Hot and Not So Hot Advertising at Cape Town International

Allan Gray. That's it really, their billboards are always creative, have a great impact and they have a great one on the way into the airport. I am no green thumb but they have some ivy or something to that effect growing out of pot and through a wire frame of the Allan Gray message.

Then the other piece of advertising that caught me was from Sanlam. Absolutely no idea what agency is responsible but I really thought this was very cool.

And as I am sure you have figured out, both of these are pretty hot pieces of above the line advertising. Was feeling pretty good driving out the other side hoping to be surprised with maybe one last gem. The absolute abomination that I instead was faced with caused me to almost swerve into a lamp post.

There really is not a hell of a lot you can say to accurately portray this thing.

The Growth of Mobile

In South Africa and really Africa in general there is a huge push to develop ways to enable people with a cellphone to do more. Gone are the days of the "I just want to be able to call and message." Now it is email, apps, social networking, banking, and a whole host of other functions.

When still sitting in lectures at varsity it was not at all uncommon to look around the room and see a mass of Blackberrys sprawled across the desks. You see the same thing if you go into any Vida, except it is instead a gathering of iPhones. This study is obviously based on American usage but the numbers are mind-blowing, enjoy!

Your Facebook Book

A couple of weeks ago I posted "A Life on Facebook" which really had a great response and everyone really enjoyed it. Now, how about having a book of your Facebook life, a fully printed out journal of your life and times on Facebook?

Unfortunately this particular one is in French but you get the idea. The campaign was created by DDB for the promotion of a French telecom to promote their new Facebook platfrom. It is a fun idea but a little too gimmicky for my liking. Enjoy!


When Facebook becomes a book from Siavosh Zabeti on Vimeo.

Nandos Goes 5GS

Quite honestly I want to cause someone grievous bodily harm every time I see or hear Trevor Noah. Cell C have gone overboard and it is just getting annoying. So here is a surprise, Nandos has taken the gap.

They are not the work of DraftFCB and are instead from Black River FC. They feature Kagiso, the CEO of Nandos, thats the Chicken Excellence Officer (awesome, I know). Such a great ad, watch carefully to catch each and every stab they take at Cell C. Enjoy!



Read the full story on Chris Rawlinsons blog and check up on my Cell C rant here.

Free Moustache Rides

No doubt someone will take a stab at the fact that this is an ad for budlight, and I am sorry about that. But for Movember it is appropriate and besides, what has been the most useful function your mo has performed this month?

Where has our Windhoek man been this month? What better way to "always keep it real"? Enjoy!

Apples False Marketing Scheme

Really just a heads up for all hoping that the IOS 4.2 software will give their iPod touch 2G the functionality they were hoping for... it won't. I thought I would do the update as Apple SHOWED a changed background in the 2G model. It does not allow and it is a 350 megabyte download. The only change I can figure out is the Game Center application.

Please, if any of you have figured something I have not, let me know.

The Cape Town Festival of Beer

Knocking Golfballs off Lions Head

Asking people the most creative way to destroy their wallets came back with some pretty outrageous ideas. One particular dude was convinced he would feed it to hyenas, he was/is a special case and we thought that some humanitarian service would come in if we actually asked him to carry through. So, for the matblac wallet Richard De Villears gets it on condition he carries out the following:

"to micro-wave and liquidize the mentioned wallet, by compressing it into a ball of melted nastiness, and then chipping it off the top of lions head with a 7 iron golf club, it will be evenly distributed on the side of the mountain (and since it is leather, have no adverse effects on the environment)"

[Adrian Stanford Photography]

So for now, well done and enjoy the potential wallet bro. Until we have photographic evidence we shall hold onto the it. Will try and get a filming of the process involved with embedding a wallet in the side of Table Mountain. Check in later.

To everyone else that entered, don't stress, will be having another competition not long from now.

Your Facebook Email

But it is not email, it is an integration of all the ways you can communicate over Facebook. Someone said to me yesterday that it is going to be exactly like Google Wave, possibly similar but with one big difference. It won't be utter rubbish and make you want to curl up in the fetal position in the shower and weep profusely over how complicated it is.

There has been so much talk of what Googles big social network will be like I am not sure many of us had really cast a thought abut Facebook attacking Gmail. At the moment you can only request to be sent an invite and it does not happen immediately. Made the request a couple of days ago and have had nothing back but by all means go ahead and make a request here. Enjoy!

Red Bull Short Films

As much as I can get through the content on the internet at an astonishing rate I always enjoy being sent stuff I would not have otherwise found. This came from a friend of mine who has this severely disturbing fetish for bicycles. Just saying bicycle gets him a little flushed, cross-eyed and incredibly sweaty palmed.

Anyway he sent me this clip which after a bit of digging seems to be doing the viral rounds. Who thought anyone could be so interested in a little man on a little bike, and then you watch it. Red Bull are once again the ones behind it, and it is very cool. Would be awesome if we all had such skills. People I have seen attempt things like this are normally drunk, middle-aged men on their daughters pink bikes with training wheels still attached. The result is usually at the very least a broken nose. Hard to decide which of these would be more entertaining, enjoy!



[Thanks Trist]

The Biltong Box

"IT'S AWESOME!"... The end
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

matblac Wallet Giveaway

I have been asked several times before about my wallet from matblac, it is a very trendy, slimline, vital piece of equipment I have where ever I go. Well, matblac found out and has given me one to give away. Here is the matblac vibe and details about how to enter. The wallet is worth R580 and I am not sure I could have made it much easier to enter.

The Vibe

Matblac products are designed for the individual.
We’re talking about products that are crafted with the same passion they were designed with. The kind of products crafted for you by someone so confident of his workmanship that if you feel let down, you can call and tell them yourself.

Matblac strives for its products to exude the Raw Design concept.
Raw Design is about going back to the basics, it’s about the reason you needed the product in the first place. It’s about utility and functionality. Once a product embodies these qualities and is assembled using the finest materials, it becomes timeless.

How to Enter

To enter simply "like" the matblac Facebook page and update your status to the most entertaining way you can think of destroying your old wallet, get creative! Be sure to tag the matblac group in your status so that we can see you have entered. To tag, type "@" and you will then be able to select the matblac group. The winner will be asked to follow through on his/her plan and post photos of the destruction.

Entries close Sunday 19 November.

Google and Treasure Island

Google likes to customize its search page for holidays such as Christmas and Easter as well as for remembrance of key dates in history. They have been doing it for ages and I always think that they are quite cool and quirky but I could not place this one. Who the hell is Robert Louis Stevenson and why should we care that is is his 160th birthday?

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson (13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. [Source: Wikipedia]

Treasure Island and the Strange Case of Dr Jeyll and Mr Hyde are timeless and I am sure I am not the only one who had no idea who this guy was. Brings back a bit of nostalgia from being a kid.

A Life on Facebook

Ever tried to figure out the evolutionary phases you go through in your Facebook usage? If you are reading this blog I know that you will have a Facebook page... Unless you are my mom and I think she only reads this to help in the traffic department.

This viral came out on Tuesday and is coming up to half a million views. This may have something to do with the killer soundtrack or it may be because it is an awesome video. Goes through the life and times of Alex Droner, from joining Facebook, to getting friends, all the way through to being an old toppy signing off. Given that Facebook is only six years old I wonder how we will be using it when we are sixty? Enjoy!

Old Spice 'The Mshini Your Man Could Smell Like'

It has been a while since I have posted anything from ZANEWS but these cracked me up. We have by far and away the most entertaining politicians in the world and ZANEWS has never been shy to take the piss.

The Old Spice virals ripped through the internet and there are loads of Old Spice Parodies. The best one by far and away I have seen was the library spoof from Brigham Young University. But now we have a spoof a little closer to home. Enjoy!



Old Spice pulled off an awesome live response campaign through Twitter and so ZANEWS had a crack at it. Gareth Cliff, the always outspoken radio DJ was sent his own response, enjoy!



If you have not seen the original Old Spice viral ads do yourself a favour and click here.

Geek Ft Gangsta Viral

Back in September I posted a video of Keenan Cahill which had guys in stitches. Keenan is a lip syncing YouTube celebrity who always gets a lot of flack for the videos that he posts. There seem to be some very sour people out there who can't handle a geeky little kid becoming an internet sensation. This will really piss them off.

I would really like to find out the story behind 50 Cent getting involved. Was not what I was expecting at al but this will have boosted the kids credibility and who knows who else will make an appearance. Little viral genius and a great bit of PR for 50 Cent, enjoy!

Chuck Norris in Czech T-Mobile Campaign

There really is not a hell of a lot I can say here to convince any guy to watch these clips. Walker Texas Ranger, the only man on earth that does not age. He is making an appearance for T-Mobile in their campaign to promote their Christmas promotions. Would love to have a look at the marketing budget of T-Mobile, they are certainly spending a bucket load on campaigns at the moment.

Personally I did find the Chuck Norris jokes got old really quickly, and really, the only ones that could not control themselves were self-confessed jocks. That was probably becasue "it was cool bru". Vernon Koekemoer, the South African Chuck Norris, I think did a better job in the Nandos ads. But here we have them, enjoy!

There is a Soldier in all of us

Today is the release of a highly anticipated game among the gaming junkies, at least I think so. This video has been doing the viral rounds for the last few days and is definitely just as cool as the Skoda ad I posted yesterday.

The game is Call of Duty - Black Ops and they did a great job creating the scene with everyday people rocking the game. I am not a huge gamer but even I want to have a swing at this game, preferably with cheats for immortality and unlimited ammo, what would be the point otherwise? Enjoy!

Made of Meaner Stuff

No better way to advertise a hot hatch than by making the production process look like a life threatening task. The ad is for the new, "meaner", Skoda Fabia VRS and was done by Fallon London.

Yes, those are vultures. There are also venomous snakes, samurai swords, an alternative method of doing the paint job and so much more that will have every guy going, "****! That is cool!" Shock that it has gone viral... Alone, I think I have watched it six times, enjoy!

Reaction to the Heathrow Flashmob

A week ago I posted the T-Mobile flashmob at Heathrows Terminal 5 and the amount of attention that clip received was quite incredible. T-Mobile certainly has created some amazing awareness, not just for themselves but for London as a destination. Future visitors will be disappointed when they are not greeted with quite the same enthusiasm but for the ones that were these were their reactions.

Buddy the Boxer Finds Zen

Right, here we have the brand spanking new Toyota Yaris Zen ad with Buddy the Boxer from Draftfcb Johannesburg. I have featured most of the Buddy ads on the blog and I really do dig the brand personality that is Buddy but the flair and humour that was with the original ads just is not quite there any more. This may have something to do with me being up early and having to study but I would really like to know your thoughts.

The new Yaris is titled the Zen and the ad shows Buddy discovering the "truly enlightened decision" with his mentor Mr Miaowgy. Am sure at some point Draftfcb will do something with all of the characters that have featured in the Buddy ads which would be quite fun. Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think, enjoy!



There is a 40 second version that I have not been able to get hold of but will post once I have.

Woolworths Aligning their Corporate ID

For a company as marketing oriented as Woolworths you would think that they would have never put their new image NEXT TO its old image. What is even more astounding is how long it has been like this.
Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

Andy Irons - I Surf Because Short Film

Andy Irons was a surfing legend from Hawaii who died in a hotel room in Dallas yesterday. The internet has been buzzing since then and I know that there are some fairly dedicated surf nuts out there that will appreciate this.

People Are Awesome

I tweeted this video the other day assuming it to be just a great clip that some YouTube junkies put together, turns out that it is more than that. The clip is actually the music video for the song "People are Awesome"by a group called Hadouken, an English new rave band.

They put together clips from a mass of other clips on YouTube that have been very popular and made themselves an awesome music video. The video has been up for a week and has been viewed close to five million times. Enjoy!

Vodacom Surfing at Midnight

Vodacom used to have really awesome ads and then they went to the Meerkat and half the nation was put on suicide watch because they really were that bad. Then they came back again and did some great stuff with Jan, better known as Players 23, and the nation was once again happy. Well, here is a new one and I think it is very entertaining.

Sourced from Between 10and5 and they reckon that DraftFCB is responsible and I am sure that they are. The general is back and more than willing to dish out orders. The campaign is called "We've been having it," enjoy!

WTF Debonairs Campaign

You obviously did not click through because you were interested in Debonairs, let us face the fact that their ads are not quite Nandos material. Really nothing to write home about but this is so cheesy I kind of like it.

The agency behind it is MorrisjonesCo and they also created a very cool Facebook page where users can add pictures of their "WTF" experiences as well as offering some great prizes. What cracks me up is that they are also offering an iPad as a prize, and let's be honest, if you have an iPad as a prize EVERYONE is going to sign up. Not knocking the ad at all, I reckon it is pretty cool, enjoy!



They do have a very cool Facebook page and looks like they manage it well so wander over and have a look at their "WHAT THE FRIKKADEL?" application.

Iceberg in Cape Town

A friend of mine has in the last couple of minutes pointed out something that was only too clear from the start but to which i have not accomodated for so well recently. I am talking about those guys who do not get sent viral videos, links to awesome articles, the most recent entertaining ads out (locally and internationally) and all that other good stuff that goes with it.

He asked why I had not posted about the YouTube video of the Ice Berg spotted off Clifton beach. The reason, I was sure that it had been covered enough that there was no need for it to be posted here as well. Apparently not. 

I first came across the video last week through Twitter and thought it was pretty cool and left it at that assuming it was another Puma special (Greenpoint Viral). These guys seem to have pulled it off far better having had a little over six thousand views in a week. Here is the original, enjoy!

Turned out to be a Liqui-Fruit stunt for their Summer Melt Down campaign. You can read the full story and check out the other videos here, and join up with them on Facebook to win some pretty rocking prizes.

[Thanks Donovan for the kick in the ass]