In an effort to foster young talent Big Blue (a clothing retailer) with the help of young Melissa Attree, devised a cunning plan; the Makhulu Polane competition. Mellisa suggests “The idea for the Makhulu Polane initiative was developed in 2006 when I was with the Black Khaki Ad agency. Big Blue were keen to discover and support local SA design talent and Makhulu Polane seemed like a creative way to do that.”

If you’re like me intensely inquisitive - I’ve scanned the people magazines on the way out of Woolworths - then you’ll want to know what the hell Makhulu Polane actually means; Mellisa has this answer : “the name is made up from two local languages and loosely means “Big Idea” - having an unusual name also meant we could create a brand around the annual competition”

I was of course interested in the big “why” question; the one which might make my follow up remarks : “in this competitive environment?”, “in competition with the Springleap’s of this world?” and “so late on in the game?” redundant. Mellisa suggests :We decided to launch, market and manage the campaign exclusively online which in 2006 was pretty new for SA - the competition had great support from bloggers, design collectives and t-shirt design fundis.” Whoa where was I in 2006 then; this predates so many of the social media networking opportunities many e-marketeers now take for granted - you’ve got to tip your cap at that balsy move.

I was wondering though; could this entire marketing event have been staged online? Surely in 2006, you’d be better off with traditional media, emailed entries and perhaps a niche blog for those early adopters I’d mentioned above; it appears Big Blue had thought the same “In order to find the best entries Big Blue opened the entries up to anyone who felt they had a cool design and although it was marketed online we made sure we attracted a wider ‘offline’ base also which I think is the reason for the competition’s success”

Makhulu Polane rocks! I recommend all those young budding designers who happen onto this site enter it; make a name for yourself. The theme is “funny galore” which in my head sounds like “funny gore” which I think is perhaps more my style..You’ve got until the 1st of October to enter and you can find out more about Makhulu Polane @ www.bigblue.co.za