Great TV ads unite us

While most South Africans will tell you that they hate advertising, particularly television ads, I get the feeling that what they really mean is that they hate bad advertising.

When a good one comes on air, they love it so much they put aside such issues as politics, crime and unemployment at dinner parties, in the pubs and shebeens, and share a laugh, not to mention deep and profound discussions on the latest ad that has taken their fancy.

Ask radio talk-show hosts and they will tell you that when they are faced with dead air due to no-one phoning in to a show, they just have to invite listeners to call in with their favourite TV commercials and the switchboard lights up like a Christmas tree.

Eight years ago the SABC ran a 13-part series featuring the world’s greatest television and cinema commercials. Within weeks the show was the most-watched in prime time, pushing even a news bulletin into second place for the first time in TV history, and relegating Pamela Anderson to an also-ran third place.

Some time ago, on a radio programme, I tested South Africa’s national memory by playing the jingles from some Springbok Radio ads from the 1950s. Callers got the whole lot right instantly!

For example, remember this one? “You’ll wonder where the dullness went when you brush your teeth with…” Of course, Pepsodent. And yes, lest I offend those British immigrants to South Africa with a penchant for advertising accuracy, the British version used “yellow” instead of “dullness”.

But the iconic age of advertising in South Africa was undoubtedly the 1980s. So much so that when a panel of advertising industry leaders chose their favourite ads of all time a few years ago, they listed not a single one that was produced in the present decade.

Many people in the marketing industry believe that black and white viewers and consumers have differing likes and dislikes when it comes to advertising, but that’s not true. To this day, one of the most loved commercials of all time by all race groups in South Africa is an ad from Cardies. It’s about a very rural Afrikaans woman who petulantly shrugs off a geriatric lothario who presents her with gifts such as pumpkins and piglets, but finally relents when he drops off a Cardies greeting card.

Then there was the most fascinating of all advertising campaigns ever seen in this country. Mercedes Benz produced an outstanding award winning commercial based on a true story of a Cape Town man who fell asleep at the wheel of his Merc and crashed through a low parapet on Chapman’s Peak Drive, somersaulted and rolled down an almost vertical 250m cliff face. He survived thanks to Mercedes Benz safety technology.

This commercial really grabbed the attention of South Africans, and was so successful that other brands tried to get in on the act. BMW produced an extremely cheeky commercial featuring one of their cars on exactly the same stretch of Chapman’s Peak, also shown to be going into a skid. But instead of crashing down the cliff, the next scene showed the BMW carrying on along the road with a voiceover talking about BMW “beating the bends”, which television viewers heard as “beating the Benz”.

Another iconic ad of the 1980s was all about IBM disinvesting from the country but leaving behind a local IBM clone called ISM. This was the basis of  “ISM Elephants”, a TV commercial featuring a big brother (IBM) elephant with his trunk over the shoulders of his baby sibling (ISM), walking through desert sand-dunes to the tune of the Hollies’ hit “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”.

Ironically, while this ad was immensely popular, very few people could remember what it was about or who is was promoting.

Another advertisement that introduced an expression still widely used today was Cremora’s “It’s not inside, it’s on top” commercial. Once again. a wonderful example of excellent acting and production values.

There are many things that make good advertising great. The first is the entertainment factor. All of South Africa’s truly great and memorable television commercials are entertaining. And so they should be, given that TV is essentially a medium of entertainment. And secondly, they spark some or other emotion.

Advertising, I believe, is a sort of mirror of society. While there are many things that make this world an ugly, brutal and inhumane place that we don’t like watching or hearing about, there are many more things that make it wonderful.