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Hope you have a card!

Introduction
As many our readers may recall I wrote a fairly dramatic newsletter at the end of January when, after 16 years, FNB stopped their sponsorship of www.sagoodnews.co.za. It was entitled:

Is this the last newsletter?

It was then, but it’s not now!

We have a new lease of life thanks to Brand SA who have requested that we get it going again with a changed frequency of our newsletters, blogs and SA Hero stories (see Appendix 1).

Brand South Africa was established in August 2002 (same year as SA Good News!) to help create a positive and compelling brand image for South Africa. At that time, the world was unsure about what to think of South Africa, with many different messages being sent out by various sources. This did very little to build the country’s brand and it was evident that to attract tourism and investment there was a need to co-ordinate marketing initiatives to make them more effective.
This led to the creation of Brand South Africa, whose main objective is the marketing of South Africa through the Brand South Africa campaign. There are many benefits to having a consolidated brand image, with the most important being that a consistent Brand South Africa message creates strategic advantages in terms of trade and tourism for the country in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
We are teaming up to share our databases and improve the frequency of communication, with particular reference to keeping those South Africans living abroad, informed.

The need

It is often said, not just by me, but by the likes of Bill Gates and Paul Harris “that bad news arrives as drama, and good news is incremental” you can interpret this differently; that being that news comes in three forms:

• Events – usually dramatic and negative
• Cycles – good one year, bad the next
• Trends – incremental, and often positive

Generally, and I loathe generalisations, the day-to-day media focus their attention on the dramatic “event” of the day, as it is often said “today’s media scoop is tomorrow’s fish and chips packet”. Sadly, cycles and trends, whether positive or negative, get lost in the wash of the day’s drama.

This website www.sagoodnews.co.za is going to stop that. We are going to focus our attention on a balanced and informed narrative that seeks to understand the many positive events, cycles and trends that are, as my Afrikaans master used to say, “happening behind our back right in front of our eyes”.

Optimism Paradox

Adrian Gore recently gave a talk in which he mentioned the concept of an Optimism paradox. He says that in a survey of many South Africans two things emerged:

• In respect of their private aspirations they saw a more positive future.
• However, in respect of the future of the country they saw a more negative future

He described this as Personal Optimism versus National Declinism

Hans Rosling in his book Factfullness describes the chimpanzee syndrome, where many chimpanzees by default have a more optimistic outlook that many of the MBA classes globally that he lectured to and asked questions of:

One example:
Question: In the last 20 years the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has:

• Almost doubled
• Remained more or less the same
• Almost halved

33% of the chimpanzees got it right (almost halved), only 9% of the MBA classes got it right!

The reason is in part Adrian Gore’s optimism paradox or what Rosling describes as an over dramatic worldview “which is uncontrolled….our appetite for the dramatic goes too far and prevents us from seeing the world as it is and leads us terribly astray, it’s the way our brain works and is not the fault of evil minded-media, propaganda, fake news, or wrong facts”

Filling the need

So, if you the reader are interested in many of the positive events, cycles and trends that are taking place in this wonderful country of ours, stay subscribed (if you are an existing subscriber), or subscribe (if you are not). Send on to a few friends as well.

In this edition check out our Blog and our SA Hero story so you get a feel for the way we write.

Nice to be back!

Appendix 1
Content Frequency of publication and approximate number of words
Newsletter 1 x monthly 600 – 800
Blog 2 x monthly 150 – 300
SA Hero 2 x monthly 150 – 300
Fast Fact 2 x monthly 20 – 40
Daily Latest news 2-3 x weekly 60 – 100
Corporate Good Deed 2 x monthly 60 – 100
NGO Good Deed 2 x monthly 60 – 100
Corporate Sponsor story 1 x monthly 20 – 40
Video As and when suitable material found