The recent TBWA\Africa Conference held in Sun City focused on harnessing the power of Disruption for African communication.

Disruption is the lifeblood of TBWA\, and this year saw over 80 people from 15 countries and 20 agencies throughout Africa gather for an annual three-day TBWA\ African Conference to immerse themselves in Disruption® philosophy and processes.

There has never been a greater need for creative and disruptive ideas in reputation management. The spread of risk is so much greater now and, as a result, companies have to be better prepared and quicker to respond than they were three or five years ago. Exposing the Magna Carta to new Disruption tools is critical, as it empowers our staff with the skills needed to ensure our clients break through the clutter.

Africa, by its very nature, is disruptive. We see this in many forms throughout the continent, from an array of Nollywood movies being distributed via mobile, the embrace of online retailing in many African markets and the adaptation of the Uber model in Kenya where payment is made in M-pesa and cash.

The scope for continued Disruption creates exciting opportunities as African youth happily flip conventions and experiment with new solutions.

The challenge is not selling Disruption into Africa. The challenge is continuing to drive Disruption as a uniquely TBWA\tool that sets us apart and acts as our differentiator. We can achieve so much more by using our shared Disruption thinking while optimising new tools, technologies and techniques.

The conference showcased opportunities for Magna Carta and other agencies to strengthen the unified network and galvanise our Disruption DNA, which is exciting for the agency and our clients.

Ima Peter, Account Director

In today’s ever more cluttered advertising environment, brands are constantly looking for ways to achieve cut through for their messages.

One of the most effective tactics adopted by brands  to achieve this goal of late, has been the practice of newsjacking, with Nandos being South Africa’s most consistantly celebrated protagonist of this very delicate practice.

For the uninitiated newsjacking is essentially the art of injecting your brand  message into a breaking news story with the objective of generating media coverage and social media engagement, or more succinctly put, “The process of leveraging trending news to elevate your brand.”

When done right, the pay off can be lots of eyeballs and positive sentiment for your brand, however, as with most things, there is an equal and opposite downside for brands that get it wrong.

This approach is even more fraught with risk in the midst of an unfolding tragedy and the risk to any brand’s reputation can be very serious.

Take for example this rather tasteless and tone deaf tweet from Urban Outfitters during Huricane Sandy in 2012. In the midst of the destruction caused by the storm, they not only trivialised a very serious and tragic event, but also attempted to benefit financially of people’s plight. This was a clear example of how not to do it.

Or when Kenneth Cole trivialised the suffering of many people in Egypt during the revolution, with this tactless post on Twitter, that one can only assume was an ill advised attempt at humour.

Both these brands paid the price, with both experiencing a significant amount of backlash from on social media and negative news stories being written about their efforts by some media outlets, forcing them to back track and issue apolgies for their respective faux pas.

In Johannesburg we recently witnnessed a tragic accident when the temporary bridge near the Grayston Drive Bridge over the M1 collapsed, resulting in two deaths and 23 people being injured.

As a result of the accident, the M1,  a major highway in Johannesburg, used by tens of thousands of motorists every day was closed, causing major traffic jams in and around the Sandton CBD as motorists were forced to find alternative routes to their desitinations.

The accident also resulted in a huge amount of media coverage, both traditional  and on online media, with the news trending on Twitter for some time.

Now ordinarily, this would be fairly trecherous ground for any company to try and leverage for its brand, however one brand, in conjuction with the City of Johannesburg did exactly that.

Using its unique offering and online footprint to offer a truly valuable service, Uber took to Twitter and it’s mobile app to offer free rides for people in and around Sandton to and from Gautrain stations in an effort to relieve some of the traffic congestion caused by the bridge collapse.

The tweet, promoting the initiative received 432 Retweets and 151 favourites and a significant amount of goodwill.

What Uber demonstrated through their actions, was that with the correct message that offers a truly useful service or solution that is not just opportunistic, brands can garner a great deal of positive sentiment.

We’ve summarised a few lessons to be taken from these examples:

The first being that brands who rush headlong into a trending news story without understanding the context, nuances and tone of the story and without adding anything of benefit to the intended audience, can find their actions causing serious damage to their brand’s integrity and reputation.

On the other hand, in similar circumstances, when brands take the time to understand the story and what the major issues are with the addition of making the decision to get involved in the story based on whether their brand is able to add something truly beneficial in an authentic manner, can be a great way for your brand to achieve that desired break through and generate significant positive impact .

Sifiso Mazibuko, Social Media and Content Marketing Director

I recently presented the South African Social Media Landscape 2015 Report at the ITWeb Social Business Summit and the research demonstrated some pretty interesting trends.

As a result of the rise of technology and Internet access, South Africa’s trends in incorporating social media in corporate environments, are not far behind those of the United States and the rest of the developed world.

Most notably, however, are the advances that South Africa continues to make when it comes to mobile technology, with local advances often eclipsing those witnessed in the US.

Additionally, the report also highlights how the increased adoption of largely mobile visual platforms such as Instagram, which experienced over 100% growth in the 12 months, have been fueled by cheaper data costs, free Wi-Fi and cheaper smartphones.

According to the report, Facebook has also continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace than its photo sharing subsidiary, growing by 10% year on year with 13 million South Africans now on the platform and 77% of them logging on using their mobile devices, continuing the strong mobile theme.

Smartphones are being used by 7.9 million South African Facebook users with 1.9 million using basic feature phones to log onto the service.

The past four years has also seen a notable increase in video content and most branded content on platforms like Twitter also being supplemented by images.

They key thing for brands, is for them to recognise the vital role that visual media has always play, even before the Internet. The difference now, is that social media is largely the domain of consumers, and TV-style advertising is nearing obsoletion.

The challenge for brands will be to leverage the power of social media influencers and co-create content in order to grow their communities.

When it comes to the adoption of Snapchat in South Africa, the young generation is quickly adopting these new platforms, and local interest has increased dramatically in the last two years, even though exact numbers have not yet been confirmed. Snapchat fills the need of ephemeral messaging, as people have realized that not all content needs to last forever.”

As use of mobile devices continues to increase, instant messaging platforms will be the future of CRM, as Standard Bank has shown using WeChat to communicate with its customers 24/7.

Michal Wronski, Business Development Manager  at Ornica Group

Native advertising, sponsored content, corporate journalism, visual storytelling, brand publishing, content marketing – corporate news is everywhere. The secret is out and agencies, corporates and brands alike are all out to get their 3 minutes of YouTube fame. But how do we create a positive and lasting impression that delivers value to our audience? On top of getting noticed or entertaining our audience, how do we ensure we have a positive impact on the businesses we work for?

With newsrooms under pressure to do more, with less, a gap has been created, with many seizing the opportunity to fill it. Newsrooms of today are on our fingertips, it is the phone calls, emails, posts and tweets that all of us do on a daily basis. Each day all of us are sourcing, aggregating, curating and creating our own news. Mashable ran a completely virtual newsroom for almost five years and still relies heavily on remote employees and freelancers.

South Africa media houses continue to face rising costs with Times Media Group, Media24 and the Independent, all having retrenched staff in recent years while also consolidating newsrooms and production teams. The hunger for quality content has never been greater. This presents brands with a massive opportunity.

Organisations are starting to take control of the content creation process, either by taking content production skills in-house or through agency partnership. Although mobile and social media news consumption habits have evolved, legacy platforms have not been abandoned. Instead it has created an opportunity for organisations to become their own publishers.

But what happens when brands effectively become their own Editor in Chief? Eager marketing managers with sales targets setting the agenda is not exactly fertile ground for creative and inspiring ideas to flourish.

On the other side of the coin, we have creative agencies who conceptualize big ideas that have all the bells and whistles to sing, dance and make you a cup of tea, but lack relevance and fail to meet the business objective, (unless of course you are a teabag company).

Winning organisations and practitioners are finding that balance by putting the audience at the centre, understanding that the audience is not ready and waiting to receive your news. Before publishing, a good editor will first consider the intended audience and what they want to see and interact with. Similarly, a brand journalist’s rule of thumb is audience and engagement first, brand second. A brand journalist actively seeks out the story; understands the characters and the journey.
The story is told in an emotive or thought provoking way. This is very different to “corporate spin” used to sell products and services. The brand voice is more liberated from the traditional constraints and has to be authentic and engaging for the audience.

A smart approach to brand storytelling, brings together the boldness and innovative qualities of a creative studio with the agility, responsiveness and timeliness of a newsroom. The challenge is to be nimble enough to respond quickly to the 24-hour news cycle. You need to produce content quickly if you want to be relevant. You then need to leverage that content over multiple channels with different formats and different entry points.

Your brand story lives beyond, a catch phrase or tagline, it needs to make a connection with people, beyond their interaction with your product or service – that’s how you stand out from the crowd.

For many, news is just another form of content that can be used to attract an audience of readers in the hope that they will turn into paying customers. However capturing the essence of a brand and sharing that narrative in a smart, provocative but honest way can win you much more than just headlines and retweets. It can build the brand profitable, long-term relationships.

Tanya Buckley, Head of Content at Magna Carta Reputation Consultants.

This year has been a big year for Magna Carta – we celebrated 20 years of managing the reputations of Africa’s top companies.

We have also bolstered our presence on the rest of the continent over the last eight years through the creation of a 16-country partner network, which includes six new affiliate agreements with consultancies in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Zambia and Angola.

“The six new affiliate agreements carry a level of exclusivity that includes access to our intellectual property as well as some of our most senior consultants,” said Vincent Magwenya, Chief Executive Officer of Magna Carta at the side-lines of the consultancy’s Africa network conference.

“This gives us an almost unrivalled breadth and reach on the continent which is a compelling competitive advantage for us when serving clients that are expanding their own operations throughout Africa.  We are also currently in the process of securing an additional affiliate agreement with a partner in Mozambique.”

We are also celebrating our evolution from a traditional public relations firm to a truly global African reputation management consultancy, highlighting our ongoing commitment to evolve along with the rapidly changing media and information landscape.

Since our birth in 1994, the year of South Africa’s first democratic elections, we have grown into one of Africa’s most recognised reputation management consultancy offering the full spectrum of new media positioning solutions. Our long-term client base includes the likes of Standard Bank, Engen, Deloitte, Oxford University Press, Samsung, Syngenta, Emirates Airlines, Starwood, Medscheme, Bonitas, Vedanta and Eskom as well as a rapidly expanding portfolio of new business opportunities.

In keeping with our philosophy of continual evolution, we revitalized our service offering at the end of last year to mark our transition from a public relations agency to a consultancy offering the full ambit of end-to-end reputation management solutions.

New services include Investor Relations geared to take companies from an initial public offering through to defined market positioning; Advanced Media Training covering digital, print, financial and broadcast channels; and Public Affairs Management that assist clients in their advocacy efforts on regulation and policy.

Magna Carta’s Investor Relations unit has already built up a significant portfolio of clients while the Public Affairs team has four active briefs at present covering both regulatory and policy advocacy. Advanced Media Training has been rolled out to several of the company’s long-standing clients and is rapidly gaining a reputation as the go-to outfit to prepare for media engagement.

“Our transition to a Reputation Management Consultancy is not just a matter of semantics but a fundamental shift in how we do business,” says Magwenya. “Our comprehensive service offering analyses and assists on all factors that impact a client’s reputation, either positively or negatively.”

During the course of 2014 Magna Carta has been able to on-board a prestigious portfolio of new clients that include Transnet Port Terminals, British American Tobacco SA, Clicks, Pernod Ricard, Nissan, Basil Read Group, Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Shanghai Zendai and Pembury. In addition to this, Magna Carta is also working on a strong pipeline of additional new business opportunities.

“We continue to research and integrate global best practice into the service of our clients by leveraging our partnership with TBWA as well as our exclusive African affiliation with Ketchum.

“Our clients’ reputation journey is also our journey – from navigating complex policy and regulatory environments to finding relevant ways of engaging on digital platforms and enabling clients to meet the expectations of today’s consumers and investors,” says Magwenya.

“Thanks to our strong partnerships we can confidently say that we as Magna Carta are a truly global African Reputation Management Consultancy.”

Written by Garth Theunissen, Media Director