THE 2012 DESIGN INDABA, PART 1: WHEN IS A DELEGATE NOT A DELEGATE?

Seventeen years on and Design Indaba shows no signs of slowing down. Quite the opposite as 2012’s set of thought leaders, both local and international, got down to their mission of promoting creativity as a means to fuel social change.

The bulk of them were top-class speakers who not only know their stuff, but also know the art of presentation. And an art it is. When some attendees have been out partying it up ‘til the early hours of the morning, speakers not only need to inspire you with their amazing concepts, but they have to pull something really special from the hat to keep short attention spans riveted.

But before writing about the various presentations and workshops I attended, here’s a little story about the concept behind this year’s DI, a story that speaks volumes about audience engagement. I’m pretty sure this year’s concept took its inspiration from surrealist painter René Magritte’s work, “This is not a pipe”.

So here’s the establishing scene. My best bud and I went down to the hotel reception wearing our delegate tags slung around our necks. These tags proudly proclaim:

Hotel staffer: “Ah, you guys are Design Indaba delegates, hey?”
Kamal (pointing to the copy on the tag and irony smart-arsing): “Actually, we’re NOT delegates…”
Hotel staffer (expressionless pause): “So… what time does it finish?”

Not the target audience then?

Emil Padia, Creative Director.

CONTINENTAL SURVIVOR PROMO

ECO


PERFORMANCE


SAFETY


OFFROAD

Our client, Continental, is sponsoring the current season of Survivor on SABC 3. These are the 10″ stings we’ve created with the help of the talented people at Wicked Pixels.

The strategy of dominating a highly popular television property is definitely paying dividends for Continental, as the highly-respected tyre brand gains ever more recognition among the target audience.

VIDEO POWER

Videos, hosted on various platforms, are attracting massive search engine interest not surprising when you consider that Google owns YouTube, the mother of all video sharing platforms.

The good news is that you don’t need massive production budgets to produce decent videos you can host on your website as well as on YouTube and other video sharing sites.

One of the major benefits of producing videos is that they are showing up very high in search results. To demonstrate this I did a search for “how to ride a bicycle for adults”. This is obviously a highly competitive search term as it showed 130 million results!

But right there on page one of the results, in place #10, is a link to a YouTube video entitled “Tasnim learns to ride a bike as an adult for the first time.”

A similar search, “learn how to ride a bicycle”, shows two YouTube videos at the very top of the search results, against competition from sites optimized to the hilt to show up on page one.

These videos are certainly not Cecil B. de Mille productions. And with many modern digital cameras, even some smart phones, capable of shooting full HD quality, getting acceptable results is easier than ever. But do bear in mind that a badly produced video may have a negative impact on your brand image.

If you’re relying purely on traditional optimization methods and struggling to get your site on page one, you should seriously consider making some videos and posting them to YouTube together with carefully optimized titles and descriptions (and of course with links back to relevant pages on your main site).

Just because a video doesn’t go “viral” doesn’t mean no-one’s watching it. You don’t need millions of viewers, just interested prospects who are searching for what your business offers. Spend some time brainstorming topics, related to your business, your prospects would find interesting or educational to watch.

Grahame Hall, Copywriter.