Month: October 2017

Whizzky, one of the top Whisky apps globally, accompanied the website worldwhiskyday.com to discover the best Whisky destinations in Johannesburg, to be featured in their ‘Whisky Capitals of the World’.

 Administered by Nokulunga Msibi, the Whizzky App is one of the world’s most used and downloaded Whisky applications for Android and iOS, and is specifically developed and designed for Whisky lovers by Evolve, who are part owners. The app is managed by and is one of the many innovative companies that fall under the umbrella of Nfinity, an established innovation hub headed by entrepreneur Ken Varejes.

“As a shareholder of the Whisky Live Festival, one of the largest events of its kind in the world that provides a platform for sampling whiskies from all over the world, it made sense to look at developing a globally accepted application specifically for Whisky lovers,” says Nfinity’s CEO, Ken Varejes. “Whizzky was the culmination of everything that research showed us that people were looking for in an app of this nature.”The home grown app has already achieved a weighty 40 000 downloads and active users from across the globe, bringing it to the attention of the worldwhiskyday website. In the feature ‘Whisky Capitals of the World’ the site focuses on, with the assistance of local experts, locating and experiencing the ultimate Whisky destinations within a specific city. Nokulunga already had a very good idea of where the best Jozi spots were and according to her, “Joburg loves its whisky and its bars attest to this love affair.”

Some of the best places that stand out include The Maxim Lounge at the Da Vinci Hotel, Churchill’s Bar with its popular #WhiskyThursdays, Bottega in Parkhurst with over 500 single malts to choose from and Meli’s Lounge in Soweto. Other noteworthy whisky lounges and bars included Southern Sun Hyde Park Whisky and Cigar Lounge, The Terrace @Hyatt, the bar Hemingways in Kyalami and Robby’s and Just Badela in Soweto.

The trip included looking for the best Whisky Cocktails, where to go to ‘dram and dine’, distilleries and the best places to shop for one’s favourite tipple.

Other interesting information reflected on the Whizzky app is that Lagavulin 16 Year Old is a firm user favourite – it is the highest ranked whisky as well as the most collected. Jameson is the 9^th most collected whisky on Whizzky and being Irish, is the only non-Scotch whisky in the top ten ranked and collected whiskies.

With the easy to use Whizzky app, connoisseurs and beginners alike can discover fine whiskies and that rare ‘unicorn’; scan bottle labels to get information in seconds, save favourites, rate, share ratings. Users can also start an exclusive, members-only Whisky Club and invite friends, collectively share and rate whiskies and save tasting notes. Additionally users can brush up on whisky news and watch Whizzky’s tutorial videos to improve their knowledge even further.

It’s no secret that consumers are doing everything they can to avoid as many ads as possible. This ad avoidance, while hampering the traditional advertising efforts of marketers, has led to a relatively new tactic – Inbound Marketing.

 Recognising exceptional success in this area, Hubspot has named Spitfire Inbound Marketing with the grand prize – the prestigious Hubspot Overall Impact Award for 2017, acknowledging Spitfire’s incredible 21% growth in sales for client Suzuki SA.

The Inbound Growth Story category, specifically celebrates agencies’ inbound marketing success by highlighting a client’s rapid growth through inbound marketing practices.

Hubspot is an international offering that provides tools and combines social media marketing, content management, web analytics, landing pages and search engine optimization. Inbound Marketing can be described as a strategy that focuses on attracting customers, or leads, via company-created Internet content, thereby having potential customers come to the company rather than marketers vying for their attention.The Spitfire team travelled to Boston USA this week to collect their award. “Winning the overall Impact Award is a massive achievement and huge recognition from HubSpot for delivering fantastic client work using inbound methodology,” says Spitfire Inbound’s MD and HubSpot Gold Partner Darren Leishman.

“In our case the accolade is a direct result of a consistent partnership that tackles each marketing objective holistically, with a strong focus on inbound marketing. None of this would have been possible without the support of our amazing clients at Suzuki and our Penquin partners.”

The Hubspot Impact Awards scrutinised each entry on the basis of: challenges the client faced; specifics around the agency’s implementation; quantitative results of the campaign and how it impacted on the client.

“Inbound marketing played a significant role in the growth of Suzuki’s market share. The process not only attracted new customers to the brand it also helped align the sales and marketing teams internally, and with the dealer body,” he says. “Once we started an integrated inbound marketing strategy, digital leads exceeded our twice revised stretch goal by a massive 123%.

Customers attributed to web and content leads increased to 128% of the stretch goal.”Spitfire’s sister company, full service advertising agency Penquin, is equally thrilled at the accolade. Veronica Wainstein, MD adds: “We as the shareholders of Penquin made the decision just over a year ago to split the inbound business into a single minded and focused offering, and this award affirms that it was absolutely the right decision.

It’s allowed us to collaborate and provide an integrated marketing solution to our clients with a focused partner that guides us in our traditional marketing efforts from a different perspective.  Winning the award validates the success of aligning a digital and traditional strategy that delivers tangible results to our clients. Suzuki’s involvement is testament to this and as an agency that has always been focused on delivering results to our clients, the Spitfire award further tells our story and reinforces that we can and will continue to be a results driven agency.”