Press & Media - SA Says | Anonymous Polling South Africa

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SA Says launches anonymous polling app to make South African public opinion faster, cheaper and more honest to measure

A “WHAT IF?” Project from Johannesburg advertising agency In-Detail, SA Says removes the sign-up form from market research — and argues that anonymity is what makes the data worth having.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa —

SA Says, a free public opinion polling app built for South Africans, is now available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. It lets anyone vote on national and local polls in seconds — with no account, no email address, and no personal information collected at any point.

The platform is a “WHAT IF?” Project by In-Detail, the Johannesburg design and advertising agency founded in 1991, which has spent more than three decades building brands for South African businesses. WHAT IF? is the agency's internal programme for building the products it keeps wishing existed.

“WHAT IF?” in this case was a question about research itself: what if the thing standing between brands and honest public opinion was the registration form? Traditional online research asks people to hand over their identity before they answer — then spends the rest of the process trying to correct for the fact that identified people answer differently.

How it works

Rather than an account, each phone generates an anonymous identifier of its own — a random token that is not a name, a number, a SIM or an IMEI, and means nothing outside the app. That identifier does two jobs: it enforces one vote per phone per poll, and it lets results be segmented without anyone being identified.

For location-based polls, the app converts a user's GPS position into a ward, municipality and province, then discards the coordinates. The result is regional granularity that most lightweight research tools cannot offer, without storing anything that points at an individual household. The approach is designed to sit comfortably inside South Africa's Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), which governs how personal information is processed.

Why it matters for market research

SA Says is positioning itself as a fast, low-friction layer alongside conventional research panels rather than a replacement for them. For agencies, the appeal is speed and cost: a question can reach a live South African audience without recruitment, incentives or panel management, and results arrive broken down by region.

The commercial model is sponsored polls — brands and research agencies placing their own questions into the app's public feed. Because sponsored questions sit alongside the everyday ones South Africans are already arguing about, they are answered in the same casual, unguarded way, rather than in the survey-taking mindset that panel research has to work around.

Engagement is reinforced by random prize giveaways. Every phone that votes is already carrying an anonymous identifier, so the app can draw a winner at random and issue a claim code without ever learning who anyone is — incentivising participation without the data trade that usually comes with it.

Quote

“We kept running into the same wall on client research: the moment you ask someone to register, you change what they tell you. SA Says is our answer to that — take the identity out entirely, and what you get back is closer to what people actually think. For agencies, that's a faster read on the country than a panel can give you, at a fraction of the cost.”

— Gerald Yapp, Creative Director, In-Detail

Availability

SA Says is free to download on the Apple App Store and Google Play. There are no subscriptions, paywalls or in-app purchases, and no registration is required to vote.

About SA Says

SA Says is an anonymous public opinion polling and survey platform built for South Africans. Users vote on public polls without an account and see real-time results broken down nationally and by province, municipality and ward. SA Says is independent and is not affiliated with any political party, candidate or government institution.

About In-Detail

In-Detail is a design and advertising agency based in Johannesburg, founded in 1991. Over more than thirty years it has worked across brand strategy, design, digital marketing, web and app design and creative production for South African businesses. SA Says is part of the agency's WHAT IF? programme of self-initiated products. in-detail.com

Media contact

polls@sasays.co.za
Contact form

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How SA Says data is gathered

Clause 1.2 of the South African Press Code requires that material information about the provenance of a poll is disclosed when it is published. This section exists so that anyone reporting SA Says numbers has everything they need to meet that standard — and so there is never a question about where our data comes from or who stands behind it.

Who runs SA Says

SA Says is owned and operated by In-Detail, a design and advertising agency in Johannesburg founded in 1991. The platform is a named, identifiable source with a named operator — the respondents are anonymous, the publisher is not.

Independence and stake

SA Says is not affiliated with, funded by, owned by or acting on behalf of any political party, candidate, campaign or government body, and holds no stake in the outcome of any election. Where a poll has been paid for by a third party as a sponsored poll, we will say so and name the sponsor on request.

How responses are collected

Polls are answered inside the SA Says mobile app by people who choose to open it and vote. Each device carries an anonymous identifier that allows one vote per poll. For location polls, GPS is converted to ward, municipality and province, and the coordinates are discarded. No names, email addresses or phone numbers are collected at any point.

What we can supply

On request, and at no cost, we will provide the sample size, the fieldwork dates, the exact question wording and answer options, and the regional breakdown for any poll we have published. If a figure of ours is being reported, ask us for this and we will send it.

What this data is not

This is the part we would rather over-communicate than have misread:

It is not a probability sample. Respondents are self-selecting — they are people who downloaded the app and chose to answer. They were not randomly drawn from the South African population.
It carries no margin of error. A margin of error is a property of random probability samples. Quoting one against an opt-in poll is statistically meaningless.
It is not weighted to be nationally representative. Results are reported as raw counts and percentages of those who voted, not adjusted to match national demographics.
It is not an election forecast. SA Says measures the opinion of the people who answered. It should not be presented as a prediction of how South Africa will vote.
One-phone-one-vote is a deterrent, not a guarantee. The device identifier resets if the app is uninstalled and reinstalled, so we do not claim that duplicate voting is impossible.
Small regional subsamples need care. A ward or municipal breakdown may rest on very few responses. Always ask us for the subsample size before reporting a regional figure.

Ready-to-use provenance statement

Publishing an SA Says figure? This wording covers the disclosure the Press Code asks for. Fill in the bracketed detail — or ask us and we will fill it in for you.

Source: SA Says (sasays.co.za), an opt-in online poll of self-selected app users. Fieldwork: [dates]. Sample: [n] responses. SA Says is operated by In-Detail, a Johannesburg advertising agency, and is not affiliated with, funded by or acting for any political party, candidate or government body. The poll is self-selecting rather than a probability sample, carries no margin of error, is not weighted to be nationally representative, and should not be read as a forecast of election results.

Media assets

The SA Says logo is available below. Please don't alter the colours, proportions or wordmark. For anything else — screenshots, founder photography or interview requests — get in touch and we'll send it over.

SA Says logo SVG · vector

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Press coverage

SA Says is newly launched, so there's nothing to list here yet. Coverage will be collected on this page as it appears.

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