August is women’s month and South Africa Breweries (SAB) is celebrating with the launch of Bold Brew, a beer that is designed and brewed entirely by women and embodies what it means to be a woman in South Africa today. 

SAB teamed up with five women who are passionate about empowering women and who are passionate about the beer craft to create a special, limited edition, small-batch brew celebrating women in brewing. The beer’s ingredients were also selected by women members of the public via a poll run on SAB’s social media pages.

Pranisha Maharaj SAB and AB InBev’s Corporate Reputation Manager said, ’We wanted to make a beer that embodied the characteristics of strong, independent women. We gave the public a chance to vote for ingredients that would form part of a ‘secret brew’, and then we put the results into the hands of a team of talented women to create both the beer and its packaging.’

#BrewingTheBold

Once the results of the public vote were in, the team chose their ingredients from the shortlist. And when brew day rolled around it was all hands on deck, with the team members joining fellow women from the craft brewing industry lending a hand to get the brewing process started.

A lot of thought went into creating the perfect packaging to reflect the ideals of the #BrewingTheBold project. Ultimately, the design had to reference both the brew and the women behind it. 

‘The icon shows a woman holding up the sun – representing power, life, warmth and unity,’ explained Dearling. ‘It also cues the sun giving life and the warm and toasty caramel flavours of the malt.’ She added that the open ‘B’ represents open-mindedness, while the dynamic geometric shapes indicate women’s stability and strength.

As someone who isn’t directly involved in the beer industry, Haller found the project’s message particularly important. ‘What this project demonstrates for me is that women are relevant in any space, and our preferences and our tastes are relevant in any industry,’ she said. ‘It shows that women can come into industries that they’re not expected in, and still create great work.’

#BrewingTheBold also presented a chance to inspire young women who are just starting out in their careers. ‘SAB’s involvement means that we can reach so many more women than the handful of us in the brewing industry,’ said Elbie Louw – IT profession and homebrewer.

The women behind the beer

The aim of the campaign was to make the beer as broadly representative as possible. The brewing team comprised of women from diverse backgrounds and working in industries ranging from beer brewing to IT, design and filmmaking. Overseeing the process was South Africa’s first black female Brewmaster, Apiwe Nxusani-Mawela, whose company – Brewsters Craft – was also responsible for brewing the beer.

‘I think #BrewingTheBold is an amazing project,’ said Nxusani-Mawela, ‘not only for those within the beer industry, but for women in general. I want young women to believe in themselves, and to know that they can become great brewers, Brewmasters, hop growers, and barley breeders.’

Lynn Wicomb-Leibrandt – External Quality Manager, SAB and AB InBev Africa, ensured the quality aspects of Bold Brew. ‘As a representative of SAB, my responsibility was to support the brewing team to ensure that the customer would receive the best quality product,’ she said.

The beer is available to the public at the SAB World of Beer in Newtown, while stocks last.

SAB 
sab.co.za

Heather Astbury, MD of The Reputation People, says that to view Public Relations (PR) as just another marketing tool is to limit the scope of PR activities to lead generation, customer acquisition and sales. Of course, these things are important, but PR can do so much more.

When times are tough, businesses often cut the PR budget first – and small businesses may not have one at all. After all, PR is just one part of the marketing mix, right? Wrong!

I have seen a number of examples of where short-term sales-driven marketing has damaged the long-term reputation of a business. And once your reputation has been damaged it is time consuming, difficult and costly to recover it – it may even be impossible.

One such example was during the Arab Spring, when I was based in Dubai and working across the region. As the protests in Egypt reached their zenith and people were congregating in Tahrir Square to protest, one well-known American fashion brand decided this was too good a trending social media event to miss. The company rushed in and tweeted that people were flocking to Tahrir Square because of their sale. 

To equate a very serious political movement in a country that was essentially on lockdown – it took me three worrisome days to confirm my colleagues in Cairo were safe – with something as trivial as a clothing sale, showed a lack of understanding of the market and the situation that was staggering. 

As you might imagine, the tweet caused an uproar and for weeks any online search for that company revealed nothing but negative comments. The insensitivity and opportunism of this brand is what I will always associate with it. I had been a customer of this company before, but I haven’t bought from them since. I am sure I’m not the only one. 

This is a clear example of social media channels being run by marketers, whose only thought was about driving short-term sales. They didn’t consider the long-term reputation of the business. Had their social media feed been run by a PR team, this wouldn’t have happened. Why?

PR teams are used to thinking about numerous audiences and messaging that will work for them all. Those audiences encompass everything from investors to shareholders, media to politicians, clients to suppliers, and employees, as well as customers and potential customers. Marketing tends to take a much narrower view and concentrates mainly on existing and potential customers.

I have worked in businesses where PR reported through Marketing, through the CFO, through HR and directly to the CEO. In my experience, the direct reporting line to the CEO is by far the most effective. Perhaps this is because the CEO is the only other role that takes a holistic view of the business and its stakeholders.

The other parts of the business are measured by a narrower set of criteria – for marketing it is usually sales performance, for HR it is often employee engagement scores and in the case of the CFO it is financial performance – but how can you monetise a well written letter to a politician or a slick crisis communications plan? How do you directly compare a positive article in a key media outlet with achieving your sales targets? Employee engagement scores are unlikely to be good without good internal communications. And how do you prove that winning an award translates into more customers?

We all know that these things make a huge difference to a business, but if you only measure success by sales volumes, profitability or employee churn, then you are forgetting the value of your reputation. It is difficult to measure the impact of a good reputation, but it is easy to see the impact of a bad one.

PR is a tool that will help your business communicate the right messages to the right audiences. Good PR should ensure your business is more profitable, but it will also ensure lasting and positive relationships with a whole host of stakeholders – and that could be the difference between real success or the failure of your business. While marketing is important, don’t forget the importance of PR.

THE REPUTATION PEOPLE 
hello@thereputationpeople.com
thereputatitionpeople.com

The Standard Bank Top Women Awards have shortlisted Havas South Africa in the ‘Top Gender-empowered Company – Diversity in the Workplace Award’ category, while Havas CEO, Lynn Madeley, has been shortlisted in the ‘Top Businesswoman’ category for the third consecutive time.

Standard Bank Top Women Awards celebrate businesses and business leaders who advocate for gender parity in South Africa and across the African continent. Over the past 16 years, the awards have created a platform that leads in the recognition of women leaders and gender-strong companies.

Havas South Africa’s team composition sits at over 70% women, with a leadership team of over 80% women and a board of 66% women, all leading and driving the business from all angles. Further, Havas South Africa runs the Havas Academy, a specialist internship programme that is aimed at empowering black women who are looking to get into marketing and communication. Through the Havas Academy, interns get a chance to work across the entire Havas Village’s various discipline and get a thorough understanding of the centrality of meaningful content.

The Standard Bank Top Women Awards recognises organisations and individuals whose efforts are uplifting women in business and society in general. The awards ceremony will take place on 15th August in Johannesburg. Winners will be announced at a gala dinner on the evening attended by business and government leaders, VIPs and members of the media.

Madeley said, ‘It’s really motivating to be recognised for what for us at Havas, is business as usual. The success in our gender-diversity strong team make-up is simply because we had a woman leader, and that cultivated enough of a culture that was not only inviting but also convinced other women to join the team. It’s testament to the fact that an open door for one woman is actually an open door for many women.’

‘The Havas Academy is a great idea of putting our money where our mouth is – also responding to gender issues in the industry by joining in to equip future talent. Our focus on black women speaks to the urgent need for transformation in our industry and the women-focus is a response to the numerous gender gaps that plague many a sector,’ concluded Madeley.

HAVAS SOUTH AFRICA
+27115493600
info@havas.co.za
www.za.havas.com

Eben Esterhuizen, General Manager at OnShelf Pharma, says that with Women’s Month being celebrated in August, he looks at how women are shopping and whether it’s fair to say we’re moving into an age of gender-fluid purchasing.

The clichés are men purchase for speed and women are more motivated by price; men are big online shoppers but women still like something tangible and prefer brick-and-mortar stores. Thanks to online shopping and retailers taking an omni-channel approach, technology appears to be bringing the era of the ‘Mansumer’ to a close.

The Myth of the Mansumer was a survey done by the Future of Commerce who studied 1700 shoppers, questioning them on their shopping experiences. While men and women share similar thoughts about shopping online and customer service in-store, the study found small differences between the genders when it comes to shopping behaviour.

• 66.7% of women are more likely than men to care about being able to buy products online and return them in-store.
• Women are more likely to be swayed by social media before buying than men. ’77% of women will look to social media reviews to validate buying the product,’ according to Crobox. 
• More men than women expect a salesperson to be able to help, both in-store and online.
• 26.4% of women will spend 30 minutes or more on research, as opposed to a slightly larger 32.1% of men.

Overall, the Mansumer findings highlighted women (as well as men) have growing demands with regard to the customer experience. The key take out seems to be that instead of focusing on marketing to women in different ways, make it easy for both genders to ‘get information about brands, products and purchases both online and in-store, via sales associates and technology’.

In his article ‘Gender Targeting: The Differences between Men and Women’, Richard Johnson writes about the physiological differences in the decision-making processes between women and men. This is particularly interesting when he talks about designing an e-commerce site targeting women. 

He believes site design specifically for women should be as follows:

• Messages should be descriptive, using disclaimers and softer words.
• It must end in such a way that it gives the feeling that you understand women and that you will support them.
• Always provide women with the ability to connect and converse in order to make a same-day sale. 
• Utilise Facebook for Business or some other messaging solution to engage female visitors in real-time.
• Men tend not to buy into products that are also targeted at women. This is little to do with the differences between the sexes but rather an effect of gender stereotypes. Unfortunately, men are influenced by a long history of female discrimination.

‘The quickest way to know a woman is to go shopping with her,’ – Marcelene Cox. Clearly there are two schools of thought when it comes to how women shop. SEO and e-commerce experts like Johnson make the differentiations we see above, while others believe we should be moving towards a gender-neutral way of selling. The good news is women and men want the see the same improvements made to their shopping experience. 

In-Store:

• 39% of women and men identified long lines at checkout are their biggest complaint about bricks and mortar shopping.
• 21% found unhelpful sales people the biggest turn-off.
• 52% of women and men are more likely to shop at stores where employees use devices to speed checkout and look up information.

Online: 

• 22% of women and men cited slow delivery as their major online complaint. 
• 20% were worried about security online. 
• 16.7% were put off by slow or difficult to navigate websites. 

‘Gen Z women are coming, and today’s brands should take notice – and take action,’ – Dalton Dorné́, CMO of Elite SEM. Gen Z females are set to outnumber their millennial counterparts in numbers and sales power. How they shop is a blueprint for the future of retail. Here are some key highlights on the stats of Gen Z women shoppers from Business Insider earlier this year: 

• 64.3% Gen Z females have purchased clothing from Amazon in the past six months. 
• 59.1% of Gen Z females are likely to consider buying off-brand/generic goods.
• 47.5% of Gen Z females value ‘free and fast shipping’ as their number one reason for buying clothing.

‘Stop looking at stereotypical gender differences and instead mine data to create a unique, one-to-one relationship with each consumer,’ – DI Reporter. Looking at the statistics I’ve seen, it would be fair to say moving away from gender stereotypes is one key to sustaining a business with the upcoming generation of women shoppers. Some brands have already begun to embody this, as Entrepreneur reports: 

• Make-up brand CoverGirl appointed 20-year-old US internet star James Charles as the brand’s first male ambassador. 
• UK based chain of stores John Lewis has already removed all gender-specific labels for their children’s section. 
• Barbie has introduced boys in their advertisements. 

Gen Z and even more so Alpha Gen consumers will be fluid in the way they shop and gender-based retail generalisations will fall away. Watch this space for an update during Women’s Month 2020.

ONSHELF 
opportunity@onshelf.co.za
www.onshelf.co.za

FCB Africa (Joburg) created a campaign to launch a new limited-edition Toyota model, the Hilux Legend 50, to celebrate 50 years in South Africa. The campaign was conceived by FCB Joburg’s Creative Director Tian Van Den Heever, Art Director Jonathan Wolberg, Copywriter Paul Frade and Digital Content Lead Lucy Holford-Walker.

The campaign incorporates numerous elements including cinema, television, radio, out-of-home, print, digital media, social media and point-of-sale, brochures and launches for dealers.

Toyota South Africa’s advertising manager, Lensha Dlamini, said the key objectives of the campaign addressed increasing sales for Hilux and enhancing the Hilux premium feel. Creating value for customers and assisting in volume retention was also key, as well as generating excitement around the brand, while retaining appeal to Toyota Hilux customers.

‘The longest active model range in South Africa: that’s 50 years and 47 of them as market leader with over one million units sold to date. Toyota South Africa Motors first created a bespoke limited-edition model aptly named Legend 35 in 2004 as a tribute to its success and rich heritage,’ she said. ‘This was followed by the Legend 40 and Legend 45 in 2009 and 2014 respectively. With the calendar rolling over to 2019, the time for a new Legend arrived, to celebrate 50 years of local Hilux. 

‘But we wanted the new limited-edition model to do more than that. It has to work hard for us to drive purchase consideration, maintain high Hilux sales volumes and further entrench the ‘Legend’ sub-brand by driving awareness of the Hilux Legend 50 vehicle,’ said Dlamini.

‘For us, the legendary toughness of Hilux lives in the hands-on experiences of those who drive it – ‘people who do’,’ said Executive Business Director, Reagen Kok. ‘Toyota has always built incredibly tough bakkies, but they’ve become legendary bakkies because of what people have done with them. At a key milestone in the legacy of Hilux, it only seemed appropriate to acknowledge the driver as part of this vehicle’s legendary success.’

This sentiment is expressed not only in the campaign’s pay-off line – ‘The Hilux wasn’t born a legend; it was made one by you’ – but it also features across TVC and the cinema 40-second and 30-second executions, and filters through to all mediums. 

This was also expressed in the radio commercial: ‘If after herding cattle all day you still herd the kids to the bath (Legend!)/If you do the ice run in the middle of a braai (What a legend!)/If the only thing hard about the job is your hat (You Legend!)/If your Hilux’s second coat of paint is mud (Legend! Legend!)’

‘Importantly, Legend 50 is an opportunity to include the driver in the legendary success of Toyota Hilux. Aspirational as ever, we don’t just want people to think, ‘That’s a nice bakkie — I want it’. We want them to feel proud and confident. We want them to connect with our comms, evoking the feeling that: ‘That’s my bakkie. It’s a ‘Legend’ for what it is capable of doing and I’m part of that ‘Legend’ of doing too!’’ added Van den Heever.

FCB AFRICA 
+27115666000
www.fcb.co.za