It is a warm winter’s day in Johannesburg, South Africa. Nkosana Mazibisa is a long way from home but he is eager to make his mark; here and abroad.
Mazibisa was born in the heart of what used to be Zimbabwe’s industrial town, Bulawayo, in 1988. They call it KoNtuthu Ziyathunqa, the place that exudes smoke, in isiNdebele, because of its industry. The harsh economic conditions in Zimbabwe took the smoke from the air.
“There is so much potential in my country. When I was young, I remember the town was full of smoke from industries making many homemade products. Many of these industries have closed down and it is up to us to revive them and create jobs,” says Mazibisa.
Mazibisa wants to be the Bulawayo reviver. The idea of fixing the city dawned on him in his high school debate team in Bulawayo.
“The country was collapsing and we had a debate at school about these issues and how to solve them.”
When it was over, everyone went home and continued with their lives, but not Mazibisa. He started thinking about the role he could play. He graduated and worked hard but that debate haunted him. The smell from Bulawayo factories he was accustomed to growing up was a distant memory.  Home-grown brands he had loved were off the shelves and replaced by international and South African brands, so he swapped his well-paid job for entrepreneurship.
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“My family was shocked. They didn’t understand what I was doing because there are no jobs in Zimbabwe and I here I was resigning. That didn’t scare me. I knew that I had to do my bit to make a difference. That’s why I decided to start a business to solve the unemployment problems we have and revive our industries,” says Mazibisa.
He founded a food retail brand, Swaad “The Taste of India” and Mazibisa Inc., a brand strategy consultancy firm in Bulawayo Zimbabwe.
“I could have gone to Harare but we need to resuscitate Bulawayo and I am playing my role in its revival. Most countries have a brand that represents their nationality. In Zimbabwe we used to have such brands like Willards but now there is nothing. My country at one point was the breadbasket of Africa. Seeing all the big brands we had disappear from the shelves gave me a challenge. I realized Zimbabwe is in a way an extension of South Africa. We have South African shops and brands now, but very few of our own, those brands don’t necessarily resonate with Zimbabwean consumers,” he says.
Swaad makes snacks such as biscuits, potato crisps and dried fruits in a small factory in Bulawayo.
“I want to one day see the smoke from factories cover the blue sky like I used to when I was child. It would mean the country is healing and we are making our own products again instead of importing.”
Mazibisa’s ambitions to make a difference are far and near. He chairs Mawaba School Development Committee (SDC) in Bulawayo as the youngest SDC chair in Zimbabwe’s history. He built a state-of-the-art computer science laboratory which has been adopted for all city council and government schools. He is currently working on a $2-million double-storey lecture theater block and multi-purpose swimming pool project which is due before end of 2017. He is also one of FORBES AFRICA’s 30 under 30s for 2016 and a Mandela Washington Fellow.
These accolades were born of struggle.
“When I decided to start a business, I applied for the government youth fund twice but I didn’t get it. I saw this failure as a stepping stone and not a stumbling block,” he says.
With Zimbabwe’s harsh economic turmoil, dreams are often bleak. He used the little savings from his job to start a brand strategy consulting firm to raise funds for Swaad.
“Lines of credit are slim but the fact that we have a crisis means we have an opportunity to create a new order. Crisis means opportunities for entrepreneurs to rise and create opportunities. Sometimes it feels like I am fighting a losing battle but I always remind myself of the bigger picture. This is my purpose and I am ready to see it through. And this is more than about making money but also creating national pride and valuing local brands, ” says Mazibisa.
He says each of their products have a message from the CEO to ensure the clients feel valued.
“People also fill in their names and birthday details at the till when they buy our products. On their birthday, I send them birthday wishes. Buying local is more than just the brand but a story of national pride and I am hopeful that Zimbabwe will rise again.”
In Mazibisa’s eyes, where there is smoke there is pride.

The Bulawayo Reviver

It’s a Thursday evening in September and the upscale Pier 59 Studios in Chelsea, New York City, is abuzz with excitement.
Backstage, models spin about, heels clattering, as wardrobe stylists determine the best silhouettes and sartorial choices for specific outfits. Makeup artists layer on the highlighter and hairstylists do last-minute blowouts. Cameras flash and roll as photographers and journalists scramble for quotes and interviews.
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The plates of assorted healthy appetizers – chicken salad, baby carrots, and celery with ranch dressing – are disappearing faster than the goody bags with coconut hair products, portable chargers and gym socks.
In many ways, Harlem’s Fashion Row is like any other New York Fashion Week (NYFW) show. In many other ways, it’s absolutely unlike any other.
“I didn’t have to bring my own foundation this time,” says Naqisha Cummings, a Caribbean model from Boston, in a clear reference to the tone of her skin. “I just knew they would have my shade.”
Mariah Mckenzie, an African-American model from Queens, New York, nods in agreement. “It’s usually not this diverse. Not at NYFW. Today’s show is more ethnic. It’s a really good stepping stone for minorities.”
And indeed, it was intended to be. Founded to increase diversity in fashion, Harlem’s Fashion Row (HFR) has transformed from its modest beginnings in 2007 to emerge one of the most prestigious industry platforms for emerging minority designers and fashion creatives.
In an industry where people of color make up less than one percent of designers in major online and department stores, HFR is significant.
Backstage, its founder Brandice Henderson is doing the rounds – looking into minute logistical details, networking, giving interviews. Earlier that day, NYMag had published a compelling profile calling the entrepreneur a small town native who started out with few connections and “fashion’s best advocate for black designers”. Today, fashion’s force of nature is decked out in a red dress, glittering necklace and rather comfortable-looking brown flats.
“I’m super-excited,” says Henderson. “This is HFR’s eighth year. And I’m about to birth a child. This feels like a new beginning.”
Harlem itself is a cradle of new beginnings. The historically black neighborhood was the seat of the Harlem Renaissance – a socio-cultural and artistic revolution in the black American community. Today, that community includes a prominent and growing African diaspora.
Indeed, in certain neighborhoods in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx today, as in pockets all over America, Kru, Igbo and Yoruba are the most commonly spoken non-English languages. From burgeoning sabar dance classes to the plethora of restaurants selling jollof rice and injera, from the proprietorships in Le Petit Senegal to events like the International African Arts Festival, signs of Africa’s soft power are everywhere in the world’s financial capital.
Africa has woven itself into New York with the gentle intricacy of Maasai beadwork. And today, Africa is the showstopper here in Chelsea.
The Fashion Deli, a globally focused retail platform that first opened in Cape Town, is showcasing four South African designers at HFR.
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“African fashion and lifestyle elements are no longer viewed by western audiences and buyers solely as ‘traditional’,” says Thulare Monareng, the Founder-CEO of The Fashion Deli. Attired in black, high heels and tribal-inspired jewelry from her own company, she has a relaxed sophistication about her. She looks very New York and international – the kind of lady who is so well-travelled she carries cities with her.
“Africa is now influencing global mainstream fashion and lifestyle trends,” she says. “Take Balmain’s African inspired resort 2015 collection, Louis Vuitton’s Spring/Summer 2013 collection inspired by the red Shuka worn by the Kenyan Maasai people, Sergio Rossi’s Zulu-inspired Spring/Summer 2014 footwear collection, and Vivienne Westwood’s Spring/Summer 2015 handbag collection inspired by the West African Bogolan prints.”
Armed with multiple degrees including one in Fashion Buying and Merchandising from the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York, a wealth of corporate experience in her native, South Africa, and experience with her own eponymous designer label, Monareng, came to realize there was a gap in the international market for African luxury and for ethically produced, sustainable and conscious products.
“There’s a lot more to African fashion than just wax prints,” she says. “I want to present an alternative narrative of African designers.”
And so, under bright lights on a long, ivory runaway, the alternative narrative began to unfold. If the audience was previously unfamiliar with African fashion, or didn’t know what to expect, they were about to have their hearts stolen and minds blown. The thoughtfully-curated array of gorgeous ensembles elicited sighs of wonder, gasps of surprise and frantic iPhone photography from the onlookers.
From veteran designer Marianne Fassler came prints found from and inspired by the cityscapes and citizens of her native Johannesburg. Fassler’s love for her modern, cosmopolitan city, which she described as a place to find one’s “personal gold” truly shone through. Every garment featured a palette that positively burst with vivid colors and prints that came together with a giggling playfulness. Dramatic pleats and paneling prevailed. Flirtatious flowing and sheer fabrics abounded.
Where Fassler’s brand drew from the urban jungle, Katherine-Mary Pichulik’s accessories label PICHULIK, drew from the colors of the South African environment. The pieces were designed and inspired by African tribal ornamentation, making symbolic use of color, beadwork, basketry.
“The sacred nature of making jewelry and its link to ceremony and initiation inspire a powerful way of making ornamentation that serves to not only adorn, but alchemize and empower the wearer,” says Pichulik.
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From Celeste Arendse’s SELFI brand, inspired by the subconscious, came the SELF AWAKE collection featuring geometric silhouettes in a palette that was entirely black and white and primary colors. Everything was digitally-printed.
“The collection explores the connection between the self and technology,” explains Arendse. “What we see and what we touch.” Even something like the use of primary colors was inspired by early 90s video games.
Futuristic and forward-thinking, Arendse’s collection certainly subverted the Western notion of Africa in fashion and rewrote the script. Presumably in JavaScript.
The Adriaan Kuiters label featured sophisticated unisex and androgynous garments in neutral colors and sleek silhouettes. The collection exuded timelessness, being both current and classic. The designers Keith Henning and Jody Paulsen experimented with gender lines, using women’s items on men and men’s on women.
If there’s a running theme throughout The Fashion Deli’s collection, it is that of the old and new worlds cocooned in harmony. It’s a universe where nature and cityscapes, humans and technology, the traditional and the contemporary are simpatico.
Contemporary African fashion, it seems, doesn’t seek to conform to global ideals, but rather, seeks to disrupt and improve them.
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“South Africans are now looking directly in our backyard for inspiration, because it’s so rich and diverse.” says Arendse. “I feel really lucky to be living in a time where countries can merge so easily. The new generation understands the power of technology and are able to communicate their messages directly without agencies. The youth in South Africa are expressing their own style on social media which is so unique and is certainly being noticed on global platforms. This will only strengthen us as creators.”
Amina Nuwame, a Senegalese model who Monareng met in Harlem, and who found herself debuting at HFR, considers herself lucky. She had to hide her love for fashion and modeling from her family until they found her on Walf Fadjri TV and eventually caved. It’s been a long journey to New York City since then.
“There’s a lot of talent in Africa. But we need more opportunities to get discovered globally,” she says.
“Africa comes from a rich lineage of craft and has a large network of incredible artisans,” says Pichulik.
The possibilities for African designers it seems are endless.

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Unfurling Africa in The Big  Apple

The brand is everything in today’s social media-driven environment. And to market it requires every gigabyte of data, strategy, tact, and not to mention, oodles of creativity.
Shireen Jaftha seems to have quite the talent for it, driving award-winning campaigns and strategies as Head of Content at Omnicom Group, a marketing and corporate communications holding company in Johannesburg.
She develops opinions on the future direction of a company and its brand, based on existing and predicted conditions, working with clients to identify unmet marketing and business needs, goals, opportunities and the challenges they may face.
Through branding and marketing, she creates and oversees the execution of a plan through specific initiatives that meet the objectives of the strategy.
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She started her career in the advertising industry, and it was sheer luck by chance.
“I went for an office interview for a ‘girl Friday’ temp post at an advertising agency and after that interview, I was asked to join the media team. I think that they picked up my negotiation skills. That agency taught me this industry,” says Jaftha.
Of all the campaigns she has done, she rates the Standard Bank Access Banking case study as the one that stands out as it has proven the potential inherent in branded and interactive content.
The campaign made use of all media and introduced a new level of customer engagement by adding broadcasting and client-generated content to the mix.
“It was about being more consumer-centric – using traditional platforms in a non-traditional way to break through the clutter of advertising, as well as educating the market which made it strategically aligned to Standard Bank’s ‘Moving Forward’ brand promise.”
The campaign walked away with two industry awards.
Although social media strategies have the ability to help build successful businesses, it is not without its pitfalls.
“Due to different behavior patterns on social media, many people always assume the success of a campaign based on the likes or comment posted by consumers. Most people assume that 1,000 likes is a winning campaign. Unfortunately it is not – as it doesn’t prove tangible sales. With social media you create leads, but you cannot track sales,” she says.
She says behavior is constantly changing on social media and the solution is to follow the behaviour of the user and by constantly checking consumer insight.
According to Jaftha, it is vital to remain relevant. And the brands she follows for inspiration? Adam Morgan, Seth Gordon, Contagious magazine online, Trendwatching.com and Mike Street.

Shireen_2

‘1,000 Likes Is Not A Winning Campaign’

When Vivian Kleynhans grew up in the remote fishing village of Paternoster on South Africa’s West Coast, not in her wildest dreams did she think that one day she would sign a major export deal with the world’s largest discounter, Walmart.
Last year, that happened.
Kleynhans, 49, shipped four 40-foot containers of her Seven Sisters wines to the United States (US), where Walmart has been selling them in more than 500 stores countrywide since September.
“We are hoping to ship this amount every three months from now on, if sales go well,” says Kleynhans.
Although she’s not allowed to disclose the size of the contract, Kleynhans is certain of one thing: “This deal will change our lives.”
Even before Walmart discovered the Seven Sisters wine brand, Kleynhans had made a success of the label that she launched in 2005 from scratch.
After growing up with six sisters and a brother in a poor village, survival was difficult. Straight after graduating from high school, Kleynhans had to take a secretarial job at a construction company to help her family financially. When she didn’t get a promotion a few years later, she started working for a real estate agent, then moved into human resources and soon thereafter joined an insurance company.
She slowly worked her way up, gaining business experience with every new employment she entered.
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“Throughout my career, I was working towards owning my own business that could provide a legacy for my family. Eventually, I felt ready to set up my own company,” says Kleynhans.
She launched African Roots Wine Brands in 2005 after the South African government set up a trust to help formerly disadvantaged people enter the wine industry. Her idea was to sell wines that would represent her family and her cultural history.
For a year, Kleynhans searched for the right wine farm to partner with. She wanted a farm that could provide her with seven different wine styles—one for her and each of her six sisters. She eventually teamed up with Swartland, a winery located in the region where she grew up.
“My vision was to build a company that my sisters could be part of. Because we are seven, I wanted to partner with a winery that could provide us with a wide range of styles,” she says.
Each sister personally helped create their own varietal. The result: a Bukettraube Odelia, Rosé Twena, Moscato Yolanda, Sauvignon Blanc Vivian, Pinotage Dawn, Merlot June and Cabernet Sauvignon Carol.
That same year, Kleynhans took the Seven Sisters range to the Soweto Wine Festival near Johannesburg. It was the first trade fair she had ever attended. As luck would have it, she met an American importer, Selena Cuffe of Heritage Link Brands, who invited her to present her wines in the US.
It was a tough start. Without an advertising budget to speak of, Kleynhans had to market her wines by doing road shows across the US, garnering customers one by one. It was a tedious strategy, but it paid off over time.
The first container of Seven Sister wines left South Africa in 2007. A year later, Kleynhans shipped four containers. In the third year, she sent nine. By early 2013, African Roots Wine Brands was selling 110,000 bottles a year in 42 states to supermarkets, wine stores, specialty stores and discounters. Buyers included major chain stores, such as Whole Foods, Super Value and Disneyworld.
“Over the years, we managed to become an established brand in the US. Our drive is to grow a household brand,” says Kleynhans.
She also landed a four-year contract with American Airlines, which served the Vivian Sauvignon Blanc on all of its flights.
“It was one of the first big business deals we signed. It helped us a lot to stay in the game,” she says.
Ironically, it took Kleynhans longer to enter the wine market in her home country.
“South Africa only woke up after we made a name for ourselves in the US. We’ve been trying for some years to get into the South African market. But it’s so saturated, we struggled to gain entry,” says Kleynhans.
When Walmart bought a 52% stake in South African chain Massmart in mid-2011 for a whopping $1.59 billion, South African antitrust authorities, concerned that the deal would lead to job losses and product domination, obliged the retail giant to set up a $20 million-fund to support small suppliers.
It was through this fund that Kleynhans eventually managed to place Seven Sisters on Massmart’s Makro shelves in South Africa.
A second Walmart development fund, this time aimed at providing $20 billion to small, women-owned suppliers, represented the jackpot. Kleynhans had been supplying Seven Sisters to American retail warehouse chain Sam’s Club, one of Walmart’s sister companies, for a while.
“Walmart was looking for companies all over the world to find suppliers that met the criteria for the fund. The buyer from Sam’s Club hooked us up,” says Kleynhans.
From there, the deal snowballed. In December 2012, Walmart’s global sourcing manager visited Kleynhans at the nine-hectare farm she had just bought in Stellenbosch, one of South Africa’s top wine regions. He invited her to spend a day at Walmart’s headquarters in Arkansas in February last year. A month later, Kleynhans was invited to Walmart’s global supply summit. Shortly thereafter, she sealed the deal.
For Kleynhans, this is just the beginning. She recently planted her own cultivars—a Shiraz and a Chardonnay—which are tended by her brother, John Brutus, a viticulturist. The first bottles of the new label, to be named after her brother, will be sold from a boutique cellar on the estate by 2015.
Kleynhans is also opening a restaurant on the farm. Like all her ventures, the eatery will stay in the family and be managed by all seven sisters.
“It will be run like my mother’s dining room.”   FL

MG_8415final

Stateside  Sisterhood Success

It’s mid-September, and Volkswagen of America has a problem: It won’t have any new models coming out until the spring. Keeping VW front and ­center in consumers’ minds has drawn a group of marketing folks from the automaker and two of its ad agencies to Google’s BrandLab at its YouTube headquarters south of San Francisco. Dedicated to “evangelizing the art and science of brand-building,” the richly appointed meeting space is basically a man cave for ad creatives, complete with overstuffed couches, booze and the mother of all big screens, an assemblage of 32 flat-panel displays massed into 300 square feet of video overload.
In one corner of the BrandLab, Google’s Jeff Rozic goes to work running VW’s folks through a rapid-fire succession of video ad campaigns the BrandLab feels have worked. His earnest delivery is well-honed, courtesy of 100-plus similar “private workshops” held for potential advertisers from Coca-Cola to Toyota over the past year. VW has some catching up to do, a point Rozic makes intentionally or not by highlighting 13 travel vignettes produced by a rival, Nissan Mexico. His larger point: Don’t clutter a story with too blatant a call to action. “We shouldn’t apologize for trying to sell cars,” one VW exec protests. “Sure,” Rozic shoots back, “but you have to be careful to distinguish when you’re telling a story and when you’re selling.”
Fair point. Rozic is clearly selling—and it’s a product intended to change Google’s path. The king of the click is now lecturing one of the world’s most accomplished advertisers to forget those clicks and amp up the image ads. CEO Larry Page can go on as much as he wants about self-driving cars, wearable computers or any of the company’s other “moon shots.” But Google fundamentally remains the most disruptive advertising company of the past half-century. As its total advertising-revenue growth rate has halved in the past two years, from 29% to 15% (thanks in part to Facebook and Twitter), it’s now charging full-bore toward the biggest pot of advertising gold it doesn’t own: brand advertising, the image ads you see in glossy magazines and on television.
Most online ads—the banners that litter nearly every commercial website and, most notably, Google’s search ads—have failed to help marketers move the needle on classic advertising measures like brand awareness and intent to purchase. ­Instead, they mainly drive people to a product page to click the buy button. ­Direct marketing is lucrative: Search is still upwards of 60% of Google’s ad revenue, helping it earn an estimated 15.8% net margin in 2013—but image ads will come to dominate digital advertising in this decade.
Look at the numbers: Digital brand advertising is an $18 billion market this year, according to eMarketer. Its forecast implies that number will double by 2018, at which point it will have passed search and direct marketing, with plenty of room to grow.
Television advertising, comprising almost entirely image ads, is currently a $200 billion global market. And it’s a vulnerable one, as the medium’s iron grip on the bulk of ad spending looks a little less firm as younger people scatter to YouTube and Netflix when they aren’t Snapchatting or Instagramming on iPhones or skipping ads entirely on their DVRs. Some 75% of respondents to an Interactive Advertising Bureau poll of 5,000 ad execs expect to see some spending move from TV to digital video in the next year.
This explains the man cave. YouTube remains one of the greatest acquisitions of the Internet era. Larry and Sergey paid $1.65 billion in 2006 for a business that today would conservatively be worth $20 billion as a stand-alone. So what’s another $400 million or so to build out a brand ad business?
The return has been fairly quick: In October Publicis’ MediaVest, the ad agency for Coca-Cola, Honda and other big advertisers, inked a deal to spend tens of millions of dollars over the next year on Google video, display and mobile ads. It was Google’s first agreement with such an online partner to buy ads in advance, as agencies and marketers do on television. In November Publicis agencies DigitasLBi and Razorfish went bigger, committing to spend $100 million on YouTube and Google’s banner and mobile ad networks this year. “Google is one of the few players with a platform big and wide enough to attract these dollars,” says Razorfish CEO Pete Stein.
And Google sources insist that more of these “upfront” deals will be announced shortly, which has investors—who have driven the stock to a recent alltime high of over $1,150—feeling bullish. Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at the asset management firm Solaris Group, a Google investor, figures the company could capture about 6% of TV ad spending by 2020, or $20 billion a year. Given that Google’s total revenue this year will come in at around $60 billion, this is the growth the company needs to continue its dominance.
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Susan Wojcicki was Google’s 16th hire. Marissa Mayer came a few hires later, yet it was Mayer, now Yahoo’s CEO, who became the flashy female face of Google. No matter. Wojcicki (pronounced wo-JIT-ski), the senior vice president in charge of all Google ad products, plays the anti-Marissa. She favors jeans and hoodies around the office, displaying a self-deprecating plainness that one former employee says is reminiscent of Chance the gardener from the movie Being There. “She never felt she needed to be the smartest person in the room,” says another ex-colleague.
Instead, she’s become the most powerful person—male or female—in advertising. She manages effectively without drama and thus has been Page’s go-to exec for wins such as the introduction of AdSense, which pays other sites to run Google ads (now a $13 billion business), and the acquisitions of DoubleClick, an ad-serving pioneer, and YouTube. “She only works on big problems, not small ones,” says ShareThis CEO Kurt Abrahamson, who worked for her a decade ago.
Her vision of the future of advertising (and hence Google)? Since content is flowing across so many digital devices—a trend Google is trying to accelerate with such initiatives as its Chromecast device for streaming online video to TVs and its flurry of Android smartphones and tablets—she sees nearly all advertising eventually going digital, too, putting it squarely in Google’s wheelhouse.
“Advertisers will have to go where the users go,” says Wojcicki, sitting outside her office at the Googleplex, sipping a “detox” lemonade with maple syrup and a dash of cayenne. “A big chunk of dollars will follow.”
Wojcicki envisions an operating system for advertising that can connect search, display, YouTube and branded content, and bundle it all up into campaigns that span computers, smartphones, tablets, connected TVs and—who knows?—maybe Google Glass. Some marketers are moving quickly in that direction. For the recent launch of its D Rose 4 sneakers, Adidas ran ads on YouTube and the Google Display Network, a partnership of some 2 million sites, backed up by mobile ads for a second-screen experience and search ads to catch those who want to buy them right away.
For some time Wojcicki has talked about the “perfect ad,” the one that people see at precisely the time they want to know about a product or are ready to buy it. Search ads now approach that ideal for direct sales, but Wojcicki pictures image ads, supplemented by data on personal preferences and behavior, that can plant the seed for brand or product preference just as well. It’s an advertising axiom that people are more receptive to messages when they’re leaning back on the couch watching TV than when engaged in online activities. Wojcicki contends the potential is for just the opposite. “If users are engaging with something, they’re choosing to see it,” she says, and Google can use that overt choice to serve even more relevant ads.
So how would a Web display ad—largely, the vilified banner—engage?
Upstairs at Google’s display-ad headquarters off the main campus in Mountain View, Calif. scrawled equations blanket a wall-size whiteboard. The equations are a scrap of the impossibly complex mathematical formulas that power its $12.5 billion display network business. “They turn into beautiful rich-media ads,” Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president of display advertising, explains dreamily as we walk by.
When Larry Page took over as CEO in 2011, he told Mohan to “revolutionize” display ads so they’re just as useful as Google’s obscenely profitable search ads. Mohan, a veteran of pre-Google DoubleClick, is a true believer. (With a reported $100 million in stock grants to keep the likes of Facebook and Twitter at bay, he isn’t driven by the need for more money.) He has bought or built what even rivals concede is the broadest set of software needed by advertisers and publishers to sell and place ads, including a state-of-the-art ad exchange that sells space as fluidly as the Nasdaq sells stock.
Mohan, who likes to decry the 40% of “spray and pray” TV advertising he says is wasted on indifferent audiences, offers a vision of the future in which Google can marry its data about individual consumers with the reach of TV and measure the results, too.
Google can generate that reach with its display network, which ­ranges from tiny outfits to the New York Times and USA Today. It serves ads on those websites for a cut of revenue. (Tellingly, even NBC partakes, though Google has put a big, fat target on its back.) The network ­reaches 90% of the Web’s population and serves impressions to a billion people worldwide a month. It was tough sledding early on, as ads began showing up on dodgy niche sites, but an ongoing cleanup campaign has big brand advertisers increasingly interested. The number of advertisers booking space months ahead—an option chiefly used by big marketers looking to influence brand consideration—has quadrupled from a year ago, but Google isn’t offering specifics.
Still, the banner ads have been losing out to “native” ads, which use content rather than a boring banner to attract people’s attention. “Facebook is a bigger bet for us right now than YouTube,” says Laurent Fa­racci, the U.S. chief marketing officer for Reckitt Benckiser, owner of brands such as Lysol and Clearasil. Instead, Mohan has bet on rich “engagement ads” for the display network. For instance, one might expand to play videos, games or apps when hovered over for two seconds. Samsung recently ran millions of them to play a live video stream of a new smartphone and smartwatch. In June Burberry ran display and mobile ads through Google that prompted people to snap a photo of their own puckered-up lips and send the digital imprint of the kiss to a loved one.
They’re starting to work. Now used in about 1,000 campaigns daily, engagement ads command around double the price of standard banners, which vary wildly but average around $3 per thousand viewers reached. That’s partly because advertisers can choose not to pay unless someone actually views those ads—like those who pay for clicks rather than views in the banner world—so they’re more valuable. Still, branding remains a challenge for a company whose success so far derives from cold mathematics. Back at the BrandLab, there’s an elegant arrangement of two dozen digital photo frames mounted on a pedestal, all playing videos of flames. “Great stories are told around the campfire,” a Google project manager explains. Cute. Except this campfire gives off no heat. For that, Google needs some of the sizzle of Hollywood.
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The warren of studios and soundstages southwest of Hollywood is strewn with cameras, lights, toolboxes and half-empty coffee cups. One stage features stock horror-movie sets, like the hotel hall from The Shining. In another studio, three women, one of them with scissors in hand, are preparing to film a video on how to cut your own bangs. Once a hangar where Hughes Aircraft built the Spruce Goose in the 1940s, this 41,000-square-foot building is now YouTube Space LA, possibly the world’s largest production facility dedicated to online video.
It’s YouTube’s latest bid to shed its dog-on-a-skateboard-video image and make the site a cleaner, more well-lit place for big TV marketers. That bid began a couple of years ago with YouTube’s $300 million drive to create some 200 TV-like channels from the likes of Shaquille O’Neal and Amy Poehler. While they don’t have TV networks quaking just yet, YouTube has been able to command higher ad prices closer to those of TV than Web display ads. YouTube gross ad revenue jumped 51% in 2013 to $5.6 billion, netting $2 billion after payments to content and ad partners, according to eMarketer.
Here’s the funny thing, though: It turns out that some of the most popular channels are not network wannabes. They’re from producers such as PewDiePie and Jenna Marbles, invisible to those over 30. Likewise, some of the most popular ads on YouTube don’t even look like the TV ads that Google has hoped to capture. It’s dawning on big marketers from American Express to General Electric that to take advantage of the social and interactive nature of online they need to forge a new sensibility, not simply rerun TV commercials.
In a new take on its long-running Campaign for Real Beauty, for instance, Dove launched a video on YouTube in April that featured an FBI-trained forensic artist sketching two portraits of women. One was based on their own descriptions and another on a stranger’s, which produced more attractive images. By May the Unilever brand’s touching three-minute video had drawn more than 114 million views worldwide, becoming the most-viewed online video ad ever. “It’s not just 30-second ads,” says Jamie Byrne, YouTube’s director of content strategy. “It’s creating something that people want to engage with and share with friends.”
So now it’s up to Byrne, whose previous job was head of YouTube’s original programming push, to make it easy for big brands to reach YouTube’s 1 billion monthly viewers.
Similar to Rozic’s ad-campaign boot camps in the BrandLab, Byrne brings companies such as PepsiCo and Johnson &amp; Johnson to YouTube LA for a four-day workshop on creating compelling stories, videos and YouTube channels. He’s aiming to get more than 100 advertisers into the program this year, both at YouTube LA and in a new combo studio and BrandLab being built in New York.
If Byrne has his way, the new world of brand marketing online will look a lot like a shoot at an unassuming neo-eclectic house in Anaheim Hills, 45 minutes southeast of Los Angeles. In the living room a crew of six is filming the sixth episode of Grace’s Faces, on Bobbi Brown Cosmetics’ I love makeup channel on YouTube. It features Grace Helbig, a 28-year-old YouTube star whose own self-produced channel, Daily Grace, draws more than 2 million subscribers to her wacky takes on life. For this new show, Helbig shows up at the doors of fellow YouTube stars to do a makeover.
Her subject this day is Rebecca Black, the 16-year-old who became an instant star in early 2011 for her self-produced monotonous pop hit, “Friday,” that year’s most-watched video on YouTube. Marc Reagan, manager of artistry at Bobbi Brown, is showing Black how to apply various kinds of makeup. Dull barks from a dog banished to the garage only add to the authenticity, apparently. Helbig jumps into the frame, bubbling with a whiff of irony, “You look like an angel!” For a companion show, Touching Your Stuff, Helbig prowls the house rifling through personal effects. “In this medium you can get your Idol moment without paying $20 million,” says Reza Izad, whose Collective Digital Studio produces I love makeup and more than 200 other channels, such as the Annoying Orange—a piece of talking citrus that heckles other fruit until they get sliced with a knife.
It’s all pretty nutty, but there’s nothing amateur about Grace’s Faces. Or even overtly commercial. Bobbi Brown isn’t mentioned anywhere in Grace’s Faces despite the use of its cosmetics. Still, the company says it’s happy with the 300,000 views the channel got the first week and the 70,000 channel subscriptions it drew in the next two weeks. “We felt like comedic programming would be in line with our brand personality and would resonate with a younger audience,” says Bobbi Brown President Maureen Case. Marketers don’t pay YouTube to run the shows, but they do pay to run lots of ads to drive people to watch them.
Google will ultimately win this race for a simple reason: Video ads perform better than TV spots, says David Cohen, Universal McCann’s chief investment officer, based on multiple studies his agency has done. “But TV advertising is a frictionless system,” he adds, “a well-oiled machine.” Google can play around with Larry Page’s moon shots, one of which might eventually land, but what will pay for those flights of fancy? Making digital display just as free of friction, something Google knows how to do. It’s just a matter of time.

Google Wants It All

Women walk for miles with buckets on their heads to fetch water, as the warm air rustles the leaves of the eucalyptus trees. Children play outside and men work for little or no pay. Here, in the village of Zenebework, Addis Ababa, one of the most impoverished parts of Ethiopia, the people rely on international aid for food and supplies.
“It’s how we lived and how we survived…” says Bethlehem Alemu, founder and CEO of SoleRebels.
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When Alemu was a young girl she was saddened to see her neighbors struggle to make a decent living because of the lack of jobs.
“I don’t like to call people poor. I would call them disadvantaged… if you give opportunities to the poor, they will no longer be poor.”
After university she returned home, determined to create a better life for her community, one that would empower it through its members’ creative skills. With $10,000 and a few employees her dream and artisanal shoe brand began to take shape.
“It has a strong investment on people. It’s not about giving aid but teaching people life skills that will sustain them in the future.”
SoleRebels makes eco-friendly shoes that combine traditional Ethiopian Selate and Barabasso shoes with modern production. The shoes are made from recycled tires and natural fibers. Alemu says that although the market share for green products is small, it opens up a lot of opportunities. However, this requires a lot of marketing.
“We selected shoes because we saw that footwear was an excellent platform to begin to share many of the indigenous, eco-sensible, craft heritage and artisanal talents that we have here in Ethiopia,” she says.
It was a simple idea that turned the company into the first fair trade-certified footwear brand under the World Fair Trade Organization. Over the years SoleRebels has expanded and become the fastest-growing African footwear brand with stores in over 30 countries across the world. It is also the country’s number one exporter to the United States.
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The success of the company has transformed Alemu into one of the most successful businesswomen in the world. She has appeared on the Forbes ‘100 Most Powerful Women in the World’ list and was selected by the World Economic Forum (WEF), as a 2011 Young Global Leader. Last year, she sat alongside Sir Richard Branson, Bob Geldof and Arianna Huffington as one of the councilors at the One Young World (OYW) summit, which was held in Johannesburg, South Africa.
In her address to the youth at OYW, she spoke of the importance of being innovative and how blazing your own path will pave the way for others to follow.
“When I started the business I was afraid because the market was not there&#8230; I didn’t follow anybody’s road. What’s happening in Africa is there is one big road and everybody’s following it.”
One of her biggest challenges was breaking through the mindset of those who believed an African footwear brand would not succeed.
“There are a lot of entrepreneurs in Ethiopia who are doing really well, but they don’t know how to sell their product, how to market it, or how to brand it. It’s not only a problem in Ethiopia, it’s all over Africa.”
Another issue that troubles many female businesswomen is gender inequality. Alemu, fortunately, has never been treated differently or had difficulties because she is a woman.
“I don’t think females should think like a female, they have to see themselves as a person who has a dream and can make their dreams come true. I don’t want to put myself back in that box when I am already out of that box.”
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According to Alemu, the key to a successful business – whether you are in Africa, Europe or America – is to follow the business strategies of successful companies and adjust them to suit your community. The problem for Africans is the disconnect and lack of trading agreements between other countries.
“Whenever people want to start a business, they always look up to somebody and that’s a problem. We don’t ask: ‘how are other companies reaching this point?’ or “how am I going to build that inside my company?’”
As the founder, she has ambitious dreams for her Ethiopian-based company and wants it to become the “Apple of Africa”.
“I am inspired by the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs. I love how he came up with the idea and said I want to have this kind of product next week and then people put it in front of him the next week.”
Looking back, Alemu never thought that the footwear company with the quirky name would become what it is today. She set out to create a business that would allow her to earn an income and better the lives of the people around her, and today she is one of Africa’s most successful female entrepreneurs.
The people of Zenebework, who once felt hopeless, now stand with dignity. It was one small step for Alemu, but one giant leap for Ethiopia.
She just happened to do it in a pair of  SoleRebels.
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In The Shoes Of A Rebel

Kirsten Goss, a Durban-born entrepreneur, jewelry designer and mother has quickly become an award-winning African brand with stores in Johannesburg and London. There’s no stopping the strong-willed, go-getting Goss who has high aspirations and wants to continue expanding her exclusive jewelry chain with Cape Town also in her sights.
Goss has agents in San Francisco and New York and was recently the new face of Bombay Sapphire in South Africa. She now plans to expand to Asia.
A qualified jewelry designer and gemologist, her first flagship store was opened in London in 2002 and she recently opened another in Johannesburg. In 2009, Goss opened a state-of-the-art goldsmith studio in Durban where six designers craft her jewelry.
The London-based Kirsten Goss gallery is based in the trendy area of South Kensington on a picturesque cobbled path. Exclusive collections are heavily embellished, simple cuts which grab your attention. The pieces appeal to the independent, sophisticated woman who wants something unique. The exquisite styles are breathtaking, the gems dazzling; silver and gold jewelry with embedded precious stones.
Being passionate about the designs is important. Goss is meticulous about her work. She makes sure that every individual piece is handcrafted and personally designed, to fulfill her pride in the Kirsten Goss brand.
It took several attempts to catch the driven jewelry entrepreneur, who we managed to track down in Hong Kong. She explains her latest plans to break into the Asian market with a “pop-up” style fair.
When starting her business she took the risk and established herself as a small boutique firm which has now gone international. “We are doing an unusual thing, most people use the wholesale route to get ahead,” says Goss.
She said that her grandmother, Erica Goss, influenced her to start her own business.
“My role model is my grandmother who was a real frontier lady. She was a well-educated, typical Irish living in Africa, very frontier-orientated. She was somebody who was well-traveled. She taught me a lot,” says Goss.
“I started my business in London when I had a small child and then moved back to South Africa and visited London every month. My grandmother taught me you could live anywhere in the world. It’s all about passion, it’s all about ambition, it’s all about you and I think she was somebody who I drew a lot of inspiration from in my life,” she adds.
The designer’s Scandinavian and Irish heritage and her South African upbringing have all played a major part in influencing her designs. The use of exuberant colors clearly shows how she is influenced by her African heritage.
Goss supports a number of charities including the Make A Difference (MAD) Foundation; Sunflower Fund (leukemia); Save the Children, Enkuliso and Ekujabuleni nursery schools and the Wildlands South Africa. Her father was active in rhino conservation.
She was recently asked to design 12 pieces for the Spirit of Liberty exhibition in London. She has designed pieces for the Royal Wedding and Prince Willliam’s special birthday party.
“My dream is to have five to six galleries around the world in different locations and everybody knows that when going to a Kirsten Goss gallery they will find a truly unique piece,” says Goss.

Tag: Brand

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