Havas Johannesburg

One roof for creative, media, PR and health

Havas Johannesburg is the South African office of the Havas group, presented locally as the Havas Village South Africa. Advertising ideas, media buying, press work and health marketing sit in one unit, so a brief can move between them without being handed to outside suppliers. The office builds a team around each client's needs, works to one shared method and runs all of it under a single profit and loss account, so no discipline has a separate budget to defend.

Partners from music, gaming and film

Much of the office's reach comes from its parent group, whose businesses go well beyond traditional advertising. The network includes a large recorded music company with more than fifty labels, a pay-television business that also produces and distributes films and television series, a French-language publisher covering fiction, children's books and reference titles, a mobile games developer, a video distribution platform and a set of ticketing, venue and event production companies. Havas Johannesburg uses these links to plan entertainment-led campaigns and new kinds of brand experience.

Meaningful Brands research and framework

The office's strategy work rests on Meaningful Brands, a research study run across the group. The study covers about 395,000 people, 30 markets, 21 industries and 2,000 brands each year. Its published findings include the view that many brands could disappear without anyone noticing, and that people back brands which put purpose ahead of profit. From that research the group built a framework in which a brand's value depends on how meaningful it is to consumers, measured through functional, personal and collective benefits. Strategy and planning teams in the group's agencies around the world use the same framework, which the company says gives a common approach to strategic thinking across its integrated process.