So, I was in New York last week. I like saying that – makes me feel very jet set.

I’ll say it again, “So I was in New York last week.”

Okay, I’ve got it out of the system, thanks for bearing with me.

The reason? America is big and so is its digital marketing spend. By 2019, marketers in the US will spend US $103 billion on search marketing, display advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing — (source Foresters 2016). That’s more than they will on broadcast and cable television advertising combined. Over the next three years, search will remain the largest share of the digital mix, but social media investment will grow faster than any other digital marketing channel.

Compare that to our SA spend which comes in a tiddly US $100 million and you can see the difference in budgets and usage.

I asked one of my team members to compare spend in terms of percentages. What she found was that SA’s market is but 0.14% of the US spend on digital. Simply put, the American market spends 735 times the amount we do here in SA. (Thanks Rentia!)

As you can see, this is a business opportunity that we’re taking full advantage of. We’re now developing high quality digital marketing solutions for international markets, which is a sure fire way of growing our footprint in the USA.

The weakness of the rand and the high levels of digital knowledge and skill in SA, coupled with the same language, make a compelling argument for outsourcing work to SA from the USA.

I returned with two large development projects and these hopefully will be the first of many.

We are also working on an exciting project with an A list movie star,  creating a marketing plan for clients and agencies and looking for a local MD to head up a potential opening of a Digital Fire office there – watch this space!