Hollard Insurance teamed up with us in June 2021 to kickstart hyper-localised advertising for four lucky small businesses.
Covid-19 and the consequent lockdowns have had a brutal effect on small businesses around the world, but especially in South Africa. That is why Hollard has decided to allocate their yearly advertising budget towards 12 South Africa small businesses with their “Big Ads for Small Business” Campaign.
We caught up with Joanna Mondon, Group Marketing Manager of Hollard, to discuss what motivated Hollard to invest their campaign budget into small businesses in the first place.
“Hollard’s purpose is to enable more people to create and secure a better future,” said Joanna. “This underpins our ongoing activities in the Small Enterprise Development space. We really wanted our next brand initiative to demonstrate our purpose in a similar way.”
Hollard used their annual media budget to buy “big” ads, the costs of which are generally beyond the reach of small businesses, to promote these 12 businesses. “We then created unique media plans for each business based on their own requirements,” said Joanna. “We believe helping small businesses creates better businesses, better communities, a better South Africa and #BetterFutures.”
Why Delivery Bike Advertising?
“Partnering is in our DNA,” said Joanna, “and securing win-win-win partnerships has always been a big part of how we operate. When Jon from MotionAds approached us about this innovative OOH advertising channel, I think that the spirit of our brand campaign resonated with them. From our side, we were captivated by their passion to support and empower thousands of micro enterprises on wheels. It was abundantly clear that the synergies between our respective brands, and the degree to which we share values, was just too powerful to ignore.”
From MotionAds’ perspective, we were excited to participate in and contribute to Hollard’s campaign. This partnership not only means we can help more food delivery drivers (micro-enterprises in and of themselves) but the small businesses enjoy massive brand exposure, awareness and ultimately sales in the neighborhoods they want to reach.
“The fact that we were also able to support the independent bike owners as micro-enterprises put the “sprinkles” on the deal and added a special smile to the whole partnership,” said Joanna.
Delivering Street-Level Ads at Top-Level Quality
We gave 10 bikes to each SME in each region they needed. These regions were selected based on the geographic reach of each entity to ensure hyper-targeted marketing and brand awareness was achieved. This is made possible by how hyper-localised each delivery bike is as drivers service a fixed area. This makes it possible for local brands to become trusted household names in their own neighbourhoods.
Journey Leather
Journey leather, located in the Western Cape, is all about creating personalised, customised leather products.
Created by two sisters, this born-and-bred South African brand seeks to bring local talent and luxurious leather into perfect unison.
Creating everything from wallets and handbags, to vanities and backgammon keyring sets, this dynamic duo caught Hollard’s eye.
We branded and deployed our bikes in Stellies as a key target region identified with great market-share and share-of-voice potential.
The bikes were ideal as they can go where other mediums can’t and are able to reach cities in a powerful, unconventional way.
Busani Men
Busani Men is a custom suit and tailoring business based in Maboneng. Offering bespoke suits and tailoring for weddings, events, business, and more, their target market is the upper LSM ready and willing to travel to the inner city for a personalised experience and quality clothing.
The Hollard team in media planning chose to target Rosebank and Sandton to reach this audience segment.
As stylishly wrapped as a Busani Men suit, the bikes gave an extra dimension to the streets of Rosebank and Sandton, and complimented the existing media deployed in the areas, namely street poles and a billboard.
SchoolHub
Schoolhub is an innovative online app that allows parents to keep all their additional school spending - such as tuck shop money, civvies day, and uniform - on one platform.
Operating from Durban, their target market is busy parents looking for a cashless, safe solution to school spending, and who increasingly outsource their weekly meals to takeaways.
The Hollard media planning team saw our bikes as the perfect opportunity to speak to the right market with the right medium in Durban.
We spread the bikes across the city, from the CBD to Umhlanga and further north, ensuring a wider coverage for Schoolhub.
Haircelerate
Haircelerate is a hair treatment company founded and operated by two sisters who are passionate about healthy hair. Their online store sells products ranging from satin pillowcases to take care of your hair while you sleep, to vitamins and supplements to nurture great hair from the inside-out.
As the store sells nationwide, the media plan for this brand was less about targeting a specific area but more about associating this e-commerce brand with delivery bikes.
The strategy behind branding the delivery bikes was to shift market perception and make the community think, “Maybe that’s another haircelerate delivery being fulfilled.”
Targeting the residential areas of Fourways and Bryanston we were able to expose a high number of the right people to the branded bikes.
Common Values: Hard Work and Authentic Relationships
When asked what it has been like for Joanna to work with us, she said, “Working with MotionAds has been the most human and inclusive experience, something we prize at Hollard. The process has been smooth and we feel like we’ve made new friends! There’s a lot to be said for partnering with people who share your values and outlook.”
Jon, Elan and the team travelled to Cape Town, Durban and around Joburg to personally ensure the bike wrapping, driver deployment, and service delivery was everything MotionAds stands for. It was great seeing fleets of our drivers hit the streets with these beautifully wrapped bikes, knowing that there’s a bigger purpose behind every delivery – as Hollard puts it, a better future.
Hats off to Hollard for partaking in this win-win-win partnership and running such a selfless and powerful campaign.
Joanna concluded by adding, “I’m so glad we got to partner with a like-minded brand on a shared value initiative and cannot wait to see the results of it.”
We look forward to posting the results of this exciting partnership in a few months’ time. Watch this space!
