Media Moves… TheMediaOnline’s weekly round up. SABC makes interim senior appointments. SABC appoints new head of sponsorship and business development. OgilvyOne South Africa names Nicholas Wittenberg as national group creative director. New national sales manager for Popular Mechanics. Dashboard appoints new client director. Red Carpet Concepts wins two new hospitality accounts. Tribeca continues its new client-winning streak. Red Carpet Concepts wins two new hospitality accounts. marcusbrewster in line for Campaign of the Year award. RSG wins Fleur du Cap theatre award
Who’s moved where
SABC makes interim senior appointments
Communications minister Yunus Carrim has approved and endorsed the appointment of Tian Olivier as the SABC’s acting group chief executive officer and James Aguma as the acting chief finance officer. This decision follows the resignation of the SABC GCEO Lulama Mokhobo and the CCMA arbitrator’s ruling that found the SABC Gugu Duda guilty of charges of misconduct that led to her dismissal this month.
Olivier and Aguma’s appointments are based on their extensive knowledge and a proven track record as senior managers currently at the SABC. The SABC Board is confident that these appointments will provide the required leadership to turn around the SABC while maintaining public broadcasting mandate.
Oliver has performed various leadership functions within the corporation as the head of audience services and as the acting CFO whilst Aguma joined the corporation last year as the general manager responsible for strategy and governance in the office of the chief operations officer (COO). Aguma brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in finance and auditing from the Auditor General’s office.
“The SABC will expedite the process of filling the vacancies of the GCEO and the CFO and other critical and senior positions within the organization. It is imperative that at this stage we provide support to the two acting executives who have just been appointed,” said Ellen Tshabalala, chairperson of the SABC Board.
SABC appoints new head of sponsorship and business development
Desiree Trout has joined SABC Commercial Sales (TV) as the head of sponsorship and business development. Trout is a highly experienced and print and television advertising sales expert with a wide range of professional skills.
Her career extends across a plethora of media platforms, having worked for the Independent Group for over 10 years on community and national publications, SABC group sales and marketing for seven years as channel champion SABC2, key account manager at DStv and e.tv, sales manager: South Africa MTV Base, Media24 Magazines as head of the women’s interest division, and most recently at Sentech as head of customer service.
Trout will oversee the Sponsorship & Business Development across the TV platforms: SABC 1,2, 3 and the newly launched SABC News Channel.
OgilvyOne South Africa names Nicholas Wittenberg as national group creative director
OgilvyOne Worldwide South Africa (OgilvyOne SA), Ogilvy & Mather’s digital customer engagement business, has announced that Nicholas Wittenberg has been named national group creative director, effective immediately. His promotion coincides with the recent appointment of Ben Evans, who relocated from the London office to head up OgilvyOne SA as national managing director.
Reporting to Evans, Wittenberg will be based in Cape Town and oversee OgilvyOne SA’s strategic creative direction for digital work in both the Johannesburg and Cape Town offices.
“I am thrilled that Nic will be leading our creative operation nationally and partnering with the management team to take OgilvyOne SA to the next level,” said Evans.
Wittenberg is no stranger to the digital community, having previously held positions in the United States and South Africa. In over two decades, he has worked with numerous blue chip clients, including Volkswagen, Audi, Coca-Cola, South African Breweries (SAB), Mondelez and Unilever.
New national sales manager for Popular Mechanics
Popular Mechanics has announced the appointment of Jesse Henney as national sales manager, with effect from 1 April. He joins the team from sister title Compleat Golfer, where he was national sales manager for three years. Prior to that he held the position of ad sales executive with the automotive brands, CAR and Leisure Wheels.
“Jesse brings a wealth of energy and talent– not to mention a formidable knowledge of the marketplace – and we look forward to working with him,” said publisher Alan Duggan of the appointment.
Dashboard appoints new client director
Research and strategy company, Dashboard Marketing Intelligence, has appointed Pieter Kok as a Client Director. Kok’s experience within the business intelligence, ICT and research fields is expected to assist Dashboard fast track its already impressive growth on the African continent. The 10-year-old company recently launched a new media consumption measurement tool in Ghana and Nigeria, and conducts continent-wide customer experience, brand health and out-of-home audits for several blue chip multi-nationals, including MTN.
Who’s won what
Red Carpet Concepts wins two new hospitality accounts
Adding to its bouquet of high-end hospitality clients, Red Carpet Concepts has won two new restaurant accounts in March 2014: Cassia and Tables@Nitida, dually owned by Warren Swaffield.
Tables@Nitida, based at the multi-award winning Nitida Wine farm, is an al Fresco, Mediterranean cuisine restaurant, boasting a natural amphitheatre for live concerts, coupled with a child friendly play area which caters ideally for the whole family. Cassia restaurant, also located at Nitida in the Durbanville wine valley, accommodates an understatedly upmarket restaurant setting complimented by the superlative views of the vineyards across the lake.
Red Carpet Concepts has been appointed to represent the PR, marketing and social media portfolios of these two restaurants, as well as assisting with various concerts, weddings, food and wine pairings and other upcoming festivals taking place at Tables@Nitida and Cassia.
Euronews becomes MSN Arabia’s new multilingual news source
Euronews, Europe’s leading news channel and MSN Arabia, one of the leading web portals in the Middle East and North Africa, have teamed up to provide users with a comprehensive selection of news programmes from three Euronews services.
Thanks to the syndication of an international and multilingual content agreement, Euronews Arabic, Euronews English and Euronews French, are delivered to different regional North Africa and Middle East sites of the MSN Arabia’s network. Indeed, www.arabia.msn.com is accessible to Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia and Pakistan.
The 100 Million monthly visitors to the MSN Arabia site can now follow, through articles and video content provided by Euronews, the latest international news and a complete up-to-date selection of programmes on Business, Europe, Culture, Science and Technology, all available in English, French and Arabic. The subjects covered are updated several times a day by the Euronews editorial teams.
Tribeca continues its new client-winning streak
Tribeca Public Relations (Tribeca) added to its growing client base by signing two new clients during March: Net1 Mobile Solutions and the FNB Whisky Live Showroom events.
These latest wins come after the award-winning agency celebrated new client wins Cathay Pacific Airlines, Imperial Auto, Retroviral, and the Red Bull-sponsored Wings for Life World Run in the first two months of this year.
Net1 Mobile Solutions, a South African-based technology company offering world-class technology solutions predominantly in the payments space, appointed Tribeca following a multi-way pitch to increase awareness of the company’s range of products and services in South Africa and abroad.
Tribeca will manage the public relations for three FNB Whisky Live Showroom events taking place in Durban in April, Nelspruit in May, and Cape Town in June. Tribeca’s previous experience with the FNB Whisky Live Festivals earned the company a PRISA PRISM Gold Award in 2012.
APO makes gains in 2014
APO has been selected by Philips (www.philips.com), Oracle (www.oracle.com), Symantec (www.symantec.com), Garmin (www.garmin.com), Sage (www.sage.com) and SkyVision (www.skyvision.net) as exclusive supplier for press release wire distribution in Africa.
Their press releases will be distributed via Africa Wire®, the service for press release distribution and monitoring in Africa, reaching over 50 000 media contacts, bloggers and social networks, and redistributing content to over 50 African websites, Bloomberg Terminal, Thomson Reuters, Lexis Nexis, Dow Jones Factiva, and more.
It has also announced opening new office in Dubai. This expansion has been a result of the increased interest in creating brand and image attention in Africa and from journalists globally.
Who’s making moves
Tiger Wheel & Tyre renews broadcast sponsorship for 2014 F1 Season
Tiger Wheel & Tyre has confirmed that it has renewed its broadcast sponsorship of Formula 1 motor racing on DStv’s SuperSport channels, for the 2014 season.
The company has a long history of making the sport accessible to South African fans via its sponsorship of television broadcasts and for many years was run by former racing driver Eddie Keizan, who competed in several Formula 1 races and held the 1972 Formula 5000 championship title.
“There is never a dull moment in F1 and with one race already completed, it looks like the dramatic changes imposed for this season will make for an even more exciting year than usual,” said marketing executive of TiAuto, Joe du Plooy.
Euronews, Compostela Group of Universities, sign journalism deal
The international media group Euronews and the international association of Higher Education institutions, Compostela Group of Universities (CGU), have signed an agreement foreseeing a set of strategic joint actions aimed at providing better training opportunities for students and fostering online education.
Through the core initiative of this agreement, Euronews Campus, the news channel will facilitate the use of its audiovisual contents as tools for online education and language teaching courses at the CGU member institutions. Being provided with live broadcast of Euronews and using its magazines (as VOD), the CGU universities will be able to take advantage of updated course material, especially interesting for journalism, communication, business, international relations, politics, science and language studies.
The most immediate of the planned actions of this new partnership is the involvement of Euronews in the CGU’s International Video Contest for Students, a competition that in its current round involves 19 universities from 11 different countries. The TV channel will offer a training placement to the winner of the competition and it will also have a representative among the jury who may identify other highly talented students and give them the same opportunity. These trainees will be integrated in the departments and daily working routines at Euronews with a working agenda, which will serve to improve their professional skills.
And now the wins
marcusbrewster in line for Campaign of the Year award
Managed communication services firm marcusbrewster has steered Magnum to its first PRISM Award for PR Excellence for the launch of the ice cream’s Pink Pomegranate & Black Espresso flavours. The PR programme for the Unilever brand by marcusbrewster is one of four finalists shortlisted for the prestigious Campaign of the Year recognising the best work from nearly 30 categories. All four campaigns automatically win a Silver Award at the ceremony on Sunday 6 April.
“Within three weeks of media launch, marcusbrewster achieved R1.5 million publicity and set the online community abuzz,” reports account manager Saadiyah Hendricks who handled the PR campaign. At the Twitter auction, Magnum’s 11 campaign hashtags trended for 26 hours and #MagnumAuction trended worldwide adding R3 million+ AVE.
“The work that we take most pride in as a firm of PR and communications specialists, is when campaigns reach the tipping point where measurable results move from outputs to outcomes” says agency founder and chairman Marcus Brewster.
RSG wins Fleur du Cap theatre award
RSG has received the Fleur du Cap Theatre Award for innovation in the theatre at a prestigious event held in the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town. The award was given to RSG for the on-air arts festival that the radio station hosted in November last year.
It was the first time ever that RSG hosted a four-day long arts festival which included drama productions, book readings, art discussions and even music concerts, with a Cabaret production amongst others. The Fleur du Cap theatre awards are one of the most elite awards in South Africa. The awards started 49 years ago. It’s the first time in its history, that a radio station received an award. It’s not only a milestone for RSG, but also for the Afrikaans language to have received this award in a multi-lingual theatre environment!
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