Keeping Up with the MediaHeads: Season 7, Episode 3: Q1 Off Mute

New Year\’s, Back to School, Valentine\’s Day, Mid-Term Break, Unmute Masterclass Series and seventy-three days of load shedding have seen 2023 kick off to a roaring start! I’ve often noted how I love the way South Africans engage and interact with each other when under pressure. As the first quarter of the year is about to wrap up with our first public holiday looming and April Fool\’s Day soon thereafter, I definitely feel like we’ve taken 2023 Off Mute!

We are a company of storytellers, and every month is a chapter in our journal. Our vision for 2023 was to help take clients, brands, briefs, and campaigns “Off Mute” using that one thing we love: stories.

We’ve spent the last three months better understanding the power of personal stories and how to voice them. We’ve always known that everyone has a story, and those who are able to articulate themselves stand out in a crowd. Standing out is about being different, being noticed, and being vulnerable. When one is able to understand the vulnerabilities and express them in a narrative, the mute button is switched off.

It has been such an exhilarating few months talking about taking campaigns off mute and sharing our insights with clients and colleagues. We often underestimate the impact of basic storytelling, wanting to complicate the narrative. The basics win: time and timing, characters, conflict, the ability to include the audience into the heart of the story, and, most importantly, the ability to listen.

We connect. And we connect our clients to platforms and products that help amplify their stories. Targeted messages require attention to platform usage and proper planning. Marketing budgets no longer have additional scope for the “nice to haves,” and decisions need to be driven by exceptional planning. Taking campaigns off-mute is not an ad-hoc process. Campaign managers carefully manage each part of the process, maximizing the opportunities around budget and platforms. Story synergies connect brands and audiences, and it is important to understand what opportunities each story creates.

We’ve loved listening to brands and clients unearth new stories and develop old ones. From legacy brands to start-ups, we’ve been un-muting campaigns one story at a time! One of the exciting things to share is the way in which stories coincide. When we know what we want to say, how we want to say it, and why we want to share the story, opportunities to collaborate become clearer. As a specialist agency, integration and brand synergy are areas we thrive on.

We’re looking forward to turning the volume up on more stories in the MediaHeads 360 journal in the next few months. If you think you’re on mute, you probably are! Let us help you find your voice, your story, your synergy.