Samsung Electronics have announced that their AlwaysOn free Wi-Fi service has gone live as of 15 April 2013. With more than 1,000 local AlwaysOn hotspots, consumers will be able to enjoy this free service at almost any favourite location.

Samsung WiFi Always On

If you are a Samsung user, on any Wi-Fi enabled smart device purchased after March 2010, you will be able to register  your device for this free service. This entitles you to 1GB of free AlwaysOn Wi-Fi data every month for 12 months, per Samsung device.

With the digital age and the need for Internet access at any given time, Samsung has come to the party by allowing consumers to enjoy and be in control even when they are out of the office or home. Samsung consumers get to sit back and enjoy the convenience of this premier Wi-Fi service, simplifying mobile connectivity.

To be able to use this service, Samsung users need to:

• Locate the nearest AlwaysOn hotspot
• Register on the AlwaysOn network
• Connect your Samsung device to the AlwaysOn hotspot
• Select Samsung Registration from the Free Sites menu option
• Enter your details including the serial number of your device (dial *#06# or found on the back of your device)
• Begin using AlwaysOn Wi-Fi!

Once the 1GB of data is depleted,  you may purchase additional data from the AlwaysOn Wi-Fi portal at standard rates.

The AlwaysOn Wi-Fi service is designed to move towards strong value-added offerings to Samsung consumers. Samsung combines product innovation with constant connectivity, allowing you to be connected at any time without additional expenses.

To find the AlwaysOn hotspot location closest to you, visit http://finder.alwayson.co.za

So you have heard about this thing called Twitter, and you have opened yourself up an account and chosen a handle (which is what your name is called on Twitter), what do you do from here onwards? Well let me help you out.

1. Start following people with the same interest as you:  You can find these people by searching keywords that interest you, in order to find other people who are talking about the same stuff as you, for example ‘running’, ‘fishing ‘, and ‘poetry’.
2. Get interacting:  The most valuable thing I was ever told was “Interaction is Key” and it really is. How is anyone with a lot of followers supposed to know you are there and that you share their interests if you don’t try to talk to them? So get interacting
3. Don’t over use #Hashtags: Your tweet has to get across what you are trying to say in under 140 characters. There is nothing more annoying than reading a tweet that goes along the lines of, “Wow, what a great run #Running #Fitness #WorkingOut #RunningTips #RunForFun”. Your tweet gets lost in the hash tag noise.  Tweet it like you would say it, and if you do need to add a hash tag, I would personally stick to 2 maximum.
4. Don’t join #TeamFollowBack or beg for followers: Team Follow Back is to Twitter what Oil is to Water.  Granted you can put oil and water together but sooner or later they are going to separate and the result isn’t pretty. The same applies to #TeamFollowBack. Your Twitter experience will be diluted because they are following you and you are following them only because you are a number.  Rather have fewer followers who share the same interests as you and really enjoy the people in your community than having millions of people you don’t talk to but feel obligated to follow.
5. Don’t be an arrogant idiot:  Ok we get it. You have a lot of followers. People may even call you “an influencer”, well guess what? The people who made you an influencer are still following you and can stop doing that at any time.  Respond to tweets, follow the ones trying to interact with you or interact back with them.  Be human. Calling yourself a Twitter celebrity is kind of like the homeless guy at the traffic light. Everyone knows you are there and can see you but only the ones who smile back will give you their spare change or a moment of your time

Good chat kids. Now go forth and tweet, but be ‘Twitter Friendly”

As we all know when it comes to advertising nobody plays the ‘parody card’ quite as well as Nandos does. From the “Mugabe Last Dictator Standing” to “Julius Malema Demanding Change”, Nandos has always been at the forefront (some may say abreast) of political satire and satire in general.

Well, Nandos has done it again with the Santam ad with Ben Kingsley at the bar. If you haven’t seen Nandos’s latest parody commercial, you can see it here, it is well worth watching. It came as no surprise though.

The Nandos ad is funny and clever as are all of their parody ads only that this time the “victim”, Santam has played them at their own game with something that is equally witty and even, some may say, honourable. You can view Santam’s response ad to Nandos dubbed “Back at ya” hereif you haven’t already seen it.

Santam’s response has most of us really curious to see what Nandos will come back with, because thus far its 1-0 to Santam. Whether or not this is a planned stunt by both Nandos and Santam, we think it is absolutely brilliant advertising!

The big question is will Nandos deliver Santam’s order to the Johannesburg Children’s Home at 4pm on Thursday as requested in the “Back at ya” response. Well, we’ll wait and see!

Marketing Success.

The Johannesburg weather is beginning to heat up in a serious way. The mercury has touched on just shy of 30 degrees a few times already and the brunt of summer is no where near us. The relentless heat coupled with a lot of traffic on the M1 South heading towards Johannesburg central meant that we were in need of something to quench our thirst and bring some much needed relief from the heat.

While making our way along the highway we cannot help but be bombarded by the cleverly designed and well placed KFC Krusher street pole advertising. Every few hundred meters the mundane “fade into the background” and traditional street pole advertising (which gets filed by our minds eye as irrelevant) is replaced by the larger than life replica Krusher cup, grabbing our attention and screaming at us to take notice!

The repetition of the Krushers coupled with additional more traditional billboard advertising on the highway made it virtually impossible for us to think of anything other than making our way immediately to KFC!

Execution fail!

KFC did everything right. Or should we say that the Ad Agency who does KFC’s advertising did everything right! They used a busy, public space to grasp our attention in everyway imaginable. In fact, a KFC Krusher was all that was on our minds long after we had even passed the clever, alternative advertising. 10 points there!

When we finally arrived at a KFC (on William Nicol) some distance from the M1 south where we had been hypnotised by this Krusher advertising, we waited in line patiently, adding to the suspense of that very moment we would have the Krusher firmly in our grip. Alas, it was not meant to be. Upon ordering our long awaited KFC Krushers, our ears were met with the very words we dreaded, “Our Krusher machine is broken.”

Not only did these 5 words make us want to cancel the rest of the order and buy lunch from the competitor down the road, but we were also very disappointed because it seemed as though KFC had grabbed an advertising opportunity by the horns, (unlike other brands in South Africa) and finally used some creativity in a campaign.

Maybe someone should have checked that KFC’s Krusher machines were all working properly before they created such a hype around one of their products. All in all, a complete brand disappointment and a slack effort on KFC’s side.

What to do?

When embarking on a marketing campaign, ensure that you include in the planning of your campaign to check the following boxes :

1. tell your organisation about the promotion
2. check that you can handle increased demand for when your marketing actually works
3. have a plan in place for if things go wrong with your delivery

The recently launched www.wdyl.com otherwise known as “What Do You Love?” is a new service that has been designed to offer information regarding any topic, across multiple Google products. These include:

• Google Books
• Google Trends
• YouTube
• Flickr
• Google Alerts
• Google Search
• Google Places
• Gmail
• Image Search

These are just a few of the platforms that will appear on the extremely clean and well designed tool. www.wdyl.com offers the user various boxes on the page, each displaying search results according to the Google product. The overall idea is to take users to a single page of relevant information across Google’s online products.

Users will get the very best results by entering a broad search term, e.g. “dog.” Once the term has been entered, the user needs to click on the heart button, a sweet but extremely punny addition with love from Google.

This extremely user friendly Google tool is a fantastic combo of the things you love and how to use Google’s search tools. By clicking on any one of the numerous boxes on the results screen, users will be directed to that Google product where they may continue their search as usual.

All round, a really clever addition on Google’s behalf. Easy to use and simply designed. We give www.wdyl a massive thumbs up!

This joint venture between Red Bull and Cell C offers customers two branded packages and four phones to choose form.

Red Bull phones

The phones are Red Bull branded and come standard with Red Bull Music Academy Radio and Red Bull X- Fighters.

Red Bull packages

The two packages are made up of the RBM100 (R149 per month) and the RBM200. (R249 per month)

Through the Red Bull Mobile portal, customers will have access to:

• Red Bull TV
• Free Red Bull downloads
• News and updates on Red Bull events and athletes
• Weather
• News
• Local entertainment

Red Bull is focusing on providing their customers with freebies and benefits: great if you are into sports and action.

• Tickets to Red Bull Racing
• Tickets to Top Gear Live Festival
• Monthly copy of Red Bulletin (Global magazine)

The Red Bull energy drink has been a booming success in the sporting world and has certainly been the drink of choice for many keen athletes and sleepy heads around South Africa. Whether or not they are able to succeed in the mobile market is something that only time will tell. However with Cell C on board, the relationship that these two exceptionally strong and successful brands have could be the beginning of bigger and better things for Red Bull.

The PSP Phone or the Xperia Play as it is known is an Android- powered, games centric phone that sports a slide- out gamepad and includes real buttons. This spectacular device has a 4 inch, multi touch screen that runs at a resolution of 480 x 854. The touch screen is powered by a 1Ghz Scorpion ARMv7 and comes with an Adreno 205 mobile GPU. Gamers are given a whopping five and a half hours of game time before the battery needs charging.

When the phone is released (set to launch in America in a couple weeks, no word on South African release date or price) there will be over 50 games available for download. The phone will however come pre- loaded with a selection of games.

• Asphalt Adrenaline 6
• Bruce Lee
• Star Battalion
• The Sims 3
• Tetris

The PSP Phone contains an 8Gb microSD card that provides support for up to 32Gb. This all runs on Anroid 2.3 (Gingerbread.)

• Phone memory: 400MB
• Weight: 175 grams
• Size 119 x 62 x 16mm

Although this device is designed to be a portable PSP, its capability as a phone is impeccable. The 5.1 megapixel camera and stereo speakers are great additions but it’s the long battery life that is the most impressive.

• Talk time GSM/GPRS: Up to 8 hrs 25 min
• Standby time GSM/GPRS: Up to 425 hrs
• Talk time UMTS: Up to 6 hrs 25 min
• Standby time UMTS: Up to 413 hrs
• Talk time CDMA2000®: Up to 7 hrs 40 min
• Standby time CDMA2000®: Up to 405 hrs
• Game play time: Up to 5 hrs 35 min
• MP3 playback: Up to 30 hrs 35 min

The PSP Phone is certainly something that grabs attention. For the keen gamer looking for an Anroid phone, it will probably take up hours of spare time. With a portable PSP in hand, gamers will be truly impressed with the PSP phone.

In 2006, Zoopy was launched into closed beta where it then moved into live beta, available to the public on 5^th March 2007. With some pretty high profile users like Helen Zille, Grant Haskin and Jonathan Shapiro (Zapiro,) this online and mobile social media site has certainly been appreciated for a variety of different reasons.

▪ Share/ view videos

▪ Share/ view photos

▪ Share/ view audio clips

▪ Zoopy TV (content created by the Zoopy team)

With the character and personality of South Africans, what better way to show off our enthusiasm than offer a platform to express to the world the creative, artistic, clever, funny, talented, charismatic, colourful, glamorous, expressive side that we all have within us! (May be a little biased there) With the world cup successfully behind us, who wouldn’t want to continue seeing more from this exciting country?

How does Zoopy work?

Zoopy is fun, new and is South Africa’s first video and photo sharing social network. Why wouldn’t we need one of these considering the huge amount of talent we have on display in South Africa? Just like YouTube, Zoopy allows you to upload a variety of media, choose a channel, write a description and share with the world. Whether it’s funny or something a little more serious, even amateurs are able to contribute to Zoopy.

Once your upload is live it is able to be viewed by people all over South Africa and the rest of the world. Through using Zoopy you are also able to invite friends, family and who- ever you wish to view your media- provided they are a member of Zoopy. If however you choose to use Zoopy as you do YouTube, you are able to view videos and photos and enjoy the humor, interest and fun that others choose to share with the world.

Visit www.zoopy.com

Follow them on Twitter, subscribe to the blog or join the Zoopy Facebook page.

The name “Talooma” originates from the Swahili term for “professionalism.”  After much debate and research it was decided that yellow and grey would represent the new brand. The fresh, original approach is carried throughout our logo, website and within the company as a whole.

The launch, which was hosted at The Business Centre in Fourways, was a great success.  We asked all our guests to bring a yellow colored gift for the SPCA. We received an  impressive collection of donations which will be going to the SPCA in Nigel.

With almost all of our clients at the event, there was much mingling, eating and fun to partake in. The evening  begun with snacks and drinks outside and later moved indoors so that our guest speakers could reveal what the “Yellow Launch” was all about. This was long awaited as all of our clients were in the dark with regards to what the launch involved.

When our new name “Talooma” was introduced to the guests, the Talooma team threw streamers and decorations into the crowd. The banner was unveiled and Talooma was born. This very exciting moment was certainly well earned by the new Talooma team.

We at Talooma look forward to working with our clients and taking on new challenges within the world of the internet. We thank all our clients who attended the “Yellow Launch” and for all the support over the years.

Talooma’s new website is something we are all very proud of. We feel that it not only represents our rebranded company perfectly but also each one of us at Talooma. Check it out, www.talooma.com