ALEC HOGG: If you’ve been also following the sporting front, be it horseracing, be it rugby, you will have noticed that Investec’s name is becoming well, better known around the world. Its head of global marketing, Raymond van Niekerk, joins us now. Raymond, you guys went on the strategy some time ago – I think rugby has been one of your focuses, horseracing as well. But what I found interesting today is that you're also not ignorant of what's happening in the new media space, and particularly the Times of London, on its app on my iPad – I see, lo and behold, there’s Investec as one of the early advertisers.
RAYMOND VAN NIEKERK: Ja, hi Alec. The Times application is quite interesting. I know that you live a very connected life because of the way you do your business – but The Times if very good for us. It's paid-for content. And if you deal with the media that does paid-for content, you are dealing with people who are actually pursuing whatever that content provider is selling, and that tends to be in certain categories more of a match with our target audience. I suppose as a fairly extreme digital user myself, and some of my colleagues, what was very striking is when you go into things like that, you are typically presented with what you could say is flat-art advertising. So non-dynamic stuff that you can’t interact with. We've got a pretty decent online team, and the guys came up with the idea that we should be making the advertising throughout far more interactive so people could, if they were interested, pursue far more of a search around what we do, what we stand for, what they are able to get out of us, where we operate and all sorts of things. So The Times is I think a bit of a ground-breaker in terms of interactive as for financial services, and time will tell whether we've got it right or not. So we’ll see how this one goes.
ALEC HOGG: What does it cost?
RAYMOND VAN NIEKERK: Oomph – look, if you are first to market, in terms of a new technique, quite often the content providers or the media owners will treat you quite favourably because what they want to do is use you as an example so that they can provide similar types of initiatives for other people. So we tend, as first-movers, to get their good pricing. But in the scheme of things, is it expensive? No, it's not expensive. It's actually very, very well priced. And of course what you get is real efficiency, because you can measure who is interacting, what they are looking at, what type of profile of person you are dealing with. And then afterwards you can say well, this thing worked or didn’t work, or we can improve here or things like that. It's a very useful media form.
ALEC HOGG: Fascinating. Raymond, I am sure there are a lot of people who are baffled that Investec – we see you as a South African bank still, although you are now international – that you would be sponsoring Australian and New Zealand rugby teams in the Super 15 against our guys.
RAYMOND VAN NIEKERK: It's a very interesting thing. You’ll see – if they are home rugby matches, for example in the Super Rugby series here in South Africa, you’ll see Investec’s advertising at Newlands and the Shark Tank and all sorts of places like that. You’ll see us present in a South African context. But what we've also found is if you have an international approach to your business, you can do multiple markets with one go. And because we are kind of an exploratory bunch of people, South Africans, and we've got some nice brands like Investec that are doing good business overseas, as a South African we figured if you are watching sport here, a South African brand in a foreign context, there’s a kind of a feel-good factor.
I take you back to personal experience when Lucas Radebe used to play for Leeds United many years ago, and I’d see that and say, “Hang on a second, that’s one of our guys and he’s playing seriously good stuff, he’s playing in the top league elsewhere” – and that affected our logic. And of course there’s simple economics. It's quite often more cost-efficient to do things offshore with the South African audience in mind than it is to do in South Africa with a South African audience in mind. So it's a mixture of motivations in there.
ALEC HOGG: I'm surprise you didn’t mention Steven Pienaar, because when they play in the champions league they carry Investec as well, don’t they?
RAYMOND VAN NIEKERK: And they are playing tonight! So let’s hope that they can get their way past Real Madrid.
ALEC HOGG: Raymond, it's been good talking with you, as always, and congratulations on the ground-breaking work that you’ve been doing at Investec. It's a fascinating South African company with South African roots that is developing, particularly focused on sports. Watch that game tonight, and you’ll see the Investec name from a little South African bank – or so it was some years ago – emblazoned on the Tottenham Hotspur football team. Fascinating stuff, isn't it?
This interview was broadcast on The SAfm Market Update with Moneyweb (SAfm 104-107fm, weekdays at 18:00 to 18:30)
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