Marklives | 11 August 2015 In our globalized world countries and cities compete in an almost-open market for investment and tourism. That makes it as important for them to have coherent and compelling brands as it is in the private sector. But South African cities are struggling to define their brands, pulled as they are between wanting […]

Marklives | 28 July 2015 The Castle Lager ads of the 1990s put forward a vision of South Africa that was far removed from the lived reality of most South Africans then. That kind of footage seems cheesy and cliched now, but seeing a genuinely and happily multi-racial society back then must have seemed like looking into […]

Marklives | 2 June 2015 “A customer that complains is a good customer,” said an entrepreneur while explaining his business idea to me recently. It’s definitely the right attitude to have, and an attitude that would do our politics a huge amount of good. South Africans don’t change their votes much. In the five general elections […]

Marklives | 26 March 2015 Where does #RhodesMustFall leave heritage brands? Mass protests, a social media storm and the occupation of the administration building have pushed UCT’s transformation record into the national spotlight, throwing up some interesting questions for heritage brands. What do you do if you were the favourite brand of an old generation of […]

MarkLives | 3 November 2014 When Vermont legalised same-sex marriage, US ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s celebrated by renaming one of its flavours “Hubby Hubby” with an illustration of two grooms on the tub. A few years later, in support of same-sex marriage in the UK, it changed its “Oh my! Apple pie!” flavour […]

MarkLives | 12 August 2014 An obvious marketing objective of the Democratic Alliance is to shift perceptions around race. With a disproportionately high number of white supporters, the DA has long suffered from the ANC pigeonholing it as a party “for whites”. As the marketing wisdom goes, if you fail to position your brand, the […]