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Opinions

  • The COVID-19 Consumer

    June 4, 2020

    During a global pandemic and a nation-wide lockdown, consumers have been forced to change their daily routines. Not only are they spending more time indoors, but they’re also spending 50% more time online. As a result, shopper behaviour has changed and businesses are seeing the impact of this. Even with these changes and harsh restrictions, 75% of consumers don’t want brands to disappear but instead, want to see a clear shift in strategy that highlights...

  • Celebrating Freedom Day in a time of COVID-19

    April 27, 2020

    Reflect - On what is important Freedom Day commemorates the first democratic post-apartheid non-racial elections held on April 27th 1994, which saw Nelson Mandela elected as President, and made freedom an inalienable right for all the citizens of South Africa - regardless of race, gender or creed. Today, this symbolic time in our history is being celebrated while the country, and the globe as a whole, finds itself at war with the COVID-19 pandemic. As...

  • You’ve been invited to join the group…

    April 9, 2020

    We’re entering into week three of lockdown. For some it’s almost been a month depending on when your company said to work from home, and boy oh boy, have the group chats exploded! While we’re all adapting to new ways of keeping in touch, mimicking conversations we would have had in the office, it is vital to draw the lines where needed and recalibrate our ways of working and communicating. Here are some guidelines to...

  • Connecting in 3… 2… 1

    March 24, 2020

    Thoughts on conferencing and keeping the flame alive The S&I team at FleishmanHillard, Joburg thrives on close contact banter. We share everything from news and celebrity gossip to song dedications and impromptu brainstorms. We get shushed occasionally because we love to bark the latest updates at each other over our desks.   But last week, with all 9 team members sitting in different suburbs across Joburg we attempted to shift our ways of working completely...

  • The Power of You

    August 30, 2019

    Anyone who has been job hunting knows it is an incredibly challenging task – one made infinitely more difficult when there is a shortage of jobs available. South Africa has a high national unemployment rate at 27.6%, and youth unemployment stands at an all-time high of 55.2%.  Unsurprisingly, being unemployed comes with heightened levels of stress. Some of the more apparent stressors are financially based - the loss of income, for example - but others...

  • The Sunday World has closed, where to from here?

    June 7, 2019

    South Africa’s media is facing tough times, and with the announcement of Sunday World closing, the South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) has called for media houses to think “creatively and responsibly about implementing new, sustainable business models.” Yet corporates still rely on journalists to cover events, print their opinion pieces and publish content that serves in the public interest. So likewise, we call for South African corporates to consider new ways of working with...

  • Great minds don’t think alike

    August 8, 2018

    Cognitive Diversity is a term that we’re hearing more and more about, not only in communications, but in various industries, across a variety of sectors. In their 2018 Trends Brief, Sparks and Honey identified “Cognitive Diversity” as an important ideological trend for the year. The concept recommends bringing together people with different ways of thinking and distinctive working styles to create a debate and ultimately produce more creative ideas.  Cognitive diversity is not predicted by...

  • Adapt or die: brands and cultural diversity across Africa

    May 29, 2018

    A one-size-fits-all approach to marketing communications does not work in Africa, or any of its 54 countries. Yes, there is a huge sense of optimism around Africa, and we continue to find our voice, but to build on and harness the massive progress we have already made, there is a real need for African-born creativity to be recognised and respected by an international community. This means that when businesses from beyond African borders plan to...

  • 5 Reasons your business needs SEO

    May 21, 2018

    With over 85 percent of consumers taking to online search engines to find the service they’re looking for, just having a website is no longer enough. With more leads than ever being generated online, your business needs to act smarter and faster to pick them up. According to a HubSpot study, 75 percent of internet users never scroll past the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs). Other than first page ranking, how...

  • Twitter makes life on social real hard for fake news

    March 19, 2018

    Twitter is one of the most popular social networks, hitting 8 million users in South Africa at the end of 2017. In the past couple of years, governments, political figures, celebrities and brands have all tapped into the power of this social network, by using it as a communication channel. The influence that the micro-blogging service wields cannot be ignored. Unfortunately, this influence has also attracted some of the more nefarious parts of society, those...

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