The Board of the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) has appointed Zukiswa Potye as Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Potye holds a Postgraduate Diploma and a Master of Commerce Degree in Project Management from Cranefield College; a Management Advancement Programme (MAP) from Wits University; certificates in applied risk management from Unisa and in Business and Life Coaching. 

Potye’s work experience spans more than 27 years in both the private but mostly public sector. Previous to joining the Government Communications (GCIS), she was a Programme Coordinator at the National Electricity Regulator (now NERSA), and a Director for Monitoring and Evaluation at Blue IQ. 

Ndivhuho Norman Munzhelele, Chairperson of the MDDA Board commented on the appointment, ‘Potye was selected from a pool of some 65 applicants, based on, amongst others, her knowledge of and strategic vision for the community media sector; her commitment to good governance, fairness and transparency; and her ability to engage with people and create lasting partnerships aligned to the mandate of the MDDA.’

Potye took over as Acting CEO following a period of considerable turbulence at the Agency. In this role, she commenced the process of stabilising the agency, as well as introducing a number of important initiatives, critical to the sustainability of the MDDA and the community media sector. These included a grant funding policy for the effective and transparent selection of media projects for MDDA support. 

In addition, she implemented a proactive strategy to lobby potential and past MDDA funders for support of the agency’s work, as well as sought out partnerships with sector stakeholders to pool together resources for the survival of the sector. 

‘Potye is therefore tasked with continuing her work in turning the entity around and bringing the much-needed stability to the agency. Together with her Executive team, her immediate priority is to build a coherent and high performing team, equipped to provide meaningful leadership to a community media sector that is facing an exciting but also potentially disruptive environment, brought about by the onset of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,’ concluded Munzhelele.

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MEDIA DEVELOPMENT & DIVERSITY AGENCY
+27116431100
mdda.org.za

PRISM Young Voices was launched in 2017 and is a platform offering mentorship and skills development in partnership with the PRISM Awards and the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA).

10 young people will be given an opportunity to be mentored by South Africa’s top public relations and communications professionals during the 2020 PRISM Awards, in an effort to inspire and upskill them.

Candidates need to be creative, formidable and an impressive young person in the public relations and communication industry. PRISM Young Voices Founder, and Convenor of the PRISM Awards, Palesa Madumo, said the training that the young judges will receive will be instrumental to their careers and serve as guidance going forward.

‘Industry experts have a responsibility to mentor young minds, who will plan to forge a career in public relations and communications. This will give ten top candidates the opportunity to learn from industry experts, receive peer-to-peer training and receive a youth-focused perspective on competing campaigns,’ she said.

Applicants can be students or professionals with at least two years’ experience in the public relations and communication environment, or be actively involved in the industry. One of the ten young judge slots will be awarded to a final-year student entrant studying public relations or communication.

This is an opportunity for a young professional to gain insight into the industry and jumpstart their career. All entrants are required to submit a 500 word motivation on why they should be selected OR submit a minute-long motivation video to info@prismyoungjudges.com.

Entrants for PRISM Young Judges must:
• Be between the ages of 21 and 30.
• Have at least two (2) years’ experience in the public relations and communication environment OR be actively involved in the industry in one way or another OR be a final-year student studying public relations or communication.• Reside in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal or the Cape.• Write 500 words motivation on why you should be selected OR send a minute-long video version.
• Tweet about your entry tagging and follow @theprismawards. Use the hashtags #PRISMYoungVoices and #PRISMAwards20.

Entries close on 7 February 2020 at 00h00.

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PRISM AWARDS  
www.prism-awards.co.za

The Loeries Board has appointed Preetesh Sewraj as its new CEO from 1 April, after Andrew Human, who served as CEO for 15 years, stepped down in 2019.

Sewraj is an experienced business leader and innovator and has worked with major brands including Unilever, Samsung, Nedbank and Vodacom. He successfully launched Product of the Year in South Africa, the world’s largest consumer-voted award for product innovation. Since its launch in 2008, it has helped millions of consumers identify great innovation that adds value to their lives.

Sewraj has featured regularly on CNN, SABC News, The Sunday Times, Destiny Man, SAFM, Channel Africa and other media platforms. He is the co-host of Power Edge on Power 98.7’s Power Lunch and has spoken at several conferences including TEDx Soweto, TEDx Johannesburg, the GIBS Innovation Conference, the PIA Idea Design Conference, Seamless Retail and the Wired Women Conference.

Sewraj said, ‘I look forward to leading the Loeries in its mission to unearth and share great examples of creativity and innovation, as well as ensure deeper engagement with organisations across the region that are aligned to supporting this goal.’ Creativity is the cornerstone of great innovation and the Loeries is uniquely positioned to help stimulate greater innovative thinking and execution across the Middle East and Africa. The changing communication needs of consumers means that the Loeries truly is the strongest source of insight into how consumer thinking is evolving across the region and what both brands and agencies need to do to ensure that they develop a deep understanding of these ever-changing needs.’

‘I want to ensure that we break down barriers between the countries in our region to facilitate collaboration that creates opportunities for new thinking, greater conversation and respect for the human experience, regardless of where it is experienced,’ Sewraj said.

Loeries chairperson and Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy Cape Town, Tseliso Rangaka said, ‘We are really excited by the appointment of Sewraj as our new CEO. He brings deep experience in the awards and events space, coupled with a fresh perspective on our industry. This, combined with a passion for creativity and boundless energy, are exactly the qualities we need at the head of the Loeries table.’

During his tenure, Andrew Human grew the Loeries into the largest celebration of creativity across Africa and the Middle East. He led the launch of multiple new initiatives, including the Creative Future Scholarship, whereby learners from disadvantaged backgrounds are successfully integrated into the industry. 

Human is confident in handing over to Sewraj and believes he has ‘exactly the right combination of skills, motivation and energy to take the Loeries forward’. Entries for Loeries 2020 open on 3 February.

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To enter the Loeries or for more information, visit loeries.com.

In partnership with Brave Group, the Nedbank IMC is calling on youngsters (25 and under) to put on a brave face and tell marketers how they could make their marketing more youth relevant.

‘It’s all about the youth. We need to listen, encourage, connect and uplift.’ This has been Dale Hefer’s mantra since taking over as Nedbank IMC CEO in 2018.

‘Brave Group, one of South Africa’s leading black-owned, independent advertising groups, is on a journey to connect with youth, and therefore our clients, better. This partnership further demonstrates our commitment to developing youth within the group and society as a responsible corporate citizens,’ said Brave Group CEO, Karabo Songo. 

‘We believe that Millennials and Gen Z are changing the course of brands, industry and the world. However, for many brands in SA, the question of how you pin down true, genuine African content with global or Pan-African brands, still remains. Simply put: great story telling,’ he added.

‘The theme of the 2020 conference is ‘Marketing works. Work it’ and we want youngsters to tell us how to work it,’ said Hefer. 

The initiative calls on anyone who is 25 or younger to simply take a video of two minutes or less telling brands what they could do differently. They should then post their video to Twitter tagging @IMCCONF, @TheBraveGroupSA and #NedbankIMC2020. 

For more details and terms and conditions, entrants can click here. The three top entries will win tickets to the conference and their pitches will be screened on the day to over 600 of South Africa’s top marketers as well as those viewing the conference livestream on Facebook.

This year’s conference boasts international marketing game-changer Fernando Machado, Global CMO of Burger King, and Google Africa’s CMO, Mzamo Masito.

‘We are all for the youth and look forward to hearing from them first-hand,’ added Khensani Nobanda, Nedbank’s Group Executive Marketing and Corporate Affairs.

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NEDBANK IMC CONFERENCE   
www.imcconference.com

Lisa Smith from Wordstream looks at the best marketing strategies for 2020.

Personalise marketing messages

Peter Wilfahrt, managing director of digital agency Versandgigant, said marketers should personalise every single message in 2020 by digging into analytics and understanding demographics, affinity categories and in-market segments. More on that in a moment.

‘Only very few brands execute a personalised messaging strategy and we’re not talking about adding the first name to your email greeting. Really dig into your prospect’s mind and discover what they fear, wish and want.’

While Brock Murray, COO of digital marketing agency seoplus+, agrees consumers should be made to feel special, he argued that automation is the way to go because it allows advertisers to create ads that dynamically change based on whoever is searching. And, Murray said, results show consumers want this type of customisation.

Refresh your content

Cyrus Yung, co-founder of SEO company Ascelade, said updating old content is a strategy that has served Ascelade well as Google has a freshness ranking factor and most sites eventually see content decay. ‘They have old articles that have ranked well previously and have attracted backlinks, but the search traffic for that particular article is on a downward trend,’ he said.

Mark Webster, co-founder of online marketing education company Authority Hacker, said 2019 was the year Authority Hacker focused on this tactic of refreshing older content instead of just pumping out new, high quality content.

‘After some testing, we found that making simple updates and tweaks and, most importantly, changing the date of the article to represent the newest revision [made] our rankings instantly [jump] up. It’s no secret Google prefers fresh content but we had not anticipated this to be such an easy win.’

Data should drive creative

According to Natalia Wulfe, CMO of digital marketing agency Effective Spend, platforms like Google and Facebook are taking control more control of audience targeting as they simultaneously move away from manual bidding capabilities. Meanwhile, their algorithms have become adept at understanding which ad images and copy will drive the best click-through and conversion rates.

‘With these shifts, we’ve seen creative emerging as a serious performance driver, carrying equal weight to other key drivers like placement selection and audience targeting. We analyse the performance metrics of existing creative, identify where the gaps are, and then design new creative that directly impacts those poor performing metrics,’ she added. As a result, Effective Spend overhauled its creative design process to incorporate a data-first approach.

Automated email marketing campaigns

Maciej Baranowski, manager of customer engagement at career advice website ResumeLab, said ResumeLab started automating its email marketing campaigns in 2019, which was a ‘resounding success’. That’s because the company can send almost four times as many newsletters, which more than compensated for the initial drop in conversion rates.

‘Ideally, we want both, but math tells us that the tradeoff was more than worth it and we’ve been surging ever since,’ he said. Automated email also allows for better customisation with A/B testing, infographics, sequences, time zones and CTA buttons, as well as data-backed optimisation.

Get ready for voice technology

Continuing a trend from prior years, voice search was once again on marketers’ minds in 2019. That includes chatbots, which Paige Arnof-Fenn, CEO of marketing consulting firm Mavens & Moguls, noted cut costs and convert visitors into leads by answering FAQs, as well as optimising for voice queries and long-tail keywords.

Arnof-Fenn said the latter will be key to maximise marketing and advertising opportunities via voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant. ‘I predict that the brands that perfect the branded skill with more customer-friendly [and] less invasive ads are going to win big,’ she added.

Use more video 

Stuart Leung, vice president of marketing for vaping brand Breazy, said that videos forge stronger bonds with consumers, which, in turn, makes them more likely to purchase a product. Options include tutorials, testimonials and behind-the-scenes footage. Video remained a popular digital marketing tactic in 2019, and it’s a must marketing strategy for this year, too.

Chris Savage, CEO of video software company Wistia, said Wistia has paid close attention to the rise of streaming platforms and has seen more and more businesses take a page from the Netflix playbook, creating longer-form original content to build brand affinity. That’s why Wistia created its own late-night-style talk show, Brandwagon.

‘Throughout the series, I talk with some of the top minds in the marketing world to learn the secrets behind some of their biggest successes. Plus, we welcome some unexpected special guests and our team even buys a ’91 wagon to transform into the ultimate Brandwagon along the way,’ he said.

Podcasts

Host or join, Digital marketing consultant Ryan Scollon called podcasts ‘a real breakthrough in 2019’ with a surge of shows in digital marketing in particular. Marketers can appear as guests on established podcasts or start their own, both of which Scollon said offer huge benefits with few downsides.

‘Podcasts are a great way of building a solid audience that returns every week without having to have your face in front of the camera. It’s also a great way for repurposing content that you may already have on your blog,’ he said.

Stacy Caprio, founder of Accelerated Growth Marketing, said appearing on podcasts has been one of her most effective marketing strategies of 2019 because it has driven site traffic and brand awareness.

Prioritise local SEO

Dan Rice, marketing manager at recruiting firm Talent Locker, said that the most effective strategy in 2019 was optimising and prioritising Google My Business, the free tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including search and maps.

‘We have used this as part of a wide-ranging digital marketing campaign designed to raise awareness of the brand and brand name. Through steadily producing posts, updates and actually helping drive people to our Google My Business listing, we have been getting strong results. It doesn’t just appear to be helping local SEO, it is also highly significant in driving searches on brand names, too.’

For more tips, visit www.wordstream.com

YouTube has appointed Alex Okosi as managing director of emerging markets for YouTube in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Okosi will be responsible for running YouTube’s business and partnership teams across emerging markets in EMEA including Russia, the Middle East, North and sub-Saharan Africa. He will report to the head of YouTube EMEA, Cécile Frot-Coutaz. Based in the London office, Okosi will start in April 2020.

Okosi said, ‘YouTube is a game-changing platform that plays an increasingly important role in our lives today through the dynamic content and innovation that it delivers. I am very excited to be joining Frot-Coutaz’s leadership team to continue empowering creators and elevating value for viewers and partners across the region.’

Frot-Coutaz, head of YouTube EMEA said, ‘I look forward to welcoming Okosi to our YouTube EMEA leadership team. He brings a wealth of experience in the content industries and has a track record for building businesses and audiences in established and new markets. Alex will be leading our existing teams in Russia, sub-Saharan Africa, Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa to drive further expansion in these key markets.’

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YOUTUBE
youtube.com