Marketing and media times are changin' - fassssst

When I started as a journo on the Pretoria News in 1962, Winnie Graham was my mentor and we not only had to pump out news on a thing called a typewriter, but had to do it one or maybe two paragraphs at a time on three little slips of paper interleaved with something called carbon paper so the sub-editors could have one copy, the South African Press Association another and I completely forget who the third one was for.

Hard news was hard

Typewriters did not have delete button - if you stuffed up, you would have to start again. My first story I ever wrote was a caption to a picture on the level of the water in the Hartbeestpoort Dam. The caption was only 40 words but it seemed to take me all day.

I remember working for United Press International TV News, the BBC and NBC and having to go to Pretoria to hear the verdict in the trial of Nelson Mandela. Of being in a massive crowd on Church Square and being attacked by police dogs.

In those days, we used hand-held Bell & Howell Filmo Cameras to shoot black and white TV footage. We had to get to what was then Jan Smuts Airport by 5pm every day to make sure our film package, along with the script, could catch the evening flight to London and eventually get broadcast on the BBC one o'clock news the next day.

Arresting experience

I remember flying around South Africa with senator Robert Kennedy, of filming John Vorster being sworn in in Cape Town, and being arrested no less than 32 times in Rhodesia while working for the BBC.

Of sitting every morning and having tea with Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith, who used to pop into the UPI offices in Salisbury (now Harare) to read the world news off our telex machine because his government had banned the publication of foreign news in local newspapers, radio and TV.

I remember getting into trouble for daring to photograph British prime minister Harold Wilson without his customary pipe in his hand.

I remember my days in the advertising agency business. Using the very first TV recording device for a pitch presentation.

Begging the SABC

Of having to beg the SABC on bended knees for commercial slots on radio and thanking my lucky stars that I managed to actually get a spot on the station I wanted and never daring to believe I would ever get the time I wanted. And having to explain to clients that the SABC wouldn't just let one run a commercial in English but it had to be in Afrikaans as well.

Of having to get in the queue for the SABC's quota of TV commercials. The arrogance of the SABC in those days was beyond belief.

I remember working on my first "computer". It was actually an IBM "golf ball" typewriter that could show a full sentence one had just typed on a digital screen and allow one to actually go back and fix spelling mistakes. Then as one hit the "return" button, it would print it out on a piece of paper.

Then along came Phillips, with the first word processor I ever used - it was the size of Canada and one could type whole paragraphs onto a screen and save them on a thing called a floppy disk.

Communicating by brick

I remember using one of South Africa's first cellphones when I was working for BMW and MTN gave us a few to try out before the system went live for the public. It was a brick of thing that had a standby battery life of about three hours maximum.

I remember delivering an armoured BMW to Nelson Mandela and playing golf with FW de Klerk and standing a few feet away from Queen Elizabeth as she opened the new Land Rover assembly plant in Pretoria.

The rest is history. The digital age arrived with a vengeance and change started happening so fast, it has been a blur.

Now, thanks to the people at Bizcommunity, who invited me some years ago to be non-executive chairman of their board, I have kept pace with technology, thanks to their patience in teaching me the ins and outs of the digital world.

Changed our lives

In 10 years, the web has changed our lives. Social media has changed our lives. And let me tell you, it is more exciting for me now than it can ever be.

What I have learned is not to be afraid of change, not to be afraid of new technology and not to be afraid of getting incredibly excited about what you do and the people with whom who you work, no matter how old you are.

I know - I have seen all of this, and heck, I'm only 38!

For more:

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