Category: Articles

Do smart speakers and personal assistants have something good to say about your brand?

If Apple’s voice-controlled personal assistant, Siri, were a real person she probably wouldn’t have many friends: she struggles to pronounce names, interjects spontaneously, repeats herself and when you ask her a question, nine out of 10 times she flatly tells you to just look it up online yourself.

At the moment it would appear that Siri hasn’t gotten it right. But what if it’s you who has it all wrong?

About 2000 years ago the Greek philosopher Epictetus was born. He didn’t have much, his parents weren’t known and at a young age he was taken into slavery. But though he was un-influential in his youth, he made up for it in his old age. He became a large philosophical influence on Marcus Aurelius, traditionally known as the last of the five good Roman emperors. He was depicted in the blockbuster Russell Crowe movie Gladiator.

Epictetus famously said: “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen more than we can speak”. Though not referencing eyesight, the quote seems to point to a modern-day trend: the resurgence of listening.

Turning up the volume

If you look at the history of media and how it appeals to the senses, one could argue that we are more visual than anything else. Brands began advertising with grainy black-and-white print adverts, then with the advancement of technology moved into colour print and finally to video, the most prolific and popular medium today.

However, we are also auditory beings. Video without sound is oddly out of place and today many people have earphones constantly dangling from their ears or music thumping from their stereos. According to Nielson Music, Americans spend 32 hours a week listening to music, more than ever before. This resurgence of listening has laid bare a gap in the market. In filling this, podcasts are becoming an increasingly popular channel for brands to express themselves, books are being read to us rather than by us and smart speakers are telling us things that we want to know instead of showing them to us. Times are changing.

Siri-ous business

According to a report by Juniper Research, smart speakers will be installed in 55% of U.S. households by the year 2022. By that time, over 70-million households will have at least one smart speaker in their home, and the total number of installed devices will top 175-million. With the growth of this channel and its place in the personal spaces of our clients, brands should be using the technology as a way to connect.

The most widely known example of a brand that has engaged with smart speakers as a channel was Burger King. In its Cannes Lions award-winning advert, the brand “hacked” the Google Home smart speaker by using the voice prompt command: “OK Google, what is the Whopper Burger?”. The smart device reacted to this by reciting the history of the Whopper from its Wikipedia page. It was a breakthrough.

How do you sound online?

With Burger King as inspiration, go up to any smart speaker you can find and ask it to tell you about your brand. For example, ask: “Hey Siri, tell me about Capitec” or “Hey Siri, why does FNB exist? or “Hey Siri, what does MTN do?”. If she doesn’t answer your question, reverts to reciting your address, or starts blabbing on about another company with the same name, go back to your web designers and your marketing team and purposefully craft your answers to these questions. They are soon going to be asked.

It’s time to start thinking about the way brands can interact with, and mine, this new technology.

Brands need to take Epictetus’s advice, listen and acknowledge this growing channel of communication, understanding the power that it has to allow consumers to converse with their brand. Further than acknowledgement, there needs to be action.

Siri is only as good as the information you give her. Next time you’re annoyed that she’s got it wrong, make it your business’s business to get it right.

Statistics from globally recognised organisations and research institutions – PwC, Harvard & McKinsey – have found that the market for women is continuing to grow at an exponential rate, while innovating to this segment still isn’t meeting its unique requirements.

In our view, this presents brands with an opportunity to innovate for women and take a firm stance in a market that is open to fresh communication and invigorated campaigns.

Changing narrative

There is power in being the brand that leads the way in building a strategic vision around a changing narrative that remains underwhelmed and underdeveloped.

Some categories remain entrenched in traditional stereotypes, missing the chance to expand market share and drive brand engagement. Tired tropes should be retired in an era where the female voice and economy are increasingly changing conversations and perceptions.

The challenge is that the industry itself requires a shift. Statistically there are only 11% of women in the role of Creative Director in advertising industry. This skews the ways campaigns are created and the messages they convey.

In our whitepaper examining the Female Equation, Ronnie Malden, Creative Director at TLC Marketing said,

“Washing powder ads were, and still are, famous for showing housewives who don’t work and only worry about stains on a Monday morning. In a recent campaign, the entire piece of work looks like it was shot in 1960 – women like that just don’t exist anymore, not modern women. If it was intentionally a parody, then I could accept it, but it’s not.“

The gender marketing dialogue

That said, companies such as Dove, Ellevest and Kellogg’s have been instrumental in changing the gender marketing dialogue.

Ellevest, an online digital investment platform, found that 86% of investment advisors are men with an average age of 50+. This meant that the investment industry tended to default to male salaries, career paths and lifespans.

Ellevest is designed around the female investor and the differences that she will experience in her life. The company innovated around an unmet need and has captured a significant portion of the market’s attention.

Value in inspiring women

There is value in innovating around what influences and inspires women. It underscores how important it is that brands, and the agencies that create work for them, recognise this value and the potential it represents.

A company that has paid attention and reaped the rewards is First for Women. The company recognised that the risk profile for women was different from men and so it built its business around how women perceive risk, not the other way around.

This manifested in their communication most recently in the 2017 ‘Always Read, Just in Case’ campaign.

“We often think about leaving 15 minutes early in case there’s traffic. We may even pack two bags for a trip, just in case it’s rainy and cold, and we research things before we do them. Truth is, we just like to be prepared for any possible situation. It makes us feel secure, and confident that we can do anything because we’ve prepared for it. Like, having someone we can call if our child isn’t feeling well at 3 am in the morning, or if we need a lawyer to look over a new contract. Or want someone to wait with us if our car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. That’s why when you insure with First for Women, we cover all these things and more. So that you’re always ready.”

– First For Women

Building brand communications and campaigns

In our white paper we analyse the market, why there is a need for more businesses to apply this highly tailored approach to their work, and examine the value in innovating for, and communicating to, the woman of today.

We have also developed five clear steps that provide clarity on building brand communications and campaigns that are both conducive to diversity and inclusive of women:

Step 1: Stop reinforcing gender-based social constructs and stereotypes.

Step 2: Be a social challenger.

Step 3: Create new narratives.

Step 4: Innovate for women.

Step 5: Be the voice that starts progressive conversations.

 

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DOWNLOAD | Whitepaper examining the Female Equation |

“The man who dies rich dies disgraced”

These words from Andrew Carnegie’s 1899 essay, The Gospel of Wealth, were especially radical for the time. Industrial America was booming and with it came the precursor to the elusive American Dream — characterised by glamour, status and wealth. Over 100 years later, it seems far more at home in light of the rise of social impact investing.

The premise and the promise

In his work, Carnegie argues that in every successful businessperson lies an obligation to actively use their capital for good, and not just to accumulate it to be passed on once you kick the bucket. Enter social enterprise. Its simple premise of ‘doing good while making money’ used to be the annoying promise that businesses had to make to address every aspect of their triple bottom line. Now social impact has started to move to the core of many business models and has attracted the investment to match.

Asset managers and investment firms such as Bain Capital, Blackrock and Goldman Sachs have all launched impact investment funds. Goldman has US$7bn invested in ‘impact’ businesses. According to the Economist, this is partly due to the transfer of wealth to women and the youth, whose investment goals transcend mere financial results.

The satellite connection

However, too many businesses still view their corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a satellite extension of their core, and merely as a redistribution of income. This is, sadly, the most-common form of how most businesses in modern economies tick the CSR box on their reviews.

Nevertheless, some businesses have engrained ‘good’ as an integral part of their DNA. Lumkani seeks to address the challenge of shack/slum fires in urban informal settlements in South Africa and across the globe. The Hippo Roller, a business created to help provide access to clean water, has carried about 16bn litres of water and has more than 500 000 direct beneficiaries. The Awethu Project invests in South African entrepreneurs who wouldn’t have access to capital and helps them set up their businesses.

Mind the gap

For any third-world country marred with high inequality, social enterprises have a pivotal role in closing the gap between the country’s rich and the poor. If we built SA as Carnegie envisioned, imagine what the country would look like today?

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Originally published on Marklives.com

At the end of last year, the National Treasury briefed parliament on the new Insurance Bill. Essentially, the changes back a new regulatory framework for the provision of accessible and affordable insurance to low-income South Africans.

Given the inequality that still divides the rich from the poor, often physically, the bill is a welcome reform for a traditionally price-discriminating sector. In 2014, auditing firm KPMG estimated that formal insurance penetration in SA was just 14.28%, which highlighted the magnitude of the unprotected. South Africans, especially those who need financial protection, just can’t afford it.

In our view market leaders in this category will need to embrace these new regulations in order for the bill to succeed. Established insurance providers in the country have built up empires, effectively managing risk by being averse to it. To open up their books to “higher risk” individuals, these companies will have to re-evaluate their operating models.

In addition to the change, incumbents will also have to deal with increased competition, as the micro-insurance regulatory framework specifically aims to give smaller players a chance.

As innovative as the insurance industry is, leaders will need to rise to the challenge from a product innovation perspective.  However, the difficulty of making a connection between low-income consumers, who have a completely different set of needs, drivers and nuance, and established marketers in this field may be an impediment.

Take a SEAT

According to a paper by research company Genesis titled “Overview of the Micro-insurance Market in Africa and the Potential for Growth”, one of the core elements that influence the demand for micro-insurance is trust. By ensuring trust, brands, both big and small, can start to unlock value and successfully engage with the low-income market.

To address the micro-insurance market insurance and financial services adequately, companies need to ensure four things that will to build trust in the category and provide low-income South Africans a SEAT at the table:

1. Simplicity: People trust the things they understand. By ensuring simplicity in product portfolio, communication and interface, brands can enhance effectiveness. Capitec Bank has managed to penetrate the low-income market by leveraging this insight. The bank offers a single banking solution called the Global One account.
2. Education: By educating South Africans about the value of insurance and enhancing financial literacy, brands will grow both their business and the category.
3. Accessibility: Brands that ensure accessibility through presence, channel and payment will drive both recall and trust with the increase in frequency of interaction. This can be achieved through the right partnerships. Avbob, an SA insurer, teamed up with PEP, a mass-market SA retailer, by selling its policies in cash at PEP’s stores.
4. Tangibility: Insurance is often viewed as a “black hole” where you pay money every month and get nothing back. This erodes trust and creates frustrations. By making the benefits of insurance tangible, brands can turn insurance from a grudge purchase to a nudge purchase. Outsurance offers tangible benefits through its Outbonus benefit. Clients get all their premiums back if they are claim free after 15 years. In the same vein, Clientele Life offers a tangible benefit by sending its clients airtime worth R200 if they claim on a funeral policy so that they can call their friends and family about the loss.

We look forward to seeing how these progressions will be implemented by the broader insurance business and marketing community.

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Originally published on Financial Mail

An interview with our MD, Refilwe Maluleke

In an environment in which SA consumers are strapped for cash, brands must ensure two things: that they build trust with their consumers; and that they are clear about the value they can add to consumers’ lives – not in the form of discounted prices, but by making a real difference, says Refilwe Maluleke, newly appointed MD at marketing consultancy Yellowwood.

“Whether they’re struggling to afford the upkeep on their second homes or to buy meat for the family dinner, every consumer is feeling the pressure,” says Maluleke. Political, social and cultural volatility is creating additional tension, she adds, resulting in consumers desperately needing brands to keep their promises in every facet of delivery.

For brands to win consumers’ trust, they need to begin by ensuring that their strategy is rooted in meaningful consumer insight. This creates lasting relevance for a brand and does not tend to change over time. Once a brand has defined what it stands for, Maluleke says, it can start making deliberate choices about the customer experiences it delivers at every touch point.

It’s a challenging landscape, she warns. Consumer expectations are no longer confined to product categories. Rather, a favourable experience in one category – banking, for example – will create an expectation for every other category, from e-commerce to hospitality. Consumers want faster, more personalised experiences across the board – a challenge that means marketers need to be cognisant of what is happening in all categories, not just their own.

“This state of affairs may seem to be similar to drinking water from a fire hydrant,” says Maluleke. This is where deliberate choices become important: brands need to decide which moments on the customer journey they are able to enhance and then work on those, rather than trying to be all things to all people.

A further challenge facing marketers is the increasing cultural awareness of consumers and their lack of tolerance towards brands that are “tone deaf” in this regard, she says.

Challenges aside, Maluleke says it’s an exhilarating time be in the industry. She is particularly enthusiastic about the increased purchasing power of women and what brands are doing to harness the opportunities around this market. “Women make decisions in a completely different way to men and it’s going to be exciting to see what brands are doing in this regard,” she says.

Closer to home, Maluleke says she is thrilled to be taking on the challenging role of MD at Yellowwood, and is looking forward to maintaining the company’s growth trajectory, as well as working on digitising the business to a greater degree. “Externally, we’re looking to expand the scope of the business, helping our clients to ‘live’ their strategies,” she explains.

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Interview by Lynette Dicey, originally published on Financial Mail

Yellowwood has announced the appointment of Refilwe Maluleke as their Managing Director, effective 1 of January 2018.

Maluleke joined the Yellowwood team as Strategy Director in January 2016 and has been involved in a number of key marketing strategy projects both in South Africa and across the continent across Telco, Financial Services and Technology sectors. She is a skilled marketer with significant experience working across multiple brands and geographies.

“It’s a privilege to lead this talented and eclectic group of people. At Yellowwood, we are committed to helping our clients build sustainable businesses by becoming better for their customers, not just better than their competitors,’’ says Maluleke.

She began her career at Unilever where she joined the Asia, Africa, Middle East and Turkey (AAMET) brand team on the Flora, Rama, Stork and Mrs Balls portfolio. The mix of brands allowed her to build her capability in developing winning strategies and building local relevance into global brands in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2010 she moved to SABMiller, now ABInBev, where she worked on Hansa Pilsener, for five years. Her time there included work on strategy, sponsorship and communication for Hansa Pilsener.

Maluleke has a Business Science degree with Honours in Marketing from the University of Cape Town. She recently completed her MBA with distinction at Cass Business School in London.

“Refilwe’s new appointment marks a very exciting time for our organization as we embark on a new and highly ambitious geographic expansion plan. Her character mirrors our company values of Bravery, Humanity and Originality and these qualities, as well as her experience will be integral to us delivering successfully,’’ says David Blyth, Yellowwood CEO.

Founder and Chairman, Andy Rice states: “Since first working with Refilwe when she was at SABMiller, I’ve always thought that she would make an excellent member of the Yellowwood team, as she clearly has the kind of “Unconventional Wisdom” that we promise our clients. Now, to have her not just on board, but leading Yellowwood as managing director as well, is hugely exciting.”

EACH YEAR PRESENTS NEW LESSONS, AND 2016 WAS NO DIFFERENT. THE TURBULENCE OF ECONOMIES AND THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF POLITICS WERE APPARENT NOT ONLY IN SA BUT ALSO GLOBALLY.

One could argue that the current tough economic climate mirrors the aftermath of the 2009 recession and yet, surprisingly, marketers appear to be reluctant to adjust their strategies to appeal to a more cautious consumer.

Society is becoming increasingly distrustful of political leadership. This is being manifested in the rise of populism in the US, triggered by the presidency of Donald Trump, and locally in the rise of civic activism fuelled by frustration in the absence of equal opportunities for all. The latter is demonstrated in the “fees must fall” protests and the escalating land repatriation debate.

The increasing suspicion is not only seen in protests against governments but has also trickled down to consumers’ interactions with brands. The “foresight effect”, examined by Olega Urminsky and Adelle X Yang of the Chicago Booth School of Business, shows how the economic recession affects consumers’ spending patterns. The study asserts that during times of uncertainty consumers adopt a cautious mindset towards their purchases and brand interactions.

Local optimism encourages consistency in brand and purchase decisions while local pessimism tends to lead to variety and shifts in those decisions.

The concept provides a new perspective for brand strategy during tough economic times. Market leaders can’t assume that consumers will remain loyal to familiar brands, and brands will still need to find new and innovative ways to source growth.

The question is then: how do we convince cautious consumers to buy into our brands when they are pessimistic and seeking novel options and solutions?

In our view, brands that actively respond in targeted and sustainable ways will thrive in this complex environment. Ways brands can do this are by adapting their messages to meet the temperament of the community or by solving a challenge faced by the society in which the brand operates.

During times of uncertainty, it’s imperative for businesses to offer value beyond their products and services. This can be achieved within the business operating model. For example, a publishing company that produces educational material could build consumer confidence by providing solutions to the textbook delivery issue by initiating deliveries to affected schools.

The following are three key approaches from Amazon that marketers can use as a guide to engage with cautious consumers successfully.

1. Does your brand make the consumer feel secure?

Does your brand instil peace of mind? Consumers are no longer passive bystanders. Delivering on your brand’s attributes consistently creates a feeling of trust and security.

We see this in Amazon’s response to the resentment first-time shoppers conveyed towards the “register” button on the company’s website. Their user’s related negative experiences of being pestered by marketing messages once they registered, and Amazon acknowledged this feedback. It removed the button and replaced it with a “continue” button. According to an article by Jared M Spool, titled, The $300 Million Button, changing the name of the button increased the site’s annual revenues by US$300m.

2. Does your brand share similarities with the consumer?

People respect and admire brands that intuitively deliver on expectations. This can only be achieved if brands have aligned values and interests with consumers that go beyond the product or service. In an article titled Study: Majority of People More Loyal to Brands that Care About Them, Giselle Abramovich argues that 79% of consumers say brands have to demonstrate that they understand and care about them before they will consider purchasing.

Amazon aligned its packaging with the concerns of environmentally conscious consumers by introducing “frustration-free packaging” that is made of recyclable cardboard and reduces the number of packing materials used.

3. Is your brand consistently sincere?

We tend to trust brands we can connect and forge “human” relationships with. Such relationships are built on empathy and honesty, and so brands that are “felt” are often trusted.

Amazon achieves this by striving to be customer-centric at every touchpoint, operating a “no fuss” delivery system and ensuring short turnaround delivery times and a simple return policy. A more recent innovation is its “dash button”, which monitors consumers’ consumption behaviour and automatically replenishes used items by sending replacements directly to clients’ homes.

Building consumer confidence in brands must be the foundational objective for innovation. This will result in continued consumer relevance and, more importantly, will gain the confidence of prudent consumers.

THE EYES OF THE WORLD ARE ON AFRICA AS BUSINESSES SEARCH FOR NEW SOURCES OF GROWTH. TO RETAIN OUR HOME GROUND ADVANTAGE IN THIS INCREASINGLY COMPETITIVE CONTEXT, WE NEED TO BECOME BETTER AT INNOVATION.

We need to be innovating in ways which are faster, more relevant, flexible, useful and meaningful than global competitors. The days of coasting along and slowly adapting global trends to our local markets are over.

An African model of innovation requires thinking beyond taking market share from competitors. We believe the innovation that will set African businesses on the path to sustained success needs to be more than ‘disruptive’ or ‘radical’ – it needs to be transformative; of categories, markets and lives. Crucially, in Africa, the most powerful and successful innovations will be those that release revenue back into the market in the form of jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities – those innovations will stabilise and grow markets, create brand loyalists from those you have helped while adding to the disposable income of your potential customers.

Most businesses have been thinking about market attractiveness all wrong. African markets are niche wealthy and mass poor, and those brands that have ventured into the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ have had their fingers burnt by trying to sell things to people who couldn’t really afford to buy them, expecting them to give something else up. When that fails, brands retreat back to the more lucrative upper-income segments.

But what if businesses asked how they could add to the incomes of their potential customers, rather than trying to use it up? Many of the most successful disruptive innovations on the continent have done just that. A good example is M-Pesa in Kenya, they have transformed the conduct of financial transactions through creating mobile money accessed through a mobile phone. This has created access to financial services to the unbanked population in Kenya, at a lower cost, because the bank doesn’t have the burden of the cost related to physical infrastructure. An article published by CNBCA titled, M-Pesa has Completely Transformed Kenya’s Economy reveals, “When M-Pesa was launched the average distance to the nearest bank was 9.2 kilometres. Eight years later the average distance to the nearest M-Pesa agent is a mere 1.4km.” M-Pesa has created thousands of resellers and small businesses across the continent, benefiting the economy and society.

More and more businesses are discovering the transformational potential of outsourcing non-core elements of their business to employees or entrepreneurs. UBER is a great example of disruptive innovation that empowers entrepreneurs and benefits society. Unilever’s Foundry is another fitting example that uses collaborative platforms to adopt start-ups and share ideas that drive sustainability in the Unilever growth model. Their objective is to build and cultivate strategic partners for the future, with Unilever as a partner of choice.

In our research, we identified a number of lessons for businesses to start innovating transformatively.

A FEW OF THESE ARE TO:

• Partner with the ‘pirates’ in your industry. South Africa and Africa have enormous informal sectors – can you adopt their business models and work with them instead of against them?
• Use existing distribution networks and intermediate technologies. Don’t build everything yourself or try to launch irrelevant high-technology.
• Identify the bottlenecks in your category. What could you change to get non-users into the category?
• Transformative innovation has the power to build world-leading African businesses. It creates real value for all the stakeholders of a business, and it upskills, empowers and contributes to prosperity on the continent – making it a better place to do business.