Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
February 26th, 2010 by Amanda
Join marketing and advertising entrepreneur Dale Hefer on “From Witblits to Vuvuzelas – Marketing in the New South Africa” at the Hyatt Regency in Johannesburg.
In a rapidly evolving industry, new and innovative ways of understanding target markets and go-to market opportunities are required.
Great marketing is always about people, ideas and uniqueness.
Hefer delivers compelling ideas on how to market South African products and services that make them irresistible. Her approach is witty, accessible and informative. In addition to talking about the South African target market and how to approach it, she will also touch on how an advertising agency works as well as mention some of the essential ingredients for an effective creative concept.
“The greatest myth in South Africa is this idea of a black market and a white market. There is just one market.”
- Victor Dlamini
Event Details
- Date: Friday, 05 March 2010
- Time: 7:00 PM for 9:00 PM
- Venue: Hyatt Regency
191 Oxford Road, Rosebank,
Johannesburg - Cost per person: R 455.00
- Cost per table of 10: R 4389.00
- Book Here
The first 10 people to book and pay for this event are eligible for a free copy of the book! (Note: A table booking will be limited to 2 free books.)
About Dale Hefer
Dale Hefer started her company in 1998 as a one-woman show. Operating from a rented garage and using her boyfriend’s computer and money given to her by her sister as start-up capital, Dale soon grew the business to the R1-million mark. Today she employs a team of 40-plus and has projected earnings of R70 to R80 million. Dale is a graduate of the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
As founder of the Chilibush Group of Companies, she has grown the company to include Advertising and Design, Investor Relations, Public Relations, Events and Consulting. Her company was voted a top-three small agency by the Financial Mail in 2004 and by Finweek in 2006.
Hefer was a Businesswoman of the Year finalist in 2002, a finalist of the Ernst & Young Global Emerging Entrepreneur Award in 2007 and was the Gauteng Businesswoman of the Year in 2008. In 2009 she was a finalist in the Top Women in Business and Government awards. She regularly lectures on marketing, advertising and entrepreneurship.
Book Details
Cats: Business,
Events,
South Africa Tags: Advertising,
Business,
Chillibush Communications,
Dale Hefer,
English,
Events,
From Witblits to Vuvuzelas,
Hyatt Regency,
Marketing,
Marketing in the New South Africa,
Non-fiction,
Oshun,
South Africa
February 17th, 2010 by Amanda
Dale Hefer, founding director of Chillibush, is a big name in advertising and with reason. Her company, which she started in a garage, has grown into a real force in the industry.
At least part of Hefer’s success is the amount of time she spends getting to know her target market – she extrapolates on this and on her new book From Witblits to Vuvuzelas in a candid interview with Angelique Searrao:
Dale Hefer remembers the first day she knew she was meant to work in advertising.
She showed up at an advertising company 20 years ago sporting a mullet, a shirt that tied at her waist and fluorescent shorts. Very “cutting edge”, she recalls.
She sat in on a boring marketing pitch when her boss, who was lounging in his chair, stood up, clutched his crotch and said, “It's got no balls”.
“I knew from that moment it was the job for me.”
Book details
Cats: Business,
Non-fiction,
South Africa Tags: Advertising,
Angelique Searrao,
Business,
Chillibush Communications,
Dale Hefer,
English,
From Witblits to Vuvuzelas,
IOL Tonight,
Marketing,
Marketing in the New South Africa,
Non-fiction,
Oshun,
South Africa
February 8th, 2010 by Amanda
The launch of Dale Hefer’s From Witblits to Vuvuzelas at her Chillibush offices off Jan Smuts road in Johannesburg was superbly professional yet comfortably relaxed. The offices blend the old and the new in an architecturally innovative building, with metallic frames and wooden floors structuring an eye-pleasing mix of solid wood furniture and the latest ad-agency technological bling.
Guests were welcomed with champagne, orange juice and mini metal buckets filled with a colourful arrangement of chillies, along with press packs. Hefer greeted each guest personally, trailed by a friendly Yorkshire Terrier and Rottweiler – who are as at home in the stylish offices as are the employees, (several of whom were still at their desks!).
From Witblits to Vuvuzelas is about marketing in South Africa, filled with stories based on Hefer’s experiences growing the Chillibush group of companies from a rented garage in Parkhurst in 1998 to the multi-million rand business with 40 employees that it is today. She was introduced by the Chillibush chairman Victor Dlamini who called guest’s to the table by with a mighty blow of a handy vuvuzela. Dlamini, who wrote the book’s foreword, said, “The vuvuzela: you either love it or hate it but you can’t ignore it – much like the lady next to me! This book is just what the marketing world needs.”
Hefer’s humourous use of personal anecdotes became apparent as she described her first day in advertising when she donned her 80’s “cutting edge kit” complete with blue knickerbockers, plastic black Lady Di shoes and three studs in her left ear and found herself in the boardroom with the big boss as her creative director put forward his pitch. After moments of tense silence the big boss sprang out of his chair. Hefer said, “He thrusts his pelvis forwards, grabs his crotch, ‘It just has no fucking balls,’ he yells. I immediately know that I am in the right industry and I have just learnt my first lesson in effective communication.”
Hefer spoke about how the marketing world has, “become very theoretical – we use words we don’t need. Marketing has become up its own bottom with all those dreaded ‘P’s’ popping up all over the place.” She continued, “The downfall is advertisers sitting in their ivory towers thinking they know their target market without really exploring it.”
Hefer wanted to call the book, “But What about the Bleks” – the title of her second chapter, inspired by an black marketing company executive who regularly asked this question in a whisper. Hefer seeks to dispel the myth of the separation of black and white markets, and says “bollocks” to terms like “Black Diamonds”. “The emerging market has already emerged, there is a main market and we have to be very careful about how we navigate these waters,” she said.
Read the book for much, much more – the light mixed with the serious, the sacred mixed with the profane… and downright hilarious!
Facebook gallery
Book details
Cats: Business,
Events,
Non-fiction,
South Africa Tags: Advertising,
Business,
Chillibush Communications,
Dale Hefer,
English,
Events,
From Witblits to Vuvuzelas,
Marketing,
Marketing in the New South Africa,
Non-fiction,
Oshun,
South Africa
February 1st, 2010 by Amanda
Dale Hefer, author of From Witblits to Vuvuzelas, invites you to celebrate the launch of her book at the advertising agency whose rise it chronicles, Chillibush.
In From Witblits to Vuvuzelas Hefer shares a wealth of advice for South African marketers in witty, straight-talking style. The book provides guidelines based on the author’s years of experience with clients and incorporates invaluable insight from local marketing professionals. Each chapter contains personal anecdotes that illustrate key concepts, and focuses strongly on our diverse culture and the challenges and pitfalls that marketers encounter in this country. From Witblits to Vuvuzelas is an essential tool for anyone in the marketing industry or for those who want to enter the world of marketing.
See you at the launch!
Event Details
Book Details
Cats: Business,
Events,
Non-fiction,
South Africa Tags: Advertising,
Book Launch,
Business,
Chillibush Communications,
Chillibush Offices,
Dale Hefer,
English,
Events,
From Witblits to Vuvuzelas,
Marketing,
Marketing in the New South Africa,
Non-fiction,
Oshun,
South Africa
January 7th, 2010 by Amanda
Dale Hefer, the author of the forthcoming From Witblits to Vuvuzelas: Marketing in the New South Africa, started Chillibush Communications with just a year of advertising experience under her belt. Two years later she’d built it into a sizable company with big name clients. Want to know how? Take a look at her Q&A with Entrepreneur Magazine:
For some people owning their own business is a lifelong ambition. Dale Hefer is one such person. As a university student she dreamed of having her own company. “It was an itch I just had to scratch,” she says, elaborating on some of the many business ventures she has embarked on, which include importing second hand clothes and selling them out of a hut, to selling made-in-China radios on the side of the road. Today she owns and runs Chillibush Communications, boasts a list of big-player clients as well as a nomination for the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur Awards.
Taking on the unknown
What’s remarkable about Hefer’s story is that she took on an industry notorious for its competitiveness, without knowing much about it. “I got a job with a media monitoring company and for the four years that I was there I was thinking ‘I want my own business’, but I realised there wasn’t much scope in that industry. Advertising sounded glamorous and sexy and I thought ‘How difficult can it be?’,” she remembers. But in spite of that early naivete, Hefer was not lacking in determination or practical sense. She joined an advertising agency to learn all she could about the industry. “I told myself I would be there for a year, which I was – to the day. I just sucked up every piece of knowledge I could and when I left I started Chillibush,” she relates.
Book details
Cats: Business,
Non-fiction,
South Africa Tags: Advertising,
Business,
Chillibush Communications,
Dale Hefer,
English,
Entrepreneur Magazine,
From Witblits to Vuvuzelas,
Marketing,
Marketing in the New South Africa,
Non-fiction,
Oshun,
South Africa
December 29th, 2009 by Amanda
Founding director of Chillibush Communications (Pty) Ltd Dale Hefer started her company in 1998 as a one-woman show. Operating from a rented garage and using her boyfriend’s computer and money borrowed from her sister as start-up capital, Dale soon grew the business to the R1-million mark (just two years later, it was up to R18 million). Today Dale employs a team of 40-plus and has projected earnings of R70 to R80 million.
In From Witblits to Vuvuzelas she shares a wealth of advice for South African marketers in witty, straight-talking style. The book provides guidelines based on the author’s years of experience with clients and incorporates invaluable insight from local marketing professionals. Each chapter contains personal anecdotes that illustrate key concepts, and focuses strongly on our diverse culture and the challenges and pitfalls that marketers encounter in this country. From Witblits to Vuvuzelas is an essential tool for anyone in the marketing industry or for those who want to enter the world of marketing.
About the author
Dale Hefer is a graduate of the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the founder of ChilliBush Communications (Pty) Ltd, ChilliBush Investor Relations (Pty) Ltd, ChilliBush Public Relations (Pty) Ltd and ChilliBush Media (Pty) Ltd. Her company was voted a top-three small agency by the Financial Mail in 2004 and by Finweek in 2006.
Hefer was a Businesswoman of the Year finalist in 2002, a finalist in the Ernst & Young Global Emerging Entrepreneur award in 2007 and was the Gauteng Businesswoman of the Year in 2008. She regularly lectures on marketing, advertising and entrepreneurship.
Book details
Image courtesy the Business Times
Cats: Business,
South Africa Tags: Advertising,
Business,
Chillibush Communications,
ChilliBush Investor Relations,
ChilliBush Media,
Dale Hefer,
English,
Ernst & Young,
Ernst & Young Global Emerging Entrepreneur,
Financial Mail,
Finweek,
From Witblits to Vuvuzelas,
Gauteng Businesswoman of the Year,
Hefer was a Businesswoman of the Year,
Marketing,
Marketing in the New South Africa,
Non-fiction,
Oshun,
South Africa,
UKZN,
University of KwaZulu-Natal
December 2nd, 2009 by Amanda
Cats: Business,
Non-fiction,
South Africa Tags: And How It Can Change Your Life,
Berlin,
Business,
English,
International,
John Hunt,
Lascaris,
Non-fiction,
South Africa,
Stefan Schmidt,
The Art of the Idea,
TWBA,
Zebra,
Zebra Press
November 23rd, 2009 by Amanda
John Hunt’s The Art of the Idea was launched at The Book Lounge in Cape Town on Friday. Introduced by Random House Struik’s Stephen Johnson – who has known Hunt since he was an ad man for Exclusive Books, before he conquered the advertising world at TBWA Hunt Lascaris – Hunt spoke about the simple but powerful ideas that underlie his hard-to-pigeonhole book. The idea’s the thing, Hunt tells us – and the possibilities are endless if we simply put ideas first.
Here’s Johnson on Hunt:
Video: Stephen Johnson introduces John Hunt
Taking the microphone, Hunt used The Art of the Idea as an example of how ideas can be successful even while resisting easy categorisation. His handsomely cloth-bound “business self-help art book general interest thing” being a prime example:
Video: John Hunt on The Art of the Idea
Hunt’s life, he says, has been about having ideas, and helping others to have them. What he’s discovered is that the process can be controlled to a certain degree, just like other endeavours which can be said to admit a certain degree of “art” into their practice. Ideas will come if organsiational structures are in place to receive them. It’s not magic:
Video: John Hunt on the patterns that underlie why ideas happen
At the close of his talk, Hunt mentioned that proceeds from the sales of The Art of the Idea will go toward supporting the South African branch of Room 13, an organisation that builds spaces for the creatively-minded who haven’t had many advantages in life, and helps develop them into entrepreneurs. Another reason to get your hands on a copy of this stimulating, inspiring work!
Gallery
Book details
Cats: Business,
Events,
Non-fiction,
South Africa Tags: Advertising,
And How It Can Change Your Life,
Business,
English,
Events,
International,
John Hunt,
Non-fiction,
Room 13,
South Africa,
TBWA Hunt Lascaris,
The Art of the Idea,
Video,
YouTube,
Zebra,
Zebra Press
October 26th, 2009 by Amanda
A fascinating glimpse into the life of advertising leader John Hunt, which concludes with the tale of how Hunt’s agency helped independent newspaper The Zimbabwean attract new audiences earlier this year:
WHEN TBWA Hunt Lascaris relocated to Sandown last February, the movers broke down co-chairman John Hunt’s desk and an electronic bug fell out.
It was a legacy of an era when he worked on the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) campaign for the 1994 elections, when bomb threats and “third force” ops sabotaged the path of change for even the most maverick agency in the advertising industry.
“The bug was rusted and long out of service, and it disappeared with the rest of the junk that’s discarded when you move on,” says Hunt. “I should have kept it and had it framed as a memento of those crazy days. Then again, times right now are just as interesting. Change means new ideas, and if they’re any good they always make people nervous.”
At 54, the kid who dropped out of Wits university by lunchtime on his first day still lives by his instincts when it comes to making decisions. Picasso could draw a complete picture — a bull, a horse — with a single line, and Hunt’s book, The Art of the Idea (Zebra Press), takes an equally direct approach to finding simple ideas upon which megabuck advertising campaigns are created.
Book details
Photo courtesy Business Day
Cats: Business,
Feature,
International,
Non-fiction,
South Africa Tags: Advertising,
And How It Can Change Your Life,
Business,
Business Day,
English,
Feature,
International,
John Hunt,
Non-fiction,
South Africa,
The Art of the Idea,
The Zimbabwean,
Zebra,
Zebra Press
October 22nd, 2009 by Amanda
John Hunt, author of The Art of the Idea, has enjoyed wall-to-wall coverage in the SA broadcast media since his book appeared on shelves earlier this month.
We’re giving plenty of advance notice, then, for the launch of his book: make plans now for the 20th of November, it’s going to be an event to remember!
Event Details
- Date: Friday, 20 November 2009
- Time: 5:30 PM for 6:00 PM
- Venue: The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland St
cnr Buitenkant
Cape Town | Map - RSVP: booklounge@gmail.com, 021 462 2425
Book Details
Cats: Business,
Events,
International,
Non-fiction Tags: And How It Can Change Your Life,
Business,
English,
Events,
International,
John Hunt,
Non-fiction,
South Africa,
The Art of the Idea,
The Book Lounge,
Zebra,
Zebra Press
