Talking to a mass audience is no easy feat! You must create value, show relevance and be authentic, writes Zama Phakathi CEO and Founder of Splendid Marketing and Communications â€" an entity of the Splendid Group.

Product, brand placement, and other strategic platforms and activations for a mass audience are not a one-size-fits-all approach.

In the South African context as a marketing and communication agency we look beyond the marketing theories and best practice approaches, and often find ourselves going to the heart of our communities to understand how they live, their needs, their culture and their aspirations.

Although different from the niche approach, we find that when dealing with our mass audiences there are many advantages. It is an approach that involves committing to the client’s needs, meeting the needs of the larger audience and vice versa. It is about the client engaging in a space and with an audience that most private sector entities have not met, seen or ever interacted with. It is about understanding the behavior and
demographics, and the skills and capabilities and the people.

On the surface, serving the needs of a mass audience may appear to be less intimate and targeted, yet in practice it can be a more meaningful, enriching and positive in its outcome with a good return in revenue. Like it or not, it is a lucrative future market for any business, it is a developing pipeline for entrepreneurs and it is an audience that makes up the future workforce of our country.

Our “Splendid Way"

As Splendid Marketing, our company expanded not out of choice but out of a need, to fit the changing face of the economic landscape in which we operate. Profit is an important consideration in the life of any entrepreneur, but for our Group we truly believe that contribution to development, empowerment and growth of a local community is very much part of our “Splendid Way” of doing things.

Our business approach to marketing to a mass audience is centered on a team that understands community and mass audience. As CEO, I pride myself in the knowledge of my audience and in surrounding myself with a team of thinkers who are young, street smart and easily adapt to the changing economic workplace and who themselves have experiential learning, training and life skills from the very mass communities we target.

A balance between the public and private sectors

As our country approaches the dawn of a second democracy, as a marketing and communication agency, we understand that our business mandate must incorporate a balance between the public and private sectors. Often times we find ourselves working with both sectors in a cohesive, creative and sustainable level in the mass market arena.

While the public sector â€" local, provincial or national government â€" has a service delivery mandate in the mass market arena, the corporate sector looks to brand and product positioning to reach mass audiences.

We recently had several engagements with both public and private sector leaders in an attempt to bridge the gap between the two sectors to garner greater support for mass audience targeting. We also enable such platforms to achieve business synergy with different private sector entities, for example a banking client working side by side with our retail partner.

At Splendid Marketing, our mass audience interventions and activations are also shaped by a deep commitment to empower and change the lives of people, especially the youth and women through education, training and skills development. This is a value add proposition element to the client for their mass customers. These engagements for our private sector leadership are something extraordinary to witness.

In our interventions planning, organisation and messaging are critical. When private sector leaders engage with a mass audience at community level, they realise that their spend reaps more rewards than anticipated.

For the private sector leadership, there is opportunity to engage with and witness how communities use their products and how they visualise their brands. More especially, it presents an opportunity to corporates to engage firsthand in the mass mobilisation experience and learn where their future market growth trends are heading, and how to interact with them one-on-one.

A keen understanding

Talking to the mass audience is not easy. It requires research and information that is credible and a keen understanding of the larger market. Neither is it a ready-made platform. It is a multi-faceted market audience of mainly LSM 3-7, requiring messaging and content that are cross-cutting, relevant and socially conscious. Often language challenges, and cultural dynamics play a big role in the final deliverables.

In our experience, mass audiences will believe in you and your brand if you show a commitment and authenticity to giving back - giving back to their community and to their future, acknowledging the reward they have reaped from their support for your organisation, your services and products. They will respect you and your company if they understand fully the benefits of your products and brand and its impact on their daily lives.

Media placement

On products where the private sector client wants high sales volumes at lower prices, we have found that the media placement, and above and below the line marketing approaches must be robust, and content and the language used are critical to a successful outcome for both client and customer.

In the above scenario, traditional media usage with a mix of community mobilisation tactics can work wonders.

Social media usage is always maximised and the customer response mechanism must be optimal. However, local media activation in the local vernacular remain a critical platform.

While our private sector partners are eager to partner with us, as are government and largescale retail agencies, we believe there is still a gap in the market for more private sector entities to be playing in this space.

Mobilisation networks

With experience in the markets, we have developed a large network of access points to deliver for all out private and public-sector clients â€" from urban and peri-urban to rural.

We have the right channels and the right distribution mechanisms.

Our mobilisation networks include instant and immediate access to mass markets and audiences/customers at:

• Township centres
• Taxi ranks
• Churches
• Shisanyama hot spots
• Business forums
• Trade unions
• Institutions of higher learning
• Media (mainstream and community â€" radio, print and television)
• Government departments

Preferred service provider

Splendid Marketing & Communication is a 100% black, female-owned marketing and communications agency and the preferred service provider for vibrant marketing, media planning, publicity, communications, project management and brand management solutions for organisations both in the public and private sectors, in South Africa and Africa.

We strive for distinctive quality services, thereby ensuring maximum returns on our client’s projects. Our company has clients countrywide with offices in Durban and Johannesburg.

We are a multi-award winning company encompassing:

• Splendid Marketing and Communications.
• Beyond Boundaries (a black women-owned commodities and construction enterprise).
• Splendid IT.
• The Zama Phakathi Foundation.

Splendid Marketing was founded in 2007. 

For further information, please contact:
Ms. Chuma Mapoma
Projects Co-ordinator: Splendid
Marketing & Communications
T: +27 10 446 0787
M: +27 71 131 1717
E: projects@splendidmarketing.co.za
www.splendidmarketing.co.za