These are a few of my favourite ads

Now that I am back in South Africa, I have had a chance to catch up on some of the ads that are being flighted right now. While most are unremarkable, and a couple are actively offensive, a few campaigns do stand out.

1. The ad everybody loves right now is the TV commercial for the new Golf 6. I can’t watch the story of Lucky, the three-legged cheetah, without choking up. The ad is heartwarming, endlessly watchable and generates great talkability. The product is relevant to the scenario without being overexposed — a brave move for any advertiser who would have been tempted to show the usual shot of the car speeding around some romantic mountain pass — and for once an advertiser uses its website to tell anyone who is interested about the story behind the ad. That said, I can’t help feeling that they didn’t quite make the most of the viral opportunity here.

2. The Halls ad where the aliens arrive in the Joburg CBD to abduct the locals and a woman yells “Hei voetsek!” Though it has been around for a while, it’s still funny, uniquely South African, and, as with the Golf ad, the product’s attributes are relevant to the situation.

3. Despite a snippy letter in yesterday’s Saturday Star, in which the writer accused Nando’s of pandering to its “European” target market (oh please, give the race card a break already. It’s so tatty at the edges), the Julius Malema campaign was genius. Sure, Julius was an obvious target for a brand that became synonymous with controversy in the 1990s — and subsequently lost some of its mojo — but it would have been criminal if Nando’s hadn’t taken on the Msholozi Mini-Me. The PR resulting from the campaign was priceless, and while I haven’t seen any of the sales figures, which is the ultimate test of whether a campaign makes the grade, it remains a case study in how to use current events in order to market a product. I look forward to more edgy work from Nando’s in the future.

4. The campaign for the Pendoring awards for creativity in Afrikaans advertising is always a good one, and this year’s is no exception. My favourite execution in the campaign, which features well-loved Afrikaans TV favourites including SA’s answer to Chuck Norris, Rian Cruywagen, is this one showing poor Bennie Boekwurm being used as bait on a hook. (I loved Bennie Boekwurm as a child, especially the way the blommetjies used to sing for him before he emerged from his hole in the ground.)

5. Cell C’s Woza Wheneva campaign: typically South African, creatively executed. It manages to remain likeable despite being relatively hard sell. They’ve also tried to use the web a little more creatively than most so that the information about the offer on their site adds to the experience of the ad rather than just being another brochure.

6. Most radio advertising in South Africa is awful (it’s just as bad in Australia, if anyone gets hot under their patriotic collars) so it’s always gratifying when somebody makes an effort. The radio campaign for Sinutab nosespray, in which a heavy-breathing stalker turns out to be a woman’s bunged-up husband, is funny and unexpected. No doubt it will be flighted to death and I will end up hating it, but in the mean time, kudos to the agency and the advertiser.