Banking in a new way?

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The future is something no-one can truly predict or fore-see, this is a fact on almost all aspects of life. However the same sentiment cannot be shared for cellphone banking which is full of predictions which may come true. For example using your cellphone to pay for your bill or your grocery purchases isn't some distant, dreamy idea.

This idea would truly be something extraordinary in the market we live in which is confined by the plastic cards called debit and credit cards. Jonathan Houston the digital marketing lead executive in the Deliotte consulting technology division said, "It is obviously far fetched to think that the use of debit and credit cards will be completely eliminated, but a time will come when you open a bank account, you will be asked to choose between having a card or a phone (as a means) to pay". This raises the question just how far will technolgy grow(in terms of banking) in the 21st century? Houston answers this by saying "The rapid convergence of mobile and banking technology which started  with such simple functions as money transfer was increasingly making the cellphone a virtual bank itself".

Bankers say that South African's high mobile penetration rate made it the perfect maket to launch banking technology and products using cellphones to reach an under-banked and unbanked population estimated at more than 11 million. An initiative which particularly caught my eye in terms of banking which took place in May was by FNB which launched a person-to-person payment option called "Geo Payments", using its banking app which allows users within close range of each other to make payments to one another without using their bank account details. This shows great promise for our local market.

Girl Power

In commemoration of women's month, I would like to focus on the predominatly women-owned company BLT SA. To dwell deeper into what BLT is all about and what they exactly do I chose an extract from BLT South Africa products manager Clinton van den Berg, "Durban-based materials handling equipment specialist Big Lift Trucks (BLT) South Africa offers a range of MecLift variable reach trucks, designed for diverse materials handling applications, including the efficient handling of electrical cabling." The company is generally considered a baby in their respective industry of shipping due to the fact that it was only recently established in January of this year. A range of other products the company offers is container handling equipment, including the supply of new and refurbished variable-reach trucks, mobile container handlers and terminal tractors. What really makes them unique in a sense is that they are a distributor for equipment manufacturer B&W Mechanical Handling Equipment, which supplies a range of harbour equipment, including link conveyors, grab hoppers, surface feeders, radial boom stackers and mobile ship loaders.

Charity Gumede(marketing director of BLT) says "the company has been well received by the local industry so far, although competition in the market has been tough." she went on to add on that by saying “we are working in a very demanding industry, but we are holding our heads high. We ensure that we provide the best service possible and keep up to date with the latest industrial technology. We are also committed to providing productive and dependable equipment for our customers.“It is important to build good business relationships in this highly competitive sector and we have managed to secure supply, service and distribution agreements with some of the world’s most respected materials handling equipment manufacturers. This enables us to offer the local market the latest international products.”

Local businesses like this are the type of establishments that spur on other aspiring South Africans, especially females to take advantage of the oppurtunities available to them in our ever growing country.

Collaborations still the way to go

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When companies like Coke and Spotify come together one can only dream of the endless outcomes that are possible from such a partnership. Now what makes such a collaboration special is that they will be focusing on four main pillars which are namley global, technological, social and music.

As far as technology is concerned, Spotify is incredibly proud of its platform that allows people to share across the world. “We’ll be working really closely with Coke as a technology partner to do things that only Coca-Cola could think of with music,” explained a Spotify executive. “We want to bring new experiences with music to consumers everywhere.” For those of us who don't already know Spotify is a music streaming service offering digitally resticted streaming of selected music from a range of major and independant record labels, including Sony. EMI, Warner Music Group and Universal. Now for all those techno boffs who are still trying to find out how such a partnership would benefit them, Spotify has announced that users will be invited to Spotify through live shows, unpacked events, and Coke even mentioned that a Hackathon took place to cater to the more technologically inclined. Meanwhile, Coke will be building content on top of the Spotify platform to deliver to users not only as a marketing effort but as a way to curate the content already available in a more useful, and convenient way.

Coke has always thought of itself as a company which incorporated music in its marketing and this is evident through a series of advertisments they had back in the 50's which featured music icon Ray Charles. According to The Verge (a channel on Dstv based on technological advances in the 21st century), the AT&T app will give users the ability to check out locations where certain songs were originally recorded. Pretty cool stuff for the music buff. Through such a partnership one may say both companies are sending an indirect message to the public in terms of trying to draw in new audiences. From a communication aspect this greatly benefits Spotify and Coke on the basis that its constomers will get the image that both companies are trying to grow and cater to their growing needs by not being one dimensional but also beig able to offer other services. I give a HIGE thumbs up to this collaboration!!

Dancing to technology's tune...whether you like it or not



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Throughout my brief blogging stint I've tried to refrain from talking about topics which would put me in the ''common pot'', because let's face it, for the passed 6 weeks it's either been about Sanral and the whole e-tolling debacle or about some form of corruption in politics. I've tried to be very exclusive about my topics and the stories I researched and blogged about. However this streak of mine may be put to jeopardy today through the topic I'm about to raise, I'd like to believe there's always a new and fresh angle to a story depending on the brains in front of the computer screen.

I've decided to look at this whole viral video incident in which a 17 year old girl was raped. The reason I've decided to raise this topic is mainly for two reasons, the first being that most of my blogs stretch out to more of an international platform so with this blog I decide to bring it on a more local front and focus on events which are taking place on our own soil. The second reason is because the incident itself is a perfect example of just how powerful technology has become in our country and how huge of an effect it can have when used irrespective of whether it's for the wrong or right reasons.

The story states that four boys were accused of raping a 17 year old mentally ill girl in South Africa, Soweto and shot a video of the occurrence with a cellphone which eventually went viral and would come to spread on the internet on the 18th of April. The accused were arrested on the 17th of April, by which time the video was all over the country. As painful and raw as the story is I decided not to look at it from the angle of the individuals who were involved but from the view of the technology which was used and the impact it had. What really caught my attention about this event is the way in which it spread and the exposure it recieved, to say it spread like WILDFIRE would be an understatement. Hard news is somethimg we're almost immune to in South Africa yet this particular story just had a particular vibe about it which slapped you by the ear and forced you to listen. This my friends is the power of technology in the 21st century!!! I look back 20 years ago and companies would have had to sell their souls to get the kind of exposure this story got at that same speed. Even in todays times, no matter how good a company's communications and marketing team is they'd have to do somethimg pretty special and daring to get people talking like this. We're living in a age where almost all age groups are familairising themselves (if not already familiarised) with social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Media is being served on a platfrom where one can read a particular article and share his/her views with other individuals around the country at super-sonic speed.

So there you have it, whatever form technology may come in whether it be viral videos or social networks, it should be taken as a serious force to be reckoned with when it comes to tools which help one to communicate with the general public. Just the pure influence it has on how people percieve information in the media places it head and shoulders above any other platform in current existence

iPad: the answer to school being "uncool"

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FINALLY, I GET TO BLOG ABOUT APPLE!!! The reason I'm so excited about blogging about this company is because there's just this certain atmosphere of exclusivity when it comes to mind. The reason I say this is drawn from a personal experience of my own. It was my 21st birthday and I'd asked my mother for a laptop, now the previous week my friend had bought himself an Apple Macbook PRO and my word was it a machine!!! The clarity alone was the first I'd seen of it's kind, switching between windows and different browsers was on a whole new level. To cut a long story short, that laptop cost an arm and a few legs so I ended up getting an HP Pavilion dv6 and ít's no Macbook PRO but it's definitely a tech monster in it's own right. Since then I've gathered a very huge respect for Apple and the innovation behind its products.

Now when a company of this magnitude goes about changing something as rigid and formal as school environments one has to pay attention. Apple have gone about trying to commercialise the usage of iPads in the classroom and exposing them to students of all ages. An interesting statistic which rose in America is that "while 97 percent of the participating teachers in Manhattan Beach reported in November that the iPad makes class more engaging, that proportion had dropped to 86 percent by the end of January. The proportion of students who said so also dropped, though less steeply, from 81 to 77 percent. This kind of drop in interest and excitement makes sense to me. Anyone who has experienced a new gadget will experience a similar type of drop in enthusiasm. That puts a tremendous onus on teachers to change the way they think about teaching and learning. I hope this kind of feedback spurs innovation and creativity in teachers to try new things." So this shows that Apple is not simply releasing a product to the students and merely sitting back but also incouraging teachers to think more creatively and change traditional teaching with the use of the iPad.

When we look at the usage of the iPad in classrooms on a more nation level, namely South Africa. One is able to see it could not have come at a better time with the MD of Think Ahead (an institution which provides educational solutions) Michelle Lissoos said "it is a challenge to keep the classroom environment exciting but, with the introduction of the iPad, school children are now excited about going to school and learning." She also said that "there are currently 20 000 educational applications and 1.5-million iPads at educational institutions globally, which prove the popularity of the device in an education setting." Now Í'm sure a question which comes to mind for alot of people is that how do disadvantaged schools afford the device? Lissoos states that "affordability is a challenge for disadvantaged schools but corporate South Africa is coming on board to sponsor schools in townships and rural areas. There are also different models for the use of the device, in private schools parents and schools can afford one device per learner but, in disadvantaged schools, a group of five kids can share one device."

From a communication aspect Apple really played it's cards right by focusing on bettering the lives of students and how they interact with information in class, they've taken a rather played out innitiative of focusing on schools and adding their own twist to it by making school more fun for students. They have some how been able to manipulate the product to suit all countries and play to each of their characteristics. This shows the level of detail they were willing to go to in terms of researching and finding out exactly how to play to the comunities needs and solve their individual problems.

ebook WARS!!!!

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I've often asked myself as a student currently studying in a tertiary institution and commonly exposed to different kinds of technological platfroms everyday...how much do I actually know about ebooks? Wikipedia states that "an electronic book (variously, e-book, ebook, digital book) is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices.^[1] Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines the e-book as "an electronic version of a printed book,"^[2] but e-books can and do exist without any printed equivalent. E-books are usually read on dedicated e-book readers. Personal computers and some mobile phones can also be used to read e-books." 

So basically it's taking a physical book you would read and placing it in the platform of a tablet, e-book readers, personal computers or a mobile phone. Now I'm sure your question is how exactly does this appeal to me as a tertiary student? Well the answer is quite simple, the usage of tablets will be the saving grace for applications like the e-book reader. Shipments in terms of enterprises for pads has grown from 20,410 units in 2010 to 1,121,990 units in 2011 making the year on year growth 5397.3%. Where as shipments in terms of consumers has grown from 16,861,160 units in 2010 to 50,589,290 units in 2011 making the year on year growth 200%. The following figures show the current and future growth for tablets:

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 The huge debacle around e-books right now exists between Apple and Amazon with Apple being accused of fixing e-book prices while the team at Apple says that it was simply trying to break the monopolistic grip Amazon has on the market. Telegraph states that "the US Department of Justice this week accused Apple of conspiring with five major book publishers to fix the price of ebooks, in an effort to loosen the stranglehold Amazon had established via its Kindle device. However, Apple said that the charges are "simply not true" and that it had instead promoted competition. "The launch of the iBookstore in 2010 fostered innovation and competition, breaking Amazon's monopolistic grip on the publishing industry," it said in a statement. Whoever leaves this scuffle as victor could glaim quite a huge foothold in the e-book reader market and inevitably the tablet community. Whether on a tablet or a physical book, as long as people have eyes and are able to read this will be the more prefered way for many to gather and process information, from a student doing an assignment to a PRP preparing an article for an organisation.

PR on the blogging tip....

Search Engine Blogs as Public Relations Tools

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Blogs are used for various reasons including reporting news, communicating with specific groups of readers, and spamming. With millions of active blogs being constantly launched by journalists, students, CEO’s and celebrities, the blog can be seen as a living and breathing ecosystem dependent on links, trackbacks, databases, feeds, and indexing for survival. Over the past year Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves; the un-argued big four in search, have launched their own blogs.

What started as a way to say hello to their users has now transformed into a cult of transparency and communications. Along with a dash of geek-speak, crisis management and pro-active posting, these blogs have also begun to outshine the traditional forms of press and public relations, as the press and public has become as non-traditional and non-linear as the blogosphere itself.

The new public relations model of the search blog brings with it a change in attitude and information. No longer are journalists and bloggers pitched as often by Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN by the boilerplate press release, which is usually as damn interesting as reading the back of spray cans.

Instead, the new form of communication is an oxymoron; mass intimacy. Instead of one of our favorite PR reps contacting us with those old releases, we’re now contacted via email or IM with a link to the newest blog post. And if we subscribe to the RSS feeds of these blogs, we’re instantly contacted by our aggregator before the search engine PR people can say “PRISA” three times.

Additionally, Yahoo has taken a more intimate approach to announcing new product offerings from Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Search and Y Search Marketing on the Yahoo Search Blog They have not used the Y Search Blog as a way to respond to the controversies which have been dogging Yahoo over the summer (China Journalists, Spyware and YSM Crashing) but what they have done is used it as a channel to explain what Yahoo is working on and Yahoo’s direction in Search, Maps and Local; instead of simply announcing. Unlike the Google Blog, the Y Search Blog offers comments, which lets readers send feedback directly to the authors of the blog entries – non-PR affiliated Yahoo employees.

So there you have it, with the convienience of the web benefiting public relations practitioners a whole new level of communication is possible

I’m not a Public Relations specialist but I do pay attention to the PR industry and its trends and do truly feel that the Search Blogs used by the big four search engines are a successful model for some companies, especially tech friendly ones to follow. One of the greatest aspects of reading these entries, is that I already feel like I sort of know these people . Such a feeling of company to public relations is quite priceless.