Our Services
Start-up Kick Starter
Backing the new kids on the block, giving start-ups everything they need to build their brand and take on the world.
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Starting a business and building its brand is no easy task. If you’re just getting going with that business idea you can’t stop thinking about or already have your brand’s name, logo and venture capital sorted, Watson Ferguson is here to help. Our tried and tested brand building process will get your brand out of the starting blocks and ready to take on the world.
First off, we help you stress-test your idea and lay it’s crucial strategic brand foundations. We find out what will make you stand out in a crowd that’s often oversaturated. This helps to define the brand and allows us to move onto giving it a relevant name, logo and look and feel. From here, we're able to develop all your key assets which can be anything from a website for lead-generation, brochureware, corporate stationery, point-of-sale advertising and other collateral. Only once we get to this point, where the brand is solid and looking its best, do we shift our focus to the customer. We work together to find the best ways to connect your newly developed brand with its potential customers through a launch campaign. Our involvement doesn’t stop here, we know how crucial those first few months can be, so we’re here to help your brand optimise and maximise every opportunity.
If your brand or business idea can benefit from partnering with us, please get in touch.
Strategic Brand Pivot
Giving mid-sized brands the flex they need to stay relevant and grow with a brand refresh or re-do.
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To stay relevant, every business needs a rebrand or brand refresher every once in a while. This need exists for both new and established businesses, B2B, B2C, in every industry and every size of business. Businesses grow and change, and the brand needs the flex to accommodate these developments. With nearly a quarter-century of strategic brand work behind them, Watson Ferguson has the experience to pivot your brand, taking it to new heights.
We spend time understanding you, your business and ambitions, allowing us to put crucial strategic brand foundations in place. From there, we tweak or entirely overhaul the look of your brand to ensure that it matches your ambitions. This can include assets like business stationery, your website, brochureware and point-of-sale elements. From here, we work on connecting your defined and refined brand to your existing and newly identified target markets through an advertising campaign. Our involvement doesn’t stop here, we follow through ensuring that your newly refreshed brand is optimised and able to maximise every opportunity.
If your brand is in need of a change, please get in touch.
Ad Agency +
Giving you more from your advertising agency. More quality. More accountability. More marketing effectiveness. More efficiencies in time and costs.
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With years of experience working in South Africa's most successful advertising agencies, Watson Ferguson knows it all, the good and the bad of agency and client dealings. When setting up our business we challenged ourselves to offer our clients something different, better even. The result is a low overhead model bolstered by a curated network of the very best freelance talent. We don't do monthly retainers instead, we offer the same rigour and quality of work as the big agencies without the long wait and eye-watering price tag. It’s like having your cake and eating it too, with insightful strategic thinking, profoundly conceptual creative and adaptable yet meticulous production. Our capabilities include ATL, TTL, Digital, Media, PR, Direct, Events and all manner of production, all with more accountability, effectiveness and efficiencies.
If your brand can benefit from the advertising agency offering more, please get in touch.
Marketing Director for Hire
For big brands with Marketing Departments that need a shakeup. We help develop a plan of action, so you know where to turn and what to change.
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Marketing a brand is not for the fainthearted. Sometimes brands lose sight of themselves, getting caught up in the business and seeing themselves from the inside out, instead of from the outside in, as their customers do. There is a lot to be said about a holistic, objective, 3rd party review. As a Marketing Director For Hire, this is exactly what Watson Ferguson offer.
Through a 6 month intensive process, our team conduct a comprehensive and tailored marketing audit. We deep dive into your marketing resources and team structure, brand and marketing strategies, partner agencies and creative output, customer research and insights, customer touchpoints and more. From here we are able to propose a way forward, making you stronger and ready for the future. This can take the form of plugging gaps or making significant changes, all with the goal of turning your marketing department into a world-class operation that can support your business in realising its ambitions.
If your brand and marketing department is in need of an objective review, please get in touch.
Agency Strat Dept Support
Here to support your strategic department, to lighten the load of small, medium and large advertising agencies in need of extra resource.
Read MoreAgency Strat Dept Support
Every brief in the agency goes through the strategy department in one way or another. As the department that listens and learns, it shapes all the creating, inventing and delivering of ground-breaking ideas. As a result, it’s often stretched too thin but that’s where Watson Ferguson come in. As strategic support, we work with agency departments to lighten the load. We are agile, cost-effective and can quickly jump in and decouple selected projects so you and your team can focus on the rest of your workload.
With 24 years of experience to our name, our expertise lies in brand positioning across all the models: ladders, blueprints, compasses, bottles, onions, butterflies, and even the traditional matrix. We’re also well versed in communication strategies, can offer vital pitch support, help to crack that tough brief that’s been hanging around, identify creative opportunities for the agency and complete insightful category reviews. However you need support, we’re here to help.
If you’re looking for short-term capacity relief and strategic support, please get in touch.
Client Reviews
“Watson Ferguson are extremely passionate about brands and are fanatical about ensuring that only the best work is delivered for your specific brand. Being both professional and timeous, I would recommend them to any company that needs big thinking and tailor-made marketing solutions. Be prepared to have your world turned upside down – the Watson Ferguson guys are smart individuals and will get deeply involved in the strategic thought behind your brand.”
Head of Marketing, Spec-Savers South Africa
“The team at Watson Ferguson have been truly transformational for us. They took time to understand who we were and tailored their approach accordingly; they've taken scales off our eyes, been balanced but frank in their assessments of our strengths & areas of opportunity and provided crystal clear direction and practical support in terms of charting a course forward. They couldn't come more highly recommended!”
CEO, Mukuru
“Watson Ferguson have been the consummate professionals to work with. They had a very clear idea of what our business required and translated ideas into some cutting-edge concepts in regard to packaging and the promotion of our products. We feel our company's product range is now poised for the future. Watson Ferguson are still taking Keynote Health forward and growing the brand.”
Sales and Marketing Director, Keynote Health
“What a pleasure to work with a team of seasoned professionals who understand the dynamics and challenges of my business and brand. They were able to craft a clear strategy with hard-hitting deliverables, on time, in full and of excellent quality. Watson Fergusson goes the extra mile! Working with them feels like having your own Marketing Director on your team.”
Managing Director, Mitchell’s Brewing
“Watson Ferguson has generated from scratch a brand strategy that has seen our company grow from an unknown entity into one of the most recognisable players in our industry. We have benefited from world-class advice such that the position of CMO has become redundant for our company.”
CEO, HouseME
“Watson Ferguson helped us develop the Frankees brand from inception. They provided us with a complete brand development and marketing solution – something we had very little experience in. As a startup, it's great to be surrounded by a professional team with such integrity, guiding and advising us every step of the way.”
Co-founder, Frankees
“Watson Ferguson has a unique ability to get to the heart of your business almost immediately and then to embed your very essence into the heart of your brand. I always look forward to receiving deliverables from the WF team – engaging with the team is effortless and always fun.”
Group Innovation Director, Moyo Business Advisory
“Watson Ferguson have been fantastic to work with. They took a great deal of time and effort to get to know and understand our brand and our values. This has meant that all of the marketing work they have done for us has been completely on point, without us constantly having to re-educate them around how we want to position and message our brand. I would have no hesitation in recommending their services.”
Founder and CEO, Fix Forward
“Watson Ferguson really committed to investing time with us upfront to gain a clear and objective understanding of our multi-faceted business. It is because of this that every project we complete together now feels like Watson Ferguson has been with us from the very start.”
Director, Propell
“Jurumani Solutions, a telecoms consultancy, had very little experience in brand and marketing strategy, yet recognised the need for it. Watson Ferguson were a key partner in developing our marketing strategy as well as applying the strategy in a real way with recognisable results. Not only that but the greater sense of clarity, focus and identity it brought to our core business was invaluable. Great folks, great team, highly recommended.”
Founder and Managing Director, Jurumani Solutions
“Watson Ferguson are masters at unraveling the core essence of a brand. Gaining this deeper understanding of one’s own brand as a business owner places you and your team into a winning position. Through understanding your differentiation, you are able to set yourself apart from others and play to your strengths with clarity and purpose.”
Founder, Xperiencemakers
“It is an absolute pleasure working with Watson Ferguson. They have been instrumental in streamlining my brand and have helped with everything from redesigning my email signature to planning a Digital Media campaign. Nothing is too much for WF. Everything we have done together has had a common goal: increase Black Key Diamond’s bottom line.”
Founder, Black Key Diamonds
“Watson Ferguson carefully guided us through a major rebrand of our seven year old company, which gave us the edge to tackle the next seven years with a refreshed sense of self-awareness and motivation. Their honesty, humour and enthusiasm made the whole process a total pleasure and we’ve subsequently recommended Watson Ferguson to many of our clients and friends.”
Director and Co-founder, Republic PR
“I was immediately hooked by their boundless enthusiasm and their ability to unpack my business and ideals. Their process and expertise comes from many years of working with big corporates but has now been distilled into a friendly and highly maneuverable problem solving machine, giving you a plan to get your business punching above it’s weight. Instead of being a sheep following the herd, my business now has a clear message and sense of purpose.”
Director and Owner, Aview Property Developers
"Clarotech could not have been an easy assignment for Watson Ferguson, yet they managed to forge a balanced, simplified and workable marketing strategy for Clarotech's multifaceted IT solution business. They unwrapped our true essence while respecting our conservative and humble manner. It’s a pleasure dealing with Watson Ferguson and we hope to remain partnered into the future".
Sales & Marketing Manager, Clarotech
“As a Sydney based mobile tech company, we engaged Watson Ferguson to help us develop a new brand and corporate styling. You might be able to imagine as technologists that it was with a degree of skepticism and hesitation we committed to their Free Dive Workshop kick-off and process to develop our Brand Blueprint which lead ultimately to a new Brand Constitution, Tone of Voice and Corporate Identity Guideline and Website.
Turned out it was one of the best investments of time we’ve ever made.
Watson Ferguson really, REALLY listened to us talk them through what we are about, our vision, our product and what we were trying to achieve. Then somewhat amazingly came back a week later with a clearly articulated, succinct distillation of the essence of our being and purpose as a company. After walking us through their strategic thinking, I turned to my long-standing business partner over three successful startups and commented, “I wish we’d done this 20 years ago in our first business!”
CEO and Co-founder, Binu
“Watson Ferguson brought consummate clarity to marketing my business and were able to pick up our language and ethos very quickly. We operate in a very competitive business-to-business industry and Watson Ferguson were able to assist “through-the-line’ from strategy to execution, in helping me profile some of the fantastic work that we do. I wouldn’t hesitate recommending them to any business looking for a real marketing partner wanting to achieve big things. After all, if you grow, they grow.”
Partner and Managing Executive, LRMG Performance Agency Digital
“Watson Ferguson helped us to clarify what we wanted to tell the world about ourselves. In a world of information overload, it is critical to get this message spot-on. The guys helped us achieve this.”
Founding Partner, Nimbus Digital
“Watson Ferguson is a dynamic agency. They have delivered many insightful brand strategies and advertising campaigns to our business. Their outsourced business model enables them to hand pick the right talent, which in turn results in bespoke communication solutions. Their lean structure allows them to be responsive and agile, able to revert on our briefs quickly and at an affordable rate. They are consummate professionals who always go the extra mile and their friendly and approachable manner is a breath of fresh air.”
Marketing Director, Cape Union Mart
About Us
The directors of Watson Ferguson Marketing Agency, Andrew and Dylan, have over 20 years of experience working for global ad agencies like Ogilvy and BBDO, working on accounts like Volkswagen, Johnson & Johnson, AB InBev, Distell, Cadbury, Mars, Adidas and Red Bull.
Wanting to offer clients an alternative, they launched the business in early 2016. Utilising a low overhead model, Watson Ferguson are able to offer clients high quality work at value that’s hard to beat.
For most of our clients, Watson Ferguson acts as their very own CMO, marketing director, ad agency and production house, all rolled into one. This ensures expediency, consistency, value and overall marketing integrity. The team is also a bit fanatical about strategic marketing that works for brands both big and small, old and new.
Click here to read an article about us on Mark Lives.
Andrew Watson
Andrew's BioAndrew Watson
Having obtained a BCom Honours degree in Business Management from Rhodes University, Andrew worked as an investment accountant at The Bank of New York in London. Returning home to Cape Town, he decided to change course and joined Ogilvy working on the Cadbury and Volkswagen accounts. Soon BBDO spotted his potential and hired him to run a portfolio of clients accounting for half of the agency’s annual income. Within a year, he joined the management team and was promoted to Head of Account Management. A few years later, Andrew returned to Ogilvy to work on the new SAB Castle Lite business. Under his leadership, the brand experienced double digit growth.
Dylan Ferguson
Dylan's BioDylan Ferguson
Dylan has a BCom Marketing degree from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and a post graduate diploma at The Red & Yellow School of Advertising. He started his working career at Ogilvy, spending 4 years on the Volkswagen account. He went on to join Instant Grass gaining valuable consumer insights for a year before joining BBDO. There he spent 2 years working as the Brand Strategist responsible for the big Distell portfolio, before being promoted to Head of Strategy and serving on the BBDO Management Team.
Our Work
Watson Ferguson developed a compelling campaign message and then rolled it out across TV, Radio, Point of Sale and Digital elements.
The Challenge
Amidst a tough economic period when consumer spending was at its lowest, Spec-Savers briefed us on their most important communications piece of the year. We were asked to develop the Summer Campaign from a creative and production perspective.
The Results
Watson Ferguson developed a compelling campaign message and then rolled it out across TV, Radio, Point of Sale and Digital elements. The high production value of each element, complemented by a brand new website we built, broke the previous record for new customer acquisitions and resulted in their best Summer campaign to date.
How we took a successful Durban-based nutraceutical business to the next level.
The Challenge
When first meeting the passionate founders of Keynote Health, we soon realised that building the Keynote Health brand or developing an advertising campaign would not necessarily improve business. We had to determine which activities would deliver the biggest impact for the 9 separate products and business as a whole.
The Results
Understanding the business and marketing challenge was a first step. From there we isolated 4 key areas of focus to achieve business objectives and bring about positive change.
- Developing a Sales Team Playbook – we realised the national sales team was selling different products, in different ways, with different prioritisation. Through an inclusive workshop we managed to extract all the relevant information to craft a Sales Team Playbook and get the full team literally onto the same page and selling the new Keynote Health way.
- A full Packaging Upgrade – we felt the full range of product packaging was outdated, generic and disparate. We designed a full range upgrade so that all 9 products would stand out on shelf, connect the products into a brand family and bring the products into the 21st century.
- Taking Keynote Health to Market – The Pharmacy Show was the ideal expo to reintroduce our brand and product range to our core market, the pharmacy groups. For this we designed a trade stand, magazine ad, corporate stationery, a new website and all the necessary brochureware to put the refined brand in its best light.
- An Integrated Campaign for MaxiVit - The MaxiVit range included Keynote Health’s original product and biggest sellers. We took the range to market through an integrated campaign including: a bespoke website, PR, Social Media, Google Search and Display advertising and through a partnership with Men’s Health and Women’s Health we achieved magazine advertising, product sampling and various digital articles and content. This allowed MaxiVit to punch above its weight and challenge the biggest players in the local vitamin market.
We helped HouseME define their brand, refine their identity and develop a communication strategy and advertising campaign to launch in the Western Cape.
The Challenge
The HouseME team had a bold business idea to change residential rental for the better, and a lot riding on the launch of their idea. If they were successful in launching and hitting targets, investment would come pouring in allowing the business to expand. They sought Watson Ferguson for help.
The Results
We helped HouseME define their brand, refine their identity and develop a communication strategy and advertising campaign to launch in the Western Cape. Targets were met within a few short months and investment arrived. Now acting as their marketing department, Watson Ferguson created business stationery, a new website and a host of advertising material for HouseME’s national launch. This resulted in more significant growth with HouseME now boasting more properties that most letting agents and plans to take their business global.
Watson Ferguson quickly developed a point-of-sale campaign for stores, bars and restaurants which resulted in Mitchell’s best December yet.
The Challenge
Mitchell’s has been brewing delicious craft beer in Knysna since 1983, but many did not know that they, in fact, had started the craft beer revolution. Under new ownership, Watson Ferguson were asked to help ‘wake the sleeping giant’.
The Results
Getting to the core of the 34 year old brand was foremost. The first objective was to make the most of the upcoming peak December period so Watson Ferguson quickly developed a point-of-sale campaign for stores, bars and restaurants. This resulted in Mitchell’s best December yet and kick-started the next phase. To bring the brand into the 21st century and make the craft brewery that started it all compete with new rivals, we developed a new logo and range of packaging, followed by a new website and point-of-sale elements. The ‘new pack’ launch was bolstered by events, social media and PR, and as a result the Mitchell’s brand continues from strength to strength.
From an idea to South Africa’s favourite underwear brand, we helped a pair of rugby players birth this iconic brand.
The Challenge
After a training camp, friends Siya Kolisi and Tim Whitehead where discussing life after rugby when the topic of quality men’s underwear, or the lack thereof, was debated and the idea for Frankees was born.
The Results
Coming to Watson Ferguson with an idea and name, we quickly developed the full Frankees brand and then translated this into a unique logo and style guide, to define the look of the brand. We then conducted a competitor review to understand the category as well as developed a brand manifesto which helped sell the idea and inadvertently managed to secure the garment manufactures. With brand and product sorted, our next goal was to build the primary sales channel through a responsive, SEO’d e-commerce website. Not only was the launch of Frankees a massive success but the brand has now grown to include women’s underwear and men’s socks, thereby proving that there is life after rugby.
Watson Ferguson has developed a number of websites for brands using a proven linear approach and global best practices.
Website Redesign for Various Brands
The Challenge
Unfortunately, most businesses don’t use their websites effectively. Often confusing customers with too much information and a poor call to action which results in low lead generation.
The Results
Watson Ferguson has developed a number of websites for brands using a proven linear approach and global best practices. Built around a clear marketing objective, a fluid user experience, considered design and brand-centric copy, these websites have become hard-working tools for our clients.
To view a few examples of our work, please select the links below.
Please get in touch to discuss your brand, to see how we can help. After all, if you win, we win.
Unit 50, Roeland Square
Drury Lane
Gardens
Cape Town
8001