It is old news that Cape Town is the media hub of South Africa. It is home to more than hundred publications and is perceived as the “The Place” to be when you are in the magazine and film business.
But there is much more to the Cape market than meets the eye. Times are changing and migration patterns are creating new audiences and readers as the population shifts.
“I recently had a hair care product representative tell me that they cannot advertise on Heart 104.9 because ‘coloured’ people don’t use their product, which is not true. Clearly this is someone who does not know or understand the Cape Town market,” says Fatima Ross, marketing manager at Heart FM, whose listenership is 80 percent coloured.
“Advertisers based in Johannesburg need to understand that the majority of people living in Cape Town are coloured people, and they are proud of who they are. Our audience is primarily made up of coloured people.”
Ross says advertisers should focus on lifestyle rather than race when selecting media audiences.
“As a Cape Town radio station, truly understanding the target market and using this intellectual information to sell your product, is key. You need to understand what turns your market on and realise how they feel when consuming your advertised messages.”
The Western Cape has a population of more than four million people and the largest coloured community in the country, according to Statistics South Africa.
The City of Cape Town’s Integrated Development Plan 2006/2007 states that the number of people migrating to Cape Town increased by 47 percent between 1997 and 2001 – an average of 3,638 people per month, an increase from 27,837 to 43,656 over four years.
The report also says the number of people leaving the Western Cape for other provinces doubled during the same period to 26,567 compared to 11,921 in 1997.
It is these changing socio-economic dynamics of the Cape Town market that advertisers don’t seem to understand or take advantage of, Ross points out, especially the tremendous growth in the black market.
Primedia Broadcasting’s group general manager Ryan Till says there is a tendency among Johannesburg-based advertisers to enforce their way of thinking and operating on the Cape Town market.
“I don’t think advertisers do understand the difference between the two (Johannesburg and Cape Town) markets. As a business, you can’t take the Johannesburg mentality and move it down here because the value system in Cape Town is different,” says Till.
“Advertisers first need to know what makes Cape Town tick. For example, the short-term insurance industry has not taken off in Cape Town as well as it has in Gauteng, whereas property is a much bigger issue here. But I can’t say one market is better than the other, they are just very different. Successful business is about getting to grips with the area.”
According to AC Nielsen Media Research (April 2005 – March 2006), Primedia’s Cape Talk and Kfm have an estimated ad spend of R20,584,496 and R121,522,817 respectively, with the latter leading the Cape radio scene. Financial and business institutions First National Bank, Absa and Edcon are Kfm’s top three advertisers with each spending more than R2-million per annum.
Heart FM, on the other hand, has an estimated ad spend of R27,002,678 and has MultiChoice Africa, Vodacom Communications and SAB Miller among its top advertisers, each spending around R1,2-million annually.
Ross says the growth of the black community in Cape Town, which is influenced by their migration from other provinces such as the Eastern Cape, has created a gap in the market for the station.
“Heart FM has had to position itself not only as a station of choice in the Mother City but also a ‘home’ for this growing black community.”
The appointment of Die Burger‘s first coloured editor, Henry Jeffreys, can be regarded as a reflection of the changing market and his newspaper’s adaptation to it.
Chris Whitfield, during his tenure at the Cape Times, found that the growing black middle-class community was where most of the newspaper’s readership came from.
Whitfield, who is now editor of the Cape Argus, believes that the advent of tabloids, which are targeting mainly the coloured community, has been the most significant development in the province’s media landscape.
“What we are hoping for is that their readers will eventually graduate to reading the Cape Argus, giving us a newer and younger generation,” says Whitfield, adding that over the years the paper has lost readers, especially in the white community, without necessarily picking up new ones.
Top on his agenda is improving the quality of news by covering all beats and the skills of his staff members. Whitfield says he intends to target the middle-class across the racial lines. He points out that Capetonians are very proud of their city – a factor that reflects in the newspaper sales when a positive story is written about Cape Town.
The January to March 2006 ABC figures show the Cape Argus circulation to have increased from 72,363 during the previous corresponding period to 75,860.
The newspaper sells more copies than the Cape Times which has an average circulation of 51,794, having dropped slightly from last year’s 52,015.
Whitfield wants to change the Cape Argus’ “soft” approach to news.
“I’m a firm believer in news. Over the years Argus became soft and feature-driven. But I still believe it can give readers news on Cape Town that no other medium can.”
But are there any specific benefits to operating from Cape Town other than the shifting population?
Media24’s assistant publisher of family magazines, Riaan Jordaan, says “no”.
“Other than the fact that all our printers are based here, the bottom line is you can produce a magazine from anywhere in the world, and nobody has to know. It doesn’t matter where you are.”
This is despite the fact that 60 percent of Media24’s ad revenue comes from Johannesburg.
Cape Town has long established itself as the magazine capital of the country with more than a hundred custom and consumer publications produced from there.
Media24 alone continues to dominate the consumer magazine market, accounting for more than 60 percent of the country’s titles. This year will see the launch of two additional magazines – international women’s publication In Style and Max Power for car conversion lovers.
The city is also home to Associated Magazines publishers of Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, O magazine, Femina, and House & Leisure. Though based in Cape Town, most of these magazine publishers have satellite offices in Johannesburg. Associated Magazines has one, so does Ramsay, Son & Parker (RS&P), owners of Car, Wiel and Getaway/Wegbreek; Media24 subsidiary Touchline Media, Highbury Safika Media, and 8 Ink Media.
Custom magazine houses such as Johnnic Communications’ subsidiary Picasso Headline, The Publishing Partnership and New Media Publishing who, between them, produce more than 50 publications, are all based in Cape Town.
Chief of new Business and Sales at Picasso Headline, Henk Botes, says a disadvantage to being based in Cape Town is the lack of skilled non-white journalists.
“There are more and more coming through but we are still battling specifically with editors who are a scarce commodity,” he says. His company has 23 titles and will be launching another one, a monthly consumer magazine Extreme Sports Angling later this year.
Botes says they end up acting as a feeding ground for the industry where they appoint and train people, only to have them poached.
It appears the Cape media is facing a similar challenge to that of KwaZulu-Natal where newspapers and radio stations have had to revamp their content in order to appeal to the Zulu-speaking black middle-class.
As Cathy Pestana, industrial manager at Print Media South Africa says, our democratic society with its diverse opinions, racial and language groups, ensures that there is always room for growth.
Marketers and media owners just have to figure out how.