Marketing & Media trends
Industry trends
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Marketing & Media trends
Tech democratisation will set the tone for 2021
Andrew Smit and Johan Walters
Agriculture trends
Automotive trends
Construction & Engineering trends
CSI & Sustainability trends
5 sustainability trends that will shape business in 2021
Christelle Marais4 trends set to continue or be re-interpreted in the NGO sector
Innocent MasayiraStrengthening NPO skills and processes
Nazeema Mohamed, Feryal Domingo and Soraya JoonasSustainability is key for social investment in 2021
Keri-Leigh Paschal
Education trends
4 trends in employee skills development and training you need to know for 2021
Siphelele Kubheka and Desikan Naidoo
Energy & Mining trends
Digital solutions need small steps to succeed
Xanthe AdamsMining looks ahead to more Covid risk
Ralf HenneckeMining's year ahead will demand deep innovation
Frederick Cawood
Entrepreneurship trends
Finance trends
The 4 themes for the new year
Andrew Duvenage,3 wealth management trends to watch in 2021
Maarten Ackerman4 strategies to rethink investing in SMEs
Kuhle MnisiMicroinsurance ready to reach new heights
Marius BothaFinding alpha in the age of Covid-19
Nema Ramkhelawan-BhanaPurpose or profit. It's not a choice
Mike MiddletonShifting towards a digital - but still human - approach
Henry van Deventer
Healthcare trends
Healthcare innovation in 2021 and beyond
Reynhardt UysAre day hospitals the new trend?
Lee Callakoppen3 emerging medical scheme membership patterns
Nerine BrinkHealthcare innovations to look out for
Moshe Lichtenstein
HR & Management trends
ICT trends
Legal trends
3 wide-ranging issues demanding legal attention this year
Jonathan Veeran, Nozipho Mngomezulu and Burton Phillips
Lifestyle trends
Wine in the wake of corona
Kristen Duff and Gosia Young7 prospects and necessary shifts for the arts
Rucera Seethal
Logistics & Transport trends
Property trends
Auction industry survival depends on going virtual
Joff van ReenenCovid-19 drives new trends in local property market
Marcél du Toit
Retail trends
A challenging year anticipated for SA retailers
Tasmika RamlakanA bold year for beverages
Alex GlendayThe rise of D2C
Michael SmollanAcceleration of digital payments
Jonathan SmitSafety vs sustainability - the packaging industry's key conundrum
Nthabiseng MotsoenengThe evolving e-tail landscape
Vilo TrskaThe path forward for retail in 2021
Matthew Leighton
Covid-19
Marketing & Media jobs
- Technical/Broadcasting Vacancies Johannesburg
- PR Senior Account Executive/ Junior Account Manager Cape Town
- Head of Content Johannesburg
- Creative Administrative Assistant Pretoria
- Brand Manager Cape Town
- Mid-Weight Animator Johannesburg
- Mid-Weight Animator Johannesburg
- Account Manager - Performance Marketing Cape Town
- Group Account Director - Media Cape Town
- Senior Search Specialist - Performance Cape Town
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#BizTrends2021: The revolution will be digitised and automated
Due to the cumulative economic effects of the last few years, our clients' businesses are facing significant economic pressure, which, as we all know, has been drastically accelerated and compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Joey Khuvutlu |
And while all global economies have been affected, the pressure in South Africa differs from most of the rest of the world. Here, our recovery is based on a set of variables: economic, political and social that do not impact very many other countries in the same way.
This pressure has meant that companies have turned to all of their departments to prove their ROI to their businesses.
And, in cases where truly efficient ROI cannot be proven, then cost-cutting has become the order of the day. For example, recent pitches for business in the telecommunications and banking spaces requested the pitching agencies to deliver the same amount of work as the incumbent, but for (far) less money.
Unfortunately, the procurement department has, for some time now, played an influential role in selection of all services within all types of businesses. It is my fear that the economic pressure caused by Covid-19 will only see the power and influence of the procurement department grow, resulting in cost becoming the most important deciding factor.
#ACACaresCovid19: The creative value chain, procurement and marketing working towards common goals
Gareth Leck, group chief executive officer and co-founding partner of Joe Public United, Mpume Ngobese, managing director at Joe Public Connect and Khensani Nobanda, group executive: marketing and corporate affairs at Nedbank discuss the creative value chain, procurement and marketing working towards common goals...
In the marketing sphere, this will further devalue and commoditise creative services, resulting in the continued ‘juniorisation’ of the creative industry as agencies battle to produce more work for less, while trying to remain profitable growing concerns that deliver reasonable shareholder value.
Large agencies have also seen a shift in the competitor space. Smaller and more agile agencies are winning accounts that were ‘traditionally’ only accessible to larger established agencies. This is because of the smaller agency responsiveness to the client need, both in terms of timing and an ability to adapt to the way they resource jobs without adding a massive cost burden.
ROI and automation can no longer be buzzwords.The other reality though is that, for the most part, we agencies have been slow to move in terms of efficiency and optimisation.
We have not optimised ourselves against the tools that help optimise processes, or that offer the automation of basic redundant tasks, both in admin and creative. We also haven't looked at our processes and overheads with an eye to deploying technology to making those more efficient.
Instead, we've stuck to the channels where we were most comfortable and traditionally drove the most profit. Those channels now are the ones under the most pressure from both cost-cutting, and the digital maturation of the South African consumer (given a serious push by Covid-19).
I am not predicting a trend. Rather I hope that my thoughts contribute towards fuelling a trend, and that is, for agencies to truly embrace digital transformation for internal operations.We have talked about digital transformation for our clients for some years now. We have not done this for our own businesses and our own operations. If the advertising industry is to prosper, we need to transform how we work and with that will come new business models.
Clients will continue to look for cost efficiencies with increased outputs, but as an industry we cannot allow the standard of our creative outputs to drop. If anything, creativity is more in need now than ever; it’s a new world we’re living in.
So, it will be key for us to look at the outputs that we can automate. Automating those low-value, repetitive tasks means that budgets can be invested back into the high-value strategic and creative specialists and tasks that clients look to agencies for.
And, while creativity is the ultimate product that we sell to grow our clients’ brands, we need to extract data and deploy technology that unequivocally demonstrates the ROI of the work we produce. It is only when we empower marketers with data-backed evidence, that we will assist them to not only defend marketing budgets, but to grow them.
We need to go beyond the ‘award-entry’, post-campaign, reverse-engineered results as the basis of our value proposition and bring more predictable science and richer evidence of the value of our work, and the tools to do this exist.
That said, we can only do this in partnership with our clients, because much of the critical data to deliver on this sits with them and, to date, clients have not shown a willingness to share richer data with their agencies, the kind of data that they openly share with consultancies.
The advertising industry is not going anywhere, but if we are to prosper instead of merely surviving, we need to transform the way we work – and quickly!
Don't miss BizTrends2021 - 8 keynote speakers forecast trends shaping business in our region! Register now!