If you think advertising in SA, with 11 official languages, is difficult, try Uganda. There, agencies must navigate their way through 37 languages and dialects. Oh yes, and there are nearly 200 radio stations. Cameroon has more than 250 dialects and cultural groups.
In Botswana, according to a senior industry executive there, "most marketing strategies lack precision and execution is often haphazard".
These are not unique situations. Across Africa, the advertising scene bears little resemblance to that in SA. Budgets are a fraction of those here. Skills and training are at a premium. Exposure to TV - still the heart of SA advertising - is almost nonexistent across swathes of the continent. Anyone who thinks knowledge of the SA market makes them an instant expert on the rest of Africa, is in for a rude awakening.
Nevertheless, SA has an important role to play in developing advertising and marketing across the continent. There are parallels.
The diversity of the SA market - in terms of languages, cultures, income bands, literacy levels and geographic spread - is a microcosm of that further afield. Increasingly, global agency groups are using SA as their base for pan-African networks.
This is the first time AdFocus has offered an award for African Agency Network of the Year. The intention is to recognise the efforts of SA-based agency groups to share their expertise and raise standards in other countries. It is also to highlight rising standards in those countries. There is a smug assumption that advertising standards in other parts of Africa are inferior to those in SA. In some respects they may be. But the markets are different.
Take Uganda. To overcome the nightmare market fragmentation caused by so many radio stations and languages, some major advertisers get their message across through mass-participation events like music festivals, fun clubs and social gatherings. Banks and telecom firms are particularly fond of sponsoring festivals.
To complicate matters further, market research is almost nonexistent in most countries. No-one can be really sure which consumers see what. There are also huge differences in what you can get away with. In some markets, advertising content and standards are highly regulated; in others, not at all.
There are five finalists for the debut of this award: Draftfcb Africa, Exp, McCann Africa, Ogilvy Africa and TBWA Africa. All impressed with the scope of their operations and their involvement in other countries' activities but there can be only one winner.
Step forward Ogilvy Africa.
How was it chosen? In judging this category, we weren't looking for dots on an African map to show how many countries each network operates in. Yes, we wanted to know where they had offices, but we also wanted to know how many people were actively involved in each; what disciplines were available in each country; unduplicated billings; awards; training programmes and budgets; creative support from SA; which SA executives travel where, and when; frequency of meetings between network executives; interagency communications; co-operation on pitches; identification and nurturing of non-SA talent; and more.
Ogilvy Africa has offices in more than 25 countries, with nearly 900 people dedicated to its business. Since last year, awards have flooded in from advertising festivals as far afield as Zimbabwe, Ghana, Reunion, Mozambique, Kenya, Mauritius, Cameroon, Namibia, Madagascar and Swaziland.
Routine pan-African training includes account management, planning, creative, media strategy and media buying. There is also regional and country-specific training. Pan-African heads meet annually, and regional board members up to six times a year.
AdFocus judges were impressed by Ogilvy's talent-identification programme. Four years ago the network collaborated with Ghana's advertising association to pioneer an advertising school there. According to network MD Ato Afful, lessons learnt from this experience are being replicated in other countries.
Ogilvy's success in this category was not unchallenged. Experiential and sponsorship marketing agency Exp had strong support from some jury members. It was the only finalist to have developed across the African continent without international affiliation. According to marketing and strategy director David Boon, it has 15 wholly owned offices in 11 countries, and works in at least eight more. Headquartered in Johannesburg, with regional hubs in Nairobi, Dakar and Lagos, the agency works with local and international companies as well as international donors and NGOs.
Boon is particularly pleased with Exp's success in developing local talent. A few years ago nearly all country operations were led by SA management. Today, nine are run by locals.
The untapped business potential in Africa is underlined by figures from Draftfcb Africa. At a time when recession is causing agencies in developed markets to cut costs and staff, business in Africa is flourishing by comparison. In announcing disappointing half-year earnings to June, Sir Martin Sorrell, head of the global WPP media and advertising group, said only Latin America and Africa remained "relatively unscathed".
In 2007, Draftfcb's non-SA African operations were responsible for R169m in billings. Last year the figure was R226m. In the first half of this year alone, it almost equalled that with R220m. Other networks report similarly rich pickings. The problem is that most African billings are in US dollars. The relative strength of the rand against the dollar since last year has therefore reduced rand earnings.
Nevertheless, with the market growing, it's small wonder the Draftfcb network, which operates out of Cape Town, is happy to spend nearly R1m annually on training and an annual feedback conference.
McCann SA recognises the continent's growing importance, which is why group CE Reinher Behrens has taken personal charge of the McCann Africa network. SA was appointed the central hub for Africa in April this year so it was always going to be too soon to win our award.
Until this year the network, with a presence in 32 countries, was run from London. International group training programmes were not always suitable for Africa.
Behrens says the vision is to create "the most alive network in Africa". Member agencies are looking to SA for leadership. They want newsletters, intranets, workshops, training and employee exchanges. However, as Behrens notes: "We can only be the best if every member contributes and participates." A 2009 year-end conference is expected to chart the way forward.
Longer-term, there is talk within the IPG media and communications group, to which both McCann and Draftfcb belong, of sharing some African resources, or "overlaying" one network over the other. "They are competitors, but if there are mutual benefits, we will look at them," says an IPG insider.
The last of our finalists (though not in order of success) is TBWA Africa. In existence for eight years, the network has 25 offices in 20 sub-Saharan countries. The advantage of well-run networks is evident in TBWA's relationship with some of its big clients. Standard Bank is serviced out of 15 offices and Nissan will be run from 24 by the end of the year.
TBWA Africa operations director Rick de Kock says that though SA is the hub, it does not dictate to other countries. "Our network is built on collaboration. We bring teams together from all over the continent to work on a pitch or campaign. A great example of this was the recent Standard Bank/Stanbic campaign where our offices played a key role in developing the big idea that has now appeared in more than 30 countries."
