It’s been a wonderful start to 2021. I’m super excited about being a contributor to Mzansi’s first #OpenSource marketing text book, Marketing to South African Consumers.
An initiative from Liberty UCT Institute of Marketing, the online text book was launched this week and can be downloaded free at the link below.
Marketing to South African Consumers provides core introductory marketing theory underpinned by a contemporary and localised South African perspective. South Africa has a unique hybrid economy with strong formal and informal economies co-existing in a deeply unequal society. It is written by marketing academics, professionals and students, and is focused on making local context a central reference rather than a peripheral addition.
The growing reader engagement with the Ebony and Ivory series on SEM segmentation in Mzansi is also really motivating. You can follow the series on the Ebony and Ivory website and various social media platforms. Parts two and three of an eight-part series tracking the evolution and effective use of the SEM model were published this week.
Against this 2021 sunrise backdrop, it should come as no surprise that I awoke this morning with a renewed Wiki enthusiasm for spreading the #media gospel.
So I thought I would join this group on Facebook: Advertising Industry South Africa.
I mean, after a year stuck in my office at Number 10, I really need to start meeting with like-minded advertising people of my own age. Well perhaps not my own age because that would mean a group consisting only of myself, Mike Leahy and Harry Herber and that’s probably not enough likes for Facebook to recognise us as a group.
Of course when I say Number 10 I’m talking about 10 Orwell Street Johannesburg not the other Number 10.
Although I must say what a pleasure it has been, after the blood ‘n guts ‘n gore ‘n veins in m’teeth (with apologies to Arlo Guthrie and Alice’s Restaurant) of the Trump era, to see a return to normality in global politics. For all you hard working blue collar #media folks out there, who’ve been wishing for a return to normal news, this story is for you.
I was powerfully drawn this week to a major international breaking news story in the British Press in which authoritative sources like Sky News The Independent and The Times have all reported that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has strenuously denied he has a little snooze in the afternoon.
IMHO this is the kind of attention to detail in news reporting that made Britain great. I’m also running a book on how long it will take The New York Times and CNN to report that Joe Biden also strenuously denies taking a little power nap in the afternoon. I guess we’ll never know.
At least when President Clinton locked his office door in the afternoon it wasn’t to have a little snooze.
But I digress.
Today I thought I would join the Facebook group Advertising Industry in South Africa.
Now admittedly I am not in tune with the inner workings of the ad industry the way I used to be the ’70s and ’80s but I was mystified by the series of questions I needed to answer in order to gain membership. In fact I’m not sure I got past the first question.
Are you in the South African advertising or a related industry? If so, what is your job?
Yes I am. Definitely. For over 40 years. But I’m a freelance. I haven’t had a job since 1999.
But it’s the next question I found most intriguing.
Have you read the group rules, and do you understand them?
I’m trying to visualise my very first day in advertising back in the ’70s. I know for sure that someone showed me where the pub was but I can’t recall any specific and binding guidelines beyond that. I can’t help wondering what would have happened to my #advertising career if I had arrived at McCann Erickson that day wearing a T-shirt saying, ‘I FOLLOW THE RULES’.
The third qualifying question was a little easier.
Why do you want to join this group?
To be honest I don’t really want to join anymore.
I love being in advertising and being with advertising people who are passionate about what we do for a living. But is there perhaps a group out there somewhere for people with a proven track record of breaking the rules?
Gordon Muller is Africa’s oldest surviving media strategist. Author of Media Planning – Art or Science. Mostly harmless! Read his Khulumamedia Blog here.
