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I’ve managed to secure a short interview with Nadine Damen, the marketing manager of Kulula.com. I’ve asked her some questions about the rebranding, sub-brands and more interesting tidbits about Kulula.com.

I also found out that Kulula.com does ±R3.5million in sales every day. Yes, that’s right, every day. Wow.

Here’s the interview:

1. Wow, great new and clean design for your site. Can you tell me why Kulula is relaunching the brand now?

The timing of the new site coincides with kulula’s seventh birthday and we consider it an opportune time to extend kulula’s focus beyond aviation. We have a new strategic direction and the new look (as well as the three supporting sub-brands) are part of this expanding business focus. Domestic air travel in South Africa is worth around R13 billion per annum. The broader travel sector in southern Africa is estimated to be worth more than R50 billion. With kulula’s new look and three distinctive sub-brands, we expect to have more flexibility to associate kulula with a wider array of products within, and outside, the travel sector.

2. Do you think a “Web 2.0″ feel is right for the brand considering many saying that web 2.0 in design is out?

Web 2.0 means different things to different people and without getting into the details, kulula plans to be more interactive with its customer base in a future incarnation of kulula.com, especially on the air and travel side of things.

3. Would you be able to tell me how much the redesign cost and who helped? Did you outsource the design or manage it in-house?

The cost of the new CI is less than a tank of petrol for 5 flights from CT to JHB. The design was created in collaboration with the Johannesburg office of Brand Union. A new advertising campaign, conceived by King James advertising in Cape Town, will launch in mid September to support the new kulula travel brand. Over all the re-design didn’t cost much because the biggest element we had to change was our website, which we build, design and manage in-house; so it was just a matter of getting the resources to do it on time.

4. Are there more plans to delve in to the social media world with the Kulula brand?

Yes…stayed tuned…

5. How long has the design been in progress?

The new look for kulula has been part of this year’s strategic plan and has been envisioned for a while.

6. I see that there seem to be plans for a Kulula Travel and Connect to complement Kulula Air. Can you tell me a bit more about these?

Taking a plane is more than about just getting from A to B. A trip could be for pleasure, for business, to explore, to escape etc. In addition, while travelling, many South Africans want to keep in touch, either on a cell phone or a laptop. With this in mind, kulula’s partnership with Altech is a complementary business to our core competence – flying passengers. Similarly, kulula travel is a logical brand extension into related areas such as hotels, car rentals and travel packages. As a trust online brand, we have a great platform to build on and encourage more consumers to extend their favourable kulula brand experience into other products that are similarly easy to browse and purchase online (all in the same place – something no other online travel retailer is doing). With more than R2 billion in revenue each year and over 650 000 unique browsers monthly, kulula is the largest online retailer in South Africa. With this strong base and entrenched consumer respect, kulula has the opportunity to extend into complementary business lines within and beyond the travel sector.

Last night I attended an absolutely hilarious opening. No it wasn’t a joke, but there were lots of jokes present.

It was the launch of a new mobile “service” called Comedy Twist Mobile.

You can visit the website at comedytwist.co.za. And with that we have a problem number 1.

The website isn’t live and the launch was held last night to the media. That’s bad. Even though the official launch is 1 September 2008, surely if you hold a press conference, comedy event and big fancy “Howzit” type party, you make your website live, even for a second to preview. We got nothing.
There was a glimmer of potential when the host of the evening plugged in his cellphone and visit the WAP site, which we were never given the URL for. Oh well, no preview.

I’m jumping ahead a bit. Let’s go back a step.

What is Comed Twist

The basic idea behind Comedy Twist (CT) is comedic content supplied to you on your cellphone wherever you are. To quote from the flyer I received:

“It’s a new digital content platform, offering high quality video and audio material for an extensive variety of South Africa’s talented comics - all for mobile phones.”

Phew, that’s fairly intense. They are doing a lot. Or are they?

From what I can see CT is trying to duplicate the success of sms subscription services that already exist with one exception, they offer video and audio and ringtones all about comedy. It’s a relatively good twist I think (maybe that’s where the name came from “twist”). The country needs comedy, I love comedy and I want to try this service.

Enter issue number 2.

Premium Content

This is a very strange choice. I suppose that many social media, content producing, user generated content websites have struggled in the past with monetizing good ideas. But Comedy Twist think they have a solution. Make people pay for content.

In my opinion this could be the downfall of the entire concept. The prices for what seems to be “On-Demand” content:

Video - R10

30-50 second live joke

Audio - R5

30-70 second live joke

Ringtones - R15

15-30 second looped funny ringtone

Video Discount Basket - R5

15-30 second live jokes

This brings up my next question: What does “Live Joke” mean? Anyways, that’s besides the point.

You do have another option, you can subscribe to the service which has a “revolutionary” one-click-opt-out. Nice selling point, but not new. You can SMS “comedy” to 38370 and a video will be sent to your phone every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Three videos.

Target Market

This seems to be a good idea, decide who you are targeting. Comedy Twist is targeting LSM 7-10. My immediate reaction is that’s where the money is, they will pay for the content. But then my research tells me that LSM 7-10 have cellphones, they have cellphones that are able to receive video but they a) are not interested in SMSing a number to subscribe to a service that is going to bug them every other day of the week, comedy or not and b) LSM 7-10 have trouble visiting WAP sites on the their phones and by that I mean that many don’t actually know how. This is not an insurmountable problem, but it will take a fair amount of marketing, above and below the line and a lot of education.

That is not to say that LSM 7-10 wont be successful if targeted correctly and with money behind the project (I can’t say how much money is behind the project) so who can tell how it will go.

It just leads me to wonder about the approach. I know alot of kids (in their teens) who spend hours and hours playing games with others on their mobiles, blowing cash to interact, chatting on Mxit and using other free and subscription services. Why? Because they know how and they know that LSM 7-10 Mommy and Daddy will pay for their usage. Simple. To get to the money, go through the children. It’s worked well so far.

Almost a potentially great mobile social network

I don’t want to go on about this but Comedy Twist had the potential to be a cracking social network on the mobile platform. People love to laugh, people love jokes and love comedy. Even more so, people love to laugh at themselves, their friends and other people making fun of other people. This could have been used VERY effectively to create a social network around laughter, jokes, pranks and anything else in the genre.

It will survive

Why? Because some of the funniest people in South Africa are on board for the ride. Trevor Noah to just name one that I saw at the event. The man must be the funniest guy I’ve had the pleasure of seeing live. The comedians will save this ship from a certain premium-content go-slow.

I awoke a few days ago to a countdown timer on Godaddy.com. I’ve made a conscious choice recently to purchase whatever domains I feel are or might be worth something, anything, to anyone.

So with intrigue I registered two domains that I have now been told I did not manage to register.

I first went straight to southafrica.me and bought it, money off my credit card.
Then I went and tried to buy talk2.me and again, money off my credit card. Gone.

About twenty minutes later and I received confirmation of the registration of both the .me domains successfully went through. Unfortunately that was not to be as I received this:

Dear Nic Haralambous,

The following domain name has failed to be registered:

SOUTHAFRICA.ME

Error: SOUTHAFRICA.ME: cannot register - already registered

We will evaluate this error and retry the registration
if appropriate.

If we are unable to successfully register the domain
name, your account will be credited accordingly. Please
allow one business day for the refund to be processed.

Please contact GoDaddy.com, Inc. if you need any further
assistance:
http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/support.asp?prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=gdbb14

Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com, Inc.

And that was that. Done and dusted. No domain, no millions of dollars from the fantastic SEO tips that obviously have cause they are hot property right now. Now talk2.me, no southafrica.me no nothing, at all, nada, zip.

But I think I’ll make it out alive, I still have a trump card or two that could come in to play. But who doesn’t these days?

I did manage to purchase haralambous.me which I have redirected to this domain. My question, in the end, is whether or not it’s actually worth owning a .me domain?

Thanks to twitter I have managed to amass a large scope of online payment options.

Here’s the list:

• Virtual Card Services
• 2CheckOut
• MyGate
• Setcom
• PayGate
• Bango

I can’t write a more detailed description of these offerings as I haven’t delved in to them yet. As soon as I have made a choice and the system has been put in place I’ll blog about my choice.

Thanks to Jason, Simone, Luke, Charl, Andrew and Workhomeparents for tweeting suggestions.

Doritos has been everywhere lately, all over the radio, a few other ads here and there. Basically they have been punting their Facebook page.

I eventually saw that one of my friends on FB had joined the group as well as ±1500 people.

My immediate reaction is that this is a flop of a campaign. Advertising on radio is no cheap affair but an affair it is. You face the risk of being caught out by your better half - the listeners or target market. And to me it seems as though this has happened to Doritos.

Why I think this is campaign was a flop?

Coming off the back of a great advertising campaign with their “Moment of boldness” A few years ago I can’t believe that Doritos could have done so badly with this one. That campaign was a viral campaign before there were viral campaigns. To this day I know many people who still joke about their moments of boldness.

At the time of writing this post there were 777 122 people from South Africa above the age of 18 on Facebook. That works out to about 0.2% of the users on FB, from SA actually bothered to become a fan of the brand. In my mind, that’s a bit of a flop.

Why this could be perceived to be a successful campaign

Theoretically what we could be looking at here is quality over quantity. Involvement and activity over masses of inactive users/fans.

But let’s look at this for a moment before we get ahead of ourselves. The available features on the FB page of Doritos are: Notes, Photos, Video, Wall Comments, Events and Discussion Board.

To analyse these in a bit more detail:

Wall
313 posts

Discussion Board
Topic 1: 120 posts by 95 people
Topic 2: 29 posts by 25 people

Videos
12 fan videos

Photos
44 photos
5 albums

Events
Event 1 - 6 confirmed guests, 4 wall posts
Event 2 - 28 confirmed guests, 6 wall posts

Notes
7 notes
144 comments

Looking at the above breakdowns I honestly cannot say that all the money Doritos must have spent on their mainstream ad campaigns was worth it. 44 photographs and 12 videos is really not a good response in my opinion. Especially considering that there are ±1500 people in the group and over 750 000 people in SA on FB. That means that less than 1% of the fans on the page posted a video and almost 3% of the fans posted a photograph.

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve posted, viewed and commented on hundreds of photos on FB, that should’ve been the saving grace but alas, it wasn’t.

What Doritos could have done differently

Expanded their “moment of boldness” campaign to an online network of viral campaigns. Blogs, videos, podcasts and “fake events” that could have boosted the reputation of the brand for the young and socially in touch.

I can picture the blog and videos now; South Africans all over filming their moment of boldness, recording fake jumps, dares and ironic, satirical parodies of the “bold” factor.

Doritos could have done more with their Facebook group. Updates, invites, ads, coupons, giveaways, freebies. Sometimes it just takes a bit of gritty interaction to spread the word for a fan page, not an entire radio ad campaign. Other than giveaways the Doritos fan page gave nothing to its members. No community offering. I know a lot of people who feel an affinity to Doritos, it’s their choice chip, but they were not enticed to join this group. People like Apple Students has it right on their page. They have a community, not a product.

Below the line marketing would have worked better. Get bloggers involved, send them a box of crisps and ask them to eat them, rally a party around the chips, get other bloggers in on it and spread the word slowly to all their readers via the subsequent posts.

Print would even have worked better than radio. More people will sit near a computer while reading a newspaper/magazine than will be listening to the radio, so why put it on the radio? You are probably driving in your car when you hear about the Doritos fan page, not sitting by a pc with internet access. Bad move.

I did try to contact Doritos, the admin of the group or anyone but no one responded. I gave them a few working days. I’d love to know if they consider this campaign to be successful or if they are looking in to recovering from the flop that I see?