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Big egos often go hand-in-hand with advertising. It’s all about creating disruption, roping in awards and becoming the agency everyone wants to work with. At LimelightSA, a Joburg-based through-the-line advertising and promotions agency, we prefer to sidestep the limelight in favour of our clients’ brands.

“We grasp that we’re a service business; whether we are producing a creative campaign or organising a conference, we exist to service our clients’ interests,” explains Bruno Quebra, LimelightSA’s spirited MD. “We like to think that we offer ‘creative-for-purpose’ – the purpose of enhancing our clients’ businesses.”

Bringing our ‘creative-for-purpose’ philosophy to life means that the client’s strategy, their brand and their objectives always come first; in turn, our reputation is based on their results.

Our mix of people – specifically their areas of expertise and experience – is vital to our success. Collectively, our team offers a combination of complementary skills, such as traditional ATL and BTL experience, traditional digital capabilities, activation and eventing, and creative skills in the areas of conceptualisation, graphic design and copywriting. Then add to that a wealth of experience in marketing, trade marketing and sales from key members of the team who’ve moved over from the client side. So, when we sit with our clients, we really do understand them.

“Although this fusion of real-life expertise can sometimes cause tension, I like to think of it as a natural tension that allows us to, ultimately, seamlessly integrate the various elements of a campaign. It comes down to this: by the time we present our ideas to a client it’s not a case of ‘here’s an idea, let’s try and make it happen’ – we know we are selling a story that we can execute.”

From a creative process perspective, it always starts with strategy. Any brand should be built on a sound strategy that guides its objectives, growth and development, as Bruno elaborates:

“Our approach has always been: let’s take this strategy and this objective and let’s design something that meets it, as opposed to being creative for the sake of being creative. And yes, it is vitally important to be disruptive, but it’s so that the brand has real standout and stands for something that catches its audience’s attention.”

A case in point is the Playgirl brand. We started working with Amka Products on the brand in 2010. Together, we developed a good understanding of the target audience, their key purchase and consumption drivers and the barriers to purchase. We quickly realised that the brand’s full potential could be unleashed with a more attractive and impactful range on shelf, coupled with an invitation to ‘pick up a can’. And that’s exactly what we did – we addressed the range proposition and then tapped into the body spray shoppers’ natural behaviour off the shelf, namely see something interesting, pick it up, spray the fragrance in the cap and, if you like it, add it to your basket. How did we encourage such behaviour? Through a simple buy-1-get-1-free drive in selected retail stores that was prominently advertised on-shelf. When the time was right, we moved into a more traditional integrated campaign space.

We have worked closely with Amka and its partner agencies and suppliers to help Playgirl become the no. 1 brand in its category. Aside from achieving market leadership in the Body Spray category, it’s the no. 1 Fragrance Roll-on brand, and it has won three Sunday Times Generation Next awards and two POPAI awards for point-of-purchase advertising.

“Our journey with Playgirl has been exciting and successful, driven by close collaboration with our client and a collective genius.”

Going forward, we remain committed to understanding the differences between shopper and consumer behaviour, and as a result, proposing the right touch points at the right time. “The better we understand the consumption occasion, the more effectively we can partner not just with our clients, but also with their suppliers, traders and retailers to deliver the holistic solutions their consumers and shoppers are looking for—and the return on investment our clients deserve,” concludes Bruno.