The background 

I got a call from a Vodacom saleswoman in about August 2011, she offered me a new contract for my 3G stick, 2 gigs at R149 pm, plus 2 gigs at some ridiculous time in the morning.  At the time it was a deal.  I signed up.

Then,

Last month, I cancelled my old cellphone contract, I had seen enough, and signed up at Vodacom.  I soon realised that my phone was hamstrung without a data connection so I looked into data bundles.  Hoping to add a gig of data to my phone at the advertised rate of R99 (for a 3G stick) – I was really disappointed to hear that wasn’t an option.  Infact, it would cost R299 to add a gig to my phone contract.

So in summary,

R99 as a stand alone contract, but R299 as a data bundle for my phone.

So I,

took to Twitter, to engage with Vodacom’s customer care team.

The conversation played out below…

Over and above being frustrated with Vodacom’s pricing (which is the same as every other provider) – there’s something about the ethos of social media, and that of multi nationals that clashes – and frankly, misses the mark.

One one hand we have social media – where for the first time consumers have access to personal recommendations, and the transparency those bring.  That is the fundamental of social marketing – all of the PR is cut out, leaving the value offering for all to see.

Historically insurers, mobile operators and banks can comfortably be lumped into the same group – corporations specializing in impossible-to-understand contracts, with more hidden fees than help desk assistants.

And here we have Vodacom, offering quick response customer care (and it is quick).  But the offering remains the same.  You can finally talk to someone… an actual person… but they have no power to help you.  I don’t blame ^CN… he would probably lose his job if he’d said something more along the lines of…”Yeah, its total bull, you’re being charged 3x as much for the same thing”.

The interesting thing, is maybe that’s all I needed.  Sympathetic customer care.  Next year we can look at customer care that can affect the company’s value offering.

Recently, we were happy to read an article written by South African journalist, Jan Vermeulen which was published on the mybroadband website. The article was entitled ‘Top 10 Facebook Pages and Brands in SA.

Cobus’ Facebook fan page is the 10th most liked page in South Africa, coming in at around 265,000 likes (as at April 2012) Not bad, we think, for a guy who hits things with sticks and likes cheese – a lot. However, what is really interesting is to see who Cobus beat to take 10th spot in the coveted ‘Top 10′ position. His page is currently ranked higer than: Prime Circle (Top SA Band), Huisgenoot (Top selling SA Afrikaans magazine), Vodacom (Leading SA Mobile Network), 5FM (Arguably the most popular radio station in SA) and many other popular pages. Just take a look for yourself.

We are working on a few exciting projects together with Cobus at the moment, some of which will be launched in the next few months… we cant say anymore on that, just yet.

In this new realm of digital marketing, brand building and building businesses online, we are excited we get to work with all types of people, even drummers who like cheese and have a few hundred thousand fans.

Enter Heather and her story.

Heather is now a full time counselor at Breath of Life. She talks to literally 100′s of pregnant woman each month who are thinking about aborting their babies. So we wanted to tell Heather’s story.  You see some 30 odd years ago Heather fell pregnant, at age 17, and was thinking about aborting her baby. She eventually decided not to have an abortion and to go through with the pregnancy to have her baby, and although it was tough with many hard consequences, the reward and blessing it was (and is) has been amazing. So that was some 30 odd years ago. Today Heather’s daughter, Donne, is married with two children of her own, and Heather, is a very happy grandmother. If Heather had aborted her baby (Donne) some 30 odd years ago now, Donne, Noah and Jude would not be here today, and we would not be telling this story.

Here are some behind the scenes shots taken at our shoot this week, as well as some screen grabs from the edit we are currently working on.

For all the film geeks out there that want to know what equipment we used during the shoot, here’s the list: Canon 550D’s; Various lenses; Dolly Tracks; Tri-pods; Lights and Softboxes; Zoom H4n (Audio recording); Flycam stabilizer; i7 2.2 GHz Dell Laptop to run the external monitor and remote camera control.

The full film will be out shortly, keep an lookout.

Intervention
Working with the ELIDZ Marketing and Communications department we bench marked international investment promotion websites and developed a content structure which clearly defined the East London IDZ’s features.
The creative department took over designing a website template aligned to the Zone’s corporate identity, careful to engineer a website flow; introducing the Zone, through sector opportunities ending with a call to action.

Result
The finished product is a rich portal into the Zone. Structured around content, the website provides an intuitive, useful promotional tool for the ELIDZ staff – capturing all of the necessary information.

Craig Lodge founded Brands In Trade as a multi-faceted retail consultancy, providing his clients with world class expertise in shopper marketing, retail strategy and integrated communication – to name a few.
Brands in Trade required a face, an identity which captured is positioning and unique offering in a way which made sense to its clients – national brands in South Africa, Africa and abroad.

Intervention:

Together with Craig the strategic team set about developing a brand story for Brands In Trade – the challenge to take an abstract concept and package it into an easily palatable offering.
After a couple of late nights, and much discussion, a concept was agreed upon and the roll out began. One of the key points in Craig’s message is integrated communication; thus the roll out of his own company’s brand across channels had to be perfect.

Design worked on a look and feel for the organisation, incorporating a set of icons to package the various facets of Brands in Trade.

Result:

The final roll out across channels, after a few tweaks, was a great success. Working with the existing developers in Poland, the website navigation was adjusted, and design face lifted. Twitter, Facebook, Google + and other social platforms were branded accordingly. A set of templates for different workshop offerings was developed, allowing for easy duplication in time to come.

Intervention:
To create an experience, we conceptualized a website which included more than just a shopping cart. Ruth has a huge heart for women in South Africa, and people needed to see that. The website includes a blog, called Journey, which is a chronicle of Ruth’s experiences relating to women, and fashion.
On a technical side, the website provides full shopping cart services, interfacing with a payment gateway; Paygate. User activity is tracked, each user’s order history is recorded and cross selling opportunities have been incorporated.

Result:
Once the website went live, we entered into an interesting beta testing phase. The boutique caters for woman of all ages, and while it would probably have been easier to design an online store for tech-savvy teens, we undertook a process of refinement to make the purchase process as intuitive as possible to cater for less confident online shoppers.

Intervention
We conceptualized an idea to connect with suppliers on an emotional level. We used video as the primary tool, and integrated it into a one page website, to which suppliers would be directed. We then penned an email that was sent out personally by Rainer Ruess, the MBSA (East London) Plant Head,  to their suppliers.
We conceptulized, shot, edited, coded and executed this all within a week.

Result
The result exceeded everyone’s expectations, and MBSA was able to increase the money raised for Rally to Read not by 100%, but by 200% on the previous year.

The Eastern Cape Development Corporation approached us for a full, and we mean full, set of collateral for their upcoming Bamboo Symposium.
The symposium highlighted opportunities in the burgeoning bamboo industry, appealing to all stakeholders; government, investors and producers in the province.

Intervention:

Our design department set to work creating a look and feel for all of the collateral, and rolled it out across Billboards, Email invites, Adverts for newspapers and magazines, Posters and conference programs.

Result:

The conference was part of ECDC’s awareness campaign, and over 250 guests enjoyed the 2 day event.

When he did return to work this year (2012) after our holiday break, he could not stop talking about how beautiful the location was with its strange rock formations, dangerous cliffs, crashing waves and ‘oasis’ type pool. We were all again reminded that we do live in a beautiful city with some beautiful spots to hang out and just, be.

So Kyle Shot and edited this video over the holidays and posted it on his own website, but we liked it so much that we decided to show off our video guy’s skills, and the beautiful location that is Bats cave.

The video was shot on two Cannon 550Ds using only the kit lenses, a GoPro, Flycam Nano and a DIY slider.

And lets be honest, theres a lot of pretense in business.

We’ve recently finished a renovation of Cobus Potgieter’s Fan page – using the new format to better tell his story; including photos and significant events along his journey to where he is today.

Where once a brand could deliver a tailored landing page to visitors, now all fans arrive on the brand’s timeline. The timeline is like the kitchen – its where the authentic conversation takes place. It’s not as nice looking as the foyer, or the lounge – but its where you hang out with your close friends, because it’s where theres least pretense.

And lets be honest, theres a lot of pretense in business. There always has been, and it’s made the introduction of social media a tough pill to swallow.

With 800 million reachable clients, spending too much time on the platform everyday… brands can’t not setup shop. But, if you aren’t willing to meet your guests in the kitchen, don’t expect an return invite for dinner.