Bic South Africa fails hard for women's day

Via Twitter

August 9 was National Women's Day in South Africa, and Bic SA's social media team tried to share an empowering captioned image. The only problem was, it wasn't really empowering at all.

Reaction was swift and sharp, including this hack:

Twitter

The problem is obvious. "Think like a man" is hardly celebrating women's equality.

I'll hand it to Bic, however. They did take it down and issue a proper apology.

From Facebook:

Hi everyone. Let’s start out by saying we’re incredibly sorry for offending everybody - that was never our intention, but we completely understand where we’ve gone wrong. This post should never have gone out. The feedback you have given us will help us ensure that something like this will never happen again, and we appreciate that.

It still shouldn't have happened in the first place, but at least it opens a helpful conversation. Especially for an international brand with a bad history of gender stereotyping.

Are rape jokes funnier when they're about men in prison?

Via Ads of The World

No. They are not.

South African ad puts a white guy in blackface, with predictable results

imeslive.co.za

It was supposed to be a funny concept about air quotes and quality control. But when they put the white guy in blackface for the "African dictator" stereotype, it pretty much guaranteed a bad reaction in post-Apartheid South Africa.



According to Times Live, it only took two complaints of racism to get the South African Advertising Standards Authority to order the Cape Town Fish Market to pull the ad. The ruling stated, "To achieve the desired result of showing a corrupt official, there was no need for the man to be made out to be black."

The Cape Town Fish Market's general manager, Davin Berrill, says the restaurant "never intended to offend anybody," which is a pretty standard non-apology these days.

There is no mention of whether anyone objected to the man dressing as a woman prostitute.

The most inappropriate "kids menu" ads ever

These ads are such obvious awards bait, I had to make Google Cape Town Fish Market to assure myself that the restaurant exists.

It does, but it's unlikely that any restaurant would pay for this many executions of such an unsettling concept. So it's either another "ghost ad" (to use Adland's terminology) or else the agency secured the account by putting up  a lot of extra work as compensation for the client allowing the creatives to do whatever they felt like.

There's a third alternative, that a family-oriented restaurant actually did think a campaign of teen sex, drugs,  baby burning and the occult was a great way to sell fish fingers. Hmmm...

All images via Ads of The World

A really, really depressing bicycle safety campaign

The concept works, I think, in conveying the idea of "distance". But at first I wasn't sure who it was talking to, cyclists (keep your distance from cars) or car drivers (keep your distance from cyclists). I was also unsure whether the 1.5 m was supposed to give me a mental image of a car tailgating a bike, or vice versa, or whether it was how much clearance drivers need to give a bike while driving past one. But at least it got me thinking about the issue, I guess.

What the campaign succeeds at is conveying the emotions of sadness and regret. It is quite honestly the most depressing ad campaign I have seen in quite some time.

And that too can be a problem. Many ad consumers simply can't cope with negative emotions. They protect themselves and their consciences by mentally separating themselves from the ad. ("That's not me!") This is called defensive processing, and it is the sworn enemy of hard-hitting social marketing.

That said, I was still moved by this campaign. When I am behind the wheel, I try to be as respectful and cautious as possible of both cyclists and pedestrians. 

And as a cyclist? Let's just say that this campaign just confirms my fears about riding a bike in traffic.

Campaign by Y&R South Africa
Spotted on Ads of The World

Playboy readers care about the big issues #FdAdFridays

I am also concerned about the obsessive removal of public hair and surgical augmentation of breasts, although I think that Playboy is one of the main parties to blame in these unfortunate intimate fashion trends.

"Deforestation"

"Silicon Valley"

Consensual anal sex, however, no matter how often, is an issue every couple needs to decide on for themselves.

"Crack addiction"

This campaign by Y&R, South Africa, tries to mash up Playboy's old-school "class" as a serious men's lifestyle mag with its cheesy locker-room humour. I think it achieves much more of the latter.

Via Ads of The World

Music rights ad sings with forked tongue #FdAdFriday

It's so randomly weird, I am almost left speechless.

Ad by Mortimer Harvey of Johannesburg, South Africa. Via Ads of The World

The sickest tooth whitening ad you'll ever see

It looks like a parody, but it's apparently real. And creepy as hell.

There's another one in which a man crucifies himself while hammering:

Bizarre. Not a particularly appealing message, either.

Unless you're Frank Zappa

Via Ads of The World

"Alibis" fragrances cover the smell of baby powder, desperation

Copyranter posted this rather clever campaign for Mavericks, a South African strip club.

From the Mavericks blog:

"Mavericks Revue Bar, Cape Town’s premier Gentlemen’s Club, is extending its entertainment brand with a range of fragrances entitled ‘Alibis’, aimed at prividing gentlemen with ‘Alibis’ for a range of day to day situations.

The fragrances, aimed primarily at men are entitled:

‘My Car Broke Down’ with the scent of fuel, burnt rubber, grease and steel
‘We Were Out Sailing’ with the scent of fresh ocean spray, sea salt, aqua and cotton rope
‘I Was Working Late’ with the scent of coffee, wool suits, cigarettes and ink

All are available exclusively to purchase at Mavericks Revue Bar in Cape Town and will retail at ZAR 295 [$36.50 USD]."

I was rather surprised that the products are actually for sale. You'd think you could achieve the same marketing effect for the club without shelling out for risky novelty product development.

I can't really complain about the sexism or ethics of these ads, because those things kind of come with the territory in this entertainment category. But I do wonder if Alibis also makes a Tide-to-go-type glitter and skid mark remover for men's clothing.

Selling men's shirts with topless women

Ads of The World posted this rather steamy South African ad for J. Crew:



Okay, now without looking back: describe more than one of the shirts you saw. You can't, can you? Yeah, that happens sometimes when you put too much sex in your ads. It tends to crowd out less important things from your brain, like brand. And product. And value proposition.

Here's a "making of", just because it's there. At least ou'll get a better look at the shirts.

F'd Ad Fridays: Virgin Mobile's flash of insanity

AdFreak says this ad was banned is S. Africa for appearing to sexualize young girls because even though the actresses were over 20, they were acting childish:



I just think it's a bizarre ad that a Creative Director dreamed up after licking a toad at a Kwaito concert.

Beautiful ad for the Dirty Bird

Acart French Copywriter Vincent send me this video from Ogilvy Johannesburg, for KFC:



Damn you for making me cry, Vincent! It's my ninth wedding anniversary today (putting me somewhere in the middle of that transition) and my son has a little girl best friend those kids made me think of.

Gorgeous work! I just wish it weren't for gross old fried chicken, that's all.

F'd Ad Fridays: Nando's double-breasted with chips

Nando's is a South African fast food chain known for their cheeky ads. I have a feeling that this one, although quite sexist, will appeal to some women's inner bitch.



Via YouTube

F'd Ad Fridays: Umbilicalievable

This South African spot for the Toyota Aygo uses a rather maternal metaphor for independence.



Squeamishness-inducing graphics aside, I think the commercial's biggest failure is when it has to resort to a teacher with a visual labelled "umbilical cord" to make sure we don't think this is a commercial about making sausages.

Or evisceration.

Blech...

Via Adrants.

Bad Karma

CharitySA is a South African online listing service where not-for-profit organizations can solicit funds, advertise jobs, and generally make an appeal to the public.

But as Copyranter points out on ANIMAL NY, their ads aren't appealing at all.

(Once you're done dry-heaving over the images, click to expand to legible size)





Sure, these ads have been noticed, and are being talked about. But is this really going to motivate you to "do something good in this life"?

Me, I'm just left wondering what vainglorious admen come back as in the next life.

South Africa choses "skins" for the World Cup

At the beginning of the week, I criticized an otherwise-stunning Sapporo beer online ad for its reliance on tired old Japanese cultural stereotypes.

This is not an isolated incident of yokelling it up for foreigners. Australia's current global tourism campaign, which is playful in its stereotyped portrayal of the land and its inhabitants, has angered many at home. “Why do we have to portray ourselves as a nation of backward bogans (hicks) stuck in a timewarp on the global stage?”, said one commenter.

It's in this context that I was amused to see the trend parodied so pointedly by Nando's, a South African fast food chicken chain, in their pre-World Cup campaign:

(warning: pixelated partial nudity)



Yes, I know. It's sexist. It's juvenile. And the puns are appalling. (I laughed, but I share my five-year-old son's sense of humour.) Look past that for a moment, though, and notice something else: the urban multiculturalism.

Nando's is known (infamous, actually) in South Africa for its controversial — even deliberately offensive — ads. The brand is anything but progressive. And yet they're the ones challenging our outdated view of Africa, gained from the dog-eared pages of an old National Geographic?



Hmmmm...



(via MTLB)

Sleazevertising

South Africa's IOL reports that their country's Advertising Standards Authority has banned an ad campaign by a chain of "gentlemen's clubs":



What's interesting about this ruling is that the billboard wasn't just cited for being sexually explicit, but "an offence to the dignity of athlete Caster Semenya".



For those who don't remember, Ms. Semenya was the South African runner who won gold in the 800 meters at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, only to have the IAAF insist that she undergo a gender test — causing national and global furor.

For his part the advertiser, Lolly Jackson, is playing this scandal for all its PR potential — first of all denying that the ad had anything to do with the runner because he lacks subtlety ("the model on the billboard would have been black, she would have been wearing a pair of athletics shoes") and then vowing to use his future ads to "throw mud" at the ASA.

It's a sleazy ad to be sure — in every sense of the word. But I can't imagine an ad getting pulled in this country just for making an oblique jab at a public figure. Can you give me an example otherwise?