After a two-year delay, the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 soccer tournament kicked off in Manchester’s roaring Old Trafford on Wednesday night. England defeated Austria in the first match, with EY predicting a TV audience of 250 million will tune in throughout the two-week competition Organizers have sold a record 500,000 tickets to fans from 99…Read More
Level 5 autonomous vehicles (AVs) will allow shipping companies to significantly decrease their costs and their liability as they will no longer need long-haul truck drivers. However, this also applies to smugglers. Trafficking of drugs, people, weapons, and black market goods will all receive a boon from AVs. Ease of shipping There will be a massive increase in vehicles on the road with the advent of fully-autonomous technology. Long-haul delivery vehicles could largely become operated with no passengers inside, and will likely not even have a place for a passenger. They will cruise down highways and across borders. Law enforcement is currently…
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There are two kinds of skills, resources and tools:
Ones that get used up as you use them.
And ones that get better when you do.
Nobody wants there to be a crowd at the ski area on a bluebird powder day–too many people use up the new snow.
On the other hand, it’s no fun at all to go dancing when you’re the only one in the club.
A painting or a song that’s experienced by more people is worth more. A carpenter increases her skills when she works on new projects (to a point). On the other hand, a sharp knife gets dull if you use it too often…
If you’ve got something that benefits from use, from practice and community, use it and share it.
Havas Media Group (HMG) has opened a business-to-business (b-to-b) advisory unit working with launch clients such as Danish shipping business Maersk, Twill, JDE Professional and ABB. The global division will be known as Havas Business and will be headquartered in the U.K. Working with existing clients within the Havas roster from around the world, it…Read More
Pick n Pay Smart Shopper has finally regained its position as the most used loyalty programme in South Africa, nudging the Clicks ClubCard programme into second place after three consecutive years in the top spot.
Whilst Pick n Pay and Clicks have dominated the top two spots in loyalty programme usage for the past five years, Dis-Chem Benefit finds itself in third position once again.
Newcomer into loyalty, Checkers Xtra Savings successfully secures fourth position as a most used loyalty programme, whilst its big sister in grocery retail, Shoprite’s Xtra Savings programme, sits in 11th position.
So, it seems you woke up in an alternate universe & you’re the only one who doesn’t seem to speak the language. It sounds like English, but you just can’t seem to remember learning about this thing that seems to be on everyones lips & minds. All you hear is “crypto”, “Crypto”, “Cryptocurrency”… “Bitcoin!” Why is everyone so excited & should you even care to find out if it’s just a fad, or something to stay & change the way things are done, forever.
Well, it’s all of the above & more. But what’s important is the disruptive nature of not only Cryptocurrencies, but the technology behind where those Cryptos live & operate, the Blockchain. In today’s world, things move at increased speeds daily, and if you’re not “on top of your game”, you may just be giving your competitors an advantage, you’ll never be able to recover from.
From ‘Low Fee’ payments with the ability to move around globe, instantaneously… to the ability to save ones entire ‘Educational, Health & Working Background’ onto a publicly accessible borderless ecosystem, thereby ensuring those who might befall situations where they may be refugees, don’t have to start over again because of lost, destroyed or detained paperwork, as it can all be uploaded onto a Blockchain. The use cases are endless, and that is why globally, there has been a major shift into the future of these technologies & what they bring into the lives of those who need & use them most.
Sounds cool right? But what are some of these Real World use-cases that exist, or is all this just theory?
Well, here’s a peek at a couple of them;
The Covid-19 Pandemic has made it impossible for some to survive, Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have made it possible for Creatives, Content Creators, Writers, Designers, Accountants, Lawyers, etc… to be paid for their creations & services without having to pay huge fees or wait days on end from banks.
They have allowed for Towns like El Zonte in El Salvador to survive, save & thrive at a time where Covid had battered their economy & ability to live. People were able to pay for food, surfing lessons & even split bills in Bitcoin. So much so that the country announced that they will be adding Bitcoin as Legal Tender in El Salvador later this year, making it the First Nation in the world to do so.
Nice right? But, what about Namibia? We’re not sitting this one out. Some Namibians have already altered their business models & marketing strategies to include Bitcoin & to educate others on the use cases they could benefit from. You can find out more on how I’ve been able to use the power of the Blockchain and the Lightning network to fund my podcast #FromTheJump in a recent Medium article.
About the Author: Namibian Podcaster & Creative Entrepreneur, Nikolai “OKIN” Tjongarero. okin@okinent.com www.okinent.com
What: Ees aka Eric Sell aka Mr Namflava hits us with the “Best Combination”. Not only did the Namibian musician recently premiere his new song and video “Best Combination” but the video was tied to a campaign where the lucky person or persons could win 0.75 Bitcoin (at the time of writing N$500k).
How: The music video very tastefully done in a game animation style features Ees as the hero character saving the Princess but that’s not the juicy part, neither is the catchy beat or the subtle not so subtle Wuma energy drink placement. No… the best part is the competition! The song and video premiered with the “Game Changer Hunt”, a treasure hunt to discover the 12 word password or Bitcoin wallet key where the prize is kept. In the video there are clues and codes that need to be deciphered that redirect participants to other websites to uncover more clues to find all 12 words. A massive undertaking for any individual and here’s where they managed to build in one of our favourite pieces of the campaign.
Collaboration! The treasure hunt team know that finding all the clues and deciphering them is a hard task, that’s why community collaboration is encouraged, doing so by funnelling participants to a dedicated Reddit thread. A channel currently unutilised by any of our brands but is centred around community, think of it as Facebook Groups but less toxic and more nerdy. In the Reddit thread those that have been smart enough have shared their progress and asked for other community members to verify and team up – a principle often adopted in the Crypto community.
Check the video below for a breakdown of the competition.
Why: There are a good few reasons why this campaign exists and this is also why we particularly love it. Video views of the music video are the first and most important factor for the musician, driving up the views as the primary entry point for any competition participant to find the first clue. In addition to that the competition also has a cause tied to it with a request for the winner(s) to donate 25% of the winnings to an environmental cause in Namibia. A cause that will be voted on by the Reddit community.
Results: At the time of writing the music video had 67k views and 140 comments, but we’re more excited about the Reddit community, currently at 427 members, to see the engagement there and ultimately to see which environmental cause gets the vote and how much the Reddit community ends up contributing. Look out for a post campaign synopsis, where we’ll try and get the man himself to tell us how it went.
Check out the full campaign here -> Ees Game Changer
The sudden cessation of international tourism as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world’s largest employer to a standstill, with widespread hardship following in its wake. Can the sector recover?
It is hard to overestimate the impact of Covid-19 on tourism. It is harder still to overstate the impact on those countries, regions and resorts that are heavily dependent on foreign visitors. From the beaches of Bali and Fiji to the Safari parks of Kenya and South Africa and the dunes in Namibia, the impact has been devastating.
Namibia has been on lockdown for almost 6 full months which meant that no tourists were coming into the country at all. Only recently did the Namibian government decide to kickstart a tourism initiative. Tourists would have to provide negative COVID-19 test results not older than 72 hours old before they would be allowed into the country and then they would have to spend 7 days at their first destination to curb the spread of the virus.
As hopeful as the country was to revive the tourism sector, this initiative has so far proven unsuccessful. The country has nor recorded a single tourist arrival at the Hosea Kutako International Airport since.
The current regulations are being reevaluated for arriving tourists and hopefully, the country will get their batch of international tourists as soon as possible.
If you do not know this already, Clicks has been in some hot water over an advert that they did in collaboration with Tresemme. Consumers are up in arms over the hair promotion and the company’s reputation is on the line. Clicks evoked widespread fury by showing an advertisement on its website for TRESemmé hair products, with pictures that described the hair of a black model as “dry and damaged” and “frizzy and dull”, contrasting with blonde Caucasian hair that was “fine and flat” and “normal”. The potential strength of consumer activism spoke loud and clear in the 6% drop in the Clicks share price in the wake of the insulting hair products advert they posted on its website last week. It sends a clear message to corporations: sensitivity to your customers is key to your reputation, which is key to your sustainability. Now, Clicks is not the first company to have done something insensitive and quite frankly, something avoidable like this. Lots of other companies have done that in the past. The outcry from consumers has led to senior executives resigning their roles and Clicks putting out a statement that they will boot Tresemme off their shelves. The worst is only beginning for Clicks, keep a lookout on how they get through this self-made saga.
Read the article here.
300+ brand professionals have their say on the impact of COVID-19
Approximately one month after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, we surveyed 300+ brand professionals to better understand how organizations are approaching the radical changes to business-as-usual brought about by COVID-19. We’ve compiled the results within our newly-released State of Branding Report: COVID-19 Edition, which you can view via the link below. Here are some of the highlights.
59% feel that the need to work remotely has only had a “small impact” or “no impact at all” on team productivity
57% believe COVID-19 will have a lasting impact on their brand/marketing efforts, but it won’t be transformative
36% of those surveyed have actually increased their output of marketing campaigns since the COVID-19 outbreak
“One month into the COVID-19 pandemic, this snapshot finds the creative and branding community transitioning relatively smoothly to the radically different work environment, with a focus on updating messaging and campaigns for the new market reality rather than completely reinventing their brands.” — Andrew Hally, Chief Marketing Officer at Bynder
