That was the question asked to people in Cape Town, South Africa, by the Prison Broadcasting Network (PBN), “a non-profit rehabilitation programme that teaches prisoners the skills to become employable when they are released.” I found the responses unsurprising. But the video has a twist.
The new Reporters without Borders’ campaign reminds me of this International Society for Human Rights campaign (same ad agency?), but their appeal is clear. And so is their message. More here.
Surfing as leisure and a sport has historically been associated with whites in South Africa, though that’s not necessarily true in practice. In fact a few documentary films (for example, “Taking back the waves“), the new feature film “Otelo Burning” and the work of photographer Richard Johnson (scroll to the right) have pointed to a long tradition of surfing among young black people in South Africa’s coastal cities.* So, I always wondered when some creative director would pounce on the idea to commodify that history and struggle for recognition. Well, Cell C, a mobile/cell operator has done so now as part of its “Be Now” campaign targeted at young people with an ad focusing on”budding” semi-pro surfer Avuyile Ndamase from the Eastern Cape province.
* The recent documentary, “Whitewash,” interrogated similar themes in surfing in the United States.
In what some see as innovative advertising and others as a publicity stunt, a South African burger chain has a bright idea for a campaign to woo blind customers: serving them burgers with words in Braille spelled out on their buns with sesame seeds.
Beer company Guinness’s new commercial “The Ticket,” made for its huge Nigerian market and first unveiled in early January this year, used local actors and crew, has Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba versions (the first time Guinness made ads in local languages), and contains a realistic storyline: A loyal brother who makes sure he doesn’t forget his small town and his mum, despite his new found city ways. And a moral lesson: “A boy dreams, but a man does.” Familiar tropes about work, beer and masculinity. Locals are praising the ad for its high production values, multi-lingualism and boost to Nigeria’s ad industry. But the ad also achieves something else the marketers probably did not set out to do with its part aspirational story highlighting Nigeria’s “can do spirit” (that’s the producers’ words): it dramatizes the transport struggles of Nigerians that are now at the heart of the #OccupyNigeria movement. Guinness for the people.
A Belgian organization (backed by a smart advertising agency) “is calling on unborn babies in Belgium, to do something about the thousands of unborn babies in Africa that do not survive their own birth.” [Read more...]
Yesterday while quickly blogging about the Carl’s Jr commercial shot that utilized Cape Town as a stand-in for Istanbul, I was reminded of French photographer Cecile Mella’s project “Fictional Cape Town.” There Mella documented the manufactured worlds produced by advertising firms using locations around Cape Town as a stand-in for European, British or American scenes. “… A characteristic wine farm is transformed into a Dutch homestead, or a Long Street café becomes a Parisian bistro for a day or two.” Not surprisingly these ads contribute to the racial political economy of the city. There’s lots of work for mostly local and expatriate whites as actors, models and extras in front of cameras. Blacks, with few exceptions, it seems do lots of the heavy labor in the industry. Why Cape Town? It is cheaper — the favorable exchange rate — to shoot and it comes with good infrastructure. Mella has written that the advertising industry “semi-colonizes slices of the city,” but that she hopes attentive viewers can catch the glimpses of the real Cape Town in her images of these “crooked landscapes” manufactured worlds. Here we’re posting some of the images. [Read more...]
Before Boima rides us out this year with West Africa’s best dance tunes, we couldn’t resist including a post with some of the lowlights of 2011.
