Does south AfricA’s Benefit?

World Cup

then , noW and the future

Business CommuniCation

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Business suMMit 2010

June 9, 2010

Your moneY ezine

ith the cacophony created by companies that are vying vigourously for the ears of the consumer, the company with the most unique method voicing their virtues will stand tall at the end of the day. As such a

defining feature that sets your business apart though is a cut-ting edge communication plan.

More and more businesses both large and small have rec-ognized the need to keep in touch with their various pub-lics. Broadcast Journalist and News Anchor Dwayne Berbick agrees. “It’s essential for survival, and being small is hardly an excuse not to be advertising because it is through advertising that a business gains traction in the market place” says the 23 year old, who has been blazing a trail in the CVM News-room.

‘Word-of-mouth advertising’ is heralded by some purists as the most effective form of getting the news out but accord-ing to Berbick, “in this day and age, there are many modern forms of communication technologies at one’s fingertips, lit-erally that can give any business the added push it needs”. With the advent of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and internet portals such as Youtube, businesses have been diversifying their communication strategies. It’s a move that has left those in the mainstream advertising mar-kets of radio, television and print a little on edge.

Berbick, regarded by some as the point of reference for com-munication in the future underlines this caveat regarding ad-vertising in alternative media. “It depends on your product and your target market, it makes no sense to go advertising in media where those who are the consumers of your product are not visiting”, says Mr. Berbick. He continued, “Alternative

media should never be seen as a replacement for advertising in mainstream media; the two go hand in hand. It’s spreading the net to capture those who have been left out”.

“It’s evident for Financial Institutions such as National Com-mercial Bank, whose Facebook page I’m sure you have seen many times when you log on to the site. Others such as Digi-cel, already envied for it’s extensive advertising campaigns across traditional media platforms has also spread their wings into alternative media advertising as well. They have a fan

page with almost 200,000 individuals, that’s giving a wide cross section of people a platform to share their experiences about their product, give updates on new promotions, treat their loyal customers with giveaways and guess what, they don’t have to spend a cent” says Berbick.

Some may argue though, that the power of the Digicel Brand demonstrated by this Facebook Fan Page is the result of all the previous expensive advertising. Berbick disagrees. “The substantive point here is that, they go hand in hand. When you have a product that cuts across generations and social classes, you need a communication plan that does that too; a little bit of the old and a little bit of the new”.

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It’s essential for survival, and being small is hardly an excuse not to be advertising be-cause it is through advertising that a business gains traction in the market place“

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Does south Africa’s Benefit?World Cup

frica’s World Cup is nigh. Such are the expecta-tions surrounding South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup Finals that an entire continent has willingly opened its arms to welcome all the

benefits that supposedly accompany such an event. The World Cup is undoubtedly the most viewed sporting event in the world and the pride felt by a people that have fre-quently been downtrodden is palpable but is feeling good worth the potential risk that accompanies such an undertak-ing? The Government certainly feels so.

President Joseph Zuma has proclaimed that South Africa will benefit from the massive infrastructure investment made for the World Cup for years to come with investors and business interests seeing the country as one of choice in the future. That’s big talk, but the big money has already been spent, in fact $3.7 billion is the figure being tossed around these days and one cant help but wonder if this is what a developing country really needs right now.

Deserted sporting grounds being patrolled by security guards, befuddled public officials and a national debt crisis tell the story of Greece’s successful hosting of the 2004 Olym-pic Games. The Athens Olympic Games cost over US$11

billion and while Olympic spokespersons strongly refute any connection between the debt crisis and the Olympic Games citing the continued benefits of infrastructural benefits while conceding that the non-use of many of the sporting grounds is a drag on the public’s pockets. That being said it is unlikely that South Africa will be left stuck with a man-made canoe and kayak course or a judo arena that have no practical use whatsoever. Even closer to home, Jamaicans have felt the pinch after an impressive stadium built to host matches in the 2007 World Cup of Cricket still being woefully under-utilized.

Pragmatism may be mistaken for pessimism so it may be prudent to look at the past once more. Germany, a country in far better shape that any in Africa saw the expected up-tick in retail spending and service activity before and during their hosting in 2006 but experienced a sharp downturn in the periods after. An estimated $12.4 billion is estimated to be introduced into South African coffers leading up to and during the event but economists are tempering their enthu-siasm about this figure because of the perceived effect that the financial crisis may have had on the spending power of tourists.

A

by Andre Burnett

The World Cup is undoubtedly the most viewed sporting event in the world and the pride felt by a people that have frequently been downtrodden is palpable but is feeling good worth the potential risk that accompanies such an undertaking?

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Does south Africa’s Benefit? cont’dWorld Cup

Never mind the effect that FIFA’s stringent licensing and copy-right regulations will have on the efforts of local traders to benefit from the influx of visitors to the country. Unlicensed traders will find that it is illegal to sell home-made products within a mile of the stadia while shop owners in the immedi-ate vicinity of the stadia are not allowed to operate during the tournament without putting up large fees. In the long run, the thousands of jobs created by all of the infrastructure development will likely disappear in short order emphasizing that employment is one area that will not directly benefit in the long run from the World Cup.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on the way it is viewed, most of the benefits that will be accrued may be in-tangible. The improvement of South Africa’s image to being a technologically sound modern democracy with a business friendly environment might make South Africa a boon for Foreign Direct Investment. Of course “Might” is the opera-tive word in this case.

Another school of thought is that an inferiority complex suf-fered by the continent may have been a bigger driving force behind the South African government’s bid for the event rather an incisive look at the costs and benefits. African na-tions’ need to prove that they are capable of competing with the rest of the world may have been exploited by the one

body that benefits completely from the World Cup, FIFA.

South African columnist Shipho Hilongwe jadedly wrote, “The World Cup is FIFA’s event, they just rented the coun-try from the government.” FIFA’s involvement has been lik-ened to being invited to a dinner party by an old friend who conveniently left his wallet at home and then expects you to be eternally grateful for being given the opportunity to pay. Of course with the clear income of approximately 4 billion expected to be raised by FIFA it is not hard to see that the organizing committee is the one out to make a killing.

According to a study by South African economist Dr. Udesh Pillay, only 1% of South Africans now believe they will per-sonally benefit from the World Cup compared to 33% in 2005. It seems that while Africa welcomes the World Cup as a once in a lifetime experience the reality has trickled down and one wonders if the a Government that bases its long term economic future on something as tenuous as a sporting event in correct in doing so. One thing that is sure is that a successful tournament should engender trust in Africa and for the sake of the region we hope this is enough.

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ast week, the members of the planning commit-tee for the inaugural Your Money eZine Business Summit launched into the preliminaries of the promotion of the Summit using the services of so-cial networking service, Twitter and our business

partner, CoreTalk Caribbean to full effect. The open source approach to Twitter has led to the development of some pretty useful Twitter services the most useful of which are those which enable users to tweet efficiently from their mo-bile phones. This capability means that CoreTalk’s two way SMS service is paired excellently with our efforts on Twitter.

What we learned: Blatantly pushing a product on Twitter does not work, in fact it starts to look like spam sooner of later and a loss of followers will ensue. Instead it is neces-sary for the account to converse with its followers and as such become such a part of their Twitter experience that information is passed in a seemingly passive manner. It is also important that your account seem to have a personality rather than an automated device posting randomly. As such we started with tweets about the root word “Summit” and gauged the response caused by curiosity of our followers.

• @YourMoneyeZine:“Summit”(n)-thehighestde-gree attainable

• @YourMoneyeZine: Once you have reached thesummit it is easier to survey the rest of the world

Of course, it didn’t take long for someone to enquire about thesignificanceof theterm“summit”viaa“retweet”(Tore-postanotheruser’spost)andtheyweredulyadvisedtotextthe word “summit” to a CoreTalk number which immedi-ately gave them more information and invited them formally to be registered for the Summit.

With a number of people inquiring and learning more the step was taken to ask these interested members to duly retweet all posts by our Twitter account which instantly ex-poses our correspondences to Twitter users who we aren’t in direct contact with already.

With the first phase of our Twitter promotion out of the way, the upcoming weeks will see the team trying to use more ingenious methods of increasing “word of mouth” with FaceBook being the next area of focus. Exciting times…

watch this space.

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