I must insist that you stop writing for The Daily Maverick. Now. Put away your pen, shut down your laptop, throw away your dictionary and lead a life of verbal abstemity.

You’re ruining it for the rest of us. Those of us who are hobbyist scribes. While we doodle, agonise, write, delete, re-write, CTRL-Z through entire paragraphs, you effortlessly churn out 500, 600, 800 word articles cutting through the fog of politics with, alternately and as is appropriate, a scabbard and a scalpel. Then, to really rub it in, you lob the steaming entrails and innards of political life onto the operating table for your readers to feast on even as we’re still wrestling with the can opener, trying to find a witty and insightful opening line that just won’t crystalise on the screen in front of us. You’re long done, with your feet up on your desk, sipping a strawberry daiquiri while showing the rest of us the middle finger.

Stop it. You are, I suspect, a bloody agent. Or worse. You could, in fact, be a bloody double agent. So those who think you’re on their side are wrong, and possibly right, depending on who you’re working for that day. And what’s with the schizophrenia? One day we’re all in the land of milk and honey. We middle-class whiteys tear up our Aussie Immigration forms and reach for another beer. Then – wham – the next day comes along and you tell us that everything is shit. So off we go to Qantas.com in search of cheaper airfares.

I remember you. In the fluorescent glow of the Rhodes Music Radio studio you used to pounce in, gazelle-like, all eager eyed, fresh-faced and enthusiastic. You actually used to write your sports bulletins before the red light came on (imagine that!) while the rest of us glaze-gazed at you through an unshaven, hungover blear. You had something that, today as a parent, I recognise as being a “work ethic”. In 2011 speak – WTF????

Which brings me back to my central point, which can best be summed up thus: How dare you? We were both at the same university, probably shared the same lecturers, bars and possibly even girlfriends. But yet, somehow and somewhere, you discovered that you had a knack for finding the political pulse and putting your finger on it. And then digging through the flesh with your fingernail, ripping out the pulsing vein, and holding it aloft like some sort of Lion King trophy. It almost makes me want to burst into Hakuna Matata. And me? I don’t know where I was at the time, but it sure as hell wasn’t doing anything nearly as useful as you. How dare you? Where did you learn so much? How did you get so bloody clever? Fuck.

It’s just not fair. And I must ask you to stop now.

Regards
Tony

PS The above piece took me twelve days to write. I did nothing else – not even eat. You would have done it in twelve minutes, and it would have been better. I rest my case. Bastard.

Thank you first of all for inviting me to speak tonight. This is a beautiful space not just in itself, but for what it represents, what it means for the people of the city and, most importantly, what it says about the value we place on creative spaces.

I’m told – by those who wield a palette and paintbrush in a manner more effective than me – that artists view the world as their inspiration, and that what we see on the canvasses they create, in the sculptures they chisel and in the words they write, is an attempt to capture a notion, a thought, a philosophy, a dream, a nightmare, an argument, a suggestion or provocative statement. An artist’s work is always just a single piece of the puzzle they create in their lifetime, the argument they have with the world around them, the visual representation of a moment in their minds. All of this seems to suggest to me that Oscar Wilde was right when he said “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” Or, as Tom Stoppard wrote in Travesties, “To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war.” So it’s a source of fascination to me to watch what is happening in the art world in Port Elizabeth… this healthy spirit of collaboration and co-operation by your artists, this almost counter-intuitive coming together for the purposes of creating alone. You’re finding strength in numbers. Or put another way, you’re finding safety and comfort in numbers and in community. On the one hand it’s encouraging. On the other, the reasons behind the notion that artists in South Africa today need to find comfort, is chilling.

The arts are under threat. We know this. And the threat isn’t obvious – it’s not blatant, out and out censorship, arrests, muzzling and the clumsy, sometimes violent attempts at forcing a party line from every pen and paintbrush. History has recorded that in totalitarian states in the past, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. Today’s threat is in many ways more insidious. It’s the threat of neglect. Of disregard. Sometimes even disdain. The threat comes from the absence of regard for the arts we see in our society. It comes from the fact that children can leave school without ever having touched a musical instrument, written a poem and read it aloud on a stage, without having experienced the exhilaration of a live performance. And I’m not talking about Shakespeare, Mozart or Rembrandt. Of course I include them, but I talk also of the words of Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and JM Coetzee, the choreography of Keita Fodeba, the music of Cesaria Evora, Sibongile Khumalo and Miriam Makeba, the art of Sokari Douglas Camp and William Kentridge.

Art Galleries are left to crumble or get by on the bare minimum, libraries can’t keep their doors open, and public spaces for art appreciation, practice and immersion in the arts are few and far between and, inevitably, driven by the passion of a few individuals and the cash of a few benefactors. Increasingly, and perhaps logically, the arts are taking a back seat in our society. So Arts Education – that is both education about art and education through art, for children and for adults – remains a distant dream.

Yes, we have other important things to do with the public purse. We have houses to build, schools and hospitals to create out of thin air, jobs to create and the elderly and vulnerable to protect and care for. Those are important. But so too is something else: social cohesion.

South Africa, as we keep hearing, is in desperate need of this “social cohesion”. It’s a phrase that sadly exists mostly on the pages of politician’s speeches and is seldom seen in the way we prioritise the arts. Because social cohesion is a nice phrase that essentially means we need to learn to find each other again. We need to pull ourselves together as a society and discover our humanity again after decades in which that humanity was trampled upon and left both the trampled and the trampler poorer and weaker. But the truth is this. We’re not going to find ourselves on the battlefields of the rugby or football fields; nor will we across a boardroom table, in the corridors of parliament or as we drive past each other in rush hour. We’ll find ourselves only through the arts. We’ll find each other through song, uplifting words well spoken, dance, music, celebration, mutual appreciation of beauty.

But we live in a society where this is spoken about but never acted upon. Consider this quote: “The artist does not create for the artist: He creates for the people and we will see to it that henceforth the people will be called in to judge its art”.

Those words resonate with us all because they represent a chilling arrogance on the part of the speaker that feels familiar to us. There’s a threat implied in those words (“we will see to it”); and an implication that the arts and free expression somehow need to serve an unseen master. No-one here would be surprised if I told you they were the words of certain political leaders we’ve had in our distant past, or even perhaps some from more recent times who may or may not have controlled the purse strings of the arts. But they didn’t. They were words spoken decades ago by Adolf Hitler. The sad thing is, they feel as if they could have been said in this country.

The threat is marching toward us and its path is being cleared by neglect, disdain and disregard. As a result some of our languages will fade away; the nuances of our many rich cultures will begin drifting backward into the dust kicked up by McDonalds, the iPhone, MTV, and Idols. And the less a country realizes that, the more it falls to the artist to shout it from the rooftops. And if the rooftops don’t exist for shouting, then the artists need to take it upon themselves to build the rooftops, and then to begin shouting. And that’s what you’ve done here. Fortunately, today in South Africa, we have an Arts Minister who is more likely to be listening than many we’ve had in the past. So maybe your shouting will not be in vain.

The threat comes from another direction, though, even less in our control. As the global economy flounders and recession bites, big corporates have less and less available to spend on perceived luxuries like the arts. Wallets are slammed shut, budgets are cut and big business is thinking like small business again. But it’s depressing only if you focus on the here and now. How will we perceive this era in 50, 60, 70 years’ time? Let’s learn and take comfort from what has come before.

In the 1930s America was in the grips of the Great Depression. But it was in that decade that the jazz standard Summertime was written; that Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington and Glenn Miller came to the fore, and we saw the birth of swing. Artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning hit their stride; and buildings like the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Rockefeller Center were completed. Andrew Mellon gave his $25 million dollar art collection to the American people and contributed $10 million to the construction of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The world saw great works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wilder and John Steinbeck. And in case you thought everyone was wandering about feeling sorry for themselves, remember that the 1930s gave us Dr Seuss and Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people. I mention this all for one reason only – to demonstrate what I think we all know: that artists, architects, musicians and writers will always find a way to make their voice heard. No matter how dire the circumstances, no matter how hopeless it all seems. History has proven to us that the arts can survive in the absence of a strong economy; but an economy can be stimulated and can flourish through artistic endeavour.

As I look at this wonderful space tonight, I’m reminded that Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “In the mud and scum of things / There always, always something sings.” And the opening of this building is a reminder to all of us that the arts will always prevail; and that the arts will always have a home in the hearts and cities of civilized nations. I applaud those of you who have made this happen. Who have kicked down the doors of bureaucracy, had sleepless nights, gone out cap in hand to bring this vision to life. The work you have done is important. What you have created is immense. And you’ve made sure that, somewhere in the heart of Port Elizabeth, something will always sing.”

Before I was someone whose Top 5 list of anything mattered, I would constantly write them in my head: My Top 5 songs this week, Top 5 meals of all time; Top 5 crushes….that sort of thing. Now that I’m CEO of the Festival and have been asked to write a list of my Top 5 things to look forward to this year, presumably because (finally) there might be someone out there who actually cares, my brain has frozen and I can’t decide where to start. So I’ll duck the question a bit, and meander my way to the answer.

Let me start with the things I don’t want to experience at the Festival this year. It would be really, really nice to not have to refund anyone any tickets because they didn’t enjoy a show, or felt misled by the description, or because they were in another show which ran late and do I know how far PJs is from Rhodes? Do I? Well, yes I do actually because I was a student in this town and, when my car wouldn’t start, I’d walk from my digs onto campus. I know exactly how far it is – and don’t really care that you couldn’t get your lardy butt there in time…but hey, smile, certainly sir, here’s your refund.

While I was at Rhodes I had a moment of humiliation that stands out: Albie Sachs came to speak at the University and I was somehow booked to operate the PA system during his lecture. Being an insensitive oaf I spent a bit of time during his talk chatting to my mate who had helped me set the system up. Until, that is, Albie stopped himself mid-sentence and told me to “shut up”. Direct quote. Now that he’s a Board member of the Festival, and that I’m a little more sophisticated, I will try and make amends by attending his talk on Think!Fest and actually listening. And while I’m there I’ll go and see Dr Christopher Smith, the Naked Scientist, who is on 702 each week and is a man who should wear a t-shirt saying “Forget Google – ask me”.

As a student I was prone to hang out at music venues during the Festival. It’s what I did. And if I were still a student today there’s no way I’d miss Guy Buttery, the Syd Kitchen Tribute Concert or Boo. My hangouts would be the Cuervo Music Room, EQ and the Urban Lounge, followed by the Long Table. Generally there would be other Rhodes students about – most notably, in a Festival context, Rob van Vuuren and James Cairns. Both of them are all over the Fringe programme this year, and both are worth seeing – even if they are merely sitting on a stage reading a telephone book aloud (I don’t think either of them have actually done that, but now that I’ve planted the seed, look out for it on the Fringe next year).

In more recent years I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the Long Table. True, mostly I’ve spent it dodging artists who wanted to explain that no-one has come to see their show because ‘they were allocated a technician who couldn’t tell a gel from jelly or a dimmer rack from a rack of lamb’. Or because ‘no-one can find the venue / the box office/ the ticket seller’; or, ‘because someone stole my posters so no-one knows about my show’.  Some of the time they’d be right, of course, but…. Maybe, just maybe, it’s because their show is, as Corne & Twakkie would say, ‘kak’.

For some reason I generally associate Rob Murray with the Long Table. Not because his shows are rubbish (they aren’t) but because he’s always there. I have become a fan of his work despite the fact that he’s never bought me a drink. This year he’s acting in Kardiavale, and directing Benchmarks – both shows I’m pretty sure will be inspired and inspiring (Heineken, please, Rob).

I love Award ceremonies. Red carpets, paparazzi, little trays of canapés and fizzy drinks in tall glasses.  We do none of that at the Festival, but a good indication of what’s hot are the two Standard Bank award programmes – the Young Artist Awards and the Ovation Awards on the Fringe. Both are flags of excellence and, if you’re in doubt about how to spend your time, you can pick a production out of the programme that has one of those indicators of quality and chances are you’ll be blown away. Look out, particularly, for Neil Coppen’s Abnormal Load and, if you didn’t see it last year, London Road on the Fringe.

I seem to have run out of space, and you’ve probably run out of patience, so let me end with a bullet point list of some other things you must see or do at the Festival in 2011:

•    Daddy Day could be the best thing you see this year.
•    Iris Brunette is technically the most polished production I’ve seen.
•    Mark Banks – the funniest man in South Africa.
•    Everything Sylvaine Strike touches turns to gold, and The Table will probably be no exception.
•    Selaelo Selota packs more energy and charisma into his shows than just about any other artist I know.
•    Spend an hour on the lawns of the Transnet Village Green, eating Hari Krishna food and staring up at the Tomorrow’s Joy bottle-top picture.
•    Support our Innovation Hub participants – they’re cool people with great ideas. Rent a bike from Pinkie; let Buli charge your cell phone or Zimasa babysit your kids.
And what shouldn’t you do? Don’t be late for a show and, if you are, don’t come and tell me about it. Have an AMAZ!NG time.

On the one hand, like most sensible people, I want to be outraged by what seems to be a clumsy and crude approach to media control: write nice things and we will advertise; if you’re nasty, we won’t. And it’s no small potatoes either – word is that the Government ad budget is around R1bn.

On the other hand, though, there is something about media owners’ response (as quoted in the Daily Maverick) that ranckles because I think it is disingenuous.

Let me explain, using my present situation as an example. I run the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. It’s the biggest Festival in Africa, one of the five biggest in the world. And in a tiny little city in a far-flung corner of South Africa each year there are about 2500 performances over 11 days, that sell over 180 000 tickets. We’re pretty darn big, and proud of it. As we all know, though, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better….but fortunately Grahamstown has long ago established its artistic credentials. More new work – premieres, world premieres, and cutting-edge experimental work – gets staged in Grahamstown than anywhere else in South Africa, making it a strong barometer of the state if the arts in this country and, increasingly, globally. Our Standard Bank Young Artists are a group who, each year, are inevitably on top of their game and go on to make serious ripples in the global arts pond. This is where careers are launched, trends are set and waves are made.

So, getting back to the media, one would think that any media outlet with even a passing interest in the arts would get excited about the Festival each year. Fortunately for us, and for the arts, many, possibly most, do, and we get a lot of pre-Festival coverage.  But there are some who steadfastly refuse to print a word about us, until, maybe, the Festival is staged and even then sometimes it comes wrapped in a cynical cloak or appears under tabloid headlines because of an unplanned crotch shot.

Wearing my former journalist and public service hat, I have to accept this. The media sets its own agenda. We can send out as many press releases and story tips as we like but, at the end of the day, there are editorial decisions to be made about what readers want. And they aren’t mine to make. I respect that.

If that’s where it ended, I would have no problem at all joining the outraged voices crying foul over Mr Manyi’s position. But it doesn’t.

Just last week I got a phone call from an advertising sales person at a highly respected newspaper – one which, by my reckoning, would have the arts coming out quite near the top of any survey of readers’ interests. It also happens to be one of the few newspapers which, this year, has published not a single word about the Festival. This sales person started the conversation by telling me how much the newspaper wanted to support the Festival and would be happy to publish an entire supplement on it should I buy an advert from her. She got even more excited when I hinted that some of our sponsors might be convinced to buy some space. If I was Mr Manyi I might have leapt at the offer. But I’m not and, if I am to remain true to my outrage, I should politely decline.

The logic goes something like this: A newspaper knows its readers best. It also knows and sets its own news agenda. By omitting mention of the Festival, it is making a statement: “this, in our opinion, is of no interest to our readers.” Fine. But then, dear media, don’t then come to me and say that you’re a good place for me to advertise – why would I spend some of my very limited budget advertising in a newspaper which has readers who are not interested in what I am trying to sell? “Ah”, would come the response “then you need a supplement to convince them.”

Supplements, special features and promotions are some of the ways newspapers shoot their integrity in the foot. Every time one is published a tiny piece of the brand dies inside. It matters not that it has the words “advertising feature” across the top. It only works, as the advertising team will tell you, because it sits alongside editorial and is only discernible from the editorial if the reader scratches a bit beneath the surface which, as we know, most people won’t do. It let’s the advertiser feel good that they are getting “quality editorial”; it helps the sales people reach their targets; and it let’s editors sleep at night because their integrity is intact. In reality, though, no one wins.

Advertising is about buying environments. Brands know that. Show me a friendly environment – one which is supportive of what we do, one with readers passionate about what we do and who are predisposed to coming down to Grahamstown, and I will gladly give some momentum to my ticket sales by supporting it with advertising. But show me a desert or hostile environment and I’m going to walk away. The media owner itself, through the editorial decisions it is making, is telling me that the battle is probably lost for the hearts and minds of those readers. So I’ll focus my time and resources in areas where I’m more likely to win.

Is that very different from the choice Jimmy Manyi is making?

Sure, there is one crucial difference: he is spending public money. But he also has a duty to make the right choices about how to effectively spend that money, or else those same newspapers will be all over him, and quite rightly too.

So I can’t join the anti-Manyi chorus too loudly, as much as I want to. The much-valued “Chinese wall” between advertising and editorial might exist as a way for a newspaper to feel ok about itself, but it is frequently bent, warped and shifted by both sides. Sometimes blatantly, sometimes less so.

On the one hand, there is an underlying philosophy that says all information should be made public and that we have a right to know what is being said behind closed doors. In a country faced with the prospect of a Media Tribunal and with a prevailing hostility to the media from many in government, I would usually support any attempt to rip back the covers on nefarious deals, sinister conversations, backhanders and perception-fiddling from those in power. Where communication is between two paid officials – or even one official and another non-public servant – and it is intended to manage a deception or crime, I’m all for grabbing it and turning it into a headline. And I think whistle-blowers on such activity should be protected and celebrated for their bravery.

Some of what Wikileaks has published is important. Jack Shafer, writing on Slate.com, says the leak “shows the low regard U.S. secretaries of state hold for international treaties that bar spying at the United Nations. Both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, systematically and serially violated those treaties to gain an incremental upper hand.” It is important that we know that, and uncomfortable for those in power to realise that they haven’t gotten away with it.

On the other side of the coin, though (and this is what bugs me), a mass evacuation of the bowels of American diplomacy onto computer screens around the world, while titillating and intriguing for the person on the street, isn’t a managed leak. It’s unnecessary and doesn’t serve to prevent or reveal a crime. And so it smacks of sensationalism for headlines sake.

The world of diplomacy is a mystery to me. Like many others, I enjoy spy movies where you can pretend to get an insight into the hidden machinations of foreign governments and their agents. I have often wondered what world leaders really think about each other – it is all smiles for the cameras, handshakes at the press conference accompanied by a friendly, bland “the engagement was fruitful” media statement. But as the doors of the conference room swing shut and world leaders are left alone, the leaders re-humanise. As Barrack Obama sinks into his pillow for the night at some big summit, he turns to Michelle and says…..what? Does he like David Cameron and Vladmir Putin? Does he think Gaddaffi is a gigolo? Would he dance with Angela Merkel? I’d love to know. But I don’t need to know, and that’s where Wikileaks crosses the line – their currency has moved from being what we need to know to keep the world safe and our leaders honest, to what we merely enjoy finding out. It is tabloid journalism for the New York Times reader.

Diplomacy is important. Those glib statements and public smiles are as necessary as they may be dishonest. For countries to get on with each other and avoid blowing each other up, the relationship can’t be managed like a marriage or real-world friendship. Diplomacy is a delicate dance around egos, issues, personalities and conflicting pressures. Yes, it is insincere and occasionally dishonest. But I, for one, would rather prefer that Barrack Obama looks Kim Il-sung in the eye and says “nice tie, and thank you for that delicious puppy-stew” and not mean it, than is brutally honest with him (“the tie is too garish for your Salvation Army suit and the puppy was tough and overspiced”) and bring on a nuclear war. Hell hath no fury like a dictator scorned.

And so publishing en masse decades of private communications between governments strikes me as being gratuitous. Wikileaks would argue that we have a right to know what gets written and said behind closed doors. My question is….do we? From where do we derive that right? The inner workings of diplomacy, the tactical shuffles between foreign powers need to be, well, diplomatic. Boy meets girl, they have a good evening together, the next day boy SMS’s his best friend to tell him how it went. Does girl have a right to know what the SMS says? Sure, she may desperately want to know, but isn’t it better for the steady growth of their relationship and the delicate rules of engagement that surround first encounters that his true feelings get revealed in a different way, over time? The US Ambassador to Zimbabwe’s real views on Robert Mugabe are interesting and nice to know, but let’s not confuse that with some sort of imagined right.

And that’s my problem with Wikileaks, and also my dilemma. A wholesale, unfiltered dump of information like this is gratuitous and doesn’t draw any distinction between what is critical information and what is simply salacious. The dilemma is, and I see this clearly, that in order for it to be filtered someone needs to do the filtering, which already imposes an agenda onto the information. It is an unresolvable dilemma, so the question becomes – who do we trust more?

It’s difficult to write of Wikileaks without some mention of the man who runs the place. Particularly when his own personality and behavior give such vital clues to the real reason behind the site. Watching him perform, it’s hard to reach any conclusion other than that he thinks he is in his very own spy movie. His brow is creased with the importance of his purpose, his burden is heavy, but he soldiers on in the name of free information. Jack Shafer, again, describes him best: “he’s a pompous egomaniac sporting a series of bad haircuts and grandiose tendencies. And he often acts without completely thinking through every repercussion of his actions.” Quite.

And don’t expect any top secret documents to be leaked from the trenches of Assange’s war. Former staffers who speak publicly of his ego and paranoia are smeared and described as “peripheral figures… spreading poison”.  Assange is often less than honest himself. On 19 October this year he vehemently denied that Wikileaks was about to publish tens of thousands of documents pertaining to the Iraq war. Three days later, he did just that. Then there is his interview with CNN where, peeved at the way things were going (the interviewer dared to go down a line of questioning that questioned his credibility), he walked out in a huff. A short while later he tried to defend himself to CNN’s Larry King, saying that he took offense because CNN should have been focusing on the real issues – those who had died in Iraq, and not on the tabloid stuff. In other words, Assange wants to set the agenda. And despite his veneer of loved-up openness, he knows what is best for the media to report on and will insist that they listen to him. The old schoolyard taunt “he can give but he cannot take” springs to mind. Why should every American diplomat and embassy staffer be fair game – regardless of what they have written or who they are – but yet Assange himself has things he refuses to talk about? No matter what Wikileaks puports to be, it is also a massive monument to Assange’s ego.

The world is a dangerous place these days, and the stakes in the political game are high. Corruption is rife in both government and the private sector, and the media have a critical role in investigating and telling us about it. I want a free, robust media, and we need a knight in shining armour. But I don’t think that Julien Assange is it.

The reaction to my column was predictable. It ranged from “well, he would say that, wouldn’t he” (I am the CEO of the National Arts Festival) to outright hostility. Sports sponsorship is big bucks, propped up by a juggernaut of mega agencies who earn large commissions from every deal, sporting codes hungry for cheques, TV channels chasing viewers and Marketing Managers ferociously protecting their decisions in case their bosses start asking uncomfortable questions. About value (why is this so much?); about return on investment (what’s in it for us?); about scale (do we really need to go this big?); about clutter (which one is our logo?); and about relevance (we’re a bank, that’s a bicep).
Recently the sporting world has begun to feel the pinch. ABSA have retracted from some of their rugby properties, SASOL have forgone the opportunity to pay for Divvie’s elocution lessons, and Standard Bank have exited their relationship with the country’s biggest soccer brands and cricket. (Disclaimer: Standard Bank are one of the sponsors of the National Arts Festival, of which I am CEO as I’ve already mentioned.)

These are all – unfortunately for the sporting codes – wise and sensible decisions for the companies involved. In Standard Bank’s case they had no option. After announcing that they had to retrench 2000 staff (always a painful choice of last resort for a company) there was no way they could justify standing up in front of the media a few months later happily announcing that they were sinking hundreds of millions into sport. There would have been a riot in the media, from customers and the unions. It was perhaps unfortunate timing as both contracts were up for renewal in the first quarter of next year, maybe if they had another year to run and things had stabilised a bit they might not have had to withdraw completely. But that sort of conjecture isn’t helpful – what’s done is done.

The challenge now facing all those brands, and the many others who are critically evaluating their investment in sport, is how to replace them cost-effectively, responsibly and trying to retain some level of brand presence in the marketplace. The answer is self-evident: Arts sponsorships. Yes, I would say that wouldn’t I? But it is an argument backed up by steady logic.

Sponsorships are, or should be, about quality customer engagement and putting your brand into the heart of an experience passionately embraced by your customers and potential customers. Once you’ve acquired the rights, activation becomes the mantra and success will be measured by how your sponsorship has grown market share. That’s Marketing 101.

Marketing 2.0 goes one step further. It requires you to use sponsorships to deepen relationships, to make your brand integral to, but not disruptive to, the experience, and to become part of the multitude of communities that crop up on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to amplify your investment. In short to become part of the community enjoying the experience not the obnoxious outsider brandalizing the experience at every turn.

You’ll notice that I use the word “experience” a lot, rather than “event”, “match”, “festival” or “fixture”. Smart brands understand that the experience is all.

So why does the arts offer a better experience than sport? I’m not going to begin that argument because it’s too subjective. What is backed by fact is the statement that the arts offers a more cost effective experience. To “own” a big sport can cost upward of R100m. To “own” a festival or genre can cost as little as R1m (obviously I’m picking the extremes to make a point, but that’s because the extremes are there for the picking). Value is what the market now needs. People who love sport love sport, people who love arts love arts, and some people enjoy both. Let’s not get into a schoolyard debate about whether it is better to be on the first team rugby or in the inter-house play competition. For those who take part, each is equally important. And the audiences equally valuable to a sponsor.

Advocates of sports sponsorships have a classic fall back: television. Matches are televised, exponentially increasing a brand’s reach and justifying the big ticket. If they’re going to use that argument, though, they need to frame it in the context of responsible sponsorship. They have to prove that having your logo on television deepens the relationship between brand and customer. They have to prove that stadium signage enhances the experience. They have to prove that viewers firstly notice their logo amidst all the clutter, then acknowledge the brand or product attached to it, and then act upon what they have seen. A tough ask. In my opinion, none of those are provable because they’re simply not true. They are clever tools slipped into a contract to make the cost seem more justifiable. Instead, viewers notice, talk about and repeat a simple, low-budget spot dropped in to the rugby breaks with the catchy line “Pump by die dam pump, pump, pump”. How galling for those dropping big cash to own the team, the stadium and the coveted broadcasting rights.
Corporates aren’t buying into the myth any more, as we have seen. To paraphrase Warren Buffet, it is when the tide is low that you can see who isn’t wearing a swimsuit. Right now the tide is lower than it has ever been. And the sporting world is Sandy Bay.
On the other hand there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of festivals, production houses, theatres and artists crafting life-changing experiences for South Africans every single day. And South Africans are flocking to them. Some corporates clocked this ages ago and are reaping the rewards. But there is still opportunity for more. The arts world is ripe for a big brand with plenty of experience of amplifying and activating a sponsorship to get out of the wings and onto the stage. (Scrum metaphors are so last year.) And we have nice swimsuits.

Living in Grahamstown we don’t get too many of those, although I did hand out the prizes at the “Amazing Chase” treasure hunt a few weeks back. Well done to the winner of the movie tickets, and all that.

So this morning, after following the buildup to the Bookmarks on Twitter (party sounded cool and the Twitter stream on BizCommunity this morning was showing an endless roll call of sponsors who were being thanked. Nice.) I thought I’d pop along and see who had been crowned king and queen of the internet in South Africa.

In a deeply ironic way, a list of winners was nowhere to be found. Yes, I am in Grahamstown – once the hub of the SA Interweb, today just another spoke in the wheel – so maybe the data takes longer to get here. But this morning I could buy today’s edition of the M&G at 7:30am…all neatly printed, folded and delivered across the country. So accessing a web page with a list of winners shouldn’t be too much of a problem…should it?

Hmm…..how bout clicking on a direct link in Twitter?

Maybe the BizCommunity site will have an update?

Nope – not since 14 October when they announced their judges. Aren’t these the “premier annual digital media and marketing awards”? Shouldn’t the website, um, work? Shouldn’t Bookmarks winners lists dominate every major website this morning?

Grrr…..this internet thing isn’t all it is cracked up to be, really. Back to my M&G and its comforting paper.

Annoying Orange. More than just a fruit….a really, really annoying fruit. And hilarious too. His video is clocking millions of views on YouTube. (*insert Clockwork Orange joke of your choice*)

There’s a whole bunch (pocket?) of them, but the one above is the clip that has had the most views so far…..the Wazzup video (25.8m views). Also check out the Wasabi video below, which has scored 12m and counting.

Genius.