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(Via Cape Town Streetmag)
Even though the Mother city doesn’t move at the pace of Jozi, we all know that this is one innovative, creative and forward thinking city. Creativity seems to spring from every nook and cranky whether you’re walking in Woodstock antique shopping or checking out the graffing in Goodwood, there’s always something somewhere to see, inspire and keep the creative juices flowing.
Naturally we at CPTSTREETMAG love finding up and coming artists, establishments etc. But we also love uncovering secrets, and we managed to bump into one of Cape Town’s well kept open secrets, that go by the name Instant Grass Youth Collaboration Agency. Try saying that four times quickly! Even though the name is quite a mouth full, it pretty much describes what Instant Grass aka IG is all about.
This marketing/Trend forecasting agency, uses a unique way to find out what’s hot, not or completely irrelevant in the eyes of South African Youth. We sat down with the Cape Town Network Manager, Shukur Cloete to find out what is Instant Grass?, what makes IG different from other marketing agencies? How the concept of the agency came about and lots more.
Instant Grass is the brain child of two marketing genius’s Ian Calvert and Greg Potterton, (you might be thinking that calling them genius’s is a bit much, but after you read this i think you will agree). Both are well respected within the marketing industry for their innovative ideas and concepts. This is probably due to their ability to play off of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, in that way creating a way to push new ideas in an old-school industry.
Overall Instant Grass is not your run of the mill marketing agency hence the name, they do in fact collaborate with the youth, so as to find out what is relevant, hot, boring, or played out, in a dynamic way compared to your usual impersonal survey taker. They go out and find movers and shakers who are crazy connected or just have a very interesting point of view and use them to infiltrate these markets that companies such as SABC, Red bull Axe etc. are trying to capture and dominate.
These movers and shakers go by the name of grasses. What is a grass you may ask? Well grass is a play on the English slang term for snitch/police informant. IG adopted this term but rather as an urban spy. So these grasses go and find out what’s hot in the streets, suburbs, ekasi etc. Then they bring back this information to IG where it is processed by the coolers. Coolers are the strategic writers, they filter the information and choose the most relevant from all that is gathered by the grasses, they create a sticky story and give it to the client such as SABC etc.
When you step into the IG office in Cape Town you feel like a kid again, with a swing in the middle of the office, a foosball table, bright coloured beanie bags littering the office you second guess whether you’re in an office or an adult-sized crèche. But this is done on purpose to make the grasses feel comfortable and feel more at home, this helps them relax and in turn the feedback that they offer is more honest and to the point. The same applies to those that work at IG the atmosphere is relaxed there is a strong sense of comradery and freedom of expression. As Shukur said “we have cool bosses who allow us to be ourselves but at the same time teach us”. This is obvious if you spend a day in the office you can go from watching Greg riding around the office in the scooter or Anthea( a cooler) playing some dub-step for everyone to listen to. The office has the kind of happiness and passion that most companies strive for. Overall you can see that this is one team which is willing to learn and grow from each other.
The success of instant grass lies in its relationships, between its clients and its grasses. Relationships are very important at IG this is obvious by how they interact with the grasses, it’s not just a business transaction-type relationship, rather they take the time to find out what’s going on with you, What are your interests, how they can help you grow etc. It’s not about artificial relationships for the sake of business but rather something tangible. The IG network is vast from young artists, to pilots to even professional young mothers, name it they’ve got it covered.
This is especially obvious in the success of the Levi’s Eva Jean Campaign. Basically Levi’s didn’t get why sales of their jeans were going down in South Africa compared to the rest of the world. So they took their problem to IG and through briefs, and collaboration sessions it was discovered that South African females weren’t feeling Levi’s because the jeans weren’t made for their body type but rather the European body type. So IG along with the grasses came up with the name and concept of the new roomier jean, and the Eva Jean was born. This story is just one example of what IG does on a daily basis.
For a grass it’s very rewarding and impressive when you look in a magazine or watch an AD on TV and see that you had a hand in creating this. You can see by the general response of IG’s clients the grasses, and the employees that IG has the magic touch, and offers something that other so-called marketing agencies don’t and that is building the bridge between the consumer and the client. I think Shukur put it best when he said that IG makes marketing cooler and sexier, by connecting the youth to the clients and the clients to the youth.
By Somajah
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