Atmosphere got a taste of South Africa’s vibrant soccer world when we announced our client Sanlam’s latest sponsorship, the Sanlam Kay Motsepe Cup on 4 Feb -  the biggest sponsorship in the history of South African schools football.Valued at R30-million over five years, it is co-funded by Sanlam, the Motsepe Foundation and the Sanlam Ubuntu Botho Community Development Trust. Our Joburg team sprang into action to put together the media launch in just three days. Attended by bigwigs Patrice Motsepe, King Zwelithini ... Read More

Atmosphere recently launched the Friendship 2.0 survey on behalf of MWEB. The survey was created by us (and carried out by TNS) to fill the information gap locally on how social networking is changing relationships and position MWEB as the experts on web in SA. There have been some great media results including extensive radio, print and online coverage. Here are some of the findings: Users in South Africa The survey revealed that the average age of Facebook users in South Africa is 33; ... Read More

Our client, Sanlam Private Investments (SPI), turned 10-years-old in 2009 and Atmosphere suggested that it launch an Innovation Awards campaign among students to celebrate this milestone. We chose to run them in creative fields which would appeal to SPI’s high net worth clients who have a passion for the finer things in life (interior design, culinary arts, jewellery design and fashion design are examples). We set to work finding the crème de la crème of educational institutions in these categories and challenged ... Read More

Atmosphere organised the media launch of ZA NEWS on behalf of kulula.com on 6th October. ZA NEWS is a satirical news show co-created by Zapiro and Thierry Cassuto that will be "broadcast" on Mail & Guardian Online. kulula.com is headline sponsor for the first season which runs until the end of the year. The show runs daily (Tuesday - Saturday). Read More

“According to research from Sanlam Employee Benefits (SEB) - one of our key financial clients - South Africans are saving more towards retirement (even in the recession) but it is still not nearly enough. Our country has one of the lowest savings rates in the world and many of us won’t have enough money to maintain our lifestyle after we stop working. Each year, SEB 2009 BENCHMARK™ Symposium produces comprehensive research into SA’s retirement industry, released at seminars and via the media to ... Read More

Atmosphere’s Pheliswa recently starred in a True Love advertorial for our newly expanded client Sanlam (previously we did work only for the investments cluster). Giving very valuable tips on getting out of debt, the advertorial is part of a series offering guidance to True Love readers on managing their finances. Phely seems to have missed her calling – if only she had a (good) few more inches in height…         Read More

We recently invited business and trade media to take a spin on kulula's flight simulator in Jo'burg. This was part of a morning which included a meeting with joint CEOs Gidon and Erik, a tour around the Operations Centre and finally an attempted take-off and landing at Jo'burg airport (simulated of course). Atmosphere also had a quick go (thanks kulula!!) with uh mixed results, but at least everyone could walk away and that's the main thing (even if we parked the plane ... Read More

Challenge In competing for a commercial WiMAX licence, MWEB needed to convince the communications regulator (ICASA) of its credentials and abilities to successfully roll out a WiMAX network. At the time, WiMAX was a brand new technology of which little was understood and MWEB had no commercial product to offer. MWEB ran a trial of the technology with 1000 home and business users in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Solution Atmosphere Communications developed a high impact, multi-dimensional communications programme to publicize the trial and MWEB’s capabilities ... Read More

Challenge: Public relations needed to play a significant role in helping Sanlam Investment Management become a competitive player in the financial services industry, rather than just the manager of Sanlam Group policy money. It needed to help SIM attract top investment experts and build its own strong brand. Solution: Our strategy was to use a focused, layered media relations campaign to change perceptions and build reputation. As we were dealing with some 20 individual spokespeople within the investment division, it was imperative that we structured ... Read More

A concept that recently went down quite well with bloggers was the ‘JSE building to let’ banner by our client, Sanlam Investment Management.  In light of the tough economic times, Sanlam Investment Management wanted to make a statement and worked with its ad agency, Jupiter Drawing Room, to create a banner that read, ‘To Let' to hang outside the home of the SA stock exchange. The headline that follows the ‘To Let' sign reads: “It's hard not to worry”. The large sign certainly ... Read More