Showcase

We are incredibly proud of the work we do. Below are a number of case studies that showcase our work and provide insights and lessons that are relevant to all businesses wishing to engage online.

  • Nedbank

    In February 2011, Nedbank engaged the services of Cerebra Communication to assist in optimising and integrating our social media efforts across the Group. The work entailed a full 360 review and audit of the bank’s existing presence, culminating in the development and implementation of a group-wide social media strategy and plan.

    The work undertaken has ensured group-wide alignment, improved governance and internal processes and the establishment of a sound internal social media management capability. Our experience and partnership with Cerebra has paid dividends and ensured that the bank is well positioned to take advantage of the vast opportunities that social media provides to deepen relationships with our clients.

  • Vodacom

    Cerebra were contracted to increase Vodacom Group’s online presence through social media, as well as to help the iconic brand to connect to its consumers. We decided that a brand of this presence and stature required a full complement of platforms, and created, among others, official Vodacom pages on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Zoopy. As a result, Vodacom now have a bustling social media presence, and are without a doubt the most comprehensively represented network provider in South Africa when it comes to social media.

  • Flora (Unilever)

    Flora is part of the Unilever stable of brands. Cerebra were sourced to manage Flora’s social media presence by making use of channel and campaign elements. Cerebra has amplified and created engagement around all current campaigns, sponsorship properties, and within the social channels themselves sustained engagement between campaigns.

    “We have been receiving fantastic positive feedback from people here at work, who like our page, about the content that you guys put up on our page! We also like it a lot and really feel that you get what the brand is about.”
    - Babongile Malinga: Assistant brand manager for Flora

  • JSE

    Cerebra was tasked to introduce South Africans to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Having never been on social media it was an exciting opportunity for us to introduce the JSE to Facebook and Twitter. The challenge for us was to come up with exciting and creative yet relevant content for the platforms, due to the nature of their industry.

  • Silicon Cape

    The Silicon Cape Initiative is a non profit, community owned and driven movement for entrepreneurs, geeks, venture capitalists, angel investors, marketers and other professionals in the IT industry. Although the Silicon Cape is based in Cape Town, anyone interested in joining the initiative is welcome.

    The Silicon Cape has weekly and monthly get-togethers. At the monthly 'VC office hours' events, startups get one on one advice from VC's and other invited guests. It is Cerebra's responsibility to tell the whole world how rad the Silicon Cape Initiative is.

    Because of the variety in speciality focus of the entrepreneurs who belong to the Silicon Cape, we use a variety of spokespeople in the media.

  • Stratus

    By integrating around-the-clock monitoring services with resilient technologies, Stratus delivers "uptime assurance". For organisations and their customers that depend on uptime, Stratus is the proven provider that helps protect lives, money and reputations. Long-time customers include credit-card and ATM networks, hospitals, manufacturing and utilities companies, securities and brokerage firms, 9-1-1 emergency call centres, and similar mission-critical operations where the potential harm from service failures is very high.

    Cerebra signed the Stratus business in 2006. We are tasked with profiling the company’s spokespeople through target thought leadership and opinion pieces. Cerebra also work to generate exposure around the quality of the Stratus service offering.

  • Invenfin

    Invenfin is a seed and early stage venture capital (VC) fund and part of Remgro Ltd

    Invenfin's interest lies in all types of innovation, in all sectors and typically involves new products, processes, software innovations, devices, technologies or business models.

    Cerebra is responsible for Invenfin's media communications and we ensure that our speakers are seen and heard at seminars, conferences and guest lectures. Our speakers are mentors and thought leaders in the VC space and can be seen regularly at Silicon Cape's VC Office Hours events giving guidance and advice to startups.

  • Symantec

    Symantec is the largest maker of security software and is a global leader in providing storage and systems management solutions to help organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. Symantec software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored.

    Cerebra is responsible for Symantec enterprise and SMB media communications in South Africa.

  • SilverBridge

    Established in 1995, SilverBridge offers clients reliable solutions that aim to simplify their operations by enabling and improving their business processes. They achieve this by implementing fully functional system platforms and customising it accordingly to their client’s needs. They also operate beyond the South African border and the experiences they’ve have gained through their existing African footprint, either directly or through strategic partnerships, positions them well to continue to make life insurance easy.

  • WirelessG

    Founded in 2002, WirelessG has established itself as a leader and innovator in the South African broadband market. Being the first to converge various networks, operators and platforms into a single revolutionary offering, WirelessG is fast evolving into one of South Africa’s leading telecommunications enabling enterprises.

    Cerebra has enjoyed a longstanding relationship with the broadband innovator, with a primary focus on announcing and subsequently launching their African-first offering, G-Connect In-Flight Wi-Fi.

  • BrandsEye

    In 2011, Cerebra teamed up with BrandsEye, an Online Reputation Management service provider to help promote BrandsEye, the brand and its services.

    Cerebra took responsibility for the publicity by coming up with a communications strategy to generate more exposure for BrandsEye and its offerings.

    BrandsEye has been featured on Business Day, The Digital Edge and of course other online marketing publications on various topics relating to ORM.

  • Karabina (Previously iSPartners)

    Established in 2001, Karabina provides business technology services with expertise across multiple industries. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Karabina focuses on the implementation, customisation, integration and core application development for Business Intelligence (BI), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Knowledge Management (KM) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solutions.

    Karabina contracted Cerebra to profile their solutions and services within the business community, with a focus on product launches. More recently, announcing their name change and rebrand from iSPartners to Karabina.

  • Missing Link

    One of the biggest presentation strategy companies, Missing Link selected Cerebra as its preferred media communications service provider since 2009. As part of their plan to generate more exposure of their services, we were tasked with repositioning Missing Link and profiling the company and its spokespeople.

    Working closely with the Missing link team of rockstars presented Cerebra with a great opportunity to understand the industry that Missing Link operates in.

  • Demographica

    Demographica, one of South Africa's largest digital email and mobile advertising company, approached Cerebra in 2010 to handle its PR and media communications.

    As part of Demographica's philosophy of building relationship based on honesty, integrity and trust, they chose Cerebra as the preferred media and communications supplier. One of the key objectives was to profile Demographica and its CEO as the leaders in digital email and mobile advertising.

    Working together with Demographica and handling its public relations activities, we were able to rebrand Demographica and profile its CEO, which in turn lead to increased awareness about the company and its offerings.

  • Amadeus

    Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, contracted the services of Cerebra to assist them with broad PR services. The main aim behind Cerebra’s work was to position Amadeus Southern Africa as the leading technology provider to the travel and tourism sector through on-going content creation, media relations and communications. Other services include dissemination of global news, events and assistance with direct marketing and advertising.

  • Tech4Africa

    Tech4Africa, the premier mobile, web & emerging technology conference, sought the services of Cerebra to launch and create awareness for their inaugural event in 2010. This was a substantial PR project, which saw Cerebra secure multiple media partners, deliver 13 pre-event news releases and motivate for over 90 direct media interviews with both the event organiser and event speakers. This campaign saw Tech4Africa achieving over 6000 online mentions and 290 media outcomes.

  • Obsidian Systems

    Obsidian, a leading provider of Enterprise Open Source in Southern Africa, is one of our longest standing clients. During this relationship Cerebra has assisted Obsidian in a media communications capacity with the main objective being the creation of broad awareness about Open Source software and solutions.

    More recently, Cerebra has complimented the media communications function through the creation of The Free Beer Session, an Open Source industry event which we set-up, organise and run on Obsidian’s behalf.

  • Nedbank Small Business Services

    Cerebra was chosen as the preferred Social Media supplier to Nedbank Small Business Services. As part of Nedbank Small Business Services’ philosophy of adding value beyond banking, they approached Cerebra to create an online value networking portal – SimplyBiz.co.za for small business owners. In addition, they wanted SimplyBiz.co.za to integrate with other social platforms namely Twitter and Facebook.

    Working together with Nedbank and taking all internal processes into account, we were able to launch a robust quality platform within tight deadlines.

  • Women's Health SA website development

    One of the more challenging and exciting projects Cerebra has taken on in some time, Women's Health SA was our first foray into a magazine site with social features.

    Touchline Media decided to work with Cerebra after choosing Drupal as the CMS for the platform, and has signed a contract with Cerebra to redevelop other key titles in the Touchline stable.

  • Microsoft SA social media strategy, platform dev and ORM

    Microsoft South Africa have retained Cerebra to co-ordinate and manage all social media activities and online reputation management for the region.

    Cerebra assists Microsoft in identifying key influencers in social networks with a knowledge of and passion for Microsoft products and services, and helps Microsoft connect meaningfully with these brand advocates.

    This relationship is soon to yield some very exciting projects - watch this space for ground-breaking developments...

  • eBucks social media strategy

    eBucks, South Africa's 'leading multi-partner rewards programme, teamed up with Cerebra to help develop a social media strategy for the brand and to manage their Online Reputation Management during the launch of PayPal in South Africa. This subsequently led to Cerebra managing their Facebook and Twitter accounts on an ongoing basis.

    Although associated with FNB, eBucks is run as a separate business unit which allowed us to create and define its own online voice.

  • IS Labs : The idea incubator

    One of the most exciting projects Cerebra has had the opportunity to work on is IS Labs, an 'initiative by Internet Solutions that challenges South African Internet users to submit ideas to make the Internet better in South Africa'.

    The site was modelled on the phenomenally successful Dell Ideastorm - a social bookmarking platform that offers anyone with access to the Internet the opportunity to contribute ideas for improving the laptops they use every day, from packaging to build quality, to software provisioning.

  • Converse Century blog

    The Converse Century blog campaign has been one of the most spectacularly successful ventures we have had the pleasure to be involved in. It was kick-started by a partnership between Cerebra and Youth Dynamix.

  • Calvin Klein IN2U community

    We were commissioned by Calvin Klein South Africa to promote their new fragrance, IN2U. A combination of two social media platforms (a Facebook group, and a blog) were combined with a traditional medium (5FM) to create an intensive marketing campaign around Calvin Klein's his and hers fragrance.

  • Toyota

    We've worked closely with Toyota marketing and agency FCB to create he blog destination for all Toyota owners, fans and anyone else who's a car nut!

    This blog is the central presence for the Toyota social media strategy www.toyotablog.co.za

    Toyota have been an absolute pleasure to work with and truly 'lead the way' in customer engagement in the new media era.

  • Samsung Mobile South Africa

    The Samsung Mobile blog was created to showcase the latest Samsung handsets and engage the online blogging community as well as mobile mavens on mobile technology news and information and how it relates specifically to the South African cellphone user.

    This platform has helped Samsung engage a niche, high-quality segment of it's market in a way not possible with traditional marketing channels.

In February 2011, Nedbank engaged the services of Cerebra Communication to assist in optimising and integrating our social media efforts across the Group. The work entailed a full 360 review and audit of the bank’s existing presence, culminating in the development and implementation of a group-wide social media strategy and plan.

The work undertaken has ensured group-wide alignment, improved governance and internal processes and the establishment of a sound internal social media management capability. Our experience and partnership with Cerebra has paid dividends and ensured that the bank is well positioned to take advantage of the vast opportunities that social media provides to deepen relationships with our clients.

The Cerebra team has provided Nedbank with sound thought leadership, excellent and professional project execution skills, social media training and valuable onsite assistance in operationalising our internal social media community management team. Nedbank is now well on its way to effectively engaging in all forms of social media with a consistent, integrated and well managed social media presence that continues to go from strength to strength. Dealing with social media in the context of a large corporate organisation is extremely challenging. Cerebra’s impact and guidance has proved invaluable and their services are highly recommended.

Mark Rock-Perring
Divisional Executive
Group Marketing, Communications and Corporate Affairs

Cerebra were contracted to increase Vodacom Group’s online presence through social media, as well as to help the iconic brand to connect to its consumers. We decided that a brand of this presence and stature required a full complement of platforms, and created, among others, official Vodacom pages on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and Zoopy. As a result, Vodacom now have a bustling social media presence, and are without a doubt the most comprehensively represented network provider in South Africa when it comes to social media.

Another component of our service involved extensive internal process and guideline consulting to ensure the business was prepared for the social media space. Numerous departments have taken a keen interest into the social media channels, allowing an amalgamation of content from retail departments to The Vodacom Foundation. The largest challenge, by far, was the customer service element, which meant Cerebra had to help put extensive systems and processes in place to ensure customer expectation was met on social media channels.

The various channels are all coordinated to ensure that Vodacom’s Social Media presence is coherent, and that the brand is properly represented across all platforms. Cerebra have been responsible for cutting edge work for Vodacom, including sending launch invites via Twitter, developing new video content for their handset partners, and making extensive self-help content available for Vodacom customers.

All channels have been a huge success. Twitter has proved so successful in fact, that we have launched a separate Twitter handle (@Vodacom111) to deal exclusively with customer service requests, further cementing Vodacom’s intention to put the focus on the customer.

We continue to provide Vodacom innovative solutions in the social media space, growing their social media presence and making sure they are streets ahead of the telecoms competition.

Vodacom Business

As part of their plan to launch a Metro Ethernet network, Vodacom Business contracted Cerebra to handle the social media component of the campaign. We decided that, in order to make the campaign a success, we would need full integration between the different channels and platforms we manage.

This was no ordinary campaign, involving as it did a stunt in which famed F1 driver Lewis Hamilton raced a Mercedes around Kyalami Racetrack in a time trial against a 2.6 gigabyte data download over Vodocom Business’s Metro Ethernet Fibre network. This event generated a buzz online and was highly talked about through social media.

Cerebra took responsibility for the publicity for this unique event through social media, and facilitated the invitation of some of South Africa’s top technology bloggers to the event to create additional exposure online. A Twitter handle for the account facilitated pre-event, during event and post-event content about the product. Live tweeting from the event allowed all those who could not attend to join in on the action, and Cerebra was pleased to see the campaign generate a significant amount of interaction on Vodacom’s social media platforms.

Flora is part of the Unilever stable of brands. Cerebra were sourced to manage Flora’s social media presence by making use of channel and campaign elements. Cerebra has amplified and created engagement around all current campaigns, sponsorship properties, and within the social channels themselves sustained engagement between campaigns.

“We have been receiving fantastic positive feedback from people here at work, who like our page, about the content that you guys put up on our page! We also like it a lot and really feel that you get what the brand is about.”
- Babongile Malinga: Assistant brand manager for Flora

Cerebra runs the Flora Facebook fan page as well as integrating social campaign strategy into traditional PR efforts. This increases the number of fans and followers, while simultaneously increasing engagement and ongoing dialogue particularly with fans across South Africa.

Cerebra was tasked to introduce South Africans to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Having never been on social media it was an exciting opportunity for us to introduce the JSE to Facebook and Twitter. The challenge for us was to come up with exciting and creative yet relevant content for the platforms, due to the nature of their industry.

As the JSE are a relatively new client, the approach with them is a phased one, and the initial launch of introducing them on both Facebook and Twitter has been extremely successful and has aided in demystifying both the JSE and the local financial market.

The Silicon Cape Initiative is a non profit, community owned and driven movement for entrepreneurs, geeks, venture capitalists, angel investors, marketers and other professionals in the IT industry. Although the Silicon Cape is based in Cape Town, anyone interested in joining the initiative is welcome.

The Silicon Cape has weekly and monthly get-togethers. At the monthly 'VC office hours' events, startups get one on one advice from VC's and other invited guests. It is Cerebra's responsibility to tell the whole world how rad the Silicon Cape Initiative is.

Because of the variety in speciality focus of the entrepreneurs who belong to the Silicon Cape, we use a variety of spokespeople in the media.

Soon to come, we will be featuring some of the Silicon Cape role models - great entrepreneurs doing groundbreaking work in South Africa. We hope to not only tell you their success stories but also show you video clips and give you guidance.

By integrating around-the-clock monitoring services with resilient technologies, Stratus delivers "uptime assurance". For organisations and their customers that depend on uptime, Stratus is the proven provider that helps protect lives, money and reputations. Long-time customers include credit-card and ATM networks, hospitals, manufacturing and utilities companies, securities and brokerage firms, 9-1-1 emergency call centres, and similar mission-critical operations where the potential harm from service failures is very high.

Cerebra signed the Stratus business in 2006. We are tasked with profiling the company’s spokespeople through target thought leadership and opinion pieces. Cerebra also work to generate exposure around the quality of the Stratus service offering.

Invenfin is a seed and early stage venture capital (VC) fund and part of Remgro Ltd

Invenfin's interest lies in all types of innovation, in all sectors and typically involves new products, processes, software innovations, devices, technologies or business models.

Cerebra is responsible for Invenfin's media communications and we ensure that our speakers are seen and heard at seminars, conferences and guest lectures. Our speakers are mentors and thought leaders in the VC space and can be seen regularly at Silicon Cape's VC Office Hours events giving guidance and advice to startups.

Another component in the work we do for Invenfin, is to work and profile the innovative talent they fund. With the launch of BOS Ice Tea, we secured almost every tier 1 outcome a client could wish for – from Business Day to SAFM.

Symantec is the largest maker of security software and is a global leader in providing storage and systems management solutions to help organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. Symantec software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored.

Cerebra is responsible for Symantec enterprise and SMB media communications in South Africa.

We started working with Symantec in 2007 to position them as a thought leader within the security space and to raise online security awareness of Internet users. In July 2009, South Africa landed two new undersea comms cables. Many years of Symantec research shows that malicious activity increases where new bandwidth is made available. At the beginning of 2010, Cerebra put together a FIFA 2010 Soccer World Cup campaign, which was adopted globally. Information was provided and malicious activity reported on the newly created website www.2010netthreat.com targeting over 1 billion soccer followers.

We continue to work with Symantec to inform you about the ever-growing amounts of malware being developed and report on security threats.

Established in 1995, SilverBridge offers clients reliable solutions that aim to simplify their operations by enabling and improving their business processes. They achieve this by implementing fully functional system platforms and customising it accordingly to their client’s needs. They also operate beyond the South African border and the experiences they’ve have gained through their existing African footprint, either directly or through strategic partnerships, positions them well to continue to make life insurance easy.

SilverBridge employs Cerebra to facilitate its overall communication strategy, moreover to do SilverBridge’s new contract announcements, with the focus on key media and stakeholder communication. Cerebra also do a fair amount of thought leadership and opinion pieces in target publications within the life insurance industry in order to boost SilverBridge’s industry profile.

Founded in 2002, WirelessG has established itself as a leader and innovator in the South African broadband market. Being the first to converge various networks, operators and platforms into a single revolutionary offering, WirelessG is fast evolving into one of South Africa’s leading telecommunications enabling enterprises.

Cerebra has enjoyed a longstanding relationship with the broadband innovator, with a primary focus on announcing and subsequently launching their African-first offering, G-Connect In-Flight Wi-Fi.

In 2011, Cerebra teamed up with BrandsEye, an Online Reputation Management service provider to help promote BrandsEye, the brand and its services.

Cerebra took responsibility for the publicity by coming up with a communications strategy to generate more exposure for BrandsEye and its offerings.

BrandsEye has been featured on Business Day, The Digital Edge and of course other online marketing publications on various topics relating to ORM.

Established in 2001, Karabina provides business technology services with expertise across multiple industries. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Karabina focuses on the implementation, customisation, integration and core application development for Business Intelligence (BI), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Knowledge Management (KM) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solutions.

Karabina contracted Cerebra to profile their solutions and services within the business community, with a focus on product launches. More recently, announcing their name change and rebrand from iSPartners to Karabina.

One of the biggest presentation strategy companies, Missing Link selected Cerebra as its preferred media communications service provider since 2009. As part of their plan to generate more exposure of their services, we were tasked with repositioning Missing Link and profiling the company and its spokespeople.

Working closely with the Missing link team of rockstars presented Cerebra with a great opportunity to understand the industry that Missing Link operates in.

Demographica, one of South Africa's largest digital email and mobile advertising company, approached Cerebra in 2010 to handle its PR and media communications.

As part of Demographica's philosophy of building relationship based on honesty, integrity and trust, they chose Cerebra as the preferred media and communications supplier. One of the key objectives was to profile Demographica and its CEO as the leaders in digital email and mobile advertising.

Working together with Demographica and handling its public relations activities, we were able to rebrand Demographica and profile its CEO, which in turn lead to increased awareness about the company and its offerings.

Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, contracted the services of Cerebra to assist them with broad PR services. The main aim behind Cerebra’s work was to position Amadeus Southern Africa as the leading technology provider to the travel and tourism sector through on-going content creation, media relations and communications. Other services include dissemination of global news, events and assistance with direct marketing and advertising.

Following a year of successful PR activities, Amadeus has contacted Cerebra to assist them launching their Southern African Facebook presence. This will include strategy development, policy and procedure creation, training, development of the Facebook page, content creation and community management.

Tech4Africa, the premier mobile, web & emerging technology conference, sought the services of Cerebra to launch and create awareness for their inaugural event in 2010. This was a substantial PR project, which saw Cerebra secure multiple media partners, deliver 13 pre-event news releases and motivate for over 90 direct media interviews with both the event organiser and event speakers. This campaign saw Tech4Africa achieving over 6000 online mentions and 290 media outcomes.

Following this success, Cerebra was again contracted to carry out PR for the 2011 event. This was a challenging project based on the expectations set during the previous year. Despite this, Cerebra managed to secure 92 media interviews and the event achieved 8700 online mentions, 184 media outcomes and an AVE over R10 Million.

Obsidian, a leading provider of Enterprise Open Source in Southern Africa, is one of our longest standing clients. During this relationship Cerebra has assisted Obsidian in a media communications capacity with the main objective being the creation of broad awareness about Open Source software and solutions.

More recently, Cerebra has complimented the media communications function through the creation of The Free Beer Session, an Open Source industry event which we set-up, organise and run on Obsidian’s behalf.

Cerebra was chosen as the preferred Social Media supplier to Nedbank Small Business Services. As part of Nedbank Small Business Services’ philosophy of adding value beyond banking, they approached Cerebra to create an online value networking portal – SimplyBiz.co.za for small business owners. In addition, they wanted SimplyBiz.co.za to integrate with other social platforms namely Twitter and Facebook.

Working together with Nedbank and taking all internal processes into account, we were able to launch a robust quality platform within tight deadlines.

Marketing Manager, Ravikesh Kalicharran says, “Cerebra must be commended on their professional and proactive approach. The highlight of working with them is the quality and relevance of the work supplied. Also, their constant search to innovate and introduce new features to the site is much appreciated.”

In addition to the design and content of SimplyBiz.co.za, Cerebra is also responsible for the well executed daily management of the site and online reputation management.

One of the more challenging and exciting projects Cerebra has taken on in some time, Women's Health SA was our first foray into a magazine site with social features.

Touchline Media decided to work with Cerebra after choosing Drupal as the CMS for the platform, and has signed a contract with Cerebra to redevelop other key titles in the Touchline stable.

"Aside from their wide range of expertise Cerebra have been a great pleasure to work with because of the great passion they demonstrate for our brands. Mike Stopforth and his team continuously go to considerable lengths to ensure both our content and business objectives are achieved. We look forward to growing our with Cerebra in the future." - Dave Wessels, Head of New Media, Touchline Digital

Microsoft South Africa have retained Cerebra to co-ordinate and manage all social media activities and online reputation management for the region.

Cerebra assists Microsoft in identifying key influencers in social networks with a knowledge of and passion for Microsoft products and services, and helps Microsoft connect meaningfully with these brand advocates.

This relationship is soon to yield some very exciting projects - watch this space for ground-breaking developments...

eBucks, South Africa's 'leading multi-partner rewards programme, teamed up with Cerebra to help develop a social media strategy for the brand and to manage their Online Reputation Management during the launch of PayPal in South Africa. This subsequently led to Cerebra managing their Facebook and Twitter accounts on an ongoing basis.

Although associated with FNB, eBucks is run as a separate business unit which allowed us to create and define its own online voice.

One of the most exciting projects Cerebra has had the opportunity to work on is IS Labs, an 'initiative by Internet Solutions that challenges South African Internet users to submit ideas to make the Internet better in South Africa'.

The site was modelled on the phenomenally successful Dell Ideastorm - a social bookmarking platform that offers anyone with access to the Internet the opportunity to contribute ideas for improving the laptops they use every day, from packaging to build quality, to software provisioning.

IS Labs has already enjoyed positive reviews from both the press and bloggers alike. It has been featured on Ruben Goldberg's Classic FM show titled 'The Internet Economy', The Mail & Guardian's Tech Leader, and of course social media guru, Mike Stopforth's blog.

The true test of the impact of a site like this is whether or not it is actually changing the local Internet landscape as it promises to. The good news, and credit goes to the enthusiastic IS Labs team here, is that the suggestions coming through are being processed and acted upon. It's a testimony that great companies willing to stick their necks out can really make a difference!

The Converse Century blog campaign has been one of the most spectacularly successful ventures we have had the pleasure to be involved in. It was kick-started by a partnership between Cerebra and Youth Dynamix.

Youth Dynamix is a specialist youth consultancy that provides clients with research, strategic and marketing solutions. The campaign was implemented as a celebration of Converse’s 100th birthday and was spearheaded by the dynamic team at Youth Dynamix. The campaign has definitely ignited the consumer’s passion for the brand. The blog and Facebook page have seen unprecedented growth and at time of writing there are over 1,200 registered users on the blog and over 2,700 fans on the Facebook page.

Converse is one of the leading brands in footwear with a massive fan base. The idea behind the blog and Facebook page is to create a community around the brand (which has proven to be successful), to promote the brand through competitions, and a view to using the platforms as survey mechanisms.

The Converse Century campaign has literally exploded in popularity, from very humble beginnings. The reason for such explosive growth is due to the popularity of the various competitions. The initial competition “Share your Converse story” proved to be quite popular (with entries still being submitted).

The community has proven to be laced with very creative people, and to take advantage of this fact; the “Trace Your Lace” (TYL) competition was introduced by Youth Dynamix on the blog. The purpose of this competition was to encourage the site users to submit their own Converse shoe designs, either as professional or amateur designers with the possibility of the winning design. This competition proved to be very popular, and Converse received over 2500 entries, with some very high quality designs being submitted. Converse have always been generous with their prizes, and this competition was no exception, with a MacBook Air or the cash equivalent of R25 000 offered to each of the winners. In addition, the winners’ designs could be manufactured and sold to the South African market. At the introduction of the TYL competition, user registrations increased quite substantially. This again proved to us that strong incentives can have a very positive effect on site registrations. The latest competition, “What would you do for a pair of Converse shoes?” has seen a large number of entries already.

The platforms have been aimed at a 16-24 year old market, and we have been successful in capturing this market. It is quite clear that this youthful demographic has embraced social media, and this is evident in the enormous amount of activity on the blog. This has contributed to the blog being one of the top 20 lifestyle blogs on AMATOMU.com, a local social media search engine aggregator.

 

Although the blog is primarily aimed at the South African audience, it has transcended borders and has had a fair amount of success, with a noticeable number of visits from the UK, US, Japan and Mexico. The brand is popular, has international appeal, and the platform caters for foreign visitors just as easily as it caters for South Africans.

 

Overall, the Converse Century campaign has been quite a success story. With a high blog readership, and a fantastic Facebook campaign, this truly is the Converse Century!

We were commissioned by Calvin Klein South Africa to promote their new fragrance, IN2U. A combination of two social media platforms (a Facebook group, and a blog) were combined with a traditional medium (5FM) to create an intensive marketing campaign around Calvin Klein's his and hers fragrance.

A user challenge was announced during Gareth Cliff's morning breakfast show after which the public had to complete it using clues they could locate in the IN2U Facebook group. The IN2U blog helped users along with these challenges as well as providing daily reports of winners and other general information. The two social media platforms employed were used as follows:

CK IN2U Blog

CK IN2U blog

The blog served as a "tips and hints" resource where the public got additional information that could help them with the competition's daily challenges. The IN2U blog received an incredible amount of RSS subscriptions, indicating that people wanted to get exclusive information as soon as it was available so as to get a head start for the day's challenge.

IN2U South Africa Facebook group

The first task for the competition was to invite people to be IN2U ambassadors. An exclsuive ambassador Facebook group was setup where people could request to join and then were carefully chosen out of this group to become the official CK IN2U ambassadors for the duration of the competition. The criteria for choosing these ambassadors were their connectivity, true to CK IN2U's target market, which was measured by the number of friends they had; most having about 200 with one person having had over 1,500. This group was also used to inform these ambassadors on their tasks for duration of the week-long campaign. Tasks included changing their Facebook status updates to a predetermined message as well as details relating to their interests, etc.

The CK IN2U group, which was opened for anyone to join, received close to 200 members by the end of the first competition day. There are currently 197 members with some having left due to inactivity but others have since joined to make up the current number. For the final challenge, entrants were allowed to post their entries directly onto the page for any Facebook member to see.

The campaign proved to be a success with e-mails containing answers being sent only a few minutes after the daily task was announced on air. The marriage of traditional and new media is not one to be overlooked by any degree. In South Africa, and indeed in most of the world, radio is by far a more accessible medium, but there are increasing numbers of people who have access to the Internet and a large number of South Africans on Facebook. This campaign has utilized this knowledge to produce a fun competition through which the CK IN2U fragrance has received a significant amount of exposure in the first campaign of its kind in South Africa.

We've worked closely with Toyota marketing and agency FCB to create he blog destination for all Toyota owners, fans and anyone else who's a car nut!

This blog is the central presence for the Toyota social media strategy www.toyotablog.co.za

Toyota have been an absolute pleasure to work with and truly 'lead the way' in customer engagement in the new media era.

The Samsung Mobile blog was created to showcase the latest Samsung handsets and engage the online blogging community as well as mobile mavens on mobile technology news and information and how it relates specifically to the South African cellphone user.

This platform has helped Samsung engage a niche, high-quality segment of it's market in a way not possible with traditional marketing channels.

Samsung Mobile forms part of the Samsung Group and is one of the world's largest electronics companies.  Their telecommunications arm includes mobile handsets and they are currently the second largest mobile manufacturer.
 
Samsung Mobile South Africa wanted to bring in a social media element to their brand and they did this partly by creating a blog called Sam's World. Cerebra Communications was later commissioned to create the currently running Samsung Blog which was created in May 2007.
 
Samsung Mobile SA wanted the blog to engage Samsung handset owners , potential customers and the mobile community at large. This was planned to be achieved by providing information on current and upcoming handsets, competitions and general topics concerned with technology, particularly the mobile phone platform.
 
The first big blogging event happened at around the same time when the blog was started. Four influential bloggers in the South African blogosphere were given different Samsung handsets to use and blog about. There was increased traffic to the blog from their respective readers during that period. From this event, two phones were donated to charity and one to a student in Tanzania whom one of the bloggers had met TED Global.
 
Over the three months, many readers have signed up and many more have left comments. Readers are encouraged to talk about Samsung products, and they do but more often than not, they use it as a product support avenue. The increased number of blog posts per week could also be held responsible for maintaining reader attention. Ever since its inception, the Samsung Blog has ranked in the top 30 on Amatomu (technology section), a popular blogging and social media aggregator in South Africa.
 
The inclusion of competitions, particularly the recent Samsung Heroes competition, has resulted in users submitting user-generated content and general participation through the blog via comments. The introduction to of Samsung Mobile blog's very own Youtube Channel has also increased interest in the blog and allowed a wider net of users to participate in the blog's activities. It is yet unclear whether the Samsung Blog has resulted in increased sales but it has certainly made it easier for Samsung handset owners to direct their queries to a credible, authoritative site where they feel that they are part and parcel of the communication. The divide between customer and company has been diminished to a large extent.
 
The Samsung Blog is currently developing its community and many have signed up to be members. The idea is that they will have conversations around Samsung Mobile products between themselves and Samsung itself rather than the current situation where the blog administrator is inherently involved in all discussions. In this way both the customer and the company are never out of the loop.

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