We are very proud to announce that, following a recent pitch process, we have been appointed as Bidvest Bank’s communications partner. Given that their slogan is GET IT DONE, we feel that we share a crucial piece of DNA with them, and

are hugely looking forward to getting things done and changing the face of banking in SA.

Davenport, co-founder of the Ireland/Davenport (ID) advertising agency, has joined the Havas group as chief creative officer.Davenport has worked on some of SA’s biggest accounts, including SA Breweries, BMW, Standard Bank, Investec, Avis, Vodacom, MTN and SA Tourism. Awards include more than 20 Lions from the Cannes international advertising festival.

Our CEO Lynn Madeley was at eNCA this morning talking about the launch of the Havas initiative #TakeThisThread, which aims to empower domestic abuse survivors. The official launch will be at the Doek On Fleek Lifestyle event this Saturday. Buy your tickets and join our movement: https://bit.ly/2IzCZzG

27 January 2018, Johannesburg, South Africa – On 23rd January 2018, the great jazz legend and anti-apartheid struggle icon, Hugh Masekela, passed on. Bra Hugh was a hero to many – through his life as a struggle icon, and his genius as a jazz musician. To celebrate his life, Universal Music Group and Havas Southern Africa pay homage in sound, a language well understood and well mastered by the great man himself. The tribute marks the passing of a legend and celebrates a life well lived; an epitome of freedom both in his contribution to the anti-apartheid struggle and to jazz worldwide.

VIEWPOINT Enough already with Digital Doomsday Prepping! About 2 years ago, I noticed that the majority of the briefs crossing my desk had something in common: a need to compete in the futurist narrative. A synopsis for the category trends in ICT, telecommunications and even some seemingly unrelated verticals was: ‘a future you don’t understand is coming, and without us, you won’t be able to deal with it.’ It hasn’t let up. If anything, it has accelerated into a wall of parity messages insisting that either the future is scary or it’s great, but without Brand X, you won’t be able to keep up. Insert consequences here, both personal and business. It’s easy to judge these brand messages as unimaginative, or manipulative in the predictable way advertisers are perceived by the public, but this narrative wasn’t born in isolation.

Talent management in an industry that is still grappling with transformation can be tricky. It’s an ongoing negotiation. From looking for the right talent at the right level, to developing future-fit talent that meets the needs of the business both today and tomorrow – business leaders have a responsibility to build and maintain diverse teams that create interesting work that will positively impact client businesses.

What happens when your hobby is using machine learning and publicly available videos to face-swap celebrity faces onto pornstars’ bodies? You create an entirely new industry, and that is exactly what Redditor, deepfakes, has done, spawning a new genre of porn called Deepfake. Pornography has always been on the bleeding edge of mass communication, always finding new ways to reach and entice new markets. Although we know that pornography is scripted, at least we know that the performers are who they say they are. Mostly. Since deepfakes’ work hit the virtual shelves, many fake celebrity porn videos have surfaced, making their way onto exposé sites claiming them to be real footage, seriously damaging the reputations of mostly women actors, across the globe.

It’s 1492 and the printing press is starting to gain traction. This bothers a very select group of people very much. Monks, who had for hundreds of years been painstakingly copying out the scriptures word for word, are about to be replaced. A monk named Johannes Trithemius goes as far as writing an essay espousing the moral superiority of handwriting, claiming that handwritten books would last far longer than their printed counterparts. But nothing can stop the march of progress, and the printing press goes on to revolutionise the way we share information. Today, books are a cultural cornerstone, and monks are enjoying a lot more free time. It all worked out in the end.