SA Rocks

I thought I’d post my own thoughts today for Product Week.

I want to quickly talk about the ways in which brands are moving forward with the times and making their products more accessible to people as trends and technologies progress.

The example that brought about this post was Standard Banks movement in to social media and sponsorship (yes to movements all in one, impressive).

They are and have been for a while, the sponsors of cricket in a big way. This is a great move and many brands have done similar things such as Vodacom with their longterm sponsorship of rugby in general and the Super 14 tournament specifically.

Basically Standard Bank have taken their product – Banking – to a social level. They have Jonty Rhodes blogging – celebrity association, tick – at the side of the field at matches. They have comments which allow people to get involved – customer involvement, tick – in the conversation and the product which gives them immediate association to the brand. And they now have the very first social media press release – moving with the times, tick.

This is what the press release about the press release had to say:

The link below will direct you to this new generation press release designed to make information accessibility and retrieval smarter and easier. Links to visual material, multimedia content, brand specific social media sites and other relevant industry news sources are intended to streamline your research and story creation. The SMPR is set to change the way that brands and journalists exchange information.

Basically the point I am trying to make is that products can never remain stagnant and I think that Standard Bank have done a great job to move along with the times and catch a new market for themselves. Hell, case in point is this blog post, they have a blogger on a positively South African site referring to their brand. Fantastic PR.

I am always so incredibly surprised by the creativity of South African adverts, advertisers and marketers. We have an incredibly versatile and demanding market to cater for and many agencies go the extra mile and compete in their creativity on an international level.

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