciplines.

It is inevitable that we will change our definition of marketing - emerging global brands, Google and Amazon, and locals such as Kulula, have rapidly and permanently redefined industries and markets. South Africa should be a frontrunner in this arena - do we know what this means and how fast it changes?

Do we know the "new rules", or have we been caught with our pants down?

Defining the future

Maybe the definition of marketing has to change from finding a consumer need and filling it, to defining the future and getting consumers to follow it. We must know how to define the future, without resorting to guesswork or basing decisions on past and passé methodologies!

"New brands" have changed the rules - they are often sexy, brash, in-your-face, challenge the status quo, and they change fast. They have large attitude. Just look at brands like Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, Google and Apple iPod. These brands are setting the new rules, ones we have to apply here at home.

Every journey begins with a single step and as marketers our first is to accept that maybe, just maybe, we do not really know and understand what is happening. Accept we are no longer able to predict buying pattern changes with the certainty of the past. Accept we do not know how to adapt our brands or even whether a given brand can be adapted to suit the new market. Accept that even the best-informed guesses are no longer good enough. Accept that estimates from people within these changing markets are guesstimates at best.

Lead or follow?

We must decide whether we want to lead this change or follow it. Such decisions are crucial to the life of a brand as an error, or procrastination, may prove suicidal for many of our most beloved brands. Rather let us decide we want to fundamentally understand our markets, and stake our claims by defining the future. Let us set new thinking trends, new paradigms and develop "gut-feel" based upon the reality of today, not yesterday.

If we do this well, I predict that South African marketing will again be accepted and praised as visionary, seen as people able to anticipate and adapt to changes quickly and accurately, no matter how complex. We shall be seen as trendsetters, not "panel-beaters" adapting old brands without pre-thought and innovation, and offering the burgeoning new market exciting products and services. Let us be masters in the new brand world. Our market is probably the most challenging and opportune throughout the world today, if we get it right!