South African Digital Space In 2010

Tim Bishop, CEO of digital and mobile agency Prezence South Africa, comments on the South African digital space in 2010.

Mobile accessibility
Africa-wide mobile internet accessibility and the availability of bigger, better and affordable internet capable phones makes Mobile the number one contender for brand engagement and marketing budgets in 2010.

Brands who consider their website a great asset must have a comprehensive mobile accessible version, and those that are only tapping into digital more recently need to choose their digital agency carefully to ensure full cross platform expertise.

M-commerce is now a reality through 3d secure and mobile payment platforms such as Mowaly and mimoney and is already being used successfully in South Africa and around the continent.

Increased bandwidth will provide a greater choice for South African internet users to explore and interact outside their borders.
With consumer expectations growing along with their expanded choice of where to spend their time and money, brands need to ensure that each click and interaction is relevant, rewarding and worthwhile.

Relevance of the creative and concept to the local market needs to outweigh richer / much higher budget creatives worldwide. The competition is on!

3D interactive environments and ecommerce
Prezence are developing highly efficient web 3d modelling engines enabling low bandwidth immersive 3d environments via the web.

This will help change the face of E-commerce stores and interactive experiences for those brands wanting to differentiate and deeply engage their customers across digital channels.

End2EndCRM - Keeping track of the ever-changing consumer
Prezence will certainly be pushing brands to concentrate more effort in the profiling and understanding of their consumers so as to have better insights into adding value to and enriching their lives.

There will be longer term strategies for digital brand engagement, with constant relevant value-add and rewards to users encouraging extended engagement and profiling (as opposed to stop-start campaigns always starting from a zero base).

Brand strategies will be tuned to adapt and fit conveniently into the consumer’s individual social sphere and lifestyle choices creating 'Tailored Aspirations'… I didn't think I needed that - but it fits!
Giving users control over how brands communicate with them and being able to enhance their overall brand experience through profiling is paramount. Data is king!

ROI- Pressure on ad-spend and higher return expectations across multiple channels will sort the men from the boys.
Multi-access channel campaigns across web and mobile need proper central control and management expertise for true seamless experiences and consistent brand interaction.  Choose carefully, ensure your digital agency is highly proficient in mobile as well as online (there are very few that actually are).

There is a huge difference between just having a 'mobile' version of your digital properties versus developing  ‘great mobile experiences'. Getting this right will reap dividends for brands in the long run.

Cut through the clutter in (Not so) Social media - The new spam
Niche groups and selective networks will become more popular with relevance and value being the key driver.

Sharing and Social networks become more established as the new way of disseminating info (replacing email) - the clutter and noise increases.

Networks become less social as companies and spammers 'intrude' forcing people to get more selective. There becomes a much greater need for brands to understand, profile and consistently add value to consumers lives in order to be accepted on their ‘friend' list.

Flash is no longer a swear word!
Being able to create rich brand expanding experiences like no other… Flash has always maintained the support of the major web players and is finally deeply searchable and indexable. With Flash also moving onto more prolific mobile devices such as the iphone, consolidated single creatives are now able to span across many access channels. This will see ROI increase dramatically and the development and management costs decrease.

Cross browser issues are non-existent and through very efficient build techniques by specialists such as our Flash team, highly efficient, low bandwidth delivery has always been possible.

Social commerce and building Facebook's brand?
Facebook the new Amazon? Facebook the new company/brand website? Facebook the new email/chat? Facebook the new brand face? Facebook the new life planner? Facebook the new recruitment tool?

Monopoly anyone?

It is incredible how marketing departments are spending huge amounts of money on helping to inadvertently build other brands such as Facebook. I cannot see the logic in driving people to a Facebook page which the brand does not own, have limited content control over, or have any access to the user data. All this as opposed to driving users to the brand's own properties where proper CRM, ownership, relevant engagement and real differentiation of your brand can take place.

2010 will hopefully be a realisation phase where brands will wake up and realise that their investment into promoting their 'Facebook page' will culminate in very little long term return. They will not benefit from knowing or owning any of those consumers at all, but instead have helped to build Facebook's dominance. Instead, brands should concentrate on developing their own engagement strategies and properties and use the likes of Facebook as a disposable communication channel to get them there... if Facebook (or any other similar platform) disappeared or lost favour tomorrow, it should not matter any more than if a publication that a brand regularly advertised in closed down. Use it wisely and don’t put all of your eggs there!

The Business world versus Social media connundrum
Businesses wanting to exploit using social media... but in turn limiting their employees use (especially in SA where the majority of Internet access is from work). How much is social media costing business in SA I wonder, it would make for scary reading and possibly outweigh the cost to the economy of strikes or fraud?

Big Brand shift to 'specialist digital agencies'
The ‘one agency’ model for big brands is declining and we are starting to see the shift to 'specialist digital agencies' to handle digital strategy and advanced executions. Fast, creative and nimble, the specialist digital agency offers comprehensive services and expertise to bring brands to life in the digital space.

Large traditional agencies building digital teams internally are unavoidably more ‘reactive’ and find it difficult to innovate and be at the cutting edge unlike us... The Digital industry changes hourly and it is our job to be right there. Proactive ‘traditional agencies’ are recognising this and plugging into companies such as Prezence to offer their client base cutting edge through-the-line campaigns. 2010 will see a significant shift in this direction especially in the mobile space where our advancements are unrivalled.