Leaving my Mark

The only South African university to make the top 200 of the latest Times Higher Education Ranking is UCT, coming in at 107.

Being a subscriber to a few News24 email subscriptions, I get the joy of entering their many competitions (I subscribe to their emailers purely because I want to enter their competitions, not to actually read the content). Today, I found out about the News24 online shop. Okay, well done, you are diversifying. Not well done, is offering prizes for a competitor's shop, Kalahari.com (formally Kalahari.net), well, those where the very first thoughts in my head.

I thought about this, and realised that there is a strategic tie in between Kalahari.com and News24 (they both part of the Naspers group), but, is that a link that most people make? My initial thought was "Why are you giving me a prize to shop somewhere else?", and I wonder how many other people thought this.

This leaves me to wonder which strategy is being followed

Leverage off the Kalahari.com brand in order to promote News24's online shopping offering

Leverage off the News24 brand to try and bolster usage of Kalahari.com by offering vouchers in the hope that people will try the newly revamped Kalahari.com website

There is no strategy and the 2 sites are being run by the same team, and someone said "Hey, we have a bunch of Kalahari.com vouchers that we have budgeted to use and we need to do so before the end of the year!"

Then it hit me when I took the time to actually look at the page, it's just a portal into an offering from Kalahari.com, not an offering by News24!

There is a lot material in the public space these days about how little South African's are saving (for example, Old Mutual's savings monitor), how much debt South African's are in, and the desire to be educated about finance. I wanted to see if there is any easy to read and understand material out there, so I decided to finally read the most classic book on financial planning/education, "The Richest Man in Babylon" by George Clason. 

This is a must read for anyone who wants to educate themselves about how to start getting themselves out of debt and into the realm of being financially savvy.

Two of my favourite points made in the book relate to the cures for a lean purse:

Pay yourself first

For every ten coins though placest within thy purse take out for use but nine. Thy purse will start to fatten at once and it's increasing weight will feel good in thy hand and bring satisfaction to thy soul.

Create a budget and stick to it so that you don't spend the one tenth that you save every month.

Engrave upon the clay each thing for which thou desireth to spend. Delect those that are necessary and others that are possibly through the expenditure of nine-tenths of thy income. Cross out the rest and consider them but a part of that great multitude of desires that must go unsatisfied and regret them not.

I've been very interested in the conversations that have been doing the rounds regarding the future of news publishers and how they are going to survive going forward. Should they charge for their content like Rupert Murdoch is convinced is the way forward (his "The Times" newspaper website put up the pay wall that started this conversation), or should they give away their content for free and try to make money off the advertising?

Personally, I'm not convinced about either of these models. In an era in which people are used to free access to information on the internet, I just don't see a place for a pay wall. Alternatively, the publishers cannot survive on just advertising in its current format. This is why this morning I was very interested in seeing how the "Financial Mail" (South Africa) website is operating.

To start with, you get access to 3 free articles per month, this is assuming you don’t delete your cookies I would imagine. Even though I realised this is how it was keeping me from viewing more than my allocated 3, I did not actually go and delete the cookie! If you want to view more than your allocated 3, then you have to register with the website.

Now, there is a bit of a flaw in their design of this process, as only today did I realise that this is a free registration and not a payment based one, which I had thought it was all along (I have been viewing this website for a while), but that is not the point of this post. When I think about the process, I was happy to give them a bit of information about myself to get the content I was after:

My point is that they are simply asking for a bit more information about the people who are viewing their content, which I assume is going to be used to amplify their advertising offering, not only by sending newsletters (I opted out of those), but also by offering the allure of data about their audience to advertisers, since now they know what I do now, and what industry I am in. This will, I assume, allow for more decently targeted advertising which is good for us the consumer, the advertiser, and ultimately the website, which will possibly lead to a better income stream for FM.co.za

Today Rob Stokes, CEO of Quirk eMarketing, presented at the UCT Graduate School of Business about his views on "The agency of 2020".

It was an interesting presentation by someone who knows his stuff, although he never really shares the juiciest information that I'm sure he has - I think he saves that for his clients/people who are willing to pay!