Dale Hefer remembers the first day she knew she was meant to work in advertising.
She showed up at an advertising company 20 years ago sporting a mullet, a shirt that tied at her waist and fluorescent shorts. Very "cutting edge", she recalls.
She sat in on a boring marketing pitch when her boss, who was lounging in his chair, stood up, clutched his crotch and said, "It's got no balls".
"I knew from that moment it was the job for me."
Hefer is the founding director of the Chillibush group, which she started as a one-woman show in a rented garage and which now employs a team of about 40 and has projected earnings of R70 million-plus. She was the Businesswoman of the Year finalist in 2002, a finalist in the Ernst & Young Global Emerging Entrepreneur Award in 2007 and the Gauteng Businesswoman of the Year in 2008. Last year she was a finalist in the Top Women in Business and Government awards.
She has just brought out a book, From Witblits to Vuvuzela: Marketing in the New South Africa, which distils her experience in advertising and marketing.
"You will not find a single theory or graphic in the book," she says.
"I have deliberately made it readable. There is a balance between business and humour, with lots of practical examples and anecdotes. It is aimed at students and people in marketing."
In the book, she dispels common myths about the South African market.
"There are lots of holes in (marketing) theory, particularly about dividing the target market into black and white," says Hefer, who began writing the book while on maternity leave and at home with her twins, now one year old.
By dividing the South African market by race, she says, "we are still treating South Africa as if we still live under apartheid".
She says that kind of model was useful 20 years ago but not now, as the "emerging market" had already emerged.
Calling our country an enormous melting pot, Hefer believes it is difficult to place people in boxes and does not believe in labelling people.
"There is no such thing as the black diamonds. It's rubbish. It's a term that has done a huge disservice to marketing."
She says that by aiming advertising and campaigns at "black diamonds", companies are concentrating only on two million people and ignoring the tens of millions more who have spending power.
"There is the biggest spending market and this should be called the main market," she says.
In her book, she quotes Chillibush chairman Victor Dlamini as saying that the desirable brands in our country, such as BMW, Mercedes, Diesel, Nike and Miss Sixty, are supported equally by both blacks and whites.
Because we are such a melting pot, Hefer says the most important part of any campaign is getting to know the target market.
She tells people to spend 50 percent of their time getting to know the target market, as opposed to the 10 percent of time spent now.
At present marketers use LSMs (Living Standards Measures) to understand who they are selling to. It's based on what people own, with LSM1 being the lowest and LSM10 the highest. But there are pitfalls to this model, says Hefer.
"How many times do you drive past a township and see shacks with satellite dishes? You can go inside and see big-screen TVs."
So it should always be used with other tools that look at language, geography or gender.
Hefer believes marketers are seeing their target market through filters, and this means they often talk down to them.
"We tend to patronise. For instance, you will often see ads with black people dancing. The market is, in fact, very sophisticated."
The colour most important in marketing is green - for money. She has picked up that the youth are very brand-focused and geared towards foreign products, but they won't discount good South African brands.
"But nobody really understands the post-apartheid market. We need to do a huge amount of work to understand it."
There are many subcultures, Hefer says, and these need to be explored. There is, for instance, a very big soccer subculture.
She thinks that South Africa lacks esteem for its own marketers, looking to international gurus for guidance.
"But we have world- class marketers. If anything, creatives overseas are so bogged down in research. Here we have freedom to express ourselves. We are still the Wild West in many ways.
"I think people talk too much in marketing. They theorise too much. I thought we needed a book on basic marketing and how it applies to business situations."