The Brief

To build brand awareness for a London-based architect who has designed a number of hotels in Africa and South Africa and had been commissioned for a hotel due to be built in Cape Town’s Central Business District. The brief was given to us four days before the current hotel was due to be demolished and was on a project basis.

The Solution

Since the architect was not in the country, nor their representatives and the hotel client owner, we recommended that we partner with the Demolition company that were due to take down the hotel on the premises of the new site.  We negotiated the partnership, dealt with their communication and logistics managers and invited our media network at short notice to attend the early Sunday morning demolition. The partnership enabled us to work around an event rather than CGI designs and also negated the need for a spokesperson by enabling media to attend and to shoot their own visuals. Although there were stringent safety regulations in place, we were able to secure passes for media to enter the safety zone directly pre-and-post demolition.

The Results

Over half a million Rand’s worth of coverage was secured with the CGI designs credited to the client and accompanying the demolition visuals. Where the media used video, the demolition went viral (Netwerk24) and we managed to have the client’s name included in the footage. We have now had the contract extended to incorporate the building phase of the hotel.

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The Brief

SouthernX is a coalition of publishers that forms a private and controlled sell side market place. SouthernX was specifically designed to optimize the yield on sold inventory for publishers. Our brief was to launch programmatic media buying and selling in the South African Market through educating target audiences on the value of private exchanges as well as positioning SouthernX as the leaders in the media exchange landscape.

What We Did 

We launched SouthernX through educational press releases, feature articles and opinion pieces. Through engaging with targeted media, we were able to ascertain what the perception of programmatic media buying and selling was, and what we needed to do in order to ensure that there was complete acceptance and understanding. We also positioned Paula, the MD of SouthernX, as a thought leader in the field and secured a number of speaking opportunities at strategic conferences.

The Results 

Over the last year, SouthernX and Paula have become synonymous with the selling of programmatic media in South Africa. Not only has SouthernX as a brand grown exponentially, but as a business as well. Over the last 12 months, we achieved a total AVE R4,159,079.30 (1:1), with a reach of 31,260,170.00. In addition, SouthernX has received tangible leads and business, directly through articles and publicity generated through the PR efforts of MANGO-OMC.

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The Brief

In 2011 Eat Out appointed MANGO-OMC for the first time to handle public relations around the annual Eat Out Restaurant Awards. We have been working with the brand for five consecutive annual award seasons to generate positive, credible and sustainable publicity for the Eat Out brand, with particular focus on the awards. The key communication objectives have been to increase top-of-mind consumer awareness of the Eat Out Restaurant Awards, encourage consumer engagement for the “Best of” categories, increase online traffic to Eat Out’s various communication platforms and to increase readership and loyalty to the Eat Out brand. The established credibility and prestige of the Eat Out Awards had to be communicated throughout.

What We Did

Our tactics included the writing and distribution of diary listings, media releases and articles; setting up interviews; engaging with industry bodies, chefs, bloggers, celebrities and conceptualising and arranging media invitations and magazine drops. We have built relationships with print, online and broadcast media as well as bloggers who have regularly published articles about the awards, nominees and winners as well as special feature articles with content and comment from Eat Out. Each year, we set measurable targets and use a tiered approach for targeting media to gain publicity for the awards. Over the years we have helped Eat Out to adapt their communication and respond to feedback from their target markets. We also helped to increase the profile of the event by inviting celebrity guests and assisting with relationship building. Our planning and implementation included the planning of responses to possible crisis situations and reputation management.

The Results

The annual Eat Out Restaurant Awards has grown in both size and stature. Restaurants and tourism bodies frequently acknowledge the Eat Out Awards as the gold standard for South African restaurants. Eat Out has seen significant growth in their readership and engagement on their online and social media platforms. The AVE has been increased per year and in 2015, reached the R14 million mark (1.1).