Janine Hawkins on the added value of South Africans

outh Africans, with their can-do attitude and resourcefulness, are proving to be naturals in the highly competitive business of global brand development. Our ingenuity, creativity and forward-looking mentality are all traits that are highly prized by international consultancies, the task of which is to grow and re-position some of the best-known brand names in the world.

Janine Hawkins, global chief executive officer of the Added Value Group, which has 22 offices in 14 countries and consults to high-profile multinational clients on marketing and branding issues, believes we are “a very inventive and resourceful” bunch.

“South Africans have a very positive way of looking at issues,” she said during a recent visit to the company’s offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town. “When you’re working in the field of developing marketing strategies, as we are, and looking for new ideas and ways to solve problems, that sort of attitude is great.

“It’s not about spending days unravelling a problem; it’s rather about looking to the future and asking: ‘What can we do differently?’,”
she added.

According to Hawkins, individual South Africans are now working throughout the group, and the local offices are increasingly being asked to do brand development work for clients worldwide. “Wherever the South Africans work, there’s never a sense that they can’t do something – they just go for it. I admire that attitude and approach.”

Added Value is one of a number of high-flying international consultancies that are employed by blue chip companies to undertake research and provide strategy advice on how to get the best out of their brands. Its local client base includes the likes of Old Mutual, Kimberley-Clark, Unilever, Southern Sun and Nestlé.

London-based Hawkins is impressed with the overall South African branding and business scene. “It’s a dynamic sort of place. Businesses are growing and there’s lots of ambition for South African businesses to do work in the rest of Africa and other parts of the world.

“Some of the markets I visit feel as if they’re quite happy with the status quo and they’re comfortable with ‘more of the same’ or ‘business as usual’. I never get that feeling in South Africa,” she added.

Building brands

Brand consultancy is a competitive business, with management consultants, advertising agencies and public relations firms all vying to sell their advice. But Hawkins said brand consultants are specialists in their field and have the edge over PR and ad people because the advice given is not necessarily based on a communications strategy. “We’re solution-neutral, and there is no agenda to use PR or advertising in our strategies. It’s about what’s right for the brand,” she explained.

And what of management consultancies, the best of which (such as McKinsey & Company or Deloitte) enjoy stellar reputations, employ MBA graduates by the truckload and have the ear of top global executives? “They tend to base their advice on financial data or marketing aspects,” said Hawkins.

“Our selling point is that we first look at consumer insights (‘market research’, in the old terminology): what consumers want, need and how the future is unfolding for them. Then we apply what we have learnt and develop strategies from that.”

Much of the work done by brand consultancies is shrouded in client confidentiality, but a typical project could involve looking at ways to take an existing popular brand into new parts of the market. The famous Mars chocolate bar, for example, will not only taste and look different in different parts of the world. It has also been extended to become a chocolate drink, energy, drink, coffee, biscuit, ice cream and confectionary roll.

Repositioning an existing brand so that it means something else to consumers, or opens it up to an entirely new group of customers, is also a common challenge.

As an example, Hawkins pointed to Lucozade, the well-known sports energy drink. For most of its product life – from the 1920s to the ‘80s – it was sold as a drink that gave energy to the elderly when recuperating from illness.

“By taking that core message of ‘energy’ and then talking about it in the context of sport and exercise, the drink was taken to a whole new market,” she explained. “Although it was now a different proposition, it was done in a relevant and credible way.”

And then there is “brand equity” – the industry’s jargon for the intangible value that is added to a product or service via marketing and PR efforts. This becomes particularly important when the product or service is not unique.

Hawkins said Virgin fits the bill perfectly. “It’s a young, fun, maverick brand that has a distinctive image in the public’s mind. So when you’re looking at new opportunities for Virgin, you want to use that strength of image to expand into other categories. Or you can look at how to exaggerate those strengths so that the brand becomes even stronger.”

BP disaster

According to marketing theorists, “equity” should be like money in the bank when a brand goes through difficult times. No brand has gone through a rougher ride than BP in recent months. So, can it recover from the Gulf of Mexico disaster and regain its former lustre?

Hawkins thought so. “It’s a strong business and brand, and it will be strong again going forward. Initially, it did catch them on the back foot and I don’t think they dealt with the situation very well. But as long as they keep focused on the way they’re communicating and make sure they do the right thing to sort all the problems out, then I think they will be fine.”

Her own personal favourites at the moment are the technology brands, Apple and Google.

“Apple has an amazing clarity as to what the brand is all about – it’s innovative, relevant, fresh and with great product design. It seems very clear about what it is and what it wants to do. It does a great job of continuing to innovate and continuing to still be fresh.”

Of Google, Hawkins said: “Look at what it has achieved in the relatively few years that it has been around. It is a brand that has a sense of ‘self’, is innovative and does a great job for consumers.

“One of the nice things about Google is that, on the surface, it has kept things very simple.

“Ultimately, a brand that keeps doing simple things and producing what consumers need, is going to be great.”

But if strong branding is so vital to success, why have we seen the notable growth of ‘no-name’ brands, particularly in supermarkets?

According to a July report on Fin24.com, for example, sales of no-name brands at Pick n Pay rose 26% in the past year.

But Hawkins pointed out that they are not truly ‘no-name’ and their success is attributable to the strong brand name of the retailer selling them. “If the retailer has a strong and trusted brand, then its no-name brands will do well.

“Retailers do a lot to promote their own no-name brands and invest in them; they imbue values into those brands that are above the basic branding on the package,” she said.

Consumer trends

As the world continues to evolve at a rapid rate, marketers and brand experts need to evolve with it. Among the trends causing the greatest head-scratching is the emerging culture of ‘free’ – the expectation that things you would pay for in other circumstances are somehow ‘free’ on the Internet.

“It’s a whole different way of thinking about how you communicate with your customers,” said Hawkins. “But rather than businesses seeing it as a problem, they have to ask: ‘How do I deal with the situation and make it work for me?’

“I’m sure that different business models will emerge as a result. It challenges us to think how we can make our brand work if the old business model isn’t going to be as relevant as before. It’s an opportunity as much as a problem.

“The obvious example is newspapers, which have been losing revenue because people expect to be able to read them for free online. Some are now going for a subscription-only online model, others not. They’re also having to deal with emerging products like the iPad and Kindle electronic device, which enable newspapers to be read in ways we never imagined. It remains to be seen what successful business model will emerge from this,” she added.

While evolving technology and consumer trends occupy the attention of many marketing and brand experts, the other big question is the impact of China. As its market continues to boom, is the world likely to be engulfed by a wave of Chinese brands?

Hawkins thought not. “On the whole, Chinese businesses are more interested in making the most of their huge domestic market. We find that most of our work there is about helping Chinese brands to evolve and become more competitive at home. The interesting thing is that marketing and branding are relatively new disciplines there, which makes for very exciting times.” ▲

Mike Simpson