To become globally competitive, South Africa’s marketers have to be innovative, argues Hunt Lascaris TBWA director Paul Bannister
The poor state of the rand is a reminder of the strength of incoming competition. Foreign competition’s marketing budgets are more powerful as they are backed by a much stronger dollar.
Marketing budgets for global brands targeting the South African market have arguably increased by about 25% in recent months.
The strength of incoming competition is demonstrated by multimillion rand marketing investments from P&G and Samsung over the past few years. It is therefore difficult to out-spend competitors with dollars and yen in their pockets.
The smart alternative is to out-think them. And the best rand-hedge is innovation and creative thinking, which makes the burning question of South African marketing all the more crucial: Where have all the visionaries gone? Without them we will never be able to outsmart our competitors whose pockets are bulging.
Skip back a generation and the movers and shakers of South African business were far-sighted marketers – — like Anton Rupert and Albert Wessels.
But today’s marketing drives are not innovative, except for a few. The local companies which still appear to be market-driven and have a brand vision are Nandos and BMW. Nashua has a “what if” philosophy that keeps it permanently innovative and Standards Bank’s Accolades programme shows a refreshing willingness to break new ground in a normally conservative market segment.
But these exceptions do not detract from the local industry’s long-standing norms of “borrowing ideas” from abroad. South Africa’s period of national introspection lasted 30 years and you can’t remain an inward-looking loner for three decades without becoming disoriented.
During this period of isolation, many companies looked overseas only to borrow ideas. The lack of real competition at home meant concepts could be cloned without adaption to the South African market (sometimes down to the brand name — for example, Toys R Us).
Priorities were short term and nailed to the bottomline. After all, if the future was grim to non-existent, why bother?
In this environment, marketing degenerated into brand accounting. It was a short-term function — primarily selling! Indifference to long-term brand health was encouraged by worrying job mobility in marketing departments nationwide. On-the-job experience entrenched bad habits. Job-hoppers changed places with business as usual functionaries who often had one eye on the current quarter and the other on their retirement date.
South Africa’s education system produced marketing entrants who had been conditioned during 12 years of schooling and three years of university to accept the status quo and not ask irritating questions.
Problems intensified in the Eighties as many of those who still asked questions got tired of waiting for answers and emigrated.
Those left behind found themselves holding the line — watching posts and avoiding risks. Marketing departments in some companies became almost a backwater. The best and brightest were doing financial sums or working on corporate downsizing to reduce costs or installing new computer systems to increase efficiency.
A risk-averse corporate culture seeped into the marketing function and has yet to seep out. Early adoption of affirmative action might have introduced new blood and new ideas.
Unfortunately, progress has been tardy. A catastrophe is in the making, especially for companies which hold market leadership by default because real competition is lacking. The Americans are coming, the Europeans and the tigers from the Pacific Rim. As South Africa re-enters a global economy, local companies will find themselves facing aggressive marketers who invest heavily in their brands and refuse to play by yesterday’s rules.
They are closer to new media and technology trends. They are not hobbled by past misconceptions and smug assumptions. If they have direct knowledge of a market, they invest in research, and in the local people who have the knowledge and skills to give them an edge. Strangely, similar investments are avoided by those holding the local marketing turf. Leaders by default are vulnerable. And not only from foreign competition.
Local rivals sitting at numbers two, three and four in a market segment are just as worried by foreign competition as it means even leaner pickings, and opportunists, entrepreneurs and risk-takers may well decide on a pre-emptive strike.
However, there is hope for marketers determined to compete and hold local leadership. Those who wish to kick the habits of the past can do so, even major corporations. It usually requires a culture shift and a team approach. “Intrapreneurship” needs to be fostered by encouraging internal executives to think more like entrepreneurs.
Brand executives need to be freed from obsession with daily brand management and encouraged to dream of future directions. In the process, in a small way, they become brand visionaries. Given a little success and a lot of corporate encouragement, they become true brand visionaries — capable of seeing the big picture and dominating it.
Alliances are advisable with partners who possess the skills necessary to formulate the innovative plans and surprise tactics needed in pursuit of the overall vision. Courage is needed to because innovators will be challenging the inertia and accepted wisdom of a whole generation.
If you imitate, you stay an also-ran. Visionaries prefer to lead the way. Some have started already. The likes of Edgars, Standard Bank, BMW, Nandos and Nashua have shown that marketing drive keeps you ahead of the competition, not under it.
The ultimate test, however, is to develop a world brand. Already South African Airways, Outspan, Harveytile and a few others operate in a global marketplace. The challenge for a generation of visionaries is how to join them. Nandos and Conservation Corporation Africa have recently made the break into world markets and that’s promising since it shows that we still have local movers and shakers.
Or does that exception prove the rule that in general we’re inward looking and myopic — visionaries who after 30 years are overdue for an eye-test?
Having been involved in advertising and marketing for the last 18 years, Paul Bannister is group marketing director of Hunt Lascaris TBWA, responsible for all strategic planning and new business development