THE TECH CONNECTION

The people connecting through tech

As the world locked down, businesses needed to find innovative ways to stay afloat. As such, the past year has seen thousands of companies, across the globe, either adopt online meeting and event technology or enhance their current offering. South Africa was not to be left behind, despite the economic and infrastructure challenges facing the country.   

Universities like the University of the Witwatersrand’s (Wits) undergraduate programme started making pre-recorded lecture videos available to their students. The university’s School of Journalism turned to Zoom to connect with their post-graduate students. And to guarantee everyone had data, students were given free data bundles, to ensure as many people as possible could make use of this technology.

Top African business school, the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS,) started offering live online lectures to their students. They went as far as making use of producers to managed the interface between online students and lecturers. Interim Dean of GIBS, Morris Mthombeni said in an editorial piece for Business Day, “Our focus as a business school is to keep our academic programme going and to deliver on our agenda… Our model of blended (digital and classroom) learning has worked extremely well”. In fact, it has been so successful that 68% of respondents, in a GIBS student survey, said they wanted to continue using this blended approach to learning in the future.

South Africa’s art industry also turned to using online technology. South African fine art auction house, Strauss & Co, who have had an online presence for a number of years, launched their live auction site in 2020 to cater to the needs of the market during the COVID-19 lockdown. Susie Goodman, Executive Director of Strauss & Co says, “Our big challenge as we neared May, was how were we going to hold a live auction for which we had already prepared a catalogue?” The company was fortunate that there was already a global trend for buying art online. “Due to this trend, we had already signed an agreement with a company called Invaluable, which is an international company which provides for the live bidding option,” Goodman said. Being one-step ahead with their tech-strategy proved incredibly lucky for the company. Goodman noted, “We would not have been able to turn our auction around without having this fortuitous relationship in place.”

This success of this first auction was phenomenal. Strauss & Co reported that the 650-lot sale fetched R79 million with a lot sell-through rate of 77% and a value sell-through rate of 79%. Two of Irma Stern’s pieces, Still life with Lilies and Zanzibar Arab sold for R14.8 million and R11.4 million respectively to telephone bidders.

This online facility has also given Strauss and Co a much wider global audience for their art, “One of the benefits is that, through the digital world, you can reach more people, everywhere. We have gone away from geographical sales where we only sell in a particular city, to now selling to people, accross the world, in their own home or office.” The only thing that has changed for company is that with online sales, they have to provide a lot more information on the pieces online, which they have done through a series of You Tube webinars and videos.

RMB’s Turbine Art Fair set an example for event organisers when they managed to, hold their fair online, with just two months of planning. Glynis Hyslop, founder of the RMB Turbine Art Fair, said, “I felt very strongly that artists had to have a channel to market this year, so we started looking at ways to run a digital fair.” She explained that the idea had to be passed by a number of stakeholders, so only got going in the beginning of July and was held at the end of August.

Although Hyslop said they had very few people watching live, they got three of four times as many people watching at their leisure. “So, we were quite well attended,” she said. An added benefit of going online was that the fair got better speakers this year. The reason being that the experts did not have to travel to South Africa, Hyslop explained.

And like Goodman, Hyslop found that this year’s fair won over a global audience, something not achieved before, which was a real boost for the young artists being represented by the fair. “The second wonderful thing was that there were quite a few sales to internationals, to people not in South Africa, and that was exciting.” She explained that in the past the fair was only attended by people in Johannesburg, and maybe a few from Cape Town.

These are just three examples of organisations that have made a successful move to digital platforms. Global institutions like museums, ballet companies, operas, and musicians have all held online tours, performance and concerts in an attempt to keep connected with their audiences.  

Even businesses that were not under threat from Covid, turned to online platforms, as they started hosting webinars for customers in an attempt to say top of mind and relevant in times of crisis. Inboxes were filled with email invites to anything from financial advice, to talks by psychologists, virtual wine tastings and comedy shows, to list a few. All in an to keep people’s moods buoyed and ensure customers were getting added value while economies remain locked down.