When Jay Wilkinson, founder and CEO of marketing, printing and website-development company Firespring, was 15 years old, he attended a leadership summer camp with his high school’s student council. While there, he learned about Stephen Grellet, a Quaker missionary whose words would change his life forever: “I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” It was this quote that motivated him to become an entrepreneur.



Since launching&nbsp;<a href="https://www.firespring.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Firespring</a>&nbsp;in 1992, Wilkinson has worked with clients in 50 states and 14 countries, growing his staff to 180 and revenue to $25 million in 2019. That’s not to say the Lincoln, Nebraska-based business hasn’t seen its fair share of struggles: In 2002, Wilkinson was fired as CEO by the investor-led board of directors after refusing to lay off employees amid the economic downturn that followed 9/11. But four months later, with the help of family and friends, he bought out the venture capitalists, and within two years, the business was profitable again. “We climbed out of it, and we survived,” Wilkinson says. “The culture that we have today was forged in the fire when we were just trying to save the company.”



That tenacity has proven essential in the current economic environment, not to mention it’s propelled Firespring onto <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maneetahuja/2020/05/12/forbes-small-giants-25-companies-that-believe-smaller-is-better/">Forbes’ annual Small Giants list</a>. The 25 companies that make up the 2020 list all value greatness over fast growth and are weathering the coronavirus crisis in their own way. 



While much of corporate America has been affected by Covid-19, small businesses have been especially hard-hit, with 31% stopping operations as a result of the crisis, according to Facebook’s State of Small Business&nbsp;<a href="https://dataforgood.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SMBReport.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>. And in the marketing and advertising world, where global ad budgets are expected to drop 36% in the first half of the year and eight in ten marketers have delayed campaigns as a result of the pandemic, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://wfanet.org/knowledge/item/2020/05/13/Survey-Covid-19-global-response-April-2020" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a>&nbsp;from the World Federation of Advertisers, many businesses are struggling to stay afloat.&nbsp;



Firespring has seen an increase in demand for its quick activation marketing programs, such as creating digital fundraising campaigns, as well as virtual strategy sessions, of which it has done more than 200 over the past couple of months. It has also worked with clients to adjust their campaigns so that they are reflective of the times. “We’re very mindful of making sure that we are messaging everything with the Covid-19 restrictions in place so that we don’t come across as being tone-deaf and that our clients don’t, as well,” Wilkinson says. “It’s going to be critical for marketers moving forward and out of the pandemic to understand how different things are going to be, in terms of the way people connect with brands.”



The firm primarily serves purpose-driven organizations and nonprofits, which Wilkinson says are uniquely positioned to navigate the changing marketing landscape, as they always keep clients at the center of their work. But the pandemic has disrupted many nonprofits’ fundraising events, hurting them financially. In an effort to help its nonprofit clients during this challenging time, Firespring partnered with GivingTuesday, a nonprofit known for its advocacy of its namesake charitable holiday for the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. The initiative, called Giving Tuesday Now, raised $3 million for nonprofits over the course of May. 



In Birmingham, Michigan, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://brogan.com/" target="_blank">Brogan &amp; Partners</a>, another full-service marketing agency and 2020 Small Giant, has been supporting its surrounding community by working with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services to produce an ad spot promoting the wearing of face masks to flatten the coronavirus curve. Thanks to the ad and accompanying hashtag—<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/zrj5CzpqjMfOKMQ9t4BY6m" target="_blank">#MiMaskChallenge</a>—Brogan &amp; Partners was able to get the word out to more than five million Michiganders, including celebrities such as musicianKid Rock. “I don’t want to make money off of Covid-19. That’s not my business,” says Ellyn Davidson, owner and CEO of Brogan &amp; Partners. “I want to help and be part of the solution. As much as possible, we want to give back.”



An hour south, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Jim Hume, founder and principal of 2020 Small Giant marketing advertising agency&nbsp;<a href="https://phiregroup.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Phire Group</a>, has also been working with clients to craft their coronavirus messaging. He believes the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of trends such as authentic storytelling. “True authenticity includes vulnerability and putting yourself out there and just becoming more human as a brand,” Hume says. “Everything that we do has to be pointed toward making companies, organizations and brands more human, more accessible, more real.”



That authenticity, he says, is important in every aspect of Phire Group’s business, including how it communicates with clients. “It’s an important time to reach out to customers to let them know you’re there for them, but also to just be transparent with what’s happening,” Hume says. “Just let them know that you’re doing fine, you hope they’re doing fine, and you’re there for them.”

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There are two Nigerian cosmetic brands – Zaron and House of Tara – that are fast inducting many more young entrepreneurs into business of beauty and creating jobs across West Africa. The Nigerian women behind these brands are revolutionaries in Africa.
In West Africa, religion and tradition are strictly adhered to. In this environment, a woman choosing a career as a beautician would be frowned upon and castigated two decades ago. But that was then; we now have millionaire beauty experts in Africa and many promising young women emerging in the beauty industry around the continent.
This is an element of the big shift in Africa’s business sphere. Businesses now operate in a society with young, self-conscious and independent consumers. Cosmetics and makeover artists are thriving amid this attitude of young people.
The presence of this younger generation on social media, with features such as ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ and selfies, are evidence of their “look at me” attitude. Businesses are thriving on this need for attention by young consumers.
For entrepreneurs, this clamour for attention demands a strategy that focuses on young consumers. The current African market must leverage this emotional need.
Let’s consider the initiative Coca-Cola introduced to the market in 2015. I saw an alarming rush in Nigeria for the bottles of Coca-Cola that had consumers’ names on the labels. This supports the notion that young consumers will enthusiastically respond to businesses that pay attention to their emotional yearning.
The Marketing Director of Coca-Cola in Western Europe, Lucie Austin, says “the campaign capitalized on the global trend of self-expression and sharing but in an emotional way”. The result was phenomenal. Within six months of launching, there were 330 million impressions on Twitter. The company’s reported earnings jumped by 19% and a statement from Coca-Cola says “the consumers had voted for the strategy with their dollars, the proof of which was Coke’s higher sales of products”.
What does this mean for an African entrepreneur? It means your business can benefit from an army of teenagers and millennials who are interested in personal symbols within products and services. Africa’s consumers are interested in brands that honor them and display it to the public. They are seeking attention in an economy that had a culture of suppressing the voices of minorities. In a culture where most women and children are to be seen but not heard, businesses that recognize the emotional needs of these people will gain popularity, and eventually loyalty.
This also means that consumers are the most important factor of production. African entrepreneurs may be heading into the “prosumer” season as coined by American futurist Alvin Toffler in 1980. A prosumer is a person that consumes and produces.
In my personal view, customer satisfaction, rather than customer service, will be the game changer for businesses that focus on their end user. This is only realistic when attention is shifted to consumers. The smart choice for any entrepreneur is to start paying attention to people’s interests. &#8211; Written by Victor Mamora

‘Look At Me, I Want Your Business’

Twitter is is a great platform for raising brand awareness and driving traffic to your business.
It can be used to increase sales and to improve your customers’ experience. Yet, there are a lot of businesses that have not yet taken advantage of Twitter to achieve their goals.
Twitter it is one of the best places to have conversations that support, educate, and delight people. It’s a place for authentic business interactions with clients.
Twitter never sleeps. It gives you access to what’s going on in your industry, community, and around the world every moment of every day. People go on Twitter to discover something new, which makes them open to interacting with businesses.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/technology/2017/08/11/seven-tips-mastering-marketing-facebook/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Seven Tips For Mastering Marketing On Facebook</a>
People often talk about the products they use on Twitter, so it’s a natural place to provide customer service. In fact, 85% of Twitter users say it&#8217;s important that businesses provide customer support on the social network. Twitter allows you to follow and interact with people outside of your personal network. It’s a great way of joining, or starting, discussions with influencers and industry experts to raise the profile of your business and build valuable connections.
Here are steps to set up a Twitter business profile:
Use a unique Twitter @name
Nothing expresses your brand on Twitter more than your account username, your @name is your unique identifier of your business on Twitter. It can contain up to 15 characters and should help people easily find your business.
Use your business’ name as the profile name and avoid using punctuation; it needs to be easy to find and type on devices. If your exact business name is not available, choose a similar name for consistency.
Your profile photo should represent your brand 
Your Twitter profile photo should probably be your company’s logo so people will instantly recognize your brand. Twitter uses your profile image to represent your account. Your profile picture shows the world who you are, and first impressions count. The image should showcase your best content and accurately sell your brand.
Choose a profile photo that visually represents your business or brand and fits well in a small space. This image isn’t just on your profile page; it is the icon in every Tweet you post.
The recommended image size for your profile pic is 400&#215;400 pixels; the image will be resized to fit.
Your bio must tell a story
Use your bio to explain what your business is about and what people can expect from your Twitter profile.
You have 160 characters to let people know what makes your business special, and why they need your products/services. Include useful information, such as what you tend to Tweet about, your location or business hours, and a link to your website. Use a unique link, so you can track visitors to your site from Twitter.
Jon Ferrara, the CEO of Nimble, says that Twitter marketers should make sure that their company’s identity and voice has great branding. It is important that the bio has a consistent tone so that other people can clearly understand what your company is about.
Your header image 
Your Twitter header image is a large background photo where you can tell a story about your business. It’s important that you use this to tell your business story as well.
Consider it a billboard for your company. You can use it to feature your products/services, or highlight your work and team. Change this image periodically to spotlight promotions, events, product news, or just keep things fresh. The recommended size for a Twitter header image is 1500&#215;500 pixels. On mobile, it’ll be cropped to a 2:1 aspect ratio.
Your pinned Tweet
Keep an important Tweet at the top of your timeline by pinning it there. Use this feature to make sure visitors to your profile can’t miss the biggest and latest news about your brand. &#8211; Written by Wale Bakare, Digital Marketer and Founder of www.webfala.com

Buy A Friend

How To Use Twitter To  Boost Your Business

In June, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, claimed that more than two billion people now use the social network every month.
Facebook continues to grow at a spectacular rate and is the most popular social media platform. Due to this, Facebook has become a vital tool for marketing. Facebook marketing can target new customers and increase brand loyalty. However, in order to create a successful Facebook campaign, one needs to provide contents that are unique, creative and engaging.
Facebook marketing is essential for both small and large businesses. It helps them effectively and efficiently promote their brand online.
While running a Facebook marketing campaign, one must consider the following seven tips to convert your target audience to customers.
1. Choose the right images for your campaign and obey the rule of 20% image text: Images are essential in creating a Facebook Ad. However, try to avoid stock photos as much as possible. Focus on images that your audience can easily relate to. But bear in mind, no matter the type of ad you want to create, your image needs to be visually appealing.
2. Keep you campaign short and simple: Make the title as attractive as possible, but do not make false claims. In cases where you cannot edit the title (like when advertising a Facebook page), you can enter the URL of the page and then edit the title. However, if you do this, you will get limited Facebook ad analytics. Keep this short and crisp. Always end this with a ‘call to action’. In terms of importance, this is less crucial than images and title. In terms of the entire description, the call to action is the most important part.
3. Run different campaigns for the same product/service: Instead of creating different ads and split testing them, create variations of ad that performs best, and change one element at a time. For example, take your best ad, make copies of it and change the headline of each version. You now have multiple ads that are identical, except for the headline that you can test. After you determine which ad gets the best response, make copies of it and test another element like description or image.
4. Your ad must be relevant: This is the most important factor for an ad to perform well. Your target audience must be able to relate to the ad. Only once your audience connects with the ad, will you gain the most from advertising on Facebook. Relevancy can be obtained in many ways and there are no set rules on ‘how to be relevant.’ You need to ask yourself if the majority of your audience will click on this ad? If the answer is yes, then your ad is relevant.
5. Be engaging with your audience: Don’t automate everything. If you want people to engage your Facebook campaign, you need to create highly engaging content that is simple. “Highly engaging” means the content is relevant to your audience and compels people to click on it. Your content should make people stop in their tracks. When your audience stops to read your content, they should feel encouraged to engage with it.
6. Follow the 80/20 rule for posts: Keep 20% of your campaign content relevant to the product or service of your business while 80% of the campaign content should be social, but relate to your business and the targeted audience.
7.    Use Geo-targeting: If you’re looking to connect with potential customers in a specific location, it’s a must-have to use geographic targeting. To find the right customer base for your brand, provide content to your desired audience and also generate leads, one needs to set up ad according to geographic target areas. &#8211; Written by Wale Bakare
<div id="attachment_33083" style="width: 683px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33083" class=" wp-image-33083" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Facebook-infographic-e1502450117421-300x168.png" alt="" width="673" height="377" />Source: Google</div>

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It’s only six blocks from James Proud’s office, a brick-walled converted bakery in San Francisco’s Mission District, to Central Kitchen, a hip restaurant owned by fellow FORBES 30 Under 30 alum Thomas McNaughton, but that’s plenty of time for the 25-year-old to take on more or less all of Silicon Valley. People who complain about finding good talent just don’t know how to recruit. Traditional venture capital firms? Unnecessary. By the time we reach the host stand, he’s deriding the entire tech community for their “airy-fairy bullsh-t about changing the world.”
This absolutism feels all the more jarring given that his short, bulldog frame and pudgy baby face make him look like the high school computer-lab nerd he once was, a persona buttressed by his wardrobe (a sweatshirt and sweatpants almost all the time, a black T-shirt if he’s feeling dressy) and diet (no vegetables, no fish). The latest in the 21st-century cavalcade of cocky prodigies in the mold of Sean Parker, Mark Zuckerberg and Evan Spiegel, Proud was born thumbing his nose at other people. “No one can make me do what I don’t want to do,” he says. He’s been professionally bred this way, too.
James Proud was in the first class of Thiel Fellows, the upstarts – 122 and counting – who for the past seven years have taken $100,000 each from billionaire contrarian Peter Thiel on the condition they skip college. And he’s also the most successful. Over the past four years he’s raised roughly $40 million for his startup, Hello, mostly at a $250 million valuation. He’s recently been raising bridge financing, at an even higher valuation, including a direct $2 million ante from the godfather himself, Thiel. It’s his first personal investment in one of his fellows. “James stood out from the start as extremely tenacious and determined,” Thiel says.
And now he’s rich, too. Proud still owns about half of Hello, pushing him well into centimillionaire territory.
Proud’s chosen market is right up there with death and taxes in terms of universality: sleep, which has suddenly become a bit more sexy and a bit less sleepy than it has been for the past few millennia. “You’re starting to see a shift in conversation around sleep that happened in the ’80s around exercise and in the ’90s and 2000s with organic and healthy eating,” Proud says. Arianna Huffington has raised $7 million for Thrive Global, which offers a suite of products and services driven by the idea that more sleep translates to a better life, and Casper, the mattress-will-change-your-life startup, has raised $70 million.
Proud’s focus is on hardware, specifically an orb the size of a tennis ball that sits on your bedside table and uses a variety of hidden sensors to track your movements and the surrounding nighttime atmosphere. The $149 gadget, called Sense, grades your sleep on a scale from 0 to 100 – and tries to help you improve that score over time. Proud claims that the Sense holiday rollout at Target is the biggest the retailer has ever done for a new electronics product (Target says that’s incorrect).
Big orders won’t guarantee big success, at least not immediately. A source close to the company says the internal sales projection for 2017 is 250,000 Sense units, implying net revenues in the ballpark of $20 million. Tiny compared even to a flagging competitor like Fitbit, which likely finished 2016 with sales of more than $2.3 billion – and even at that size, it’s barely profitable. Meanwhile, a triad of monoliths – Amazon, Apple and Google – stand determined to put connected devices on every conceivable surface of your body and in every space in your home.
What does Proud think of his trillion-dollar competitors? Looking up from his lamb ribs and roast pork, he lifts both hands in a double-middle-finger salute.
It’s the kind of brashness that a Peter Thiel could love. That tack surely worked for Zuckerberg and Spiegel. But youthful hubris goes back to Icarus, and that tale didn’t end with an IPO. Given his complicated market, dotted with pitfalls and entrenched enemies, Proud will ultimately demonstrate whether unswerving self-confidence is a necessary entrepreneurial attribute or a potentially fatal flaw. At the FORBES Under 30 Summit in Boston last October, Proud was asked backstage whether he’d ever met Richard Branson, whom he would soon join on a panel. “The real question,” Proud responded, “is whether Branson has ever met me.”
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Proud grew up less than an hour away from Branson’s childhood home south of London. His father worked for the British civil service, and his mother was a secretary who later stocked grocery-store shelves at night. Proud preferred haunting the computer lab to making friends on the playground. His first Internet payday came at the age of 12, when he built a website for a scammer he had met through an online forum (he spent the money on a Sony Ericsson mobile phone and Creative Labs MP3 player). As a hired hand for Web projects, he began making hundreds of dollars per job. At one point his PayPal account was frozen because he was underage, so cash arrived in the mail, prompting questions from his parents.
At 17 Proud started GigLocator, a website that aggregated concert ticket information, and persuaded his parents to let him take a gap year to work on it. He fed himself by faking hole punches on loyalty cards from a British chicken chain, Nando’s, or else schmoozing venture capitalists and other European techies over lunch, always letting them pick up the check. “Already back then, James had this laser-sharp focus about what he was going to do for the next ten years,” says Spotify founder Daniel Ek, who met Proud playing Ping-Pong during that period. “It was incredibly rare to see that from someone who should have been more focused on girls and school.”
Proud would have been the first in his family to attend college, but when the day came to enroll, he refused to go, despite his parents’ pleas. Then, on a September day in 2010, Proud found his savior at 1AM while watching a live stream of the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. There Thiel announced his eponymous fellowship: a $100,000 grant to each of 20 teenagers who wanted to skip college to pursue another dream. Proud decided to apply on the spot.
When Thiel flew the finalists out to hobnob in San Francisco, Proud was surrounded by preppy American kids with acceptances to Harvard they wanted to turn down. He returned to London, sure he wouldn’t make the cut. “I wished I didn’t even come,” Proud says. “I was going to have to go back and hate my life because I’d seen that this would be so much better.” But in April 2011 Thiel’s organization called to give him the good news. They also told him to sit tight until July. Proud, of course, was in a hurry – and not listening to anyone who would stop him. He quickly emptied his savings to buy a plane ticket and then demanded the first Thiel check be sent early, lest he end up sleeping on the street. They caved.
The fellowship changed Proud’s life, turning him from an unknown programmer living with his parents to a member of an inaugural class of wunderkinds. While crashing on air mattresses and couches for most of the next year, he took advantage of every door the Thiel brand opened across Silicon Valley. For a time Proud worked out of PayPal cofounder Max Levchin’s incubator, and in June 2012 he offloaded GigLocator to the concert promoter Peter Shapiro, earning himself a cool six-figure payday. (“That’s one young, smart mother–ker,” says Shapiro.)
Soon after, Proud began raising money for a new stealth startup that would become Hello. “I said, ‘I’m in for whatever amount you’ll let me in for,’” says Shakil Khan, an early Spotify investor that Proud befriended in London. “He said, ‘I still haven’t finalized what it’s going to be.’ And I said, ‘That’s irrelevant.’”
The original idea for Hello was to build a better version of the activity-tracker wristband pioneered by Fitbit and Jawbone. Proud recruited a handful of young hardware engineers and spent 18 months developing a prototype, which included a magnetic strap similar to one that would later appear on the Apple Watch. But over time Proud quietly soured on its potential. He noticed that no one on his team wore any existing product on his or her wrist for more than a few weeks. Consumer surveys show similar results, with estimates that about a third of wearables owners give up on their devices within the first six months. Plus, competition was fierce. Google would announce Android Wear in March 2014, and the Apple Watch debuted in September. Proud was already late to a category in which he no longer believed. “So what do you do? Do you give the money back to investors and send everyone home?” he asked.
The epiphany came when Proud flew out to New York City to attend a birthday party in March 2014.
Distracted by his dilemma, he brainstormed about products that wouldn’t need to be worn at all times and suddenly arrived at sleep tracking. People enjoyed the feature on wristbands but hated wearing them overnight. He brought the team together when he returned and told them they would be scrapping a year and a half of work to start over. “I wore the wristband prototypes for a good two weeks after, holding on to the work we had done,” says Hello’s first industrial designer, Rob Shook.
Proud also had to sell his decision to an angry group of investors who had supported a $7 million Series A only months earlier. To placate them, he granted additional shares to everyone who participated in the round, including Khan, then-PayPal president David Marcus and Xiaomi vice president Hugo Barra. “Had the decision to pivot come three months later, I don’t think the company would have survived,” says Dan Rose, Facebook’s vice president of partnerships and Hello’s only board member other than Proud.
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Proud’s move away from wearable devices took Hello out of a crowded but expanding market – an estimated 67 million smart watches will be sold this year – and made it the pioneer of a completely new one. “If it can work, it can end up being a consumer device on par with the iPod,” Thiel says. A huge if. Searching for scientific backing Proud hired Matthew Walker, director of the Sleep &amp; Neuroimaging Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, as Hello’s chief scientist. Walker believes that lack of sleep is an “epidemic” in First World countries and that Sense can help fix that. After one year of use, 71% of Sense users slept longer on average than they had before, and 57% had more regular wake-up times, the company claims. Hello hopes to do even better as it tests more personalized sleep techniques.
Proud proved there was a market for sleep-centered products, at least among early adopters, with a successful Kickstarter campaign in July 2014. After racing to build a basic hardware prototype and marketable software façade, Hello launched its campaign with a slick video and a goal of $100,000. It blew past the finish line, scoring $1 million in the first four days and $2.4 million after one month, just a hair shy of VR phenomenon Oculus Rift’s crowdfunding haul. That summer proved an intoxicating high, but there was so much to do to make the marketing pitch a reality that four bottles of celebratory champagne sat in the office refrigerator unopened until this past Thanksgiving.
Hello promised delivery by November 2014 but delayed the first shipments until February as production challenges mounted. Sense is a two-part system that includes a bedside device – an amalgam of LEDs, circuits and sensors to detect light, sound, temperature and air quality, all stuffed into a small sphere – and an accompanying battery-powered, Bluetooth-enabled “Sleep Pill,” which clips to your pillow to track movement. The team had to design many of the manufacturing tools themselves. That following June Hello brought in a $30 million cash infusion at the $250 million valuation from the likes of Temasek Holdings, a government-owned investment fund in Singapore, but the rest of the year was lost to fixing bugs and rewriting core features. In 2016, as Amazon rolled out the Echo and Google revealed Google Home, both voice-enabled wireless speakers, Proud pushed the team to add voice controls to the latest Sense, which went on sale this past November.
“The big challenge is always: Can you lock in the market enough before people develop copycats that are cheaper and roughly equivalent?” Thiel says. “This is always something a little harder for hardware than software.”
Unfortunately, even the new version feels like an unfinished product searching for a market. After trying it for a week, I enjoyed Sense’s novelty as a smarter alarm clock with limited voice commands and the ability to turn off the alarm with a wave of your hand. But for my $149, the core functionality is too inconsistent. It’s supposed to detect when you fall asleep and wake up, and analyze your tossing and turning to see how many hours you’re in deep sleep. Yet the Sense interprets data gathered from the clip on my pillow rather than a band on my wrist, so it frequently fails to register when I get up from bed and often confuses my fiancée’s movement for my own. Even if it were accurate, neither the sleep results nor other measurements are groundbreaking. Everyone already knows that blackout curtains are good for beauty rest and a barking dog is bad.
Other warning signs abound. Proud boasts about the new Hello displays in nearly 700 Target stores across the country, but the only inventory in Oakland was one Sense tucked in a side cabinet next to some Apple TVs and Linksys wireless routers. A survey of Best Buys around New York found only one with the product in stock; other stores indicated you needed to order it. And when I brought a Sense home, I nearly abandoned the set-up process after an hour of trying and failing to plug in the charging cable. Hello says a new manufacturer had constructed the USB port a millimeter off target in a few units.
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While plenty of questions remain about Sense, Proud now treats his risky pivot as a thesis statement. He trashes devices that need to be worn (like the Apple Watch) or require direct interaction (like the home assistants from Amazon and Google). His goal is to cover the entire 24 hours of your day with a few “nonengagement” health-tracking devices like Sense. “It’s a tragedy that we  can’t build and release them all right now,” Proud asserts.
He’ll need to diversify his product line soon to avoid the fate of other hardware startups like fellow Kickstarter darling Pebble, which shut down in December, and drone maker 3D Robotics, which crashed after burning through $100 million in funding. Even public companies like Fitbit (trading down 86% from its peak) and GoPro (down 90%) have struggled. “On one hand, it’s easier than ever to build a hardware product,” says Jan Dawson, analyst at Jackdaw Research. “But in some ways it’s harder than ever to be competitive and build a sustainable business.”
In the meantime, Proud must mature as the leader of a 50-employee startup trying to go toe-to-toe with companies that outnumber and out-finance him. While friends extol Proud as wise beyond his years, former Hello staffers describe him as a smart but inveterate risk-taker who often unravels in tense situations. “You could see the pressure got to him, and sometimes I would think it’s because he’s young,” a former Hello engineer says. “He would suddenly rush in saying, ‘We need to do X because people are complaining about it.’” Instead of patiently adhering to a long-term plan, Proud is prone to rash decisions. “The ability to take risks and be aggressive is the foundation of James’ decision making, and it may eventually come back to bite him,” says one ex-Hello employee who worked closely with Proud for more than two years. “If that day never comes, he’s a genius. If it does, the warning signs were there.” Proud doesn’t deny he can be a capricious boss. In December 2014, on the morning an engineer was set to fly to China to install the final firmware for the Sense’s first manufacturing run, Proud decided to add one more feature. His CTO, Tim Bart, told him it was insane to change anything in the code at such a late hour, but Proud was suddenly convinced that Sense should light up and play a sound when it was plugged in for the first time – like a computer booting up.
After a bruising argument, Proud got his way. The engineer finished coding the change on the cross-Pacific flight, and through skill and luck avoided introducing new bugs into the final product.
Was that last minute intervention a Steve Jobs-like moment of product genius or the power trip of an enabled, immature founder? Proud’s analysis of his behavior in hindsight is simple and unapologetic: “Well, I was right.”

The Black Sheep

It was a shock. Three years ago, Portia Masimula told her family that she was going to quit her safe, well-paid job to start her own IT company. They thought she was mad and her father refused to speak to her.
The 29-year-old entrepreneur was so determined she even put her wedding on hold.
Masimula took every chance that came her way to make her business work. One Tuesday evening, after a stressful day at work, Masimula spotted multi-millionaire Patrice Motsepe, Africa’s 22nd richest man according to FORBES AFRICA, at a restaurant in the V&amp;A Waterfront, Cape Town.
“There he was sitting having dinner. I thought I wasn’t going to let him go past me. I am going to go over there and talk to him. This opportunity comes once in life. They happen randomly. I am thinking ‘what am I going to say to him, let me wait for him to finish dinner’. There I am watching him while he is eating.”
“That’s the thing about being an entrepreneur, you grab every opportunity. As soon as he was finished. The things you do as a businesswoman is crazy. The minute he stood up, I said ‘Mr Motsepe, how are you doing?’ This is who I am.”
The brief meeting ended with a business card and some sage advice from Motsepe.
“He said to me ‘when you looking for something, never mention the word help, say I am looking for partnership’. Those are the wise words he left me with. As a businesswoman, if you don’t talk you are not going to get what you want. You have to take the shininess away from it. In business, you have to take it away. Business has taught me you can’t be shy,” she says.
It is the bold-as-brass move you would expect from the edgy streets of New York. In Masimula’s case, it came from growing up with her grandparents on the dirt roads of KwaMhlanga, a tiny village in Mpumalanga, southwest of South Africa.
“My grandmother is a principal of a school, my grandfather is a school inspector. My mother passed away when I was very young and my father had me when he was still a boy in Grade 11 at school, which is why I was living with my grandparents from my father’s side. He couldn’t afford to look after me.”
Masimula says her father came back into her life once he had matured and educated himself at university.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-31935 size-large" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/PortiaMasimula_JC-3-of-7-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PortiaMasimula_JC-3-of-7.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PortiaMasimula_JC-3-of-7-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PortiaMasimula_JC-3-of-7-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PortiaMasimula_JC-3-of-7-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />
“It becomes hard. I was born for this. I was born to do business. I know it becomes difficult when they want you to do things in a traditional way. It’s not an easy journey. My father was actually angry at me at some stage. Asking why I was leaving a solid job and opening a business. I tried to explain to him this was the journey I wanted to take. Initially he wasn’t supportive to it,” she says.
One reason her family was shocked with the news was that Masimula didn’t know anything about the business she was going into.
“I was hanging around with a lot of the tech guys, and I developed interests. If you look at it now, the digital space is where it’s happening. It’s fast in terms of tech. I was so curious. I thought ‘how could I get involved and make this a business’. While I was sitting there, I thought let’s start a company and do this. That was 2013 and we didn’t waste time.
“I always had the entrepreneurial spirit in me. I knew that one day I was going to have my own business, even though I didn’t know what sort of business it would be,” she says.
“I enrolled in some courses at the University of Cape Town. I would practice programming and luckily enough my fiancée, Mhlonipheni, is in IT and is a developer. I used to come home at night and practice and he would show me how to program.”
It led to Masimula leaving her comfortable job in financial marketing to open IT solutions company Kansani Tech.
“As a woman in this industry, it is the toughest thing ever. Most of the time you are sitting in a boardroom and it’s just men. They are sitting there and asking ‘what are you doing here, woman’?
“The ultimate goal is for a four-year contract. We want to get to that level. For now, it’s small projects,” says Masimula, who built a R6,000 ($400) app for a doctor who wants to keep in touch with her patients.
“The doctor wanted to retain her clients. She runs weight-loss programs. The people who come to see her don’t monitor it properly. When you are developing an app, you need all the ingredients, you need to monitor your food and your exercise. Today, [the doctor] can see what [her patients] have done by recording it on their phone. Instead of [the patients] picking up the phone and having to book the doctor, she can access the app,” says Masimula.
And the postponed wedding? When will her fiancée pay the delayed bride-prize?
“Lobola, it will come, but for now, we are all about building the business. The minute we see the business on the level where it doesn’t need us, we’ll pay up,” she says with a smile.
Clearly, marriage can wait, but business can’t.

PortiaMasimula_JC-5-of-7

What Are  You Doing  Here, Woman?’

The brand is everything in today’s social media-driven environment. And to market it requires every gigabyte of data, strategy, tact, and not to mention, oodles of creativity.
Shireen Jaftha seems to have quite the talent for it, driving award-winning campaigns and strategies as Head of Content at Omnicom Group, a marketing and corporate communications holding company in Johannesburg.
She develops opinions on the future direction of a company and its brand, based on existing and predicted conditions, working with clients to identify unmet marketing and business needs, goals, opportunities and the challenges they may face.
Through branding and marketing, she creates and oversees the execution of a plan through specific initiatives that meet the objectives of the strategy.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30884 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Shereen-159x300.jpg" alt="" width="159" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Shereen-159x300.jpg 159w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Shereen-300x567.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Shereen-768x1453.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Shereen.jpg 541w" sizes="(max-width: 159px) 100vw, 159px" />
She started her career in the advertising industry, and it was sheer luck by chance.
“I went for an office interview for a ‘girl Friday’ temp post at an advertising agency and after that interview, I was asked to join the media team. I think that they picked up my negotiation skills. That agency taught me this industry,” says Jaftha.
Of all the campaigns she has done, she rates the Standard Bank Access Banking case study as the one that stands out as it has proven the potential inherent in branded and interactive content.
The campaign made use of all media and introduced a new level of customer engagement by adding broadcasting and client-generated content to the mix.
“It was about being more consumer-centric – using traditional platforms in a non-traditional way to break through the clutter of advertising, as well as educating the market which made it strategically aligned to Standard Bank’s ‘Moving Forward’ brand promise.”
The campaign walked away with two industry awards.
Although social media strategies have the ability to help build successful businesses, it is not without its pitfalls.
“Due to different behavior patterns on social media, many people always assume the success of a campaign based on the likes or comment posted by consumers. Most people assume that 1,000 likes is a winning campaign. Unfortunately it is not – as it doesn’t prove tangible sales. With social media you create leads, but you cannot track sales,” she says.
She says behavior is constantly changing on social media and the solution is to follow the behaviour of the user and by constantly checking consumer insight.
According to Jaftha, it is vital to remain relevant. And the brands she follows for inspiration? Adam Morgan, Seth Gordon, Contagious magazine online, Trendwatching.com and Mike Street.

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‘1,000 Likes Is Not A Winning Campaign’

Kgomotso Mautloa dropped out of college. The nerdy former web-design student says it was not laziness, but the entrepreneurial spirit, that drove him to do it.
“You can’t teach someone to be creative, you can’t say this is how you become creative, it comes from the heart. A lot of guys who are designers are very passionate about their work because it comes from the heart. Every time you design something, you put a piece of your heart in it,” says Mautloa.
It all started with a chat with college mate, Ashley Moetlo, in 2006. Both from Alexandra, a township in northern Johannesburg, the pair saw a niche market for web design in the growing South African music industry. They couldn’t wait another year to qualify. That year, they quit and started a company named Green Robot Design.
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“The first client was a rap group from Daveyton, east of Johannesburg. They were about nine guys, really passionate about their stuff. They paid us for the first project and we bought a printer with the money. It was an awesome feeling,” says Mautloa.
But things did not turn out well, after a year, Moetlo left the company to return to university. Moetlo was the strategist, aligning and planning; Mautloa was the designer.
It was tough for a while and he had to work extra hard, Mautlao says.
“I started juggling both our roles so that the work could still be done. To some extent, that made me much stronger and more resourceful,” he says.
Mautloa took a day job with another company for a year and a half, while building his own business from home.
“I used to work tirelessly during the day and at home I worked on deadlines. It was not easy because I had to try and maintain a certain standard for myself… It’s always difficult to run your own business while working for someone else,” he says.
Mautloa says it was difficult but he made sure he delivered. After a year and a half, things started taking off for Mautloa, he had enough money to revive his own business, Green Robot Design. He then quit his job.
By 2009, Mautloa says more business was coming in. Today, Mautloa is the creative director in his company with seven people working for him, providing services in animation, brand activation, application development, print and online design as well as strategic planning, exploring different mediums of communication.
“For me, being an entrepreneur means being a thinker and a solutions provider. It also means to be a role player in the community, but more importantly, building the economy. We all have a role to play in building sustainable communities and companies that will change South Africa,” says Mautloa.
“We have been able to avoid complaints and we are efficient. That is one constant feedback that we have from our clients,” he says.
Mautloa says Green Robot Design helps small businesses develop their brands. He has also worked with South Africa’s big artists, like popular radio and ‘house’ jock, Mo Flava, and multi award-winning rapper, Khuli Chana.
“With the start-up people, our team can easily exchange views, they are open to our ideas and strategies, and they are hungry for success,” says Mautloa.
For his hard work and determination, Mautloa was nominated for the 2015 Vodacom Rising Star Award. He says there are opportunities to grow elsewhere. His next mission is to branch out on the continent.
“South Africa has an influx of many designers, there are a lot of us who want to get a piece of the big pie and I guess there is enough to go around. But that’s not where our focus is. Let’s look elsewhere, there are other countries that need our services,” says Mautloa.
So watch out Africa, Green Robot Design is coming.

It Was Tough  For A While

Eric Lawson portrayed the Marlboro Man – the iconic strong rugged man, with cowboy hat, piercing eyes and chiseled jaw, who was always holding a cigarette. This year, Lawson  became the third Marlboro actor to die of a smoking-related disease. The world has changed since smoking was advertised as the cool thing to do. Today, there is an increase in healthy options, even in fast food restaurants. Coffee shops are filled with the ‘athletic mum’ and her ‘workout friends’; healthy living is now a booming multibillion-dollar industry.
Companies realize the importance and profitability in marketing a healthy lifestyle. This lifestyle has become synonymous with strength, responsibility, sacrifice, and success. Companies sponsor athletes who embody these values to attract consumers to their products.
As with any partnership, sponsorship should be mutually beneficial. The athlete must be able to focus on training and competition, and sponsorship can provide the security they need. This ensures that their living costs are covered, including buying training equipment or travelling to competitions. In return, the sponsor receives brand enhancement and product awareness that could develop new or niche markets. It differentiates themselves from their competitors, increases overall sales and even contributes to goodwill in the community.
These are all valuable, but there are also pitfalls to sponsorships from both perspectives.
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Sponsor’s Perspective
<ol>
<li>Athlete integrity: With increased social media, athletes are under the microscope more off the field than on it. Without integrity, the potential for a negative image created by an athlete’s behavior is increased.</li>
<li>Athlete effort: An athlete has to put work into marketing their sponsor. An idle athlete (or athlete’s manager/agent) can create high costs for the company with little return.</li>
<li>Lack of control: With injury, illness, or a sudden lack of performance or drop in rankings, a once high profile athlete may no longer be an effective marketing tool. However, a good role model can continue representing a company even after they have retired from playing sport.</li>
<li>Brand diffusion: Do other companies or individuals sponsor your athlete? Are they reputable? Are there too many sponsors involved that limit the effectiveness of your athlete’s brand? Are you the main sponsor that receives the most benefits?</li>
</ol>
&nbsp;
Athlete’s Perspective
<ol>
<li>Sponsor’s integrity: Just as important as an athlete’s integrity and as with many of these points, it works both ways. As an example, if an athlete is endorsing a company that is found to be using child labor, the athlete will be seen as promoting it.</li>
<li>Sponsor’s demands: These must be realistic and allow the athlete to focus on what they are supposed to do – train and compete. The athlete must also learn to manage their time to accommodate their obligations to the sponsor.</li>
<li>Sponsor’s technology: I was under contract to swim for a swimsuit company because they had the best product at the time. My contract stated that should my rankings drop, so would my income. The sponsor failed to keep up with technology and its competitors came out with a better suit. Despite that, I remained loyal and went on to break the world record.</li>
<li>Other athletes: The sponsor may have five other athletes and choose to market them more than you. Due to your exclusive relationship with the sponsor your branding could take a back seat. It is important that the athlete does not solely rely on the sponsor for marketing, but builds marketing campaigns and branding efforts to increase their own visibility and value.</li>
</ol>
Great sponsorships are the result of strong relationships backed by good communications. A clear contract should be developed with the above considerations taken into account, including exit strategies for ‘what if’ scenarios.
The increasing trend for active and healthy lifestyles places greater importance for athletes to endorse products. Companies need to find an athlete that fits with their philosophy and shares their values. Companies can find these athletes by looking for those with a winning record or great potential, but companies should choose these athletes based on personality, uniqueness, being a good role model, and their relationship with fans.
This will avoid any potential pitfalls and allow the magic of sport to keep us entertained.

The Good And Bad Of Being An Ad

A tour of the eye-catching bespoke building that is The Creative Counsel (TCC) on Corlett Drive is highly recommended before you meet its 39-year-old co-founder and co-CEO Gil Oved. Past the lime green foyer and candy-colored boardrooms, we come up to the ‘thinking’ floor, where creative-types, mostly women, mull over next-generation marketing concepts.
This is an activations company, South Africa’s biggest, with a Rs600 million ($52 million) turnover this year; the office spaces engage the senses and activate the mind. It’s a fitting prelude for any business meeting.
Oved is running late; his make-up artist has arrived before he has. Attested by GQ magazine as one of South Africa’s best-dressed men, he arrives in a natty shirt and trousers, speaking as he gets made up. His thoughts come thick and fast, but nothing, not even the story of his humble beginnings, which he says he is now tired of relating, can compare with his studied interpretation of the future. Oved’s marketing mind has already raced ahead, occupying that space in time when robots and drones will be both medium and message.
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Past perfect
But before that, we will dwell on Oved’s beginnings. His parents immigrated to South Africa from Israel when he was six. Brought up in a conservative home, he became a TV actor at age 15, and found himself in a setting with people of all hues and hobbies. “Really, the arts is a melting pot of society, and to be flung from one side of society to another where you are intimately involved with this cast of characters, it opens up your mind and breaks prejudices,” says Oved.
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‘Act as if and you become’
He soon stumbled upon an important life lesson. “Act as if and eventually you will become…I doctored it at a fairly young age,” he says of handling difficult situations. “To be honest, I do that even today. Just before I walk into a meeting, with all these scary people in suits and ties, I ask myself, what I am going to do, I am only a little kid. Eventually, I put my game face on, and act as if and I become.”
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First sale
While still in school, Oved, dressed in his father’s oversized jacket, and with his classmate and current business partner Ran Neu-Ner, knocked on the doors of hair salons and pharmacies to sell vanity make-up cases – “the burgundy ones with the little mirrors”. That’s when they realized their penchant for business.
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‘The director of my life’
At age 19, Oved started a TV production company. He was tired of taking directions, now he wanted to be the one giving them, behind the camera.
“I wanted to be the master of my destiny, I wanted to be the director of my life,” he says. “It’s very similar to being an entrepreneur, you have a vision, and it’s about inspiring the actors and the crew. I used all those lessons in running my business.”  How much capital did he have? “Think of the number zero and then look down,” he laughs.
After three years of dabbling with TV, in 1998, he decided to start a financial portal for online day traders, spending over two years with Neu-Ner kick-starting the business. But with the dotcom bust, they lost everything: time, energy, confidence and reputation. “I was 25 and depressed. I had nothing on my CV but two failed businesses. Daunting as it was, after the failures, we were looking for something to do.” And TCC was born, in a 12sqm office in Parktown.
&nbsp;
Leading women
More than 80% of TCC staff is women; Oved is a great advocate of women in business. “It’s difficult in our industry for men to succeed. And I say this with great humility that we will never be able to do the kind of things women do. I really do believe women are more advanced than men…[but] there still is incredible sexism. And the irony is there is a trick waiting to happen for everyone who hasn’t tried [promoting women] yet. Do it and get a better bang for your buck,” says Oved. Part of TCC’s transformational strategies for 2015 is to source what the economy calls “unemployable” black women, upskill them and offer opportunities.
&nbsp;
Digital trends
The topic makes him sit up. “The term ‘digital in advertising’ needs to cease to exist,” he begins. “We have intrinsically accepted that digital is the oxygen that drives every part of our business, both behind the scenes and in front of it. Because of technological advancements, we are capable of thinking out of the box…It also means that you can no longer afford to have a monologue with your consumer. It’s a dialogue. Technological advancements have also meant that now, every day, you discover new mediums. All the old mediums can be used in a completely new way. For us as an activation agency, it’s a very exciting time to be in advertising…I get all fired up talking about it.”
&nbsp;
The future
“I can tell you some of the trends I have been exposed to in terms of artificial intelligence, drones, robotics and 3D printing. It’s predicted that a third of all employment in this world will be replaced by one of these technologies by 2025. So let us understand, 10 years from now, every single one of us will be replaced by a list of [the following]: drone technology, robotics, mass energy storage, robotics, contour printing…It is unfathomable where technology is going. We have access to things going on, we are already living in a semi-virtual environment and that’s exciting for me as an agency involved in activations.”
It is clear Oved has set his sights firmly on technology that will drive future marketing. He can’t wait.

IMG_4189

2025, Here he comes

Catherine Masitsa is a very optimistic woman. She knows she will be in business until the end of time.
“I know people will still be getting married when Jesus comes!” she says.
A trained veterinarian with an MBA in Strategic Marketing, Masitsa is a feisty entrepreneur making a decent living from Kenya’s growing wedding industry that is said to contribute KSh70 billion ($797 million) to the Kenyan economy and expected to grow to KSh100 billion ($1.14 billion) by 2015.
These figures are not captured in any government documents or financial projections. Kenya’s wedding industry is a gold mine made up of multiple smaller suppliers like caterers, wedding consultants, dress-makers, beauty consultants, photographers, DJs, honeymoon planners et al. While the industry as a whole represents a lot of money, each of the component parts is much smaller, some smaller than the others.
These smaller composite suppliers can be very local and likely will be small and privately-owned, traditionally the types of businesses that do not necessarily report financial information to any agency other than the Kenya Revenue Authority. This is in sharp contrast to larger industries, comprised of companies that make public their profits making it easier to find information. Secondly, many of the smaller components like caterers, DJs, photographers, printers of invitation cards, also do other events that are not necessarily bridal events.
Masitsa’s own story runs in tandem with Kenya’s growing wedding industry. She had never dreamt she would be a part of it when growing up in rural Kenya. At the height of her veterinary career when she was in her mid-20s, she got bored of her job, quit and went into publishing without any knowledge of the business. In 2000, she started Going Out magazine with only KSh45,000 ($500) and it is only when she was in the publishing business that she learnt how advertisers in Kenya operate.
“Advertisers wanted publishers to nail their market. They expected you to know what your target audience was doing every hour of the day. The Going Out audience was wide and I noticed a gap in niche magazines,” she says.
After her own wedding in 2003, Masitsa was inspired to start a wedding magazine – Samantha’s Bridal Wedding, which was the first bridal publication in Kenya. Eleven years later, it has become a major player in East Africa’s wedding market, evolving into a wedding media and lifestyle company.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-29443" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-002-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-002-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-002-300x451.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-002-600x902.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-002.jpg 681w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
The Show That Changed It All
A turning point in Masitsa’s entrepreneurial journey was in 2008 when Kenya went through post-election violence.
“After publishing Going Out for eight years, I had to shut it down. That year, we had no advertising and we couldn’t publish for about six months. We used to give the magazine for free. You can’t publish when you have no adverts. I simply lost the passion,” she says. The same year, she also shut down another publication she owned – Business Woman.
Magazines are very capital-intensive and Masitsa found it impossible to repay her bank loan.
She had a KSh7 million ($80,000) bank loan and a KSh3 million ($34,000) overdraft. Overnight, the bank loaded the KSh7 million on the overdraft and she now had a debt of KSh10 million ($114,000) to repay.
“They say in war, you pick the soldiers who look like they can survive. That is how I stopped publishing the two magazines and picked Samantha’s Bridal because it was more promising,” she says.
Masitsa put her house on the property market so she could clear the bank debt. She ended up paying the bank KSh32 million ($364,000).
“After I found a buyer for my house, my documents at the Ministry of Lands suddenly disappeared. For eight months I had a buyer with money but I had no documents and the bank interest was increasing.” One day she went to the Ministry office and started crying. The officer took pity on her and in two days her documents were found. She sold the house for KSh28 million ($318,000) and was left with a balance of KSh4 million ($45,532). What saved her were the real estate investments she had.
“Then, I was in my 30s. The good thing about being in your 30s is that you have a very huge appetite for risk. If you don’t utilize your 30s, you will never take any risks. Now in my 40s, I take more calculated risks.” In the same year (2008), she launched a TV show called Samantha’s Bridal and that changed her fortunes for the better.
Masitsa realized that if she was not on television, people would never know her magazine existed. This is what motivated her to get into producing television shows centered on weddings.
“TV stations pay me for the cost of production. I specialize in producing good TV lifestyle content because there are so many things that go on in weddings. When you watch the show, you can tell about the fashion trends in Kenya, youth issues, finance, music etc. It is a window to society. They are telling their story through an event.”
According to a survey commissioned by Samantha’s Bridal, over 28,000 couples get married in Kenya annually in a formal wedding ceremony, an increase of up to 10% over the last five years. On average, 26 businesses are involved in the staging of one standard wedding.
“The annual average spend per wedding is KSh800,000 ($9,000) to KSh1.2 million ($13,700) making the wedding expense the biggest single expenditure other than buying a house and a car for most people,” says Masitsa. She says these are just conservative numbers.
“I have seen a wedding worth KSh200 million ($2.3 million) and another that cost only KSh7,000 ($80). Weddings are recession-proof. Couples will stop at nothing to show the world the true meaning behind ‘what’s love got to do with it!’ when it comes to the wedding budget,” she says.
In Kenya, couples are engaged for an average of 16 to 17 months before marriage. During that time, on a national average, couples spend about KSh1.3 billion ($14.8 million) on engagement rings, wedding rings and other jewelry, KSh7 billion ($80 million) on gowns, suits and tuxedos, flower girl outfits and bridesmaids’ dresses, dresses for guests, and KSh2 billion ($22.7 million) on honeymoons.
The survey also revealed that annually, engaged and newlyweds spend millions of shillings on new home purchases.
“They are responsible for a big segment of the wedding registry gifts and furniture industry. In addition, each couple spends an average of KSh700,000 ($8,000) on fitting out their homes with furniture and household electrical appliances,” says Masitsa.
In East Africa, Ugandans and Tanzanians spend more than Kenyans. This spend is driven by the fact that weddings are community affairs and families spend a lot of money on their children. It is very normal for them to hold a fundraiser, while in Kenya, the couple foots most of the bills.
&nbsp;
Fairytale Weddings
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-29441" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Aug-Sep-044-046-Catherine-Masitsa-003.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Those who can spend, spare no expense on lavish weddings. There are couples who fly in Bollywood stars to perform at their weddings so as to create a personalized experience for their guests. A bride recently flew in the Cake Boss to bake her cake.
There is a couple who spent KSh200 million ($2.3 million) for an eight-day wedding.
“For all those days, they had an open bar and French champagne for 3,000 guests. The bride’s dresses were valued at more than KSh4 million ($45,500), each made of real diamonds and she wore a new outfit every day. Family members flew in from all parts of the world. The couple hosted them in high-end hotels in Nairobi.”
In another wedding, the groom wanted to replicate Prince William’s wedding suit. He went to the UK and bought three military suits each valued at KSh3.5 million ($40,000) – for himself, his best man and the page boy. Then there are those who make their wedding planners sign contracts with non-disclosure clauses.
“However, there is nothing new under the stars. It is about creating experiences for wedding guests from the moment they arrive – how you put those elements together makes it a truly unique experience. If the money was budgeted for, the couples spend it. They don’t want to look at their wedding pictures and feel bad.”
Masitsa describes a wedding as the launch of the couple’s new life together to the public.
“The way you launch a Toyota is not the same way you launch a Benz!”
With Kenya’s wedding market projected to grow steadily, there are already international designer brands setting up shop in Kenya. The Echo Boom, also known as Generation Y or the Millennial, is the next big generation to move into the ‘engagement zone’.
Eighteen million Kenyan men and women, born between 1980 and 2000, make up this generation. This group offers bridal marketers an opportunity to reach a larger audience than in the past and also an increase in market share.

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$2.3 Million For A Wedding?

It was a hard road to business for Bheki Kunene who grew up poor in the streets of Gugulethu, on the fringes of South Africa’s wealthy tourist city of Cape Town. He was selling peanuts at just 15 years old and then graduated to fruit and vegetables.
When he finished high school, Kunene had to pay his own way to college. There was a new baby in his family which ate up the money needed for fees. Scholarships were his only way to get a higher education and he got one at the Ruth Prowse School of Art in 2006.
“I got a scholarship to study graphic design which paid for everything provided I get above 75% for all subjects,” says Kunene.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2942" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_8386-1024x683-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
As part of the course, he had to do a six-month internship at a graphic design company. Instead, he put up R600 ($57) and a computer with two other classmates to start their own business called Mind Trix Media, specializing in web development and design, printing, marketing and developing mobile applications.
His classmates soon left but Kunene quickly landed his first big client – AAA Shuttles. He had to create a website and develop other projects for the tourism company, all on his own. His deadlines for the projects were very tight and he worked tirelessly to prove himself. Ismail Louw, the owner of AAA Shuttles, paid a 50% deposit for a website.
All was going well. But a knock on the door two weeks into the business turned his life upside down.
It was a summer’s morning on a Saturday in December 2010 and Kunene was printing t-shirts. Two detectives walked in. Kunene assumed that they were friends of the local pastor and they were just coming in for a small chat.
“They started asking me questions of where I was the previous night. Then they told me to take off my rings, belt, shoelaces and I knew something was not right,” Kunene says.
To his horror, the detectives arrested Kunene for murder.
“When I got to the police station, they told me they’d torture me like no-one would believe. Each morning it was another torture,” he remembers.
“The more I cried, screaming that I knew nothing about a murder, the police would continue to torture me, claiming that all criminals cried and said that they knew nothing until they were tortured into confessing. But I was telling them the truth.”
The police would punch him in the ribs and stomach. Once they tired of that, they would cuff his hands behind his back and force him to his knees while standing on the cuffs which pulled and squeezed on Kunene’s wrists.
After spending about five days in a tiny cell, the police released him.
“They told me they found the real culprit who had dreadlocks and they thought I had cut my dreadlocks the night before. I cut my dreadlocks a few years ago,” he says.
Kunene immediately went home and was worried about his first big client. He called Louw explaining his ordeal.
Luckily for Kunene, Louw was sympathetic and he kept the contract. It took about three weeks for Kunene to recover from the torment.
Business soon picked up. Word of mouth helped him gain more clients, partnerships and even make his first million rand. Soon, the awards started rolling in. Kunene made it into the top 10 national finalists of the South African Breweries Kick Start Business Competition. This is where he learned how to run a business and met Virgin’s Richard Branson and other motivational entrepreneurs.
“I learned some of the most basic foundation things from these guys. They kind of taught me the frugal lifestyle. They said ‘keep it silent my friend, live below your means and just study,’” Kunene says.
“Each day, I read for an hour and each time I walk down the road I’ve got audio books in my head and I’m learning more each day I’m reading. And I do some of the things these guys taught me.”
One of the best bits of advice Kunene took from the speakers was for him to go see a psychologist immediately after he made his first million because he grew up poor.
“You’d be like the tender guys, up one moment and the next they’re down,” the businessmen told him.
“You have to do it differently if you want to be like us. First thing, go get yourself counseled, understand what you are in now. Next step, learn about investment. Read more and read more,” Kunene remembers.
One question he asked Branson and co was what wealthy people did with their money.
“They said, we take our money and make more money for us. Then we take the interest and buy the fancy stuff. It’s not our money.”
For now, Kunene is earning his future interest with Mind Trix, the company he started from his mother’s house. It then moved to Loop Street in Cape Town’s central business district, and then moved back to the township where it started. Today, it has clients in Zimbabwe, Angola, Vietnam, Italy and the United States.
When I meet Kunene at their offices on the ground floor of a double-storey house, he tells me he hardly does any of the corporate work anymore, but solely focuses on running the business. He hopes to open five more offices and avoid any more painful misunderstandings w

Accused And Abused

A recent study from the 50,000-member strong B2B Technology Marketing community on LinkedIn showed that 85% of B2B Marketers say LinkedIn is the most effective social network in delivering content. That study also showed that 71% of B2B Marketers say audience relevance is the most important element of content marketing and 88% of B2B Marketers cite case studies as the most effective form content marketing.
Yet, most business owners and most marketing, sales and business development professionals have a LinkedIn profile that reads like a resume. Their profiles do not show why a decision-maker or influencer should connect with them. Right there, they are not demonstrating their relevance. And, they’re not effectively showing their relevance in the content they are sharing.
Let me show you how four women are effectively using content and LinkedIn to generate more leads and profits.
<h4>How the founder of Wizard Media gained hundreds of leads and $60,000 by mixing content marketing with LinkedIn marketing</h4>
If you look at the profile of Jimena Cortes, you’ll notice we’ve included case studies. For example, you’ll find a case study on how Jimena built a Neiman Marcus jewelry designer’s Facebook community to 45,000 members in nine months (something retailers would find very interesting). Within that case study, Jimena shows why her strategies took the client from 600 fans to 45,000 fans, zero engagement to capturing 37% of her fans’ information and from zero sales to $12,000 in three days.
Because her profile has content that resonates with her targeted audiences – her targeted audiences are accepting her LinkedIn connection. They’re joining her LinkedIn groups where she offers more content. The profile attracted a prospect that was ready, willing and able to spend $36,000 per year on her services.
Plus, when Jimena completes an email lead generation campaign through LinkedIn (using LinkedIn groups) about an upcoming webinar, prospects are signing up because they see that she has value to offer just by looking at her profile. By mixing LinkedIn marketing with webinar marketing (a form of content marketing), Jimena gained an additional $60,000 for her business last year.
<h4>IT marketing firm gains four new clients fast by challenging the way software and technology companies market their solutions</h4>
Conversion Copywriting President Susan Tatum creates thought leadership content for her clients so they can attract more prospects. But she was creating the same old, boring topics on her own blog. She was writing about topics like “Wow to write an awesome white paper”, “Why tech marketers must have a blog” and “Five signs you’re talking to the wrong content writer.” She was writing for the search engines – but she wasn’t writing content that would position her as an influencer within the different social media circles she belonged to, including LinkedIn. LinkedIn members are savvy, educated professionals, who are constantly looking for new and original ideas and ways of conducting business. As there are thousands of LinkedIn groups with hundreds of discussions happening every single day, your content will get ignored if you are providing the same old, regurgitated content that’s already all over the web. By creating thought-provoking blog posts, special reports and discussions that literally open the eyes of technology marketers inside her own Linked-In group and inside the 50 targeted groups she belongs to, Susan increased her website traffic by 300%. She went from zero LinkedIn shares to 90+ LinkedIn shares. And, she was able to recently gain four new clients including a company that serves 86% of the Fortune 100.
<h4>International coaching firm attracts more women business owners by telling stories</h4>
While working with Zee Worstell, President of AccelerateHer, I discovered that she and her clients had amazing stories to tell. Zee’s expertise is in showing women business owners how to price themselves appropriately. She knows first-hand how hard this is because she came across this issue when she was growing her recruiting business. When she was starting out, she would lower her prices in order to secure a client and wound up earning less than she was worth. This backfired because prospects would doubt her work because she was priced significantly lower than her competition. She was turning off prospects just by lowering her fees – and the clients she did get failed to show her respect. So, we had Zee create blog posts that discussed the “good girl beliefs” that held her back as a woman business owner. She discussed her own confidence issues within the articles and the mistakes she made. She also writes articles where she discusses the challenges her clients faced – and she tells their complete story and how they’ve become successful. As on average, women business owners make 45% less than male business owners, her target audience resonated with the discussions that were being created based on the blog posts. In fact, when she spoke to many of her LinkedIn connections on the phone (as she took the LinkedIn conversation offline) they felt like she was writing and speaking directly to them. As a result they signed up for her coaching program.
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<h4>How the author of this article mixed LinkedIn marketing and content marketing to gain more PR, more exposure and more leads</h4>
You are reading this article right now because I invited the editor to connect and to join my Get Help with Linked Strategies LinkedIn group so she can see the value I have to offer her readers. After reviewing my LinkedIn discussions and blog posts, she asked me to write the article that you’re reading right now. How many leads do you think I’ll generate by being on one of the top business websites? Now, offer real value, challenge your prospects, start thought-provoking conversations, showcase your expertise by sharing case studies, demonstrate your relevance and connect with your audience with stories. And you will generate more leads with LinkedIn.
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LinkedIn with  content marketing

It’s a few months before the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Experts predict 300,000 tourists will come to South Africa with bulging pockets. Businessmen across the country are rubbing their hands. Musa Xaba, founder of clothing store Democratic Republic, was caught up in football fever. When someone approached him with the idea to open a bigger store at the V&amp;A Waterfront in Cape Town he thought it was a good idea. You know what thought did…
Xaba was on a steady course with his five-year plan. The Democratic Republic store at the Waterfront was doing well, Xaba was opening another store at Cape Quarter Mall and investors were eager to expand overseas. A second bigger store at the Waterfront was not in his plan but the opportunity seemed too good to pass up.
<div id="attachment_1725" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1725" class="size-medium wp-image-1725" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/569-85-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Entrepreneur/clothing retailer Musa Xaba; Sandton City, Johannesburg; 2 April 2013 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
“All the marketing gurus of the world were telling us that South Africa would be a different place… the World Cup was going to open doors to different people who had never been to Africa,” he says.
His rationale was that the existing store was very small. The thought of customers complaining because of a cramped shop was too much to bear.
But the World Cup came and went. The hundreds of thousands of supporters came, saw and walked away—taking their money with them.
“It became a disaster beyond disaster. The people who came were young and very into soccer. They hadn’t come to shop; they had come for the experience of the soccer World Cup,” says Xaba.
To make matters worse Democratic Republic’s regular customers left Cape Town to avoid the soccer crowds.
“This is the interesting thing—70 percent of all the five-star hotels in Cape Town were pre-booked but the people never came. The stadiums were chockablock full, hotels were empty. Your Pick ‘n Pays and backpackers were full. The high-end consumers that they promised didn’t come through,” he says.
Xaba had no choice but to close the two stores at the Waterfront, losing R2 million ($261,200) in the process. And as if things couldn’t get worse, his foreign investors pulled out. Xaba was devastated. It was hard to believe that one bad decision would destroy years of hard work.
“We had to let go. I told my staff that we were going to focus and stick to the plan. We had a road map. We said after five years in Cape Town we should be in the right season to move to Johannesburg.”
With thousands of rands worth of clothing and one store remaining at Cape Quarter, Xaba began to recover slowly.
It has been almost three years since the soccer World Cup and Xaba has made the move to Johannesburg. The business has stabilized and the lesson has been learnt.
“In retail, it’s about time. Even to come to Jo’burg we had to wait out five years in Cape Town.”
<div id="attachment_1726" style="width: 219px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1726" class="size-medium wp-image-1726" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/77958587-singer-celine-dion-sighting-shopping-on-gettyimages-209x300.jpg" alt="" width="209" height="300" />NEW YORK &#8211; NOVEMBER 16: Singer Celine Dion sighting shopping on Madison Avenue at Chanel November 16, 2007 in New York City. (Photo by Marcel Thomas/FilmMagic)</div>
Xaba has even thought of reopening a store at the Waterfront, a place where he enjoyed luck as well as disaster.
In 2008, Céline Dion was on tour in South Africa. On the day she visited the Waterfront she only walked into two stores: Louis Vuitton, where she bought a bag; and Democratic Republic, where she left with 17 items of clothing.
“The clothes were just so many and she needed them to be sent to the hotel. I don’t think that record has been broken,” says Xaba.
Looking back, Xaba admits that the road to becoming an entrepreneur has been filled with dedication and determination to learn the industry inside out. After graduating from Natal Technikon—now Durban University of Technology, where he studied design—he worked at South Africa’s biggest listed apparel retailer Truworths, as a senior buyer.
In 2000, he started his own manufacturing company, Vintage Culture, which produced clothing for companies such as Topics, Hilton Weiner and Truworths.
“When I was working as a buyer, I traveled overseas to source products in America, the United Kingdom, Amsterdam, Paris and Milan. But when I started working for myself I had to start from the bottom. That meant I was staying at backpackers. I had to organize cheaper [flight] tickets—it meant traveling through Dubai to get to London,” he says.
After five years in manufacturing, Xaba took the plunge and opened Democratic Republic.
“I was looking for a name… that wherever you are [in the world] you could look up at the name you’ll know it is an African brand. We wanted to build a company that would produce a product for a youthful South African woman… She is ageless, she can move with the trends, she knows what she wants,” he says.
Democratic Republic made its debut at YDE (Young Designers Emporium), which sells clothing by South African designers, in 2005.
“It was the easiest way. I didn’t borrow money from the bank. I had to sell everything that was sellable in terms of my assets in order to raise the finances.”
But after two months the agreement fell through. Xaba wanted the brand to stand out but YDE wanted the clothing to blend in with everything else. So he decided that the only way forward was to stand alone and he opened his first store at the Waterfront.
Looking back he admits that there were hard lessons learnt but that the most important was knowing that there are certain things in life you cannot control, and the outcome of the World Cup was one of them.
“Don’t put the cart before the horse—that’s my 2010 lesson.”
Now, as Xaba sits sipping on a glass of chardonnay, there are few signs of stress. He spends his time flying between Johannesburg and Cape Town to keep an eye on the stores. As the 2014 FIFA World Cup approaches, Xaba is playing it as cool as his chardonnay. He has a five-year plan and he’s sticking to it this time. In footballing terms, he conceded two own goals after spending money on a star defender that turned out not to be so. At the very least, his business won in penalties at the end of extra time.

Tag: Marketing

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