Brand strategists and marketers face major challenges in 2008: from the painful death of traditional advertising and the stratospheric rise of social networking to environmental consciousness and, in South Africa, a divided ANC. Idea Engineers’ Managing Partner, JANICE SPARK, looks at what we can expect on the brand front this year.

Globally, 2008 will mark a decisive shift into the dynamic world of Web 2.0. For brand strategists and marketers, the painful death of traditional advertising will be accompanied by the stratospheric rise of social networking. Add a global boom in environmental consciousness and you have a complex matrix of competing variables to negotiate. Locally, a divided ANC offers a telling sign of the social challenges that will continue to underpin all commercial activity.

These are some of the key movements South Africans can expect on the brand front in the year ahead:



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Ahead of the Joburg Art Fair running from 14 to 16 March in Sandton, independent curator CAROL BROWN looks at the changing face of corporate art collections, what it means for African and South African artists, and the why and how of supporting art.

Until about ten years ago, corporate art collections were hidden behind doors and only shared with employees of the leading banks, law firms and financial institutions. They were mainly purchased for financial investment and to decorate the walls of the offices. Now, walls are disappearing from offices and the art is changing and having to fulfil new roles.

Artworks have become widely publicised assets which are used to brand a company and build internal corporate identity and as part of a wide ranging package of community and social responsibility activities.

There are many reasons for this but one which has recently surfaced is that national art museums are now longer adequately funded. It’s pretty much an international trend and not only applicable to South Africa.

This means that our heritage cannot be preserved by museums and our cultural capital becomes lost as artists seek other occupations or, in South Africa’s case, leave the country to go to places where there is more interest in purchasing contemporary art. So the big corporate collectors now have a great opportunity to fill the role previously played by museums and to become keepers of heritage and patrons of living artists.



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Limited roll-out of WiMAX has resulted in dampening of its potential impact, according to a new research report from World Wide Worx.

Delays in the award of licenses for providing the new WiMAX high-speed wireless broadband service to businesses and consumers and the limited roll-out of services that have been licensed has resulted in dampening of its potential impact.

This is the core conclusion of the first study on the impact of the technology in South Africa, conducted by World Wide Worx. The report, “WiMAX in SA 2008: Year Zero”, released yesterday, shows that only those companies that have already deployed WiMAX have appreciated its impact.

These companies are all using Telkom’s scaled down version of WiMAX, which is provided only where its ADSL fixed line service is not available, and only at ADSL-type speeds. WiMAX can theoretically offer speeds of up to 70Mbps, as opposed to ADSL’s fastest option in South Africa of 4Mbps. Even at far lower speeds, however, the potential offered by WiMAX is not yet on the horizon, since no serious competition exists to spur its roll-out.



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With the concept of ubiquitous services being at the heart of this month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a keynote session focused on the topic of ubiquitous networks rang a loud bell.

The CEOs of Bharti Airtel, Ericsson, Qualcomm and Telstra examined the way in which networks are developing to support mobile as the access method of choice and deliver anywhere, anytime connectivity to anyone or anything.

Carl-Henric Svanberg, President and CEO of Ericsson, said that for him the idea of a ubiquitous network was ‘broadband everywhere,’ and that this was being achieved through the rapid growth of the HSPA ecosystem. He pointed to some 250 vendors producing around 400 devices as proof, stating that the ever-shrinking size of HSPA data cards means they will soon be installed in multiple devices and ‘everything will communicate’. Within a year, he claimed, HSPA will be delivering 40Mb/s in the downlink.

Of course, that is a rich claim, bearing in mind the big deal South Africa’s networks have made of moving to 3.6Mb/s download speeds on HSDPA cards.



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In an awards ceremony in Johannesburg last week, Altech Netstar was awarded the 2007 Technology Top 100 (TT100) Minister’s Award for Overall Excellence. “This celebration of excellence is also a celebration of truly South African innovation,” said the Minister of Science and Technology, Mosibudi Mangena, of the overall awards.

Altech Netstar is the overall winner in the 2007 Technology Top 100 (TT100) awards.

According to Professor Roy Marcus, Chairman of the Technology Top 100 and The Da Vinci Institute for Technology Management, the honour was a result of the company’s ingenuity and success in the systemic management of technology, innovation and people.

The winners were announced during an innovative musical awards ceremony held on 21 February 2008, where 81 enterprises qualified to carry the 2007 TT100 brand, signifying that they use technology to outperform their peers and achieve success.

“The Technology Top 100 Awards are recognised as the premier business excellence awards in South Africa,” said the Minister of Science and Technology, Mosibudi Mangena. “This celebration of excellence is also a celebration of truly South African innovation.”

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