Category: Branding
Why the prepaid debit card is just dumb
The, the chutzpah, they say that with your Prepaid Debit Card you have unlimited “ATM withdrawals”. Why would anyone want to take CASH, deposit it into an account only to withdraw it again. So not only are they targeting poor people. They are convinced that poor people are idiots too.
Nothing Velvet about the Sky
They bloody took my post – a genuine concern I raised in the interest of people like myself that fly at least once a month – and removed it from where it can be seen by “the public”, despite the fact that they willingly chose to position themselves on this public digital playground
Introducing the Social Media Starter Pack
On Monday 29 August 2011 Fluence New Marketing, the digital advertising agency I am the CEO of will launch the first interactive online course in Social Media in South Africa. Yes we know there are other online courses and a number of them are interactive as well. However, after researching the social media education space, [...]
Brand African?
It started one day when I jumped in taxi in the Musgrave area to go to Overport City, and the taxi driver tried to spark a conversation with me in Zulu – his mother tongue. I politely responded in English making known that I am unable to converse with him in his home language (I [...]
I wanna be a brand ambassador
Yesterday I saw the Volvo Facebook fanpage, which contains a great custom tab with high end graphics of David Tlale, Gert Johan Coetzee and Nkensani Nkosi posing next to Volvos they were given to drive as brand ambassadors. So the question sprung to mind: “Why are celebs given cars to drive by automotive manufacturing companies [...]
The myth of the savings account in bank branding
When I was 19 years old I started my first job at Coastal Metal Works in Woodstock, Cape Town. (yeah you can see I’ve been avoiding that company like the plague.. their website looks like digital vomit) I subsequently opened my first bank account with United Bank in St. George’s, Cape Town, but this was [...]
Brand ANC fails the future today
I’m a child of the 80s. Born in 1972 and grew up during the 70s, but mostly during the 80s because that’s when I started becoming aware of things. Yes I witnessed the 1976 unrest, but I was only 4 years old and had no idea what was really going on. All I knew was [...]
Your staff are your biggest brand-threat
Before I get into my story, please note that a brand is not a logo on a cap, a sign on a shopfront or a wrap on your vehicle. Yes that is “branding”, which is a process. None of that is a brand. A brand is a collection of things that you and your company [...]
Apple vs Blackberry. Great comeback
I just came across these two videos via Facebook wall post and I find it greatly entertaining. It’s comparative advertising at its very best. Blackberry takes a potshot at Apple, and Apple makes comeback that speaks volume in just a few words.
Award-winning vs Best-selling. Choose
I have just read a post written by Herman Manson of Marklives.com on BizCommunity about the waning influence of ad award shows. I cannot help but agree with Herman and even go one step further. All award shows. “Yes Arthur, but we get billings based on our status as an award-winning agency”, I hear someone whine from a corner somewhere. “Mazaltov”, I say, “but isn’t the objective of advertising to translate into sales rather than awards?” To which my imaginary whiner retreats back into her shell. Now the big debate that should be had is whether marketing, advertising, branding (or whatever you call it) should revolve around people getting a pat on the back being told how creative and witty and linguistically astute they are and get a bird statue for the office or whether it should be single-mindedly focused on how much money the agency’s creativity made back for the client company after the ad was made.
Arthur Charles Van Wyk is the CEO of Fluence New Marketing, a digital ad agency based in Durban, South Africa. He is also a brand evangelist, speaker, digital marketing consultant and impassioned spokesperson for internet-enabled marketing. 
