Plague of PR scandals - 31 Oct 2011
By Simone Puterman (@SimoneBiz)
Well, well, well, it's certainly been an interesting few days. We've had the ASA's asinine axing of the Axe ad, which features winged angels smashing halos - an idea the papacy ditched 500 years ago, Foschini and its sexist t-shirts faux pax, this morning's outrage over the suspension of the Outsurance/702 Traffic Freeflow pointspeople in Jozi, and, oh look, another sex scandal involving a minister splurged across Sunday papers.
Don't say we didn't tell you... On Media Freedom Day this month, Chris Moerdyk warned in his weekly column entitled Separating facts from fifth columnists, "our mass media will have to be careful about just accepting that information they are given in confidence by someone close to a minister, or even from a minister directly, is in fact the real McCoy and not just mischief-making". The Daily Maverick's Chris Vick has a thought-provoking column which goes into more detail contextualising the Mbalula sex scandal within a political framework, and the role of the media.
Meanwhile, the widow of Anton Hammerl, Penny Sukhraj-Hammerl, has written an open letter appealing to the people of Libya to help in the search for the slain photographer's remains.
On a more positive note, congrats to the City of Cape Town, which has won the bid to be the World Design Capital in 2014 (what it means); the #askHelenZille meme has shown that some politicians can take a joke (great PR there); and FNB is providing us with some light relief in the latest radio ad follow-ups to its "Steve from Bleep Bank" campaign - Singing Steve: two musicians, who switched their personal accounts to FNB during the initial campaign, then wrote and performed their song to the bank's agency DDB. The rest, as they say, is history...
Then there was the impressive 3D-mapping AV presentation by Ministry of Illusion for the Havas-organised South African launch of the new Motorola Razr at Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton, Johannesburg, last week (although I do deplore the objectification of women's bodies inherent within the entire campaign).
Let's see how more interesting this week can be...
Simone Puterman (@SimoneBiz)
Managing editor
PS The eighth article in our "Google AdWord Free Trial" series is now up, covering what users do after they've clicked on an ad - conversion tracking.
PPS The latest Ornico Ad Showcase features TV ads for VW Polo Sedan, Cell C, DStv, Vodacom and Spur, and radio ads for Savanna, FNB, Eskom, Santam and SANBS.
