Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
by Amy on May 10th, 2013
Given the ever-increasing importance of marketing, The Brand Book is an invaluable marketer’s tool and an ultimate guide to marketing and brand management. It covers challenges faced by most company executives and marketers today, by outlining a new “how-to” approach with easy-to-follow illustrated examples.
A comprehensive guide to the do’s and don’ts of marketing, the book de-mystifies marketing and brand jargon with an easy-to understand-and-relate-to method, using examples at both local and global levels.
Through The Brand Book, Thomas Oosthuizen describes his personal marketing method, which he developed while working in senior marketing positions for many years and being instrumental in the success of many iconic brands. Using a new model which covers all marketing pillars in one book, The Brand Book focuses not only on how to build and maintain a profitable brand, but also how to make it sustainable and affordable; making it ideal for senior company executives, CEOs, FDs, non-marketers, senior marketers and brand managers as well as academics.
About the author
Thomas Oosthuizen has been involved with many blue-chip brands over the last twenty years – as a marketer, an agency brand strategist, and as owner of his own company brand. Through working with brands like Outsurance, Vodacom, e.tv, Emirates, AngloGold Ashanti, 20twenty and eBucks, Oosthuizen discovered a series of “universal truths” for successful marketing. Through his experience, he is able to ensure that the reader will have both a far greater grasp of what makes up a brand, and also knowledge of how to better manage it and ensure it has the best chance to optimize its value as an asset and a profit generator.
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by Amy on Apr 19th, 2013
Intelligence and education are often considered primary keys to financial security in today’s world. Yet money-trouble is still a problem faced by thousands of people in spite of their schooling and acumen. The root of this issue is frequently something almost never thought of when considering finance: emotion. Emotions are the link between one’s thoughts and one’s behavior.
Heart, Mind & Money: Using Emotional Intelligence for Financial Success can help individuals to:
- Overcome the negative emotions that frustrate their progress;
- Let go of past hurts around money and start to unblock the path to positive wealth manifestation; and
- Harness the positive emotions that lead to a state of abundance that will change their finances for the better!
The book includes:
- The history behind 25 emotions and the evolutionary importance of these emotions.
- The different impact that each emotion has on behaviour and financial decision-making.
- Knowledge to give a deep understanding of why one feels the way one does about money.
- Step-by-step exercises to help master these emotions.
Applying emotional intelligence to finances can help one improve financial health and live a happier life; the lessons in this book are a smart investment!
About the author
Having pursued her MBA degree at the Simmons School of Management in Boston, MA, Vangile Makwakwa is now a writer and speaker with expertise in financial coaching. In the past four years she has focused on researching and understanding the link between emotions and financial behaviour. Makwakwa has lived on three different continents and has even had the opportunity to enlighten a Catholic bishop on the link between health, spirituality and emotions.
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by Amy on Jan 31st, 2013
Muzi Kuzwayo, author of Black Man’s Medicine, has written a column for Business Day in which he talks about education as a foundation for the economic liberation of all Africans.
I am as happy as a pig in mud because I see Africa uniting and rising in our lifetime. South Africans are getting married to Zimbabweans and the Nigerian accent is the new cool as Nollywood grows.
Judging by the number of friends and relatives I have whose parents came from Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Botswana or Namibia, these countries may well be provinces of the Republic of South Africa.
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by Amy on Jan 10th, 2013
Muzi Kuzwayo, author of Black Man’s Medicine, wrote a column for Business Day in which he said, “The future, our future, is not in worshipping politics and politicians but in looking more to ourselves to improve our condition.”
He urged South Africans to see themselves as responsible for the people they elect and, once they’ve chosen them, understand why it is they deliver or do not deliver.
In a second article, also in Business Day, Kuzwayo talked about the need for South Africans to end the culture of blame and fix the country together.
The white man left the Union Buildings 18 years ago, my compatriots, and the future is now up to people of our own skin colour. The dream of our ancestors to have the right to govern or misgovern our affairs has been achieved and now the poor and the destitute look up to blacks to alleviate their condition. That is South African democracy simplified.
White people and President Jacob Zuma have one thing in common: they are blamed for everything that goes wrong in South Africa. Someone complained to me saying that my last article did not refer to the role that white people played in the oppression of blacks.
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by Amy on Oct 25th, 2012
Controversial?
Thought-provoking?
True?
Stimulating?
Offensive?
The title of this book comes from the African adage: ‘The Black Man’s Medicine is the White Man’. It implies that black people won’t do anything right, unless there is a white man around, or that black people won’t be satisfied with anything unless it has been done by a white man.
Black Man’s Medicine is about economic freedom. It introduces the idea that SEE (self-economic empowerment) is the new BEE. Most importantly, it insists that apartheid was a terrible and unfortunate part of our shared history but should no longer define our present challenges and myriad opportunities for success. In essence this book is about moving from mud and dust, through the boardroom and on to a new Africa, where people work hard and life is decent.
Kuzwayo’s self-professed goal is help us see our own, familiar truths differently, just in case they have passed their sell-by date, and to question the righteousness of our rituals and to test the accuracy of our adages.
Is the black man’s medicine really the white man?
This is the third book written by Muzi Kuzwayo and it follows the roaring successes of Marketing through Mud and Dust and There’s a Tsotsi in the Boardroom. It is a fun, easy read that will challenge the way we all think about our roles in South Africa today.
About the author
Muzi Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, the former CEO of TBWAHuntLascaris, a leading advertising agency, non-executive director of Spur Holdings and chairman of Project Literacy, an organisation dedicated to promoting literacy in South Africa. Muzi was also a director and shareholder of King James, an advertising agency, as well as a director of the Association of Communication Agencies, an industry body that represents advertising and communication agencies.
Muzi is a visiting professor at UCT’s Graduate School of Business and author of the best-selling books Marketing through Mud and Dust and There’s a Tsotsi in the Boardroom, and was a columnist for the newspapers The Saturday Star and The Argus, commenting on advertising and marketing. Six years ago he bought two Pick n Pay franchise stores which he ran personally, giving him a complete understanding of building brands right through to retail. He also has extensive knowledge of the South African work force and the ability to align the interests of workers with those of shareholders.
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by Amy on Jun 25th, 2012
PolitySA’s Chanel de Bruyn interviewed Tashmia Ismail, who wrote New Markets, New Mindsets: Creating wealth with South Africa’s low-income communities through partnership and innovation along with Nicola Kleyn and Gwen Ansell. Ismail explained the movement towards “co-creation”, where businesses immerse themselves in a market and consult with the community as they build their product or service.
Book details
- New Markets, New Mindsets: Creating wealth with South Africa’s low-income communities through partnership and innovation by Tashmia Ismail, Nicola Kleyn and Gwen Ansell
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EAN: 9781920292034
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eBook: New Markets, New Mindsets: Creating wealth with South Africa’s low-income communities through partnership and innovation by Tashmia Ismail, Nicola Kleyn, Gwen Ansell
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eBook: New Markets, New Mindsets: Creating wealth with South Africa’s low-income communities through partnership and innovation by Tashmia Ismail, Nicola Kleyn, Gwen Ansell
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EAN: 9781920292072
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by Amy on Jun 4th, 2012
New from Jacana:
We live complex and busy lives. Returning to nature can often provide glimpses into the simplicity we left behind centuries ago. Flight at Dawn presents examples from our natural environment that can teach us how to succeed both professionally and personally to enrich and broaden our lives.
The book is structured around a visit to a wild life reserve by a father with two enthusiastic teenagers who are boiling to explore life. Tony uses the lessons, insights and experiences gained from their interaction with nature and witnessing the teenagers’ refreshing enthusiasm for the environment around them to illustrate strategies on how to make organisations and society function more productively and how to enhance personal development.
While the book’s key focus is on areas of leadership and organisational behaviour, Tony also shares commentary on topical issues and on some of the vexing challenges and paradoxes of the working environment.
This is an innovative book that shows the power of intuitive communication to highlight how life lessons are available to all of those who observe the behaviour of the flora and fauna encountered in the wild and how deep relationships with people and nature are crucial for our mental health and the wellbeing of society.
About the author
Tony Frost is a fifth generation South African, educated at Queen’s College, Queenstown and at the universities of Natal, Cape Town, and the Witwatersrand.
After spending 5 years at a board-level marketing position, he worked at top-level as a Human Resource Director for 20 years and founded his own company, Sirocco Strategy Management. Sirocco has a strong focus on integrated sustainability.
For five years Tony was the CEO of WWF South Africa. He is currently on the Board of the South African Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), is CEO of the Queen’s College Foundation and Chair of The Vulture Progamme.
In 2011 he initiated a fund-raising cycle ride to Queenstown to raise money for improving the quality of education in the Queenstown district.
Tony Frost is a frequent visitor to wild places and through his writing he is able to share his experiences in a rich, humorous and accessible manner. He is a keen photographer and a private pilot and is passionate about the natural heritage of South Africa.
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by Amy on May 28th, 2012
Author, activist and academic, David Lewis, was welcomed at The Book Lounge early last week for the launch of his book, Thieves at the Dinner Table: Enforcing the Competition Act – a Personal Account.
Lewis, who was instrumental in drafting South Africa’s competition law, has a prestigious CV.
He is currently the Executive Director of the NGO, Corruption Watch, and was joined by Advocate Owen Rogers in a frank and scintillating discussion, permeated with wit. His personal account of his experience serving on the Competition Commission makes for riveting reading.
Rogers launched the discussion with the question, “Who are the thieves? And at whose dinner table do they sit?” Lewis replied that, when they tackled the case of the bread cartel and those involved became contrite and admitted guilt, the Human Rights Commission referred to those who fixed bread prices as “thieves at the dinner table”. This struck Lewis as an apt description of the scenario and completed the task of finding a suitably exciting title for his book. However, he noted that some readers had bought the book under the misapprehension that it is a thriller.
Rogers highlighted the 15 years Lewis spent as a trade unionist in the anti-apartheid movement and asked whether this time gave him an accurate and fair insight into the world of business or whether it had skewered his perception of the way business operated. Lewis said he’d gained a healthy skepticism and, although he has never worked in a business, his work has always been involved directly with business: “I was always fascinated by business, and even in the union movement grew to a grudging respect of certain business people. I did come into it with a strong skepticism and strong awareness of what damage could be done without countervailing forces,” he said.
Owen recalled that Lewis was no “lover of lawyers” and had been known to call down plagues and poxes upon the heads of his esteemed colleagues. Additionally, competition law is a highly complex mix of economics and law. When Owen asked Lewis what the challenges to the legal profession in the field are, Lewis said he “loved to hate lawyers” and really enjoyed the theatre of the law. While he takes pleasure in television court room dramas, seeing them in person is “fantastic”!
The lively and entertaining discussion concluded with questions and answers from the floor, in which a number of Lewis’ colleagues participated.
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Liesl Jobson tweeted from the launch using #livebooks:
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by Amy on May 16th, 2012
Doing business with low-income communities – which academics and practitioners have christened ‘the base of the pyramid’ (BoP) – now includes a focus on creating sustainable markets with the potential to realise future profit – simply ‘milking’ a market for the next quarter’s profits is seen as short-sighted. The status quo is shifting, and the rules of both commercial and social engagement with middle- and lower-end markets in developing economies are transforming. There is keen interest from both local and global businesses and institutions to be involved in these markets. And they care about the practical detail of doing it effectively, and ethically. This new view accords that doing business in a healthier economy benefits firms by lowering transaction costs and the long-term cost of capital.
In South Africa, around 60% of the population is unserved or underserved by current business (and many other providers of support and services). That’s a significant new market, and in the South African context, doing business in this market can achieve a great deal more than simply finding new customers. Regardless of global trends or government pressures, accessing these markets is challenging. Often, customers who survive on minimal incomes seek and will value different market offerings from those traditional customers have purchased. They have unique needs and identities requiring innovative, non-traditional business models and approaches.
New Markets, New Mindsets showcases pioneering businesses and their BoP champions, as well as their experiments, successes, failures and best practices in creating new AND sustainable markets in previously underserved communities.
The book includes top tips for those wishing to tap into these communities in ethical and effective ways, interviews with over 40 role players, and case studies including Nestlé, Danone, Massmart/Walmart, Nedbank, Blue Label Technologies and Capitec, among others.
About the authors
Dr Tashmia Ismail is a fellow at UNU Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, and a senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) where she teaches innovation and BoP strategy. Ismail heads the GIBS BoP Hub, which offers a collaborative multi-stakeholder platform for firms interested in developing and executing BoP strategies. She is interested in how innovative and sustainable business models can be shaped for firms in developing markets. Currently, her research is directed at understanding internal innovation management and the external networks firms must engage with to ensure success in low income contexts.
Dr Nicola Kleyn is a senior lecturer at the Gordon Institute of Business Science where she lectures and researches in the fields of marketing, branding and reputation management. She is both passionate and curious about how organisations can best manage the dynamic tensions that arise when individuals and companies seek to create win-win-win solutions that concurrently enable people, profit and planet. She was instrumental in initiating a stream of BoP focused research and teaching at GIBS and plays an active role in the BoP Hub at GIBS.
Gwen Ansell is a veteran writer, editor and writing trainer. She has written several textbooks, including Introduction to Journalism, which is a set text for the national curriculum and trains scholars, journalists and other communicators in writing skills. As a researcher, Ansell is the author of the South African cultural history Soweto Blues, and has done extensive value-chain and innovation research on the South African music industry.
Book details
- New Markets, New Mindsets: Creating wealth with South Africa’s low-income communities through partnership and innovation by Tashmia Ismail, Nicola Kleyn, Gwen Ansell
Book homepage
EAN: 9781920292034
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by Amy on Apr 26th, 2012
The Competition Commission (together with its Tribunal) is one of the success stories of the new, democratic South Africa, an institution that has won respect and admiration for its fearless, professional regulation of the market in the interests of the consumer and the citizen. David Lewis was one of the chief architects of the new competition authorities set up after 1994 and then became a leading actor in their work.
Thieves at the Dinner Table is a personal account of David Lewis’s headship of the Tribunal and tells, with insight, lucidity and often a fine sense of humour, of the way this new body dealt with the anticompetitive practices of South African big business. Three main aspects of the Commission’s work are dealt with in the book: mergers, abuse of dominance (i.e. monopolies) and cartels, and with each Lewis provides telling case studies drawn from the experience of the Commission. These are often enlivened by the author’s coruscating wit and by his delightful thumbnail sketches of the characters involved in the disputes, including the powerful and arrogant captains of industry, the wily Johannesburg competition lawyers, and the interfering and self-promoting politicians.
This is a book for people in business and in law, for those who want to understand how a key institution of post-apartheid South Africa came to be so successful, and for all those interested in the story of how some of the country’s most powerful businesses got their comeuppance after years of ripping off consumers.
Praise for Thieves at the Dinner Table
“This is a book on competition law that reads like a thriller. David Lewis has taken what might have been a dry, textbook topic and turned it into compulsive reading. But in giving the history of South African competition law some flesh and colour, he also imparts advice and opinions, which, whilst sometimes controversial, challenge the way we should think of economic regulation and the institutions that regulate.” – Norman Manoim, chairperson, South African Competition Tribunal
About the author
David Lewis, who taught at the Gordon Institute of Business Science after his term at the Competition Tribunal ended, is now head of the NGO Corruption Watch.
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