Meet the warm heart of Wunderman

Meet Emily Seleise. Maker of the best cappuccino in Joburg, lifter of spirits, she's the heart of our agency."Guuyys....the bar is open!" is her signature cry on Fridays.

Emily is always laughing or smiling, always happy to see us. She has charmed her way into the heart of many a client. She exemplifies goodness: if we could bottle Emily's infectious spirit, we would.

Why did Microsoft advertise in the Daily Sun?

Microsoft is probably not the sort of brand you would expect to find in the Daily Sun. After all, why would the average Daily Sun reader be interested in Microsoft?

The fact is that, over the long term, home computer penetration outside of the core PC market must increase if growth in this category is to continue. The affluent end of the market - LSM 8-10 - is more or less saturated. It is in LSM 5-7, the emerging and mid level middle class, where the most compelling opportunities lie.

But many of the adults making the decisions as to whether to buy a PC are themselves not familiar with why a home computer would be relevant to their lives. When you are shopping at your local furniture retailer and you must decide between a computer and a fridge or a new bedroom suite, what would make you choose the PC? At Wunderman, we were convinced that laying the platform now would pay dividends later.

We also believed that it was important to communicate with the market in a way that helped computers become familiar and less intimidating. Using a comic strip format had worked well for a very successful sms education campaign we had executed for MTN, so we decided to explore the same approach here.

We created a family who would go through the exercise of buying a home PC and then discuss how to use it. Each character would serve a specific function: a school child to explain the education message, a student to talk about using MSN, a mother who would demonstrate how a home PC could be useful to people running a household, and an uncle who would reach the family how to use the PC properly. Over time, we would use the characters to expand on different story lines and explore different uses for a home computer in an entertaining way. It's a much more flexible and adaptable kind of advertising than a traditional print execution with a product shot and a blurb about its functionality.

The comic strips ran in the City Press and Sunday Sun as well as the Daily Sun, while on African Language Stations we ran a series of educational inserts that used the same characters as in the print work. Knowing that it was important for the market to interact with the product, Microsoft also put up stands in key shopping malls. These replicated the Mazibuko homea and the way in which computers could be used in different areas such as the kitchen or the bedroom.

Up2Date with the Mazibukos represents a different approach for Microsoft. So far, it has paid off, and we're looking for ways to extend it into other areas.

Vodacom shows us how not to do a promotion

100 BMWs in 100 days? It's a big idea. Dangle the prospect of winning a BMW a day fo three months in front of notoriously luxury German sedan-mad South Africans, charge them R10 an sms, promote it aggressively, and then wait and see what happens.

It's beautifully simple.

Which, for once, is part of the problem. As Rapport reported:

Hordes of Vodacom clients have joined the chorus of complaints following a Rapport article about Hendrikus Wessels who had sent in SMSs totalling R48 000.

One Johannesburg client alleged that he was allowed to send SMSs amounting to R150 000 before his cellphone service was suspended. Marelize Jackson, 39, of Bloemfontein now owes Vodacom about R27 000.

Ideally, promotions should be self-funding, in that the additional revenue they generate, usually through sales or increased product usage, covers the cost of the exercise. The one thing that promotions should not constitute is another revenue stream in their own right - and this is where Vodacom appears to have gone wrong.

Assuming that those 100 BMWs cost Vodacom around R26 million (if they did not get a bulk discount), how much revenue have they raked in through those smses? They would need to receive about 260,000 to break even, but given that people have been sending up to 15,000, it's reasonable to assume that they received many more than that.

Of course, one must factor in the media cost of promoting the 100 BMWs and announcing the winners. Bear in mind that this is money that Vodacom would in all likelihood have spent anyway, since summer is a key retail period and this is where the majority of media spend in the cellular catgeory is concentrated.

So the revenue from those R10 smses is a bonus. Which brings us to the point that this entire competition may well have been illegal:

Cape Town IT, internet and media law specialist Reinhardt Buys said the competition was illegal as the SMS messages encourage multiple entries, and thus contravened the Wireless Application Service Provider Association (Waspa) code of conduct, which regulates cellphone networks.

What sort of fallout can we expect from this debacle?

This is one comment from hellopeter.com:

AND THE BMW COMPITION THATS A RIP OFF...I WOULD ANY TIME PAY R10000 FOR MY BILL IF I HAVE WIN, BUT I AM NOT PAYING FORSOMETHING IM NOT RECIEVED.

AND NOT TO THE SMSES THEY SEND YOU TO MOTEVATE SO THAT YOU CAN SEND MORE R10
SMSES. THEY HAVE GIVEN LOTS PEOPLE FALSE HOPE,ALL WHAT ARE LEFT WHITH ME AND
OTHERS IS DEBT WE CANT AFORT AND BAD NAMES ON THE CREDIT BERAU.

ALL THAT I CAN SAY NOW AFTER I ALWAYS THAUGHT VODACOM WAS THE LEADING
CELLELAR COMPANY BEFORE THIS COMITION.

Despite the creative spelling, this poster makes a good point. Not only did Vodacom offer a compelling prize, they also encouraged profligate spending by sending their base incessant messages encouraging them to keep entering. The messaging was so annoying that it was the subject of at least one show on 702 last December.

Vodacom has emerged from this situation looking remarkably like the kind of corporation that is only too happy to fleece its customers and lure them into crippling debt. Which - we hope - was not its objective when it came up with the idea in the first place.

So learn from their mistake, and remember that promotions can serve one or more of three purposes:
*Reward existing customers for their loyalty to the brand
*Incentivise 'good' behaviour that translates into more revenue through usage
*Drive trial and acquisition

But one thing that promotions should not be about is - illegally - raising enormous wads of cash for its own sake. We honestly thought Vodacom was better than this.

Watch out for the new Freelander 2 Campaign

South African television screens are displaying more and more global advertising. The cellphone manufacturers are a good example, as is Sony Bravia. The new global campaign for Freelander 2 launched last night on SABC 3, just three days after it first appeared in the UK.

The first spot is titled 'Cloud Hopping' and features one of the planet's newer sports. Instead of standing in a basket, the 'cloud hopper' is harnessed directly to a hot air balloon, giving him or her more freedom. Shot in Vancouver, it features a race between a man driving a Freelander 2 and a female cloud hopper.

Thanks to the best in class capabilities of the Freelander 2, the vehicle is able to follow where the balloon leads, giving British director Jonny Green the perfect excuse to capture some gloriously beautiful shots:


Land Rover chose to focus on unusual sports in order to appeal to Freelander's market, which is somewhat younger than that of the Discovery 3. As Bogosi Matsheka, marketing manager of Land Rover in South Africa, notes, "The audience we are targeting with Freelander 2 have original and interesting passions and this campaign brings these qualities to the fore in a manner that typifies Land Rover's brand persona."

This campaign could not have come at a better time for us, as Freelander 2 is a finalist in the Car of the Year awards announced on March 18. At the same time, the Land Rover brand is enjoying unprecedented success in the South African market. December 2007 was a month most motor vehicle manufacturers would like to forget – which makes the fact that Land Rover enjoyed its highest sales ever even more remarkable. Overall, 2007 was Land Rover’s best year yet, both locally and globally. Worldwide sales topping 225,000 units were a fitting achievement for a brand that celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.