Sometimes life is about absolutes. Very few people know that Buzz Aldrin was the second man on the moon. Or the name of the second highest mountain in the world.
Speaking of mountains there seems to be no debate about which is the most beautiful mountain in the world. Cape Town regularly tops global travel lists as the best city in the world to visit. The latest statistics point to a solid recovery for the Western Cape’s tourism sector with international arrivals at almost 80% of pre-covid levels.
And it’s not just international visitors who are flocking to Cape Town. Domestic arrivals have recovered by the same margin.
Cape Town has a first class telecommunications and technological infrastructure and the city is well on track to ensuring that every citizen has access to affordable high-speed internet. The Cape Innovation & Technology Initiative has incubated more than 2 000 tech businesses and several iconic global internet giants have set up operations in Cape Town – including Amazon and Microsoft.
Cape Town is also a world beater in Business Process Outsourcing. BPO grew by 22% year-on-year over the past four years. Twice the global growth rate and three times faster than India and the Philippines.
This drive for digital independence has triggered another growth stream for the local Cape Town economy. Digital nomads, looking to balance work and quality of life, are semi-grating from traditional economic hubs such as Gauteng. Over 460 000 people are expected to move into the province during the next 5 years.
Against this backdrop more and more marketers in South Africa are also beginning to realise that, when it comes to high-end purchasing behaviour, the city of Cape Town may well be the best city in South Africa in which to advertise. Cars. Clothing. Houses. Mobile phones & computers. Investments. Schools and University. Travel.
In a recent article independent media commentator Gordon Muller made the point that marketers need to recognize that the Western Cape is a province. But the City of Cape Town is a market. Cape Town accounts for 72% of GDP in the Western Cape. When it comes to advertising, that’s the bottom line.
So the question remains ‘what’s the best way to target the people of Cape Town with advertising’. And the answer is that the spontaneous outdoor lifestyle in Cape Town increasingly lends itself to radio listening. This week’s release of the latest BRC RAMS_Amplify data (Feb ’22 – Jan ’23) – official listenership measurement for the advertising industry – confirms that 76% of all adults in The City of Cape Town continue to listen to radio each week.
And the epicentre of that listening distribution curve is the economically active Generation X market segment. Generation X has the highest Av. HH Income of all the generational cohorts in Cape Town and 81% listen to radio.
Part of the challenge faced by local radio in Cape Town is the tendency by advertisers to view South Africa as an aggregation of 9 provinces, rather than segmenting the market based on actual geo-purchasing potential. Analysing radio listenership through a targeted geo-segmentation lens shifts the media dynamic completely
When we isolate the top 5 local radio stations in the City of Cape Town and evaluate that audience relative to the rest of Western Cape, we can see that a station like Smile FM has only a 7% overspill into the Western Cape. For advertisers targeting the City of Cape Town, make sure you get what you pay for. And even more importantly, make sure you only pay for what you want.
In next week’s Part 2 we will unpack some of the key the insights about Smile FM from the new BRC RAMS_Amplify data release. But for this week just remember, when it comes to radio advertising in Cape Town, there are plenty of reason to Smile FM.
