The Nelson Mandela: A Living Legacy published in the Sunday Times on 18 July and in Sowetan on 19 July gives an account of the life of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. It briefly examines his role during the struggle for freedom and how this influenced events in the country and internationally. It examines his achievements in building a nation and promoting democracy, equality and freedom as the first president of a democratic South Africa and beyond. This includes how in 1995 he embraced the South African rugby team to drive unity among South Africans, part of his effort to build a rainbow nation, and how these efforts have been replicated by others in 2010; it will include his strides in promoting quality education, in fighting HIV/Aids and poverty. This is a tribute to Nelson Mandela, and to those who have fought with him, but also to those who take forward the lessons they have learnt from him.

Avusa Media has appointed new editors in the Eastern Cape, a region in which the group leads the market with its newspaper titles. Jeremy McCabe, currently acting editor-in-chief of The Herald and Weekend Post, has been appointed editor of the Saturday title, the Weekend Post. McCabe will also assume editorship of Avusa Media’s community newspapers in the Eastern Cape.

 
 In addition to these responsibilities, McCabe will be responsible for running a newly created production hub, which serves all Avusa Media’s Eastern Cape titles, including the Daily Dispatch and Saturday Dispatch in East London. He will also spearhead the creation of an Avusa-wide production hub located in Port Elizabeth.
 
 
 

 
 Sunday Times deputy editor Heather Robertson will take over the editorship of The Herald. Robertson, who has been with the Sunday Times for over ten years, has served in various capacities including senior writer, Kwa-Zulu Natal bureau chief and national news editor. In her capacity as deputy editor she oversaw the launch of the Sunday Times Zimbabwe edition which has seen the Sunday Times’s circulation soar in that country in the past four months.

 

 
 Current acting editor of The Herald Charmain Naidoo will move to Johannesburg to run the newly created Avusa Media News Service. As editor, Naidoo will be responsible for running an integrated news operation for Avusa Media titles, aimed at building a strong national footprint for the newspapers.

 
 
 
All three editors will report to Avusa Media editor-in-chief Mondli Makhanya. “These appointments are aimed at cementing Avusa Media’s position as a superior provider of quality content and agenda-setting news in South Africa,” he says.

The Avusa Trade Marketing team handed out FFFIFA* packs to our clients.

*Frivolous Football Fan Items from Avusa

“The awards ceremony was a huge success and we are thrilled to once again be behind the leading piece of research in understanding young South African’s consumer behaviour,” says Enver Groenewald, general manager of advertising revenue and strategic communications at Avusa Media.

This year’s survey boasted eleven new ‘coolest’ categories. These include coolest petrol station, which went to Engen; coolest 2010 FIFA star, won by Portuguese heart-throb Cristiano Ronaldo and DJ Cleo came out tops in the coolest local celebrity category.

“Some remarkable insights have come out of the results this year and we encourage marketers to tune in. By providing the industry with a real understanding of SA’s youth, it will be more effective and responsible in its approach to marketing and interacting with them,” adds Groenewald.

Coca-Cola maintains its number one position for the third year in a row as the coolest brand overall. Other repeat winners include ABSA as the coolest bank, Mxit as the coolest social networking site, 5fm as coolest radio station and Pick n Pay, the coolest grocery store.

“There are those reputable and legendary brands, like Coca-Cola, that are continually on top. The youth will remain loyal to the brands that don’t skimp on service delivery and that provide them with an affordable and desirable product offering,” says Jason Levin, managing director of HDI Youth Marketeers.

The tech consumption trend increases each year and notably the 2010 increase reflects the evolved versatility of cell phone usage. However, what remains constant is the importance for SA’s youth to be able to connect with their friends face-to-face. According to the survey, across all age groups, friends would rather connect with each other face-to-face, than chat on social media sites or cell phones.

The Blackberry has moved up from number five to number two in this year’s coolest cell phone category mainly owing to the phones easy internet accessibility and recent affordable offers – both qualities that are essential to these consumers.

“Understandably, within a recession, affordability was a prominent theme in this year’s survey results with Mr Price edging out last year’s winner, Edgars, to claim title of coolest fashion and accessory store,” adds Levin.
Another key insight worth celebrating is that hosting the 2010 World Cup is the number one reason that young South Africans are optimistic about living in this country.

“There is an incredible sense of unity and patriotism among this generation. Their optimism about the future is also reflected in their number one career choice being to ‘open my own company’. This newfound ability to be constantly connected has inflated their sense of independence and belief in their ability to take on anything, and be in charge of their own destinies,” explains Levin.

Other surprises on the night include Lamborghini’s jump into the number one position as coolest motor vehicle pushing repeat winner BMW out into second place.

The youth make up more than 50% of the South African population. This year, youth (ages 8-22) spend is estimated at R95.3 billion, a 6.3% increase from last year. According to HDI Youth Marketeers, their perceptions of brands are well developed by age eight so therefore- as future consumers- they already have huge influence in comparison to other generations.

“They have a tremendous amount of persuasion power over parents to purchase one brand in favour of another. These young minds are also streets ahead of older generations when it comes to embracing new technologies and trends. They are more outspoken and vocal than their older peers and have the tools to broadcast their opinions across the globe,” concludes Levin.

Find out who’s hot and who’s not in the full winners report below and visit www.hdiyouth.co.za for more details.

Click here to see photos from this event

Editorial content

• The World Cup and soccer in general (including personalities, posters, rules of the game)
• What’s on in Johannesburg and Cape Town (a visual, trendy calendar layout of movies, theatre, activities, eating out, events and places to visit)
• An awareness campaign surrounding the influx of people into the cities (and associated safety risks)
• Tips surrounding safety during the period, as well as at the game venues themselves
• Home entertainment (videos, music, gaming, garden sports)
• Cooking with children
• Cut out-and-keep lists of emergency numbers
• Books and eBooks
• Hobbies and crafts (model-building, photography, dance, horse riding)
• Crosswords and su doku puzzles
• Quizzes
• Competitions (painting, short stories)
• Fun days out with the family
• Caring for, respecting and understanding animals

Advertising

Unique advertising opportunities exist to market products aimed at children and parents during this time, in the form of;
- Activity sponsorship
- Banner advertising
- Poster branding
- School resource advertising
- Information gathering

To advertise contact Nadeem Joshua on 011 280 3266 or at joshuan@avusa.co.za

“This is the first time Avusa has embarked on a collaboration of this stature, for both our print and digital mediums. We are enthusiastic about the approaching World Cup and are committed to making the print supplement and the website as comprehensive and useful as possible for South Africans and touring fans alike,” says Elan Lohmann, General Manger of Avusa Media LIVE.

The site includes the latest World Cup news from the Go2010 print publication, sport news from all Avusa Media online publications, in-depth information on each participating team, details on all fixtures and standings, venue information, photo galleries and videos. In addition, the site boats a unique section dedicated to World Cup History – giving a concise nutshell view of all previous World Cup’s from 1930 until 2006 with summaries, facts and photo galleries. Other planned features for the site include fan forums, soccer game score predictors and a mobile site for cell phones.

“We are thrilled about this new venture, and as a prominent media organisation in South Africa we are ideally placed to provide rich and useful World Cup content in both print and digital mediums. The supplement and site sees a major collaboration of journalistic skills from across our titles, providing the best soccer information in the run up to, and during the World Cup,” adds Lohmann.

From May 16 the Go2010 supplement is published every week in Sunday Times, Sunday World, Sowetan, Daily Disaptch and the Herald and when the World Cup kicks off on June 11 it will come out every day in every Avusa title…reaching 8.5 million readers.
“We are harnessing the collective power of our journalists to create the most informative FIFA World Cup online portal available to our readers,”

On the launch of the new division Elan Lohmann, general manager of Avusa Media LIVE explains, “The division is now structured to ensure we become a competitive digital media force in the South African and the African landscape. We now operate under a single new digital publishing umbrella brand – Avusa Media LIVE – and this centralised business is solely dedicated to improving and building our brands”

“This new structure ensures that digital titles, which previously worked in individual silos with varying levels of digital knowledge, skills and resource, will now be run in a far more efficient and streamlined manner,” he adds.

“Until now, some titles have not had access to all the talent (commercial, product, multimedia and marketing) that have made other titles more competitive. This new move allows for all titles to have access to these resources. We are aggresively focussed on appointing top people to key positions.”

The new division welcomes a few new appointments. Justin McCall joins as product manager who will be in charge of ensuring premium quality Avusa Media products, with the objective of becoming market leaders in their categories. Marcus Stephens joins Avusa Media LIVE as commercial manager; he will be responsible for driving the division’s commercial strategy and revenues. Reuben Goldberg, well-known for his various leadership positions on radio in news, sport and entertainment, has been appointed as the news editor for Times LIVE.

As with the launch of Times LIVE in September 2009, the rest of these titles will re-launch through the course of the year as LIVE brands, with new-look sites on the EScenic web publishing platform. This new system is used by other major international publications and enables better editorial management and content integration. The new version 5 also includes a bouquette of social community tools to be rolled out.

“Since the revamp from The Times website to Times LIVE, we have been going from strength to strength and are thrilled about the new opportunities Avusa Media LIVE will bring to the table. The new Sowetan LIVE site is going to turn heads,” says Lohmann.

Times LIVE recently passed the 500 000 domestic unique user mark for the first time, a major milestone for the site. Only a handful of SA sites have achieved this to date.

“March was a great month for Times LIVE. The site had a 52% year on year growth in domestic users and our local readers are spending more time on the site – up from 5:52 to 6:45 minutes per session. This is also the second time Times LIVE has topped 1,000,000 total unique users,” concludes Lohmann

Internet advertising is cheaper and the channel itself has spawned a consumer profile that is young, hip, technically savvy, easily bored and remarkably vocal. Instead of just consuming news, they generate it – tweeting, face booking and blogging to challenge the traditional domain of newsrooms.

This generation views hard copies of newspapers and magazines as “yesterday’s news” and online technology and applications as the new information frontier. Traditional print media has been badly affected on various fronts and the pressure is on to maintain revenue streams while expanding into digital formats.

While the penny may have dropped, the pace of change has been slow characterised by a dogged need to tread the high moral ground related to skilled, well-researched, beautifully written news that can be trusted by the reader. No one can deny that most online content flies in the face of many journalistic ethics with hearsay printed as the fact and equal weight given to the musings or ranting of self appointed social commentators and those of heavy weight reporters.   However while the internet is quick to punt its value with even Google placing print advertisements, the newspaper and publishing has been slow to defend its territory.

But it’s changing.

A group of major US magazine companies launched one of the largest print advertising campaigns ever created to promote the vitality of magazines as a medium.  The campaign ads debut as color spreads, with headlines such as, “We Surf the Internet. We Swim in Magazines” and “Will the Internet Kill Magazines? Did Instant Coffee Kill Coffee”? The print campaign targets advertisers, shareholders and industry influencers in order to reposition the broader discourse about magazines and the printed word to challenge perceptions about the medium’s relevancy and longevity and the important cultural role that newspapers and magazines play within a society.

While these campaigns may help, the greatest challenge for publishers lies in transforming their traditional formats and revenue streams. Companies have risen to the challenge in varying degrees that span recreating digital versions of their publications to the fundamental restructuring of their business where advertising sales is not the main source of income but one aspect of a platform of marketing solutions and services. Custom content development, database marketing by building specific databases for advertisers and targeted communications programs on their behalf, customer insights surveys and lead generation are rapidly being pursued as bona fide business units within integrated media houses.

Print format publishers have often been the seed company that grows into a larger mult-media media house. It’s an intelligent premise based on owning various channels: newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and online sites in order to offer integrated packages with incentives to advertisers. As media companies expand their income streams into non-traditional mediums, more work has to be taken internally to unlock the potential of this winning scenario. Multi-channel partnerships, cross pollination of forms and formats, shared newsrooms and content have led to some exciting developments for both publishers and advertisers.

As traditional publishers transform their businesses to take advantage of the best the Net has to offer, readers and advertisers reap the benefit of what once seemed like an unworkable relationship.

This marriage between traditional print and digital mediums has energized both industries leading to new breakthroughs of form and content better able to serve the needs of a global community in the 21^st millennium.

While provocative columnists, entertainment and dining will remain essential elements of My Weekend, a far greater focus has been placed on local and international travel in the revamped product. It will strive to take readers to not only enchanting and exotic destinations around the globe, but also to fun places in their own backyards — wilderness trails, game farms and secluded beaches.

A greater emphasis is also being placed on including articles of interest to younger readers — gaming, internet, computing and music.

The first issue of the new look My Weekend appeared on March 20.

To advertise in Weekend Post, contact Ashley Poobalan on (041) 504 7336 or at poobalana@avusa.co.za

“We’ve established Stuff as the largest gadget magazine in South Africa,” says editor Toby Shapshak. “Stuff’s accessible format and the quality of our content have made it the essential read on gadgets and all things technological.”

Stuff – highly commended in the 2009 Pica Awards – not only owns the technology niche, but now leads the general-interest male magazine market as the fastest-growing title, posting its 7.5% circulation growth in a period when its competitors – technology titles and general interest men’s titles – reported decreases.

Under Shapshak’s editorship Stuff South Africa has kept to its winning formula of authoritative content presented in an accessible format, but in 2009 launched a new look and added to its “pure tech” content to include motoring, fashion and lifestyle sections.

For advertising sales information contact Kirsten Laurings,     kirstenl@avusa.co.za