This Time for Africa

One month, 64 games and 145 goals later, the world's biggest event is over. Dry those eyes and pack away those vuvuzelas because you have to wait another 4 years until the next one. But what a World Cup it has been. I think this tournament will be one that will be remembered for years, for a variety of reasons - footballing and non-footballing reasons.

But I think as the sun goes down on this World Cup, South Africa can be duly proud of what they have achieved as host and as a country. The hosting of this tournament for not just South Africa, but the entire continent of Africa has been a marketing and rebranding coup. Two years ago, FIFA President Sepp Blatter said

“People don’t want to trust Africa. That is wrong. Africa has given so much not only to football but to the whole world. Someday, something should come back. So let’s have this World Cup. Let’s celebrate Africa. Why not?”

And celebrate we all did. Even though popularised by a Colombian singer, the strains of "Waka Waka" and its tag line "This Time for Africa", continue to filter through the airwaves, leaving it as probably one of the most popular tournament anthems ever.The world has looked to South Africa over the past month for great football, but got more than they bargained for in the artistry, passion, energy and dare I say, unity of its people.

This game allowed Africa to showcase its beauty and the remnants of Apartheid regime, to the outside world, which seems to have no idea how bad things were and that there is a better side of Africa(beside tribal wars and starvation) which international media—for its own convenience ---tends not to focus on. - Ghanaweb

Whether the powers that be will leap on the momentum which this World Cup has generated and leverage all the positives into effecting socio-economic change is another story, but well done South Africa.

And without a doubt, this tournament's immense public appeal and attraction was heavily invested in the fact that we had greater means to communicate, participate and enjoy the tournament's various facets. World Cup 2010 was supposed to be the social media World Cup and boy was it ever. Information, debates, opinions, replays - all available at the click of a button, whether it be on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, the obsessed and the curious all found a way to be part of this global phenomenon via this global phenomenon. Sponsors and pundits alike milked it for all it was worth, tapping into the enormous audience primed to receive messages.

Twitter reported that the World Cup or #Worldcup resulted in a record 3,283 tweets per second as opposed to the regular average of 750 per second. The fail whale was almost as recognisable as Paul the Octopus, because of the barrage of tweets around the tournament. Social media has truly revolutionised the way we love the game, and the way the host country was marketed to the millions who could not make it there to see the games live.

At the end of it all, though Spain were crowned the best team in the world, the real winners were South Africa and social media, and all the people who joined the revolution to make this one of the best tournaments the world has ever seen.  Brazil 2014 has some rather big shoes to fill, but I think they can do it. In 4 years, this phenomenon may be bigger than any of us can ever have imagined.

Runners up: Paul and the vuvuzelas.

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On Sale: Your Small Business

A couple weeks ago, my mum and I had a Mum/Daughter shopping day and I had not been to Grand Bazaar since the interchange was opened cause frankly, I did not know how to get in. lol. But in any event, we made and during our mummy/baby adventures, we checked out a new store - J&K Signature Styles, which had only opened at its second location that same week. Needless to say I got some very nice items in said store, but the real winner was the service and the marketing.

Many small business owners leave marketing of their business to chance. The photocopied flyers and word-of-mouth, though not dead, are simply not enough to push a new business into the mainstream. It takes some extra effort to make your business stand out and create that buzz and I loved how the owners of this store had gone about doing that. And it was nothing particularly earth shattering or innovative. Just a simple email and text message. After I laid out some serious cash, I was signed up for their customer loyalty programme, gave them my email address and my mobile number, and a gift card outlining the details of a promotion they would be having in a few weeks time. Of course, the little card went into my wallet never to be seen again, but a couple days ago, I got a text reminding me of said promotion and the dates. This morning I got an email. And that is how this small business will get me to come back and spend more money I should not be spending.

Sometimes when starting that business, when negotiating funding and the like, the stuff like marketing, PR and promotion get forgotten. But this is the most important thing and should be planned for. Press ads are expensive and depending on the size of your business, you may not yet be able to afford full or even half page ads which have consumer pulling power, but there are other ways - email marketing, text marketing, customer loyalty programmes, open house days etc. You can have the best stock, the best staff but if noone knows about you or think you're a cut above the rest, then noone is going to care about what you're offering. The cost of that text message was minimal; the email free - but the ROI on both have to be worth something, including customer awareness and loyalty and sales.

The key point to remember that in order to get sales, you have to be on sale. Don't sell yourselves short.

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Did that old guy, Oscar take home the prize?

So the Academy Awards have come and gone, with most of the predicted winners going home with a statuette. This year was a bit different as the 82 year old show tried to counter the dwindling interest and viewership from the younger audiences. The "Biggest Night in Hollywood" in my opinion has been in recent years been a dud. From the long drawn out monologues, the boring run throughs of less then exciting categories, the lame teleprompting quips - Oscar had started to show its age. And...

 Let's face it, if you ask your 16 year old about "An Education", or "A Serious Man", they would be like, "Huh?" When I first ventured online to peek at the nominees I thought I had gone to a spoof page. Seriously. Where there were supposed to be the traditional 5 artsy-fartsy films for Best Picture, there were 10, and they included "Up".

"Up"? For Best Picture? Times had changed.

Not only did the conservative Academy open the awards up to more mainstream movies, that traditionally would never have seen the prestige of the red carpet, but they also leaned a little more on social media than they did last year, with live streaming on their website and on their Facebook page of the nominations ceremony. Their Facebook page is pretty good too. Great behind the scenes video and photos, trailers for all the nominated films, performance clips and the like. A lot more nominee generated content and stuff that people would be interested in, from choosing that dress for the red carpet to how the statuettes are made. And as I always say, there is an app for everything and there was an app for Oscar as well.

The Oscars unveiled its new application for the iPhone and iPod Touch just in time for this year’s show, and there is truly something for everyone. Users can get caught up on all the nominations by watching movie trailers on the Flixter app, follow all the fashion with the Style App, and learn Oscar-related trivia with the Movie Challenge Oscar Special App. The Oscars iPhone App will also allow its users to make predictions and share them through Facebook, Twitter, text and email as well as release behind-the-scenes footage of rehearsals and preparations leading up to the show. (http://blog.robmark.com/)

There was no live tweeting from Oscar himself, which is a bit unfortunate, especially as Twitter has really grown astronomically since the last broadcast. I really think tweets from Oscar would have gone a long way in generating more interest. Not to say that everyone else did not tweet, but what better way to drive people back to your other channels to check out all the other great stuff you may have come up with to draw people to your "big night".

I don't know if there was an Oscar blog or not, but it seemed like everyone else kept us in the loop, up to the minute,  like CNN and LA Times. An opportunity to give us exclusive coverage - lost. It would have been nice if even their Facebook page was kept "live" so to speak, with photos or video from the red carpet and behind the scenes of the show, if not the ceremony itself., which could have worked if they had enough dazzling, exclusive content to make people WANT to switch to ABC and watch the live broadcast. But as you see, the page became static on Saturday.

So did Oscar win? Did they rake in the viewers to the show last night? Did millions more than last year tune in to see Katherine Bigelow becomes the first woman to win "Best Director" ever, beating out her ex-husband both for directorial excellence and for Best Picture? Did the younger audience they hoped to pull in, come on board to see a bevy of younger presenters like Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron? Was the social media buzz buzzworthy enough to do the job?

Did it win for you?

"An Education" - great movie. I am one of the artsy-fartsy lovers. I probably will not watch "Up" in this lifetime.


Photos: MTV

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