Hazel Friedman
Streetwise, the term used by Saatchi & Saatchi for its “into Africa” marketing strategy, definitely has an edge. It’s got attitude, even if the impoverished communities it targets don’t have income. It conjures up the image of a kid in a baseball cap on backwards, rapping “Yo! Here’s where its happening man, so get on down.”
To his credit, that’s exactly what Neil Gurney has done. Not only does the managing director of Saatchi’s Cape agency, and regional director of the Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide Africa Network, talk the talk, he’s also walked it – from the shacks of Khayelitsha to the spazas of Soweto, and beyond – spreading the “streetwise” gospel.
In ad-speak, streetwise marketing is “below the line advertising”, targeted at markets with low budgets and high aspirations. But its not all about adorning drought-ridden rural areas with Coke Adds Life billboards. It’s part of the “all the world is a market” mindset.
It also had to do with the three words that are sacrosanct in the real estate business: location, location and location. Not only the geographical sense, but in terms of the recent global business trends and challenges created by the fall of communism, and the emergence of previously untapped markets in East Europe, Asia and now Africa.
These days, Africa in particular is perceived as the perfect hunting ground for The Big Five – McCann Erickson, Ogilvy & Mather, Grey, TBWA Hunt Lascaris and Saatchi & Saatchi, given the fact that the so-called developed world has a population of only 1,3-billion compared with the developing world’s 4,5-billion. But Africa also provides a marketing lesson the South African advertising industry has been late in learning.
After all, it’s one thing to take the country out of apartheid. It’s an entirely different matter taking apartheid out of the country. In the early, heady, hearty days of liberation, advertising agencies opted for the most familiar routes in a racially divided country. They took on the token affirmative action appointment, devised well-intentioned but ultimately prescriptive black empowerment projects and produced honky and darkie versions of the same commercial.
By contrast, says Gurney, Saatchi & Saatchi has long espoused a more “universal” approach to advertising, one that transcends the “boundaries of race, culture and age, using simple visuals and messages, as well as an emotive approach”. And the universal twin power plugs that unite the worlds of Sandton and Somalia are youth and aspiration.
“Twenty-five is the mean age in Asia,” points out Gurney, “yet over half the African population is under 18 and the continent is becoming the fastest growing urban area in the world.”
But while aspirations and Nikes might be as common in the shanties of sub-Saharan Africa as on the campuses of California, their realities are slightly different. “You can’t use a First-World distribution system in a Third- World context,” Gurney says.
For Gurney, the spaza provides the model for good service-providers. “Spaza owners offer credit, they break down quantities into sachets [in Malawi] or strip packs [in India], so that you can buy a cup of rice instead of a packet.”
This is what Gurney calls “the real market”, where anything is sold at any time to anybody. Street advertising, Gurney points out, is also pretty big and agencies have learnt the marketing potential it carries within the huge informal sector. Coca-Cola Southern Africa, for example, will spend much of its marketing budget on street vendors. And handpainted advertisements are cheap.
“Wallpaper” vendors are also much in evidence in the townships, selling printers’ offcuts of the waxed paper that wraps around soap. At R5 a roll, it provides protection against the elements and is more rain-resistant than unwaxed paper. “Drive past an open door and you’ll see a wall of Lux patterns. What a branding opportunity!”
Gurney makes frequent reference to Malawi, where every single wall in a high density area in Malawi is branded, more and more often with icon advertising, like the smiling mouth painted by the tube of Colgate toothpaste.
“Global brands are recognising that you need to take your master brand statement and turn it into an icon,” he says, emphasising the importance of using global grammar with local adjectives.
Further illustrating the DIY skills of the township entrepreneurs, he refers to the escalation of video cassette recorders in the townships – a growth of 300% in the past five years.
Videos are the only real form of entertainment available in townships and owning a video machine has become a source of considerable income. “Ster-Kinekor and Nu Metro have really lost their way in the townships. Even if they decide to set up operations now on a large scale, they would have to compete with these entrepreneurs. They should work alongside these new informal infrastructures and set up a good-quality supply system for them .” He adds: “Advertisers need to embrace existing concepts and build on them.”
“Yet all too often you find advertising executives who’ve never set foot in Khayelitsha devising marketing strategies for townships.