The Africa Market Research Association (AMRA) Africa Forum is a high-profile event held under the auspices of ESOMAR, the global market research association that brings together the best and brightest market researchers from all corners of the continent to showcase innovative thinking and breakthrough approaches in the industry.

GeoPoll won the coveted ‘Best Overall Paper’ award at the Forum, which was held in Lagos, Nigeria. The presentation was organised by Mike Odebode of GeoPoll West Africa, Tracy Angus-Hammond of Angus Hammond Africa, and Bukola Sowunmi of Unilever CMI. The presentation shared GeoPoll experience, learnings, and expertise in implementing mobile-based qualitative research in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Cote d’Ivoire, an initiative conceptualised by Unilever CMI and executed by GeoPoll and Angus Hammond Africa.

The qualitative data collection project presented at AMRA has been running for six months and has allowed for what many thought was not possible: collecting low-cost and effective qualitative research, remotely, through mobile phones. Typically, qualitative research requires an in-person moderator and a group of focus group participants to meet all together for a length of time, two hours for example.

In order to combat this challenge, Geopoll was able to conceptualise and implement mobile-based chat groups that work around typical limitations of remote qualitative research in Africa. These mobile-based chat groups had a moderator and panel of participants just like face-to-face focus groups, yet the discussion was held through text-based chatting on a mobile phone.

The long timeline of the focus group was particularly unique to the study because the time commitment for quantitative research participants typically is fixed, not flexible like in their mobile-based study. In GeoPoll’s study, participants could chime into the focus group conversation during any free time in their days, which made participation feasible to many more participants.

Participants could be tasked with providing images or videos of their life or experiences. For example, in one of the studies, participants were asked to submit a 2-3 minute video of them cooking an evening meal. The capability to collect videos of this nature brings value to our mobile-based methodology that is not present in face-to-face methods, as all brands know that images and videos are truly worth a thousand words.

Through Geopoll’s mobile-based Market Research Online Communities, or MROCs, they were able to access the inaccessible and truly see into the lives of respondents — which was invaluable to the qualitative research analysis produced as part of this project.

GEOPOLL
www.geopoll.com

Everyone knows their favourite ad – but people seldom think about what new ways there are to promote a brand. That’s the idea behind the Loeries Media Innovation category – to award innovative use of any media platform or even to come up with something that’s never been done before.

Product Media supplier Barron will spearhead a creative competition to find the best design for this year’s official Loeries T-shirt and delegate bags.

‘Product Media is an incredibly powerful marketing tool that offers strong and personalised brand experiences to people and with that an enhanced return on investment for marketing spend,’ said Barron commercial director Michael Salomon. ‘We believe great brands have the ability to tell great stories using Product Media due to its multiple touch points. We exist to uplift brands by giving them unique and even possibly unlikely canvasses on which to tell their stories. This partnership is a perfect fit for our business.’

The Loeries launched its ‘Tell Better Stories’ campaign in February with the aim to inspire brands and creatives to create communications that break out from the clutter. ‘It’s too easy to follow the stereotype. A new narrative that is locally relevant and culturally nuanced opens up a whole new world for innovation. This is all encapsulated in the Loeries’ vision to tell real stories, inclusive stories, locally and culturally relevant stories – but better stories,’ said Loeries CEO Andrew Human.

A good example of media innovation is the Nando’s ‘#rightmyname’ campaign, which won a Gold Loerie in 2018. Every day, South Africans with non-English names are told by spellcheck that their African names are a mistake. Nando’s took spellcheck’s red line, something that usually appears only on computer screens, and transplanted it to the Sunday Times newspaper.

When people picked up the newspaper their initial thought was that the Sunday Times editorial team had made a serious mistake. Just as they were about to voice their frustration they were met with a full-page ad that explained the #rightmyname campaign to correct this. The traditional newspaper was used to highlight a human problem that people usually only experienced in a digital environment – a unique way to use print and which drew massive attention.

More information on the Media Innovation category can be found on the Loeries website and the entry deadline has now been extended to 31 May 2019.

The details of the Barron and Loeries creative competition will be announced soon. ‘We’d love to see creative ideas that push the envelope of what’s possible,’ said Salomon. ‘But I’m sure that we’re up to the task.’

BARRON
www.barron.com

LOERIES 
www.loeries.com

Dana Eitzen, corporate and marketing communications executive at Canon South Africa, states that we should all be taking an action-first approach to big data. While an insights-first approach to data can be interesting, it is almost certainly not the way to generate operational and transformative value for your business.

Change is driven by action. For businesses grappling with their data sets and what to do with them, the best approach would be to consider what they want to achieve first. The future of data analytics isn’t about what you’ve got, it’s about how you use it.

The recent announcement that Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram would be merging their messaging platforms sent data experts into a frenzy, as these big data aggregators take another step closer to becoming giant data aggregators. But are we missing the point? Data itself is not inherently valuable and its future only depends on what we do with it. If, as seems likely, we are we too focused on the mechanics of big data in the modern age (‘collect as much as you can and think of a strategy later’) perhaps we need to look at how we can use data more wisely.

Contrary to popular belief, analysis of data, or mining insights, is only half the story. Insights alone don’t make businesses better. An insight can’t improve your workflows, bolster productivity or free up admin time. Rather than simply analysing the data you have, the important thing is to know what you want to achieve first, so that you can activate insights as soon as they arise.

For example, shipping and logistics company UPS installed advanced telematics on their fleet of delivery vans and tracked metrics like distance travelled, engine idle time and fuel usage. They were looking at how to reduce carbon emissions and increase efficiency in the company’s delivery fleet and began collecting data on their vehicles to work towards a solution. Through better route planning and decreasing the amount of time vans were idling, the project has led to a reduction of 100,000 metric tons of carbon emissions per year. It has also reduced the number of driven miles by 100 million (1), which has a knock-on effect in reducing wear and tear on their fleet.

Unfortunately, examples like these are not as common as they should be given the technology we have access to. A lack of action-oriented focus is already proving a significant business challenge for many organisations and IT leaders. According to Harvard Business Review for example, nearly 70% of companies have made establishing a data-driven culture a priority but only 40% are hitting that goal (2). Findings like these demonstrate just how difficult it is to become data-first, without the correct philosophy attached to it.

British Airways offers an example of how action led data analysis can bring about a real change in how a business operates. The company identified through research that its customers were self-identified ‘busy people’ who get irritated by being presented with irrelevant offers. In a bid to create ‘Know Me’ – a personalised and deliberate loyalty programme that offered much more targeted offers on flights and holidays – it made use of loyalty and online behaviour data and successfully launched the programme a year later. The scheme has been so successful that customers have written to the airline to let them know how pleased they are that British Airways understands their air travel needs so well (3).

Growing your data sets without increasing your data

The good news is that taking this approach to big data doesn’t have to be the sole domain of large corporations. Many platforms exist which can plug into existing data collection tools to allow businesses to action their insights. ClearStory Data, for example, lets businesses compare internal data to publicly available information, allowing them to identify any weak spots and work on them to turn them into strengths (4).

This action-first approach means that small data sets aren’t a hindrance, as organisations can use external tools to tap into external insights (5). By teasing out the relevant pieces of data from a multitude of sources, small businesses ensure that any actions they take are supported with context from a wider business landscape.

Google Trends, for example, lets you analyse internet search activity and Microsoft Azure has open data on everything from agriculture to taxi trip records (6). The effects of this could be far-reaching. Using external data in an actionable way could enable growing enterprises to make predictions on market or customer behaviour, and respond accordingly, ahead of time. An example would be a restaurant using seasonal data trends to predict what their customers will want to eat more of during certain times of the month and increasing their promotions of those foods at those times (7). This action-led approach to the information collected ensures that the insight around what consumers like to eat and when is activated effectively.

This is the next step in the big data revolution for businesses: using internal and external data in an action-first approach, to allow them to grow their data sets, decipher what they want to achieve and how they’re going to achieve it. By operationalising data insight in this way, even the smallest business can benefit from the big data boom.

(1) https://www.zdnet.com/article/big-data-case-study-how-ups-is-using-analytics-to-improve-performance/
(2) https://www.itproportal.com/features/unlocking-the-potential-of-big-data/
(3) https://www.digitaldoughnut.com/articles/2017/march/how-airlines-are-using-big-data
(4) https://www.clearstorydata.com/
(5) https://www.revelx.co/blog/how-external-data-can-help-grow-your-business/
(6) https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2018/02/26/big-data-and-ai-30-amazing-and-free-public-data-sources-for-2018/#7aff196a5f8a
(7) https://www.business2community.com/strategy/predictive-analytics-in-2018-whats-possible-whos-doing-it-and-how-02127016

Primedia Outdoor was nominated as one of the Top 3 Out-of-Home Media Owners for the Technology and Innovation Award at FEPE International’s 60th Anniversary Congress, which took place in Dubai from 1 to 3 May 2019, with the theme being ‘The Fame Game’.

The FEPE International Congress is an essential event for the global Out-of-Home industry, recognising key players and technical developments changing the Out-of-Home landscape.

The three contenders, Exterion Media, Ocean Outdoor and Primedia Outdoor, were given the opportunity to present their technical innovation and for the first time this year, the winner of the FEPE International Technology and Innovation Award was chosen by delegates attending the annual congress.

Showcasing their ‘Immediate Integration of Other Media Platforms with DOOH’, Primedia Outdoor is at the forefront of harnessing new technologies and reimagining how Marketers can effectively engage audiences through their latest technical innovative product offering, Social Wall and Radio-to-Road:

• The Social Wall offering demonstrates the synergy of Social Media and Digital Out-of-Home as an ideal pairing for an interactive and engaging multi-channel campaign — linking live feeds from social media platforms to be displayed onto Primedia Outdoor’s Digital Out-of-Home assets. This fully automated digital technical innovation serves to prove the immediacy and interactive capability of Digital Out-of-Home.

• Radio-to-Road, in collaboration with Primedia Broadcasting, is a first-to-market innovation. This offering is a powerful multi-channel solution that synchronises audio and visual channel to enhance the impact of advertising communication, by delivering both an audio and a visual advert for the same campaign, simultaneously. The synchronised process is fully automated through Primedia’s highly advanced media management system.

‘It is an incredible achievement to have been selected as one of the Top 3 nominees for this year’s Technical and Innovation Award,’ said Dave Roberts, Chief Executive Officer of Primedia Outdoor. ‘It serves to confirm that Primedia Outdoor is on par with global standards for technical innovation. We continuously strive to push boundaries to deliver engaging and memorable Out-of-Home campaigns, fuelled by technology.’

‘We wish to congratulate Ocean Outdoor for being selected as the winner of the Technology and Innovation Award at the 2019 FEPE International Annual Congress. Ocean Outdoor was voted the winner for their ‘Ocean Rescue’ technical innovation. Furthermore, we’d like to thank FEPE International for the opportunity to showcase our initiatives at the congress.

PRIMEDIA OUTDOOR
+27114751419 
jorja@primeoutdoor.co.za
www.primediaoutdoor.co.za

The second Future Fit Networking Event was held on 2 May 2019 at Joe Public United. The event was sponsored by Joe Public, Roco Mamas and Stark Raving.

The event was themed around the concept of being #WokeFit, which took the audience through an immersive experience by telling different pop-up stories in various shapes and forms.

Being woke is an alert to injustice in society, especially racism. People are becoming more aware, interested and informed about themselves as well as supporting brands whose values are aligned with their own.

‘These jam-packed events are there to harness industry thought leaders, trailblazers and mover and shakers who think outside of the proverbial box. We aim to inspire people to reimagine and be inspired so that they can utilise what they learn within their working or personal environment,’ said Carmen Murray, the founder of Boo-Yah! and host of Future Fit Networking Events.

The speakers selected had a dynamic take on the theme. Timothy Maurice Webster of Brain and Brand Science focused on the link between brain power and brand Influence. He is the author of four bestselling books on human and brand behaviour.

Rebone Masemola is a Founder of the Woke Project, a Tedx speaker, BET marketer and was voted Top 8 Youth Wonders in South Africa under the age of 30. She shared the narrative to create a better world that we would all want to live in. She redefined what the idea of what a ‘seat at the table’ looks like and ensures that the next generation grows up in a world that reflects the diverse stories and the realities of people like them. As an activist, Masemola shared real stories and thoughts on what it means to be woke and be more conscious as a brand and an individual.

Tarryn Pickup, Marketing Manager at Joe Public United and non-medical hypnotherapist at The Wellness Space, believes in being a force for good in the world, because when you change yourself, you may, in fact, change the world.

BOO-YAH
(+27 73) 224 6126
carmen@boo-yah.co.za
www.boo-yah.co.za

JOE PUBLIC UNITED
(+27 10) 591 7770
info@joepublic.co.za
www.joepublicunited.co.za