At Springleap, our community of creatives have been helping our brand and agency clients navigate the dynamic and changing consumer landscape across Africa’s unique countries. In South Africa alone, a melting pot of cultures thrive, and the scope of a brand’s strategic thinking is of paramount importance.

Springleap understands that when it comes to research, collecting insights from consumers alone is not always enough. Certain limitations, such as turnaround times, cost and the inevitable impasse of “so,what now?”, can force brands and agencies to shy away from traditional research methods.

To combat this issue, we introduced our Creative Insights division in January, which in partnership with our creative community introduced the concept of the “meta consumer”. These creative professionals are handpicked from the advertising and brand communications industry of South Africa and have the unique ability of cutting to the core of research problems.

Springleap - our Product Scope

Whether a brand wants to audit an advertisement, mitigate risk, test for local relevancy or launch a product/campaign in the Nigerian market, Springleap will be a partner in ensuring their core message is on the level of consumers.

Brands, are you ready to rock your creative marketing/advertising ROI?

Springleap Trend Spotting Platform

South Africa’s only trend spotting platform is at your disposal!

Other research and trend spotting platforms that are available for brands, agencies and firms in South Africa have stirred up a little bit of frustration. The core reason lies in the relevance (or lack thereof) of these trend reports, which tend to be Africa centric, not South African. There is a perception that Africa should be researched, marketed and branded to as one country - are we living in the United States of Africa? Could we really market a product to the “people of Johannesburg” when in fact the city is home to a landscape of different cultures, ethnicities, psychographics, personalities etc.

We found this gap and filled it with the on the ground, crowdsourcing-inspired growth of our Trend platform, which focuses on exploring the influences and environment in which South African consumers live. Hyper-local in its context, we view these insights as revealing a new empathy driven approach to understanding the daily “consumer experience”.

Targeting South Africa’s three major cities (Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban), we reach out to our creative professionals living and working at the heart of the hype and put them to work gaining invaluable industry and consumer insights. The Springleap Trend platform analyses the scene and reports on the local influencers (bloggers, personalities, the kings and queens of Twitter), brand activity, local imagery, events and hot topics. Where are your consumers going, which events are they attending, which brands are they engaging with, what topics are driving conversations, what brand communication and advertising is making a mark within your markets? Most importantly, what elements are working and which are not?

Sense Check (In Beta)

Traditionally, it is common for brands to spend around $20,000 USD in order to test brand concepts, animatics and ad campaigns. This is an expensive route to travel, and usually the results are limited to the articulation, vocabulary and explanatory abilities of the consumers that make up the panel.

Springleap has created and tested an advanced form of ad testing that can be used in conjunction with traditional methods, or if only testing for relevancy and mitigating risk, instead of ad testing . Our crowdsourced creative professionals will perform a hyper relative critique on any campaign, be it ATL, BTL, print, radio, billboard, video, digital…we have our clients sorted.

In addition to the professional consumer opinion and critique on the relative components of our client’s brand communication, these frontline brand experts will provide an array of new creative executions to choose from. For example, if a fizzy drink’s digital campaign is not as visually engaging to the consumer as it could be, our graphic designers and art directors will pick it up right away and work on a more suitable, lively and saturated colour tone. Similarly, if the copywriting used in a dialogue between two actors in a sports car commercial is not airtight, could be more engaging or runs the risk of being misinterpreted, our experts will provide a refined script for our clients. In essence, Springleap’s Sense Check offers a landscape of expert critique and alternative creative executions on tap.

Brand & Product Audit

Our auditing services crosses the blurred line between brand and product. The two concepts are not often linked together and traditionally considered as separate entities. At Springleap, we understand the transparency between brand and product - and how they should both work in syndication. At the very core, we want our client’s brand to resonate positively with their consumers and target markets, and for their products to reflect the value of what they stand for. Our creative professionals work with brands and the advertising of products on a daily basis and are very familiar with what will ring a bell with sustainable engagement, and what might need a little work.

We unpack the layers of what makes a brand sustainable, healthy and viable and apply it to our client’s current situation. Where is the brand now? How is the brand perceived? What is the situation on the competitor landscape, and how can we reposition ourselves? Springleap showcases these insights and delivers impactful solutions, sourced from our basin of meta consumers.

Similarly for our client’s product range, we’ll magnify the situational analysis and focus on one product at a time. We will draw insight into how well the visual presence is resonating with consumers, how impactful the copy is in explaining its purpose, and every other level of marketing/advertising centric of engagement - as well as directly comparing the product to it’s competitors for a realistic industry approach.

Category Analysis

Springleap’s category analysis showcases our crowdsourcing model’s reach into various regions of Pan Africa. These meta consumers represent our African panels, who serve our clients by having a great deal of knowledge on the trends, happenings, consumer insights, culture, lifestyle of the markets in their country.

We have had clients representing brands from many different industries in South Africa wanting to run campaigns in other African countries. We facilitate the primary research element of this task by testing the waters with our meta consumers abroad. If a brand is wanting to know what Nigerians think about German brands, which sports brand is resonating well with the relative markets in Kenya, or if Ghana’s upper class consumers enjoy premium spirits, we will be able to source the right insights.

Storyboards / Mood boards

A picture can say a thousand words - a philosophy that Springleap believes in. Sometimes, a representation of a supposed brand situation in a Pan African market is better portrayed visually. For example, when you think of a group of college friends in Lagos enjoying a night out together, what images come to mind…Where are they? What drinks are they enjoying? What are they wearing, and what is the topic of their conversation? What does the immediate environment reflect?

We have the sharpest photographers and art directors on board, ready to present us with any visually empowering industry task we might request of them. These experts are pros at visual expression, and will be able to reflect a realistic branding situation by utilising their talent and industry know-how. The ending execution will return as refined storyboard or mood board, depicting a realistic, visually empowered brand environment analysis abroad.

The Springleap Meta Journey - (In Beta)

This is a little sneak preview into a “behind the scenes” view of our creative professionals and the journey they take - step one of inspiring their industry expert process of creative evaluation.

We take our panel on a little “shopping trip” into the unknown…well unknown to the standard consumer anyway! We might ask them to evaluate a major retailer’s yoghurt environment, which brands stand out first, why are they appealing, what reasoning justifies this? We also send them off to brand activations, perhaps to critique the usage of touchpoints and comment on the effectiveness of the overall communication.

Traditionally, companies would label this as “mystery shopping”, and rally a few consumers into action. However the consumer alone would have a great deal of difficulty articulating the branding, creative, marketing, positioning, and advertising elements of a product line.

We crowdsource the finest of creative industry experts to ensure that our clients are provided with the most valuable consumer insights. Why? It’s these insights that give South African brands and agencies the ability to know and keep on track with the trends of their markets better than anyone else, to confidently and proudly celebrate in their refined communication strategies, and most importantly to rock their ROI - hardcore.

Want to experience this innovative action, gain industry expert insights into consumer trends and skyrocket your marketing ROI? Our services are open to you anytime. Please contact trends@springleap.com. The coffee’s on us!