Media Moves… TheMediaOnline’s weekly round up. Angela Madlala joins Ogilvy & Mather South Africa as talent director. Primedia Unlimited’s Mall Division appoints COO. Kim Taylor joins Go4Word. African Parks appoints Reiner Behrens as executive director. Club Med appoints Saatchi & Saatchi Synergize. Go4word announces account wins. Autotrader drives communications with ONELAN. Fin24 forms new editorial partnership with Alec Hogg’s BizNews. Ads24 welcomes advertisers to Netwerk24.com. SABC announces platinum sponsorship at Promax/BDA Africa 2014. Retroviral moves offices… and goes green too. GTC unveils new brand at JSO 80th birthday celebratory concerto. Hyundai SA to sponsor Rock the Run. Openfield secures Klipdrift’s golden sponsorship of Nedbank Golf Challenge. Connection Telecom celebrates 10 years of market-defining leadership. Sappi launches Typek Triple Green into the market
Who’s moved where
Angela Madlala joins Ogilvy & Mather South Africa as talent director
Abey Mokgwatsane, CEO of Ogilvy & Mather South Africa, has announced that Angela Madlala will be joining the agency as its new group talent director. She replaces the talent role of Lauren Woolf, who is leaving the company to focus on personal endeavours after 13 successful years with O&M.
Madlala joins O&M SA with a solid background in integrated talent management, having occupied senior roles over the past decade at Standard Bank, South African Breweries and, most recently, at Old Mutual, where she was HR executive for its corporate division.
“With her extensive knowledge in managing talent, we believe Angela will make a significant impact on our company, our culture and on our people – the very lifeblood of our business,” said Mokgwatsane.
With a Masters Degree in Industrial Psychology and Pan-African experience in strategic, executive, regional and global levels, Madlala will drive the agency’s talent management strategy across the group’s 16 companies, sustaining and elevating O&M’s reputation as the industry’s university and leadership academy.
Madlala’s appointment is effective from January 2015.
Primedia Unlimited’s Mall Division appoints COO
Primedia Unlimited’s mall division, which houses retail advertising specialist companies Primall Media, MallWorx, the Primedia Lifestyle Group, SourceCRM, Mall Active and Captiv8, has announced the appointment of Danie van Aswegen as its chief operations officer.
A qualified chartered accountant with more than two decades of financial experience, 13 of those spent within advertising agencies, meant Van Aswegen was a natural choice to join the burgeoning team.
“Danie’s keen attention to detail, negotiation abilities, business acumen and his overall managerial skills will be maximised within the Mall Division and we wish him well as he gets stuck in,” said Molefi Moloantoa, CEO of the Mall Division.
Van Aswegen will be responsible for overseeing and managing all financial and operational aspects of the Mall Division and its subsidiaries within the retail, advertising, digital, activation and marketing industries.
Kim Taylor joins Go4Word
Go4Word has a new team member as of this month, Kim Taylor. Kim studied drama at Stellenbosch University, and furthered her studies with an honours degree in media communications and journalism.
Taylor has been in public relations for almost seven years. Her background includes various PR mediums, specialising in sport PR tours. Her portfolio includes the likes of Ryk Neethling and Jake White. Also during her experience with lifestyle launch events and media campaigns for brand names she has worked with celebrities like Steve Hofmeyer, Paul Duncan, Keith Kirsten and Justin Bonello, as well as top chefs, food bloggers and award winning restaurants.
Taylor joins Go4Word as an account manager, bringing on broad range of skills, adding great value to the already dynamic team.
African Parks appoints Reiner Behrens as executive director
Ad man Reiner Behrens has jointed NGO African Parks as its executive director responsible for marketing, communications, fundraising, IT and human resources. He says this is a “new chapter I am looking forward to”.
African Parks is a non-profit organisation that takes total responsibility for the rehabilitation and long-term management of national parks in partnership with governments and local communities. Its approach combines world-class conservation practice with business expertise.
Who’s won what
Club Med appoints Saatchi & Saatchi Synergize
Saatchi & Saatchi Synergize has been appointed as the digital agency for worldwide vacation resorts company, Club Med, in South Africa.
French owned Club Med owns a network of all inclusive resorts around the world in some of the world’s most beautiful locations.
Saatchi & Saatchi Synergize will handle the full digital spectrum of services including all digital creative, SEO, PPC, display, social and analytics for the company.
“We are extremely excited about working with this established brand,” says Saatchi & Saatchi Synergize’s chief marketing officer, Rory Eliot. “Our experience in the Hospitality and travel sectors across all performance based digital marketing made us an appropriate fit for Club Med.”
Go4word announces account wins
Cape Town PR and social media company, Go4Word, has announced their prestigious appointment as traditional and social agency for both Kia ‘80s Rewind Festival and the Absa VUKA Showcase.
The Kia ‘80s Rewind Festival is set to take audiences back to a colourful era filled with neon outfits, big earrings and most of all, classic ‘80s music. This is a one-night only event, taking place in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. The Kia 80s Rewind partners with Jacaranda FM, Heart FM, East Coast Radio and VH1 to give die-hard 80’s fans the night of their life.
In keeping with Africa’s unique strengths, the Absa VUKA Showcase is a three day event at Wembley Square, Cape Town (from 20 – 22 November 2014) where the Vision, Taste and Sound of Africa is celebrated, along with afro-optimism lifestyle and products. Sponsored by Absa, the showcase is not only a display of Africa’s talent, but presents a platform for the promotion of new business opportunities and entrepreneurial growth.
Autotrader drives communications with ONELAN
Autotrader is the premier site in the UK to buy and sell new and used cars with over 350 000 cars online. With over 11.5 million unique users every month, the company continuously strives to make customers lives easier by deploying the best in digital developments.
At its new office in Manchester, Autotrader wanted to communicate brand awareness and company values to all employees, provide real time monitoring to its squads across Product and Technology, and provide access to KPI and business data to different departments. It also wanted to communicate promotional messaging to visitors (Customers & Suppliers) and enhance productivity, process workflow and employee engagement.
ONELAN’s solution was chosen by Autotrader for its simplicity of use, flexibility with signage and touch in a single platform, and the access to managed services for creative and technical expertise of the platform in the shape of onemedia.
Who’s making moves
Fin24 forms new editorial partnership with Alec Hogg’s BizNews
Fin24 has announced it has formed a partnership with Biznews.com, the established and successful news platform founded by renowned journalist Alec Hogg. www.fin24.com/biznews went live last week and includes unique financial, business and lifestyle news created daily by the award-winning Biznews.com editorial team.
“We are excited about this partnership. Biznews.com, under the stewardship Alec Hogg, has an exceptionally high standard of journalism and its content spans topics of massive interest to our readers,” said Fadia Salie, editor of Fin24:
Fin24 boasts a large, loyal audience, which allows for partnerships that offer readers great content and gives partners enormous value. “For now the hub will contain three pieces of news content a day but I anticipate that it is going to be well received and we look forward to its growth,” adds Salie.
Hogg, founder and publisher of Biznews.com, echoes this sentiment. “A key part of our strategy is the creation of smart partnerships with mutually beneficial results for the parties. This is the first step in what we expect will become a deeper relationship with Fin24. For now the partnership gives us the ability to showcase Biznews.com‘s high quality audio, video and text content, which we are confident, will add to the Fin24 user experience. We will be alert to pursuing opportunities to grow the partnership in the months and years ahead.”
As part of the partnership, The SpaceStation, South Africa’s largest digital media sales agency, will be preparing commercial packages that speak to Fin24 and Biznews.com readers.
Ads24 welcomes advertisers to Netwerk24.com
For the past month Beeld, Die Burger, Volksblad, and Rapport have no-longer had their own websites, but have provided outstanding content to Netwerk24, which now serves the Afrikaans reader market with national as well as local news.
The focus of Netwerk24, like the group’s Afrikaans newspapers, will be to offer readers the best stories, videos, and photographs, from news to sport and entertainment, in the language closest to their hearts.
The same journalists, columnists, and opinion formers who became household names in the Afrikaans newspapers over the years, will create Netwerk24’s content. Readers can therefore look forward to more from the pens of writers like Hanlie Retief, Jan de Lange, Louis de Villiers, Adriaan Basson, Erika Gibson, Waldimar Pelser, Blouwillem, Charles Smith, and Marida Fitzpatrick. Netwerk24 will also cultivate its own new, young voices.
“Ads24 would like to congratulate Liesl Pretorius, who has been appointed as the editor of Netwerk24, previously City Press’s digital editor,” says Tania Barzu, head of Trade Marketing and Strategy at Ads24.
Netwerk24 is not like other news websites, merely a collection of news stories that you can find elsewhere on the web, but a platform that will supply unique content of outstanding quality to the Afrikaans community.
Apart from the latest news reports, videos, photographs, interactive graphics, and news games, Netwerk24 will make the most of the latest digital possibilities that a website can offer. In addition, there are in-depth discussions and analyses, to give context to daily affairs.
SABC announces platinum sponsorship at Promax/BDA Africa 2014
The SABC has announced its platinum sponsorship at Promax/BDA Africa. The public service broadcaster was one of the inaugural sponsors of Promax/BDA Africa in 2006 and has since strengthened its partnership with the organisers of this prestigious event. This year’s event takes place on 21 November 2014 at The Maslow Hotel, The Ballroom, in Sandton
The SABC’s platinum sponsorship of Promax/BDA Africa 2014 includes sponsoring the keynote speaker (Michaela Angela Davis) as well as the PROMAX Muse and BDA Isis Awards ceremony.
This year’s theme ‘Evolution’ at the PromaxBDA Africa conference will look at new ways to get the message out into ever-broadening and fragmenting world.
“As the largest broadcaster in South Africa, it is imperative that the SABC holds a position of leadership in all relevant Industry events such as Promax/BDA Africa 2014,” says SABC spokesman, Kaizer Kganyago.
Retroviral moves offices… and goes green too
Retroviral Digital Communications has moved into new offices – but in typical Retroviral style, there’s nothing ordinary about the agency’s new space: the building is the first small commercially viable building in South Africa to achieve a Six Green Star SA rating from the Green Building Council of South Africa (GBCSA). This rating tool sets standards and benchmarks for green buildings, and enables an objective assessment of their impact, or lack thereof, on the environment.
According to Retroviral co-founder Murray Legg, the reasons for the move into the new office space in Sandton, Johannesburg are twofold. “We believe in doing good for the world as much as we believe in doing good business,” he says. “We needed to move into bigger space to accommodate our rapidly growing team, and we chose this building because it made commercial sense, as well as being a smart step to protecting the planet.”
The building is at Upper Grayston Office Park Block F. solar energy. Much of the building’s structure was built using recycled material, including the steel used as reinforcing, which was recovered from the original site and recycled.
GTC unveils new brand at JSO 80th birthday celebratory concerto
GTC, one of the country’s leading financial advisory businesses, unveiled a new integrated corporate brand identity to key clients and distinguished guests, at the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra’s (JSO) 80th Birthday celebratory concerto.
The new brand unites the group’s various divisions and companies with one consolidated look and feel, while continuing to recognise GTC’s 23 year heritage and historical milestones.
The JSO celebrated its 80th Birthday as the 33-person orchestra performed alongside the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra at the Linder Auditorium. In the JSO’s ongoing commitment to developing musical talent in South Africa, eight young soloists performed classic concertos with the JSO.
“As proud sponsors of the JSO, GTC is privileged to share in the orchestra’s 80th birthday celebrations today, while we simultaneously reveal our own distinct identity,” says Gary Mockler, Group CEO at GTC. “We specifically chose to share our launch with the JSO, because our organisation takes inspiration from the orchestra today as all the GTC teams and divisions unite into a single complementary performance, one that has been more than two decades in the making.”
Hyundai SA to sponsor Rock the Run
Hyundai South Africa has announced that it will be extending its sponsorship of the hugely successful Rock the Run event for a further two years.
The first Hyundai Rock the Run was officially introduced earlier this year with over 6 000 participants taking to the Sandton streets. The second event returns to Mushroom Farm Park on Sunday, 1March 2015, where live music experiences will once again be woven into this unique road running race, culminating in a massive after-party concert, featuring some of SA’s biggest musicians and bands.
“We are extremely happy to be extending our association with this unique race. It is an integrated sports and lifestyle event that appeals to the whole family – incorporating music and healthy activity into one action-packed fun filled day. We are very proud to be involved with bringing this caliber of event to the people of Gauteng,” said Hyundai SA marketing manager, François Marais.
Openfield secures Klipdrift’s golden sponsorship of Nedbank Golf Challenge
Klipdrift has signed a three year deal as a Nedbank Golf Challenge single-hole sponsor from 2014 due to take place at the prestigious Gary Player Golf Club in Sun City. As one of South Africa’s most esteemed annual events on the sporting calendar, the Nedbank Golf Challenge has drawn some of the sport’s most celebrated local and international stars to its course.
The sponsorship, which was successfully negotiated by sponsorship marketing agency, Openfield, on behalf of Distell, provides an opportunity for Klipdrift to align their premium offerings with the prestige of the event, adding to the already existing affluence of the brand. The Nedbank Golf Challenge provides exceptional local and international exposure, which provides a platform for consumers to engage with the Klipdrift brand.
Over-and-above enjoying sponsorship rights such as exclusive advertising for their products, Klipdrift aims to utilise the sponsorship plan developed by Openfield to drive consumer loyalty and expand opportunities for consumption.
Sappi launches Typek Triple Green into the market
Sappi Southern Sappi has had a unique trade presenter produced by PocketMedia Solutions to launch its new product, Typek Triple Green, into the market and to generate awareness that this product has replaced Typek 50% Recycled.
Sappi’s Typek A4 office paper is a trusted brand among many home and corporate users. In an effort to continually innovate and improve its products, the company has replaced Typek 50% Recycled with Typek Triple Green.
The offering is for the more environmentally aware consumer. All of the company’s products are manufactured with care for the environment in mind and by adding this product to the range, Sappi has an alternative offering that still performs to the necessary requirements.
The trade presenters were distributed to paper merchants, stationers and retailers and combined with an email marketing campaign to generate awareness around the new product offering.
BDO South Africa and RWI merge
BDO South Africa has announced the conclusion of its merger with RW Irish – Alliott Inc., which comes into effect as of 1 January 2015. RWI is a diverse team of seasoned business professionals providing a full suite of business support services, including audit to a largely entrepreneurial client base.
The merger aligns with BDO’s global strategy of increasing the size of its business in key areas, maximising its offerings across the country by extending its capabilities and ultimately adding more value to its clients and attracting new ones. “We are pleased with this partnership and the value that it will add to our clients and employees,” says Mark Stewart, CEO of BDO South Africa. “It supports our global strategy and will enable BDO to deliver on more sectors through our full suite of expertise.”
Connection Telecom celebrates 10 years of market-defining leadership
Connection Telecom, the pioneering leaders of enterprise Voice-over-IP (VoIP) communications, celebrates a decade in business this month. From a standing start in 2004, the company took the lead in the key hosted segment of the South African enterprise telephony market in 2013, according to BMI-T’s PBX and Emerging Voice Systems Market Study. Four short years before, it had launched its hosted IP PBX service, Telviva.
Over the entire 10 years of its existence, growth has been steady, with a period of very strong growth following the Telviva launch – from a zero base to approximately 35 000 extensions.
Founding director Rob Lith says the company’s performance closely mirrors the evolution and growth of the local market itself. BMI-T’s report indicates that, even as the overall PBX market began to decline in that year, the hosted segment was one of only two to show significant growth, validating the company’s vision.
Today, Connection Telecom serves a wide spread of household brands, including Intercape, BSG, Earth Child, FNB, Living Your Brand, Hire Resolve, Momentum Investment Managers, Old Mutual Finance, Takealot and Mr Delivery, Yuppiechef, Engen, Prudential and Servest.
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