Impacting the economy one micro job at a time

Andre Hugo

M4JAM has been going for a while now. What are the major benefits that companies and brands say they have gotten out of using M4JAM?

Andre Hugo: The biggest benefits that companies are experiencing is the speed, quality and cost savings as a result of using the platform and our community of jobbers to gather insights on their behalf. By way of example, we have been able to validate merchandising displays nationally in a couple of days vs. a number of weeks if you use traditional methods. From a research perspective brands have received feedback from thousands of respondents in a couple of hours. Coupled with our ability to target specific people in specific locations makes it truly unique for any brand wanting to engage with an end consumer.

What does South-Africa's data economy look like? How big is it and how far do we still need to go before we can say that we truly have a data-driven economy?

Hugo: How big and what does it look like, I cannot answer this. Companies have been gathering data for years, the challenge is that many of them are not turning it into actionable insights largely because the data they have sits in silos within an organisation or is incomplete. Therefore, we are still at the beginning of the journey in terms of moving towards a data-driven economy. Companies that embrace data from a structured and unstructured perspective will outperform their competitors. More often than not we have seen that if there is no data to support a strategy, the opinion of the most senior person in the room wins the day.

Are there any limitations to what social media, online surveys, etc. can be used for?

Hugo: We don't believe that there are limitations to research and gathering high-quality data through platforms like M4JAM, provided that the audience of interest is online and representative.

For you, what has been the biggest challenge so far?

Hugo: People fear change, M4JAM and Pondering Panda are disrupting the way traditional research, brand engagement, marketing, merchandising and advertising is deployed. We have seen a number of brands embrace the platform ranging from Le Creuset, Uber, TomTom, Tradereach, Showmax and Red Bull. We have seen significant interest from other brands that state they want to try something new but are slow to commit. We, therefore, believe that we have made it easy for them with our zero-risk model. If you don't get the quality of results you are looking for you don't pay.

And the biggest perk?

Hugo: For M4JAM the biggest perk beyond adding value to clients has to be the fact that every campaign we provision results in the creation of multiple micro jobs on the platform. Job creation in South Africa is key. If we can positively impact the economy one micro job at a time we have achieved our goal.

What do you see happening this year with regards to M4JAM? What can we expect and how big of a role is it going to play in how companies or brands go about developing products and services?

Hugo: We are hoping to double the business again this year, creating more micro jobs for all South Africans and more data insights for brands.

Any last words or words of advice for companies and brands who have not tapped into this kind of research and consumer insights?

Hugo: My simple request is to test us, run a pilot. It's risk-free and, therefore, you have nothing to lose. We have made it really simple. You can load your own campaigns and engage with our community of over 120,000 active jobbers in three easy steps via our website. Simply go to M4JAM and click on 'Get Insights'.

Andre Hugo has an accounting degree with over 22 years of business startup experience, as well as extensive digital marketing, legal, commercial, leadership and finance experience - both locally and in Australia, Asia and Europe.