Ryan Hogarth

Nandos most recent triumph, their “Last Dictator Standing” is indeed a triumph. When I first saw it last Friday I was quite literally gobsmacked.  A stroke of genius.  I couldn’t stop watching it.  I instantly annoyed several friends and colleagues, insisting they stop what they are doing and watch.  And I would watch it with them. I posted the following status update on Facebook: For my money the Nandos Last Dictator ad is a stroke of genius that is difficult to comprehend. Truly amazing. I shortly received a comment asking “Why do you feel that, Ryan?” That sort of stopped … Continue reading →

I attended the MyBroadband 2001 conference today at Vodaworld. There were some incredible data that came out of this.  Some of the more impressive numbers: There are currently 4 billion connected devices in the world.  This will reach 15 billion by 2015 and 50 billion by 2020.  Staggering Vodacom has spoken about a minority of people that have figured out how to abuse the Blackberry Internet Service.  The record for abuse is someone who downloaded 342 gigs of data in a month through the service (not bad for R59). In two years Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys predicts that every phone … Continue reading →

By far the most frequent refrain from business people when I talk to them about going social is “I just don’t have the time.”  The implication in this statement of course is “who has time to wade through the drivel that people post on Facebook”.  And fair enough. The simple answer to the conundrum of time and social media is this:  A business will spend time on anything in direct proportion to its return of value.  Of course you’re not going spend time on anything that isn’t growing or helping your business.  A solid and obvious policy. Having said that … Continue reading →

Managing our social networks has crept into the time management of our days.  It can be a little tiresome working out where to post what.  These issues will grow as our reliance and involvement in the social web increases. If you have a Facebook Page and a Twitter account, you may want to update both at the same time.  One way is to use a content management system like Hootsuite but a simpler way would be to post your tweets to your Facebook Page automatically.  Many are already doing this to their personal Facebook profile but how do you post to … Continue reading →

The beginning of the 21st century will come to be regarded as the start of the communication revolution. This follows the industrial revolution from 1750-1950 and the technological revolution from 1950-2000 Each of these periods changed human development and each built on the progress of the one before. It is ironic that the result of technological innovation was a revolution in communication since the industrial revolution inculcated a perception that individuals were merely cogs in the great machine of industry. This was reflected in the myriad sci-fi movies which most often depicted the future as a sort of utopian paradise … Continue reading →

This article on a personal social media strategy was a lightbulb moment. It is accepted that social media plays an important role in personal brand building. Critical when you are building your own business or if you are likely to be in the job market. An issue that has not come to view, particularly in the early and slightly behind the rest of the world stages of social media in South Africa, is the personal branding of high level business leaders. At first the idea may seem a little absurd.  Running a national corporate surely requires no personal branding and someone … Continue reading →