Enovation started off as part of the internal marketing team of Immploy, a medical recruitment agency based in Table View, Cape Town. The team – in full – comprises social media strategist Luan Snyman, marketing intern Lebo Matla, lead designer Juan Oliver, account manager Brandon Le-chat and marketing coordinator Janine Fredericks. They’re young, energetic and vibrant, making them the perfect fit for this fast-paced industry.
The agency’s birth was based on the team’s definition of innovation – progressive and improving on the existing. As Immploy wanted to become the best medical recruitment agency in South Africa, the team gave their best to make that a reality. Working their way to that reality meant needing a thorough understanding and exposure of digital marketing. They found the digital market saturated as that’s where the future is going, but noted a worrying trend among digital agencies that cater to SMEs: They were selling ‘make believe’ speeches with impressive jargon, hoping to land clients and then delivering an off the shelf, poorly produced product. Unimpressed to say the least, they saw a market gap and jumped right in it. The rest is history.
It certainly helped that people saw Enovation’s work and were interested in them as a marketing team, despite it being a marketing team of three individuals. That didn’t stop them from taking every project that came their way and having fun with it, especially as each client granted them a bit of freedom based on bad experiences with other marketing teams. It’s that freedom that worked on Enovation’s side, as the opportunity to play around meant they found their footing whilst delivering the best individualised service to each client.
The purpose of the spelling was initially to show a relation to their sister company, with the play on the “E” in Immploy and the “I” in Enovation swopping the letters around. Plus it has an African ring to it, fitting as they plan on expanding across the continent in their bid to “take over the world, one client at a time” by opening up an office in Tanzania – that’s because they hear Tanzanian coffee is acutely tart and sweet, just as they like it.
Coffee clearly plays a huge role in the average workday at Enovation. Their first step on receiving a new client brief is for the team working on the project to get together and discuss the intended outcome over the best caffeine they can come across – they’re fans of Black Insomnia coffee, known as the world’s strongest – sweetened by their daily conversations. Their next step then is to do a competitor analysis to ensure any of their ideas aren’t the same as what anyone else in that specific industry has done before. While it can be challenging to keep up with the times, Enovation has a tech-savvy team member devoted to doing research, keeping the team informed so they never miss a potential opportunity.
Then they brainstorm and start the process of doing further research and creating concepts of ideas. Throughout all of this, a lot more coffee, debates and refining is involved, and the aforementioned daily conservations about politics, feminism, the new Black Coffee album and other topics that make them aware of their world – that serves as the most invaluable asset and shows in their work as something they’re proud of adding to their portfolio. It’s certainly proving a successful strategy as Enovation’s clients range from large property developers in the Caribbean with property portfolios in excess of 16 million dollars – that’s not a typo – to risk specialists such as The Compliance Bureau. This type of account lets Enovation expand its portfolio while experiencing new industries.
Impressive for a start-up agency, that’s still in its early days – they only officially opened their doors on 1 August 2016. So any internal development is an exciting development to them, from doing courses with Red & Yellow in the different digital fields such as SEO and Copywriting to getting certified with Google Adwords has helped bring their dreams to a reality and bring it one step closer. As their key aim is to implement new techniques to each of their projects, they’re usually doing something not many have done before – that’s how they stay ahead of the competition.
As to future digital marketing trends, they predict social media will take over, with less copy and more rich media such as video. We’ll also see ‘flattening out’ of logos over the next few months to avoid appearing outdated and websites being optimised to be mobile friendly, as more users choose to mainly view sites on their handheld devices. Looking beyond 2016, the Enovation team says, “We’ve already seen how AR and VR is going to change the digital industry, and we can’t wait to be at the heart of that change.”
They’re positive and upbeat, stating local creativity meets the global standard as there is no standard to creativity; the innovative idea always delivers. Here’s to more industry innovation from the likes of Enovation.
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