Ferial Haffajee
They have been living together for just a year and now they’re getting married. The happy couple tying a R70-million knot are the advertising agencies Azaguys and Meintjes-Parker. It’s something of a cross-cultural affair. Meintjes-Parker is a distinguished old Afrikaans firm with a client list to match. They count Saambou, CTM, Clover, Subaru and Armscor among their customers. “The firm is two-thirds English,” counters Sipho Luthuli who is chairman of a group of five who will run the new firm to be called Azaguys Meintjes-Parker.
It is an incestuous marriage in that Meintjes-Parker has always owned 49% of Azaguys, which was launched amid much fanfare last year as a new black agency. Critics say this diluted Azaguys’s claim of being a significantly black-owned agency. But the ownership-by-race debate is becoming increasingly pass in advertising.
Earlier this year Herdbuoys merged with McCann-Erickson and Saatchi&Saatchi has sold 24% of its shares to black owners. Merger and integration is the new trend in advertising. “You’ve got to mix it up as much as you can,” says Happy Ntshingila from Herdbuoys.
He says their mission was never to be just “black”, but to be “black-owned”. Now the idea is to secure significant shareholding in black hands. MDS,DD&M is still a fully black- owned agency. Its strategic director, Stanley Mphahlele, says the new merged companies must ensure that they still work to “transform” the industry both in terms of staff employed and content.
“I think the bottom line is relevance,”says Luthuli, adding that “The future is a black one.” Capacity is also important and he says the merger will improve Azaguys’s ability to tender for big accounts and to train young black talents who want to break into the industry. He says “We’re now an agency that talks to South Africans as a whole.”
Azaguys’ innovation has been an imbizo or think-tank of everybody from marketeers to teachers and skollies who help them to define and fine tune campaigns.
This has seen the agency win work for Balley-Spitz, Total’s Kaizer Chief’s sponsorship, Ntsika Enterprises and Nokia. It has been a success, with billings exceeding R20-million in its first year of operation.