2014-02-13

Media Moves… TheMediaOnline’s weekly round up. ZenithOptimedia hires leading strategist for global digital role. PAMRO appoints Dr Paul Haupt as first executive director.  Yolanda Botha new editor of TaxTalk. New sales and marketing manager for Steenberg Estate. Blue Moon wins Metro FM Music Awards event account.  Brand inc Creative Group wins Nashua Limited account. Hellocomputer to drive WesBank.  A year of growth for Urbanhouse Media. African Union Commission Selects the Internet Society for the Regional Internet Exchange Points. Meropa opens Eastern Cape office.

Who’s moved where

ZenithOptimedia hires leading strategist for global digital role

ZenithOptimedia has appointed Stefan Bardega as chief digital officer to head up the network’s global digital capabilities. He will be based at ZenithOptimedia Worldwide’s office in London from March.

Bardega will set the vision for how digital will elevate the network’s live ROI proposition. He has been tasked with driving digital innovation around the network, and will work with leaders across ZenithOptimedia and its group of companies – Performics, Newcast, Moxie and Ninah – to design digital strategies for global clients.

As part of his new role, Bardega will also work with ZenithOptimedia’s partner companies, including Google and Facebook, on joint ventures and initiatives to foster creativity and new approaches in areas such as mobile and online video.

Bardega joins ZenithOptimedia from MediaCom, where he was managing partner, heading up digital in the UK across all platforms, including social, programmatic, mobile, SEO, and display.

PAMRO appoints Dr Paul Haupt as first executive director

The Pan African Media Research Organisation (PAMRO) has appointed its first-ever executive director. Dr Paul Haupt, who retires from the South African Audience Research Foundation (Saarf) at the end of March 2014, is the first to take up this new position.

Now entering its fifteenth year, PAMRO has reached the stage where it requires the dedicated attention of its own executive director, having been ably administered by the Saarf team since its inception. Joe Otin, vice president of PAMRO, says that the lack of a dedicated resource in the PAMRO office has left many beneficial opportunities untapped. “We believe that Paul has the ability to carry through the collective ideas of PAMRO’s members,” he says.

PAMRO’s long-term vision is to foster the establishment of joint-industry committees across Africa to provide clients, including multinationals, with a single platform for reading and comparing media audience research data across Africa.

New appointment to the GfK team

One of the world’s largest research companies, GfK, has welcomed account director Matthew Glogauer to its South African team as it continues to discover new insights into the way people live, think, and shop.

Glogauer has more than a decade of experience in marketing, having worked for companies such as Research Surveys, GlaxoSmithKline, Tiger Brands, and KLA. Based on this, he is well positioned to offer marketing solutions across a variety of industries and territories, and he has insight into both supplier and client perspectives. With a love for strategy and experience in a diverse range of marketing roles, the father-of-two has quite literally done it all when it comes to market research.

As an account director at GfK, Glogauer will be growing and developing accounts across financial services and telecommunications. “GfK’s roots lie in academic research so it has an inbred, cultural drive to do things in the best way possible. While profit is important, it is best practices that drive the company,” he says.

Yolanda Botha new editor of TaxTalk

Stiaan Klue, chief executive for the South African Institute of Tax Practitioners (SAIT), has announced the appointment of Yolande Botha as the new editor of TaxTalk magazine, with the task of refreshing both the design and content of the publication in order to stay topical and relevant and for an expanding audience.

TaxTalk magazine is set to undergo a subtle evolution in order to continue its expansion in 2014, and to cater for a wider audience of tax professionals and tax payers alike.

“I am excited about the opportunity to engage with the TaxTalk readership across different platforms,” says Botha, who comes with an impressive résumé in political science and journalism. “The magazine enjoys a global audience of 40000, of which 10000 are subscribed members of SAIT; my objective is to ensure that the magazine operates as a mouthpiece for taxation issues in the country.”

New sales and marketing manager for Steenberg Estate

Premier Cape Winelands destination, Steenberg Estate, has appointed Nicolene Kotze as hospitality sales and marketing manager responsible for the 5-star Steenberg Hotel, contemporary fine-dining restaurant Catharina’s, and the popular Bistro Sixteen82.

Kotze is a seasoned professional in the hospitality and sales industries, bringing with her over 12 years of dynamic and varied experience in sectors ranging from restaurant management to Corporate Sales directorship.

“I am honoured to be a part of the Steenberg team, and look forward to playing my part in taking the Hotel, Catharina’s and the estate as a whole to even greater heights in the future,” says Kotze.

In short

Lynita Padiachy has been appointed as operations admin: box office and mobile within the Group Content Services division at M-Net.

Who’s won what

Blue Moon wins Metro FM Music Awards event account

The production of the 13th Annual Metro FM Music Awards (MMAs) has been awarded to the events division of Blue Moon, who partnered with SABC1 and the Metros last year to deliver one of the most talked about live events in South African music history.

SABC1 and Metro FM have announced that they will be working with Blue Moon again this year on the 2014 MMAs. The Awards will take place in Durban for the second year running, on 1 March, at the International Conference Centre (ICC) with the ceremony airing live on SABC1 at 20h00.

“This year the Awards are going extra-large as we celebrate 20 years of South Africa’s democracy and the extraordinary local music that’s inspired us along the way,” says Blue Moon’s managing director of Events, Deana Heslop-Mthembu. “The show will be packed with artists performing highlights from two decades of uniquely South African music, as well as showcasing songs that are hot and happening on Metro FM right now.”

Brand inc Creative Group wins Nashua Limited account

Brand inc Creative Group, an integrated brand services agency, has been appointed as Nashua Limited’s full services agency, with Brand inc handling the traditional through-the-line advertising, Brand inc Sport handling the sponsorship and Brand inc Communications handling all the PR and communication requirements.

“I always knew we could do more for the Nashua brand,” said Brand inc MD Chris Heaton. “Though we’d made a name for ourselves assisting Nashua with their below-the-line marketing, I was always knocking on the above-the-line door, keeping communication open between us and the Nashua marketing team and waiting for the right opportunity to show them what we are capable of.”

That opportunity came about at the end of 2012 when Heaton arranged a meeting to touch base with the Nashua brand communications manager at the time and find out how the company’s advertising, marketing and communications were doing. As fate would have it, Nashua’s marketing director dropped in on the meeting and Heaton expressed his interest in paying some attention to Nashua’s sports sponsorship properties.

This lead to Brand inc Sport being briefed on the conceptualisation and execution of a PR and marketing campaign around the Nashua Titans cricket team.

Hellocomputer to drive WesBank

Hot on the heels of landing the chocolate and biscuit portfolios in the Mondelez (formerly Kraft) stable, Hellocomputer has been appointed by WesBank, South Africa’s leading provider of vehicle and asset finance, as its lead agency.

This follows a pitch demanding both a creative vision for the brand and a comprehensive communications strategy, and acknowledges the importance of the digital channel in today’s marketing environment.

Hellocomputer’s managing director, David Moffatt, said the agency is looking forward to making a significant impact on WesbBank’s business, especially given the cutting-edge expertise of its new digital media solutions department.

A year of growth for Urbanhouse Media

2014 has started out with a bang for KZN based publicity agency UrbanHouse Media. Having signed with KwaZulu-Natal composting specialists Farmyard Organics in January, they have now acquired two more accounts in February to add to their growing client stable.

UrbanHouse Media will manage public relations, media communications and brand reputation for new luxury guest house in Phalaborwa, Bushveld Terrace as well as assisting with the strategy and marketing of a new English/Zulu cook book entitled Pheka Nathi which is due for release later this year.

“We welcome Bushveld Terrace and Jules Stone, author of Pheka Nathi, to our client base and are pleased they see and understand the value a strategic PR campaign can offer to the growth of their businesses. We look forward to building credible brand awareness for them,” said Cindy Evans, PR Director and owner of UrbanHouse Media.

The African Union Commission Selects the Internet Society for the Regional Internet Exchange Points

The Internet Society has announced that it has been selected by the African Union Commission (AUC) for the Regional Internet Exchange Points and Regional Internet Carrier Workshops of the African Internet Exchange System (AXIS) project.

The AXIS project is focused on keeping Africa’s Internet traffic local to the continent by providing capacity building and technical assistance to facilitate the establishment of National Internet Exchange Points and Regional Internet Exchange Points in Africa.

Under the new AXIS contract, the Internet Society will conduct Capacity Building workshops focused on best practices and benefits of setting up Regional Internet Exchange Points and Regional Internet Carriers. The Internet Society will partner with AFRINIC and other organizations in Africa and around the world to conduct workshops in each of the five AUC geographical regions over the next 18 months.

To date, more than 30 workshops have been completed and a number of the countries where these workshops took place are expected to launch their IXPs in the first half of 2014, thus highlighting the sustainable efforts made by AXIS towards significantly changing the interconnection landscape of the entire African continent.

“The award of this contract reflects the success of the Internet Society’s work to date on AXIS, and we are very thankful to the African Union for this recognition and trust,” said Dr Dawit Bekele, Internet Society Regional Bureau Director for Africa. “The AXIS project is instrumental in developing a reliable and sustainable Internet infrastructure in Africa.  The Internet Society has provided technical training in Africa for nearly 20 years, and we are very pleased to continue this important work.”

Who’s making moves

Meropa expands to Eastern Cape

Meropa has strengthened its national footprint with addition of office in Nelson Mandela Bay in Port Elizabeth.

Meropa now has wholly owned branches in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth – making it the most national of South Africa’s PR agencies.

“We have been servicing Eastern Cape-based clients, particularly the Coega Development Corporation  for more than five years already and we have had dedicated resources in this region for most of that time,” says Peter Mann, CE of Meropa. “Until the opening of our office recently, we had kindly been accommodated by Coega. However, the advent of other clients meant that we had to establish our own office.”

 

Meropa has based itself in the city’s creative nexus by taking office space in the newly refurbished Athenaeum, also home of the Little Theatre.

 

Media Moves is published every Thursday. 

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