Last week, Mario Gamper paid Virtuosa a visit taking time as an ‘intern’ with the hope of learning more about specifically online  marketing and  search marketing  in the Agency  environment in South Africa. He met Ingrid Rubin, our GM, at Cannes two years ago at a Lowe Worldwide Digital Conference; and made Africa (specifically South Africa) one of his stops as he is interested in seeing how agencies are structured here, the maturity of the market and approach to strategy and emarketing.

For 5 days Mario had  an intense ‘internet marketing crash course’ to help him in writing his book before he continues with his worldwide tour to other countries and continents.

I had the opportunity to interview him while he was here and I must say that he is a very knowledgeable and interesting guy, with a fresh approach to looking at online advertising. I envy his vision and the end result of his worldwide summary of advertising and the future is certainly going to be interesting.

Mario’s Background

Mario Gamper has a TV and Print Ad agency background where he worked at Scholz & Friends for 10 years. After heading up the interactive department, he finally decided to travel and write a book on changes in the advertising sphere around the world and what to expect in the future.  He has teamed up with designer Raban Ruddigkeit, who is the editor of Freistil, a magazine on Illustration in Germany.

What the book will be about?

Mario’s project is called ‘Ideas Will Travel’, which is derived from the notion that people have to be moved by the ‘ideas’ in a campaign/ad. Mario views ads as ideas in motion and the book goes further to investigate:

• how we create ideas that are being talked about,
• why they are being talked about,
• how they are being passed on.

Basically, in Mario’s view the challenge for ad agencies (on and offline) all over the world is to generate a successful ad that can generate a discussion, in his own words “that is the value… that is the lesson“.

Why is the book different?

Mario believes that we are already living in the ‘future’ that we predicted 5 to 10 years ago with micro-blogging and augmented reality, and the question the book answers is: “What can we expect in the next 5 years of the advertising industry?”.

He believes that ads/campaigns (on and offline) will aim to constantly re-educate and their success will be measured by their ability to create new ideas and be shared through various mediums.

It was great hosting him and I for one can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of this insightful contribution to advertising. There are not too many authors and books in this market that have managed to provide a well researched and global insight into changes in marketing and advertising.

To keep track on Mario and his journey visit: Facebook and to ask him any questions, you can also visit his blog: www.ideaswilltravel.com .

“One size does not fit all”, is one of the key learning’s that Russell Hanley spoke about, when addressing the Cracking the digital Code forum during his slot today.

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facebook is about to hit 400,000 members in the South African network, sitting at 399,294 at this very moment. The growth in the last two weeks, in SA network has been phenomenal. On Sunday, 14th October there were 360,000 members… in 13 days the network has grown by 11%. There are currently around 50 million active members worldwide.

Many cynics of social networking sites say that facebook is just a “fad” and members will soon move onto something else, but with the continual renewal of applications and the easy-to-use format which provides a phenomenal platform for communicating with friends online, this is one “fad” that aint going anywhere.

To add credibility to this statement, a deal has just been concluded with Microsoft who have agreed to invest $240 million into facebook for a 1.6 percent stake in the company; this then values the site at around $15 billion. Under this agreement Microsoft will be the exclusive third-party advertising partner until 2011; this says to me that Microsoft do not see this social networking site as a “fad”; they beat Yahoo and Google to the deal table, who were also in talks to acquire an interest in the company.

facebook will be making a major announcement on the 6th November, in New York, regarding a new way of advertising online which enables companies to better target ad placement ensuring that they can block unwanted associations. This announcement happens to be at the same time as the Adtech “business of modern marketing” conference is being held.

The US online advertising industry is currently at around $40 billion and analysts predict that it will double in size within three years; with online advertsing in South Africa said to be at around R200 million for 2007 we have alot of “catching up” to do and marketers need to understand the value of social networking sites…..these are places that lots of people do spend there precious time out of choice and will continue to do so. facebook has also announced recently that 50% of their members are over 25 years of age, so it is not just a youth site anymore.

…..I know where I would be planning to spend some of my marketing budget….