Cross Cultural South Africa ‘86
(Make the consumer’s voice heard in the agency)
I had just joined Y&R and was more than fascinated with the 4C’s model handed down to me in Jo’burg from New York. “Cross Cultural Consumer Characterization” is the full name, a mouthful happily shortened to the 4C’s: the first global segmentation study of human goals, motivations and values in the world, introduced at the time when global branding had just begun. (As I’ve said Y&R are famed for firsts).
The more I looked at it, the more I felt that Y&R’s 4Cs had to be presented to the world in a fresh way that distinguished it from Maslow’s Hierarchy and especially VALS (values and lifestyles). Further in Y&R’s Consumer Perspective Strategy (CPS) toolbox, the power of Mapping was being emphasized, so I could not for the life of me think why we hadn’t applied it to the 4C’s Model?
To launch the CPS (and talk to our client Colgate whose American counterparts like Mobil were divesting at the time), Alex Krol who had recently taken the reins from Ed Ney as Y&R Inc. Chairman and CEO visited South Africa 1986. Krol loomed larger than life and we were now given the chance to “have a conversation” with him and “to present” our 4C’s psychographic map amped up and framed as the centre piece of our new business presentation — done I should add without sanction from the centre!
Dying with butterflies and desperate to impress the pants off Alex, I pictured the man in his underpants; an ordinary guy at a bar that I would tell a story to, stories of our people, stories that I hoped would show I was capable as Director of Consumer Insights of bringing the voice of the consumer alive in the boardroom. For that dear reader and fellow planner is job#l, if Planning is your work. Let me now try to replay the presentation I gave to Mr. Krol 28 years ago.
(“Twenty years where did they go? Twenty years I don’t know. I sit and I wonder sometime where they’ve gone”. Bob Seger.)
A map, any map as you know, is not the territory. It is but a compass that we use to guide our clients to Consumer Segments of most potential, to feel the heartbeat of the individuals that live inside of these clusters in order to create advertising that has a better chance of connecting, clicking, bonding; the stronger the bond, the greater the power of the brand.
I know you haven’t seen the 4C’s in mapped form like this but (drum roll)… huge very visual picture 4Cs collage revealed (Krol had risen through Creative ranks)… We had guessed right… A smile appeared on his handsome, stoic face and his still footballer frame leaned forward curious , engaged.
Across the whole northern hemisphere of the 4Cs Map he saw the “first world, advantaged” (Andy’s fingers, still shaking a bit, making quotation marks). Here is where the “Succeeders” and “Aspirers” and “Reformers” live.
Across the whole southern hemisphere in contrast live the “disadvantaged third worlds” of the “Resigned”, “Constrained” and “Strugglers”.
South Africa is a boiling pot of advantaged hundreds vs disadvantaged millions who work rubbing shoulders by day ; yet living completely separate lives, under the Laws of Apartheid (got to get the elephant in the room out early). A very privileged society (North Pole), that is served by a great infrastructure, schooling system and the finest banking services in the world versus (South Pole) very poor , disadvantaged worlds that very often don’t have running water or even any of the basic necessities and are down trodden and don’t have a voice at all.
Across the Eastern hemisphere of the 4Cs Map, he saw the “Establishment Types” fleshed out into the “Resigned”, “Mainsteamer” and “Succeeder” segments.
Across the Western hemisphere, lays the “Anti — Establishment” segments: the “Strugglers”, “Explorers” and “Reformers”.
Maps are great because they bring “Tensity” into our work by igniting energy in thinking between the tension of opposites, the yin and yang. At the centre of the establishment “Mainstreamers” live. Unlike your US 4Cs model these are not the “middle majority”. Let me however reassurance you that we have little doubt that South African Mainstreamers like Maslow’s “Belongers” all over the world value togetherness, stability, security as the “We” generation ; it’s just (here’s the insight) that the “we’s” mean such different things for people depending on their skin colour here.
For the “White”, Mainstreamer means having to live behind high walls with big dogs protecting us and it means going to sleep nevertheless worrying that someone will break in…and then waking up worrying about an impending war erupting, if we are not already blown up by a “terrorist” attack at the mall.
For the “Black” , Mainsteamer means something quite different, like the police raiding your home at night or being stopped on the street to have your passbook checked as you get off the packed train from Soweto to Egoli, Jo’burg, the city of gold with a heritage typical of mining towns but that is becoming ever blacker (skinned) and more third world by the day, regardless of what the pass laws say.
On a positive note for let me not unnecessarily depress you kind Sir (or reader), South African Mainstreamers are basically good, loving, hospitable people who will welcome you into their homes and make it difficult for you to leave. The human truth of the Black Mainstreamer, is the African value of “Ubuntu” that says “I am because you are”. I exist through you and because of you. Our tribe thrives or dies if we don’t work together. (The “Interdependence” thing Covey later preached).
Sure, Mainsteamers are family centred and will fill our beautiful churches like these Catholic, Dutch Reformed, Protestant churches or these Zionist tribes praying out in the veld. Sport is their favourite pastime. For Whites: cricket or rugby. For Blacks: soccer — where we have big local teams like Orlando Pirates and Kaiser Chiefs fighting it out.
As Shoppers Mainstreamers are not confident, tending to seek social approval and reassurance for what they buy and use. So they stand by the big established brands that they “Trust”. That’s the key word for Mainstreamers. They buy “TrustMarks”, or trademarks that brand trust (and care) into the mind. Names like Sunlight, Omo and Toyota who have such a great slogan here that says: “everything keeps going right, Toyota! And I’m happy to now showcase our two Mainstreamer cases for Colgate and Ford, our most valued clients.
(Then I passed the baton to Hein Botha, our Creative Director, and my first mentor, who shared a reel of work to show Alex how we were striving to reach his goal of undisputed creative leadership by 1990. David Buirski (our own Don Draper) then waxed poetic about how our big client Pick n Pay had long championed the Mainstreamer (mother) and connected what Sam Walton did in America to what Raymond Ackerman was doing in South Africa at the time: revolutionizing the retail market by taking on the big manufactures as well as government to champion the consumer’s cause which brings me to …
Branding truth #1. It starts with first having a “Big Y” as in “Why”. Brands with a cause/ideal win every time. That’s a truth that’s stood the test of time.
Opposite Mainstreamers on the map (walk across boardroom filled collage) we have the “Explorers” . If mainstreamers are the stable followers; Explorers are the the mobile risk takers, who delight in breaking away from the mainstream on their road to self discovery, driven by the need not to be fenced in. “These are the best days of our lives” is the slogan for this cohort, this special phase of life, when we grow out our hair, put an ear ring in and lend our voice to the protest just off the university campus. These are the ideal filled days of youth driven to challenge and shake up the establishment, to find themselves and to express their individuality, sometimes shocking the world and employing sensationalistic tactics that get the older folks vigorously and wonderfully shaking their heads left, right in disbelief.
Unlike aging Europe, we South Africans are a young society with a demographic skew sharply tilting towards 18-34, that’s the good news. The bad news is the “Lost Generation” born some ten years ago in 1976 when they rose up in the Soweto riots to protest inferior education with the slogan: “liberation before education” only of course to be gunned down. Well “when you ain’t got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose”! The Lost Generation rose up and have brought change, the world (read America) saw the images…Economic sanctions have kicked in hard now sir, we whites are shocked out of the “lullaby”, we’re seen as being the “outcasts”, those ugly “racists”.
(Not new. In fact in 1981 when I made my first crossing to New York and was carried from JFK to my hotel in Times Square in a yellow cab, noting my accent the (black) taxi driver casually asked me where I was from. I told him. Big mistake. He went ballistic: “you don’t believe in that bullshit now do you” …so fiercely focused was his anger at me, he forgot to look where he was going and the car careened into a highway divider and did a 360…Battered car, but safe, no cops, we journeyed on…Truth stranger than fiction, the driver keeps going at me about Apartheid… until finally terrified I over-tipped and ran).
“Explorers” move the world forward, propelling product growth as the Innovators or Early adopters in new categories and who look for new, different and interesting things and love trying new products. Explorers resist the leaders of the establishment because they hold all the cards, the power and control and authority. Explorers rebel against “Succeeders”.
“Succeeders” holding down the power positions can get heavy in South Africa because at a macro level that means the maintenance of Apartheid status ; that’s heavy, major league control. You’ll see our President shaking his finger at you (like we are naughty school boys) on the television which by the way only arrived in South Africa as late as 1976 with first ads only in 78. At the pinnacle of the Succeeder pyramid is the old money that originated with the Cecil John Rhodes’ of the world who got the country Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) named after him. The real wealth of these magnates, the Oppenheimers’ of our world made their money by mining the yellow rich soils of South Africa here on the Witwatersrand with the help of course of migrant Black miner, the backbone of the “Struggling Poor”.
The gold and diamond business was totally dominated by the British so to fight back, the Afrikaner Succeeder created an elite, secret brotherhood called the “Broederbond” and as fate would have it secured political power in 1948. The Afrikaners of course govern today but make no mistake the bulk of South Africa’s wealth today is still concentrated in the White English speaking Succeeder group. (And trust me Mr. Krol they’ve got their backdoor plan to emigrate to the States, Canada or Australia if the proverbial hits the fan ). Meantime they live in a lap of luxury in resorts like Sun City created for “gaming” in the homelands by the king of resorts under the southern sun - a very different kind of Succeeder, Sol Kerzner.
And now for the something completely different (walk across floor and point to South Africa’s “Struggling” group, whose slogan bluntly calls the mass to “The Struggle”. For decades they have fought to escape the hardships of barren rural homelands, have migrated to “our” (read White) cities, driven by sheer hope and luck for a better life for themselves. And if not for themselves, at least for their children.
The Strugglers’ story is one of the agony, pain and the sheer loneliness that migratory labor brought under Apartheid. Just picture the story tellers: big, lonely black men sitting in small candle lit rooms in the high rise hostels of Soweto or Alexander Township. Remember that these are the proud sons of Skaka Zulu, Dingaan and all the other warriors which were brought to their knees by the power of gun powder. But inside their brave hearts, a flame still burns, a hope to make money to send “home” to their wives and children who toil the white boer farms in the ‘platteland’.
My father opened the Fresh Meat Supply at 3 in the morning, waking up the Zulu “boys” who would carry the carcasses in and out of cold storage all day. My father, Alec spoke kitchen Zulu and worked with these Strugglers at work and Warriors at heart for nearly twenty years. He saw up close a hard, cold world, with dagga and drink and prostitutes and raw aggression and plain anger fueled from being kept out of the system.
Strugglers operate outside of the establishment in our mushrooming informal sector, signs of which you’ll see on the streets filled with hawkers who return at night to squat in corrugated iron and plastic shanty towns in the darkness on the edge of town where spaza shops and shabeens rule. Check it out but don’t get too close as you take the car from D.F Malan airport in Cape Town to your hotel at the Mount Nelson nestled under Table Mountain — looking out over the bay, one of the most beautiful spots on God’s Earth.
As Shoppers, the “Struggling” are the hardest to understand for they defy Maslow’s hierarchy. If you walk down Bree Street in Johannesburg you’ll see them through the windows, pulling out the insides of half a loaf and stuffing it with offal. But follow them down the street as they head to their trains and you’ll see them putting down a lay bye on a pair of the most expensive Florsheim shoes.
At the northern apex of our map, we have the “Aspirers” driven by Maslow’s Esteem/Status needs. At work they are competitive, not exactly dissatisfied but certainly desirous of that corner office! They hold outer directed values and are the most acquisitive group. Social image is avidly sought so they gravitate to badge brands and go to parties or clubs frequented by the “in crowd”. You’ve seen Alex the work that we’re doing for M-NET (first pay TV station) which has become our most prestigious account and no doubt have noted that it’s all about celebrating being on the inside track, being one step ahead of the Jones’, that’s the rallying cry of our headline that says: “You haven’t got it, till you get it” and our baseline and slogan: “We won’t stop the magic” (cut to Freddie Mercury’s “we won’t stop now”.)
If Aspirers are about having the best options at their fingertips, the “Constrained” are the hungry hearts and given up minds, long trapped within the lowest echelons of Maslow’s hierarchy and who have no options. These constrained communities comprise the “Struggling” who we’ve addressed, those that still hold a flicker of hope. So we turn now to the “Resigned”, the left out laggards of the establishment.
This Resigned world is a rigid, hard world, in which the predominant preoccupation is survival. One empty day to the next, in their empty hand to mouth existence. They are an older group who are orientated to the past, hankering after the “good old days”. They are ultra conservative, super traditionalistic, highly resistant to change, clanners, loyal to their cultural, ethnic or nationalistic roots and in bitter resistance to everything else. Actually their bitterness should run deeper than it does but somehow Africans weren’t born with bitterness in their hearts (remember Ubuntu), so maybe when the day of reckoning comes, we’ll have a chance they will forgive us.
Resigned are pro authority, they want to be led by the nose and call everybody “boss” but the real masters in their lives are the old tribal chieftains and the witch doctors or “Sangomas”. You’d think that Resigneds would be the biggest bargain hunters of them all; wearing rags which they diligently wash on the rocks at the rivers and living in straw huts and on mud floors but you’d be surprised. Although largely limited to basic staples bought in only the smallest packs at little hole in the wall stores that they walk miles to — Resigneds only buy the brand leaders, suspicious of cheaper, untrusted alternatives for their precious cents.
If in a word the “Resigned” group is “reactive” we turn finally to the most proactive group of all, the “Reformers” who are anti-establishment in their fight for a better world. Although “Reformers” often turn themselves outward to challenge the establishment politically, socially or ecologically, their values are inner directed, driven by inner growth, self-expression and idealism. So they become doctors, nurses, journalists or teachers or song writers… Lennon’s “Imagine” probably comes closest to a Reformer’s national anthem, right?
Us White Reformers truth be told are too damned scared to do anything. Just the other night I went to the Market Theatre, a reformer spot to see a play. Well some young blacks were handing out pamphlets and asking the patrons like me to sign up to their cause. Yes we were all too scared to even do that — such is the omnipresence of the police or so we imagine!
The real Reformer leaders have long been exiled to Lusaka in Zambia where the African National Congress (ANC) are headquartered; the others led by Nelson Mandela are imprisoned in Robben Island where they’ve been incarcerated since I was in junior school. We have never seen his face. With that confession my 4C’s sermon to Krol ended.
Post Script 28 years later, my gratitude goes to Alex Krol, a great orator and more important a great believer in the power of consumer insights to drive creative excellence. I was greatly blessed to have started Planning at Y&R in SA at a time when Planning as a profession in agencies was just being born. A creative giant that truly believed that “God helps those who help their customers”, I’ll most remember Krol for his belief that brands are people too.
“You like people who are interesting. People who are helpful. People who are witty. People who don’t take themselves too seriously. You dislike pompous, self important people and show offs. You like friendly people. Funny people. People who are characters. People who have character. Remember brands are people too”. (To be continued)
