MarcForrest.com

Category: Personal

  • A weekend with Johnnie Walker at the Gary Player Invitational

    A weekend with Johnnie Walker at the Gary Player Invitational

    As I mentioned last week, I was fortunate to get an invite to attend the Gary Player Invitational at Zimbali from the guys at Johnnie Walker. Yoh ! What. A. Weekend. Amazing to say the least :)

    I got to Zimbali on Saturday around lunchtime and quickly checked into the awesome Fairmont Zimbali Resort. Seriously, if you ever get an opportunity to stay in this hotel, grab it. The place is another world. The staff are super friendly and helpful, and the rooms are HUGE. I stayed in one of the Villa apartments, which is probably bigger than my house. Each room also gets their own Golf Cart to run around in.

    So, after a quick check-in, I headed up to the country club to get sorted and start watching some golf. Headed down to the 9th green and managed to watch a couple of guys come through. There were loads of celebrities & pro golf players in the field, so was quite cool to see some faces you only get to see in the papers & on TV.

    At round 3ish, the first group with Gary Player finished their round on the 18th. We then headed down to the putting practice green, where Gary Player gave us some putting tips. Keep your head down, and keep your head still. Easy. Not quite. A few of us from the “media” (bout 6) were then allowed to have a quick one on one session with the man himself, with some personal coaching.

    To say this was daunting was a bit of an understatement. Here, this legend, has been a Pro Golfer for over 60 years ! Sixty.Years. Wow !
    So I stepped up for my 3 practice putts, and needless to say, I sucked. Hahaha. All 3 of my shots were too hard, and the coach wasn’t happy.  But all in good fun. We then proceeded to a putting competition, and the winner, who was closest to the hole would win a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. My shot was to hard again, and I overran the target. Eventually Ben from FollowTheBounce won the bottle (read his recount of the weekend here), and got it signed my Gary Player himself. That’s probably gonna be worth a bit in a few years time. Awesome prize.

    We then headed back to our rooms to get sorted for the evening’s event, more commonly known as “The Saturday Night Party”.Very Apt. After a couple of speeches and some great dinner, the entertainment for the evening was Johnny Clegg, who is beyond amazing. That guy is a legend in his own right. And he really got the crowd going. Then after that a few(few) Johnnie Walker Black Labels were consumed with a lot of dancing with Gareth Cliff on the decks. All in all a VERY VERY cool evening, and a lot of sorry looking faces at breakfast the next morning.

    We headed down to the 9th green again to see the golfers come through. We were quite lucky to see the whole field come through, and saw a couple of great putts. One day, I will be able to putt like that.

    So, all in all, an awesome & inspirational weekend ! Some great golf, lots of really cool people, and really well organised event. A huge HUGE thanks to the team from Johnnie Walker for the invite. Def THE highlight of my year so far.

  • Off to the Gary Player Invitational at Zimbali this weekend

    The guys from Johnnie Walker gave me a call a few weeks ago to invite me to the very cool Gary Player Invitational Golf Tournament at Zimbali this coming weekend. Johnnie Walker are one of the premier sponsors of the event, and it is looking to be a cracker of a weekend with some great golfers and celebrities lined up. The golfers in the challenge have been handpicked from a whole host of backgrounds, and achievements.

    Some of the lineup for the big event include Gary Player, Ian Woosnam, Tony Johnstone, Sally Little, Roger Wessels and European tour winner George Coetzee, while some of the celebrities who will be lining up are sporting legends Pierre Spies, Lucas Radebe, Kapil Dev, Paul Collingwood, Shaun Pollock, rugby referee Craig Joubert and popular 5FM Breakfast Show host, Thomas Msengana. I’m gonna be heading down on Saturday to see some of these guys (and lady) in action. I am also really excited to have been invited to an exclusive putting session with Gary Player on Saturday afternoon, so will def be taking some pics and reporting back on that over the weekend. You can also follow me on Twitter, and I’ll be posting pics during the course of the day.

    I had a bit of extra time on my hands last night, so I did some reading up on the Johnnie Walker brand and how it was started. The story itself is really interesting and, actually, pretty inspiring. The story goes that early in 1805 a grocer, John Walker saw a gap in the market for a whisky brand, which starting to gain popularity as a drink at the time, and decided to start blending his own. From there the blend become popular and people started asking for it by name, which was then named Johnnie Walker. The business & brand was passed on through generations, and only in 1908 did the striding man logo, that we all know so well today, come to life. Actually if you read the whole story (Also read the Wikipedia story) you will see how inspirational the story was, and how the brand has become so popular over the years. The association with the Gary Player invitational is pretty cool in the sense, if you look at what Gary Player has achieved, both as a golfer, and as a person, you will see the similarities between the brand and the legend.

    I once read a quote by Gary Player – “The harder you practise, the luckier you get“, which is actually so true with anything in life, and actually pretty comparable to the Johnnie Walker motto ‘Keep Walking’ which essentially helps men and woman focus on their own progress and inspires them to move forward in life.

     

  • Blackberry vs iPhone packages

     

    I dunno, maybe it is just me. But given the last 2 days’ issues with the Blackberry BIS service, things really aren’t looking bright for BB users around the country. I asked a couple of questions earlier on Twitter about BB vs iPhone and got some pretty heated responses, so I thought the right thing to do was do a blog post with some of my (personal) thoughts :)

    I have been called an “Apple Fanbooi” plenty times given my somewhat affinity to Apple products. 100%. I’ll take the knock.But surely there is some logic. I am really not going to get into the technicalities about Apps, constant OS updates, superior hardware (show me an 8MP camera on a BB).

    I thought I would take a quick look at some of the”misunderstandings” that exist between iPhone & Blackberry, and hopefully try and clear up some of the air.

    1. BBM

    The biggest drawcard for Blackberry IS BBM. There is no doubt about it. I have previously worked out though that you need to send close on 500,000 BBM’s to ensure you cover your R69 a month BIS fee. (That obv excludes browsing etc)

    iOS5 is being released this Wednesday. Included in iOS5 is an awesome new feature called iMessage. Essentially a BBM “replacement”. I use the word replacement very loosely, cause you need to have either the other users email address or cellphone number stored in your contacts to send a message. With BBM, you just need to have a pin, and then anyone can add you (Security) . Also, remember you will also now be able to communicate through iMessage to iPad users as iMessage comes standard in iOS across all devices.

    2. iPhone uses way more data than BB

    Probably. But given that the most data used on an iPhone is used to download apps, then that makes sense. The majority of browsing and now iMessage is generally compressed data, which means you don’t end up using all your data. Last month Vodacom increased the data bundle included on the iPhone packages to 500MB from 250MB. For free. I can promise you now. 500Mb is a lot. I hardly reach that in a month, but I do have wireless at home and work, which is what the iPhone takes preference of. Still. 500MB is a crap load. And if you follow me on twitter, I mentioned yesterday that a little birdie told me that unlimited smartphone data bundles are just around the corner. Watch this space :)

    3. iPhone contracts are more expensive

    I think this is where people are mostly uninformed. My iPhone contract with Vodacom, the iPhone 120s, gives me 120 free minutes, 500MB of data, and 100 free sms’s. This costs me R450 a month. Most months I hardly ever go over that. Maybe the minutes, but more often not. That’s with the phone. Actually, I think I may pay another R20 on top of that and I got my 16GB iPhone4 for free.

    The equivalent Blackberry package which I could find on the Vodacom site is a Blackberry BIS 100 package, which goes for R349 a month (yes, R100 a less) which includes 100 free minutes, “unlimited” BIS internet. No free SMS’s. Which actually scrap. Who the heck SMS’s anymore? We have iMessage & BBM. That’s just the package. If you looking at the new Blackberry Bold 9900, you looking at R429 a month on the BIS 100 package.

    29 rands. That’s the difference in price.

    In all said and done, BB has a HUGE pre-paid market. Which, honestly, I can’t see iPhone competing with. But let’s say, RIM (The company that owns & runs Blackberry) does fold, which is looking more and more likely every day, there is no alternative to the pre-paid market.

    4. Apps

    I know I said I wouldn’t touch on this, but my friend Ewan, just replied to a tweet on Twitter about this.

    Apps. We all know Apple’s ecosystem revolves around apps. They have revolutionised the smartphone market (around the world) by allowing people to add value to their phones by downloading and installing apps. One thing Apple has got right, is that apps are moderated before they are added to the app store. Yes, some of them are crap, and some of them do crash, but 99% of the time, out of all the over 500 apps I have downloaded (eish !!) the majority have been workable. If they don’t or they are crap, they get deleted and never seen again. Also, you develop 1 app for 1 OS. No screen sizes, hardware.

    Blackberry also has an app world, but there is no moderation on the apps. Anyone can upload apps, and more often than not, the apps are terrible. Again, this I can’t vouch for as I have limited BB use, but from what I have experienced & people have told me, that the apps crash more often than not. Or you get complete rubbish apps. From a development perspective, you need to develop your app across 3 operating systems and multiple screen sizes. Same goes for Android.

    But that said, and is something I am experiencing at the moment. Do Blackberry users actually download & use apps from BB app world, APART from Facebook or twitter ? Any other apps you use ?

    Taking my fanbooi cape off here, There is no doubt that Apple’s app store far superseeds that of Blackberry & Android. Just look at the number of apps as an example.

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    I got asked about Android. Yip. Cool OS. Shit phones. Except for the Galaxy S2, which I would take in a heartbeat. There is still no free instant messaging platform there (Google talk doesn’t count). Also there are no Android specific packages (that I know of) which means you pay for your data.

    So again, I know I probably sound like the Apple fanbooi. But like I say, that’s fine. I totally take it. But really, if you are looking at upgrading your phone/contract do the maths before claiming the free internet & BBM for R69 a month. You may be pleasantly surprised.

    I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below, or if maybe I am missing the whole point. I dunno, maybe it is just me ?

     

     

  • Behind the scenes of the filming of the new MTN ad

     

    The guys & girls from Metropolitan Republic & MTN gave me a shout yesterday and asked me if I wanted to see what goes on behind the scences of the filming of their new TV ad campaign called “Let Your Ayoba Shine”

    After it had been called off the previous week to due to bad weather, I popped over during my lunch time yesterday to the Wavehouse at Gateway to see what was happening. I had to do a quick take cause I thought I had walked into a Bikini model photo shoot, with Bikini models all over the place.

    I was really surprised how much actually goes into filming a full on TV ad that only lasts 30 seconds on TV. They spent pretty much the whole day filming various scenes and while I was there, they filmed one particular one about 50 times. I guess you have to find the best take. But also all the lights, stands, props, stage hands etc etc. Loads of people go into making the ad. Really impressive.

    The idea behind the ad, which starts airing on TV around the 17th, is all about surfing the net, and loads of Facebook, Twitter props and even a guy in a plastic Tube, with a YouTube  logo on the side. Geddit. You-Tube. Ha !

    MTN have recently (1st Oct) launched their uncapped data bundles which allow you full uncapped HSPA+ (up to 22Mb/s) service for only R289 a month. I am seriously thinking of replacing my ADSL at home with this offer. It is an awesome deal !
    And, until the end of Jan they are not implementing the Fair usage policy, so it truly is unlimited. After 1 Feb there is a Fair Usage Policy, which means after you have used 3gigs, you don’t get capped, but your speed gets reduced. Win !

    Overall the ad shoot went pretty well, and I’m keen to see what it looks like when it hits the screen. I may even have sneak peak a few days before, which I will post up here :)

    Big thanks again to the guys at MTN & Metropolitan Republic for the invite. Loved watching the ins & outs of making an ad :) Here are some of the pics I took which give an idea of what goes on behind the scenes.

     

  • MMA Mobile Mega Trends in Durban

    Next week Wednesday (12th October) the MMA (Mobile Marketing association) will be hosting it’s first event in Durban as the Docklands Hotel. And….

    I will be doing a talk, for Private Property, on “Mobile Lessons Learned and Growth Comparisons”. This is the first time I am doing something like this, and I am, well let’s say, rather…NERVOUS. But, I’m sure it will all be ok :) I can do it….

    So, if you have any inkling in anything Mobile, or even want to know about where Mobile is going in South Africa, (and of course based in Durbs) I highly recommend registering for the event – http://marketingmix.co.za/pebble.asp?relid=24298

    Looking forward to seeing you there…