Author: Mark

For the third consecutive year, BONA is celebrating South African love with an incredible issue. Themed #BONALove, the February issue features two variations of couples on its English, isiXhosa, seSotho and isiZulu covers. “The first cover version is a more mature couple who have been together for eleven years and just announced their new pregnancy, Salamina (36) and Tshepo ‘Howza’ Mosese. The other covers feature newlyweds; Senzo ‘Kwesta’ Vilakazi and Yolanda,” says Editor Bongiwe Tshiqi.

The brand has received quite a lot of applause on social media for featuring two prominent same sex couples this year. Engaged couple, Moshe Ndiki and Phelo Bala as well as actresses Mandisa Nduna and Thishiwe Ziqubu.

“Representation is incredibly important to us, and a brand like BONA has to give an honest reflection of South Africa and the people who live in it. In keeping with that, we wanted to make sure that we were fully representative of all sexual orientations,” she says. She further goes on to explain how strongly she feels about love being represented regardless of age or gender. As such, the first issue of this series in 2018 featured the legendary Caiphus Semenya and Letta Mbulu on the cover. “I feel that we’re sadly deprived of seeing couples over the age of 70 openly being affectionate with each other. Too often, the stories we tell are only of the youth, but love truly has no boundaries.”

The featured couples share their stories including how they met, their first date experiences and also dish out advice on how to navigate the tough times based on their own experiences.

“The February issue of love is traditionally one of our highest selling each year,” says Bongiwe. “My team and I are thrilled at how beautiful the issue is and we’re so grateful for all the positive feedback we’ve received so far. The issue is on shelves now.”

Anton Botes, General Manager at Caxton Magazines adds: “We applaud Bongiwe and her team on an extremely raw look at love at every stage and every orientation. It’s a remarkable issue that has generated very welcome conversation.”

Caxton Magazines DNA

Storytelling is our business. Content is our currency. Caxton Magazines is a division of Caxton CTP Printers & Publishers and houses 12 brands in print and digital formats, primarily aimed at the women’s lifestyle segment across life stages, lifestyles and income groups. These brands are: Vrouekeur; Woman & Home; Bona; Living & Loving; People; Food & Home Entertaining; Your Family; Garden & Home; Farmer’s Weekly; Essentials; Rooi Rose and SA Country Life. Visit www.caxtonmags.co.za

Charne O’Haughey, Social Specialist at Reprise Digital South Africa

It’s clear that social media has become an integral part of people’s lives, forming a large part of their daily routine. So how are we, as marketers and businesses, connecting with our target audiences in 2020, given that there is an already large flock to social platforms?

This can prove to be extremely difficult for brands, especially when it comes to standing out in an already crowded space, unless of course you have a clear social media marketing strategy fuelled by staying up to date with the latest social media trends. Below are five big moves to keep your eyes on:

The use of Ephemeral Content

As in Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp Stories (with advertising opportunities starting for the latter this year).This temporary content takes advantage of real FOMO by only being accessible for a brief period. Attention spans are short and looking at how consumers consume information on social media, being pulled here and there – scrolling – swiping – laughing – scrolling – reading –scrolling – forgetting it all, makes ephemeral content appealing and more engaging as users are encouraged to create user-generated content, partake in polls, Q&A’s and so much more. This type of content is more spontaneous and allows brands to connect in a unique way, becoming recognised as more human, relatable and reliable.

Social Commerce Expansion

While we know that dominating platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have been long used by brands to sell their products, it’s safe to say that social commerce has become a new retail avenue for brands and this is going to rise in 2020 with more brands climbing onto the bandwagon. More niche platforms will follow suit by introducing selling / shopping posts. We will see these channels becoming mainstream retail on par with retail websites and offline stores. This means that competition will be fiercer, challenging new strategies around content and implementation on these already crowded platforms.

Domination from Video Content

Across all social platforms that may have been traditionally dominated by image or text content, it is clear that the most engaging form of content is video and this goes hand in hand with mobile users. Users are twice as likely than TV viewers and 1.4 times more likely as desktop viewers, to feel a sense of personal connection to brands that show video content or ads on their devices. As data continues to become cheaper, we can expect to see a significant increase in video content consumed by South Africans.

So whether it be short ephemeral content or long form YouTube videos, it is important to utilise video content in order to stay on par in the social media domain.

Personalising segmentation

While a brand has a main identity (with many sub factors), a key aspect we are able to leverage off of is the ability to personalise ads to reach different target segments. Social platforms offer advanced targeting options, including customisation of audiences and on various platforms we can include more than one primary copy, headline copy, description copy, and customisable placements. Personalisation will continue to rise with platforms serving ads to users who have showed interests in similar products from different brands.

Customer service, customer service!

We have established that social platforms have evolved into retail platforms, product discovery platforms, awareness platforms and now customer support platforms! This trend began gradually as a result of delayed / no response through various other channels. From there, brands started directing users to the correct channels to use. It’s not just some one-off cases where customers post their questions or complaints on social media and brands respond. Now, it has become a significant enough customer service channel for brands to recognise it as one.

Social Media is dynamic, and it is important to leverage these trends which will dominate the social media landscape in 2020 in order to stay ahead of competitors and to woo consumers. Happy clicking!

Reprise Digital SA DNA

Reprise is a digital-first agency, and everything we do is rooted in understanding how consumers interact across apps, sites, IOT-devices, bots, search engines, and social platforms. We uncover your audience based upon their digital fingerprints – and build a media approach to help transform your business digitally. Reprise has the ability to fuse smart digital approaches for our media agency partners in smart and sophisticated ways.

In the digital world, it’s a given that Paid Search advertising is important, but only a few industries, except the finance and eRetail sectors, are capturing the true value this channel has to offer. Most brands are missing a trick by not tracking the full customer journey says Michael King, Managing Director of Reprise Digital, an IPG Mediabrands company.

So how can it be possible that insurance brands invest 30% plus of their entire marketing budget on this channel?  Simply put, it’s what companies call a P-Factor or Profitability Factor.  This is a simple profitability equation that allows brands to measure the value of a sale over time.  Let’s use car insurance as an example – If I’m insurance company A and I spend R5 000 on Google Ads today, I’ll most likely generate quite a few visitors to my website who will either complete a quote online or want to talk to a sales advisor.

As a result of the quotes generated, I may sign up a new client who would hypothetically insure their vehicle at a monthly premium of R1 000.  At a glance you might say that this channel is loss-making as the amount of adspend far outweighs the sale value, but the inverse is actually true.  Car Insurance is a service that consumers sign up for on a monthly basis which means that as Insurer A, the company will be generating revenue from the initial sale over a long period of time.  This is where P-Factor comes in.  This equation helps us understand how long our new customer will need to stay insured with us before we cover the initial R5K adspend.

Ad Spend divided by initial sales value = P-Factor. So, R5 000/R1 000 = a P-Factor of 5. This means that our new client will need to stay insured with the brand for five months before it “breaks even” on advertising spend.  If we then incorporate the fact that the average insured person stays with their insurer for 12-18 months, the profitability conversation very quickly changes to a positive one.  In this example the company would be making money from our new client for anything between 7 – 13 months.

Every industry is of course different with their own unique challenges but the learning for marketers has to be that the future for brands is not only tracking a customer’s journey online until the sale is complete, but tracking the customer for the entire time that they’re associated with your brand.

Reprise Digital SA DNA

Reprise is a digital-first agency, and everything we do is rooted in understanding how consumers interact across apps, sites, IOT-devices, bots, search engines, and social platforms. We uncover your audience based upon their digital fingerprints – and build a media approach to help transform your business digitally. Reprise has the ability to fuse smart digital approaches for our media agency partners in smart and sophisticated ways.