[Orchids & Onions] Jingle tills, jingle tills to Pick n Pay

At this time of year, they will be the people denying vehemently that they ever look at the newspaper inserts put out by the likes of Pick n Pay, Checkers, Spar, DionWired, Incredible Connection, Cape Union Mart, Sportsman's Warehouse, Game and Hyperama.

© Wavebreak Media Ltd – 123RF.com

They're liars. These are some of the most irresistible marketing inducements around. And that is because, being in printed format, they allow potential consumers to quickly zoom in on exactly what they are interested in, and enable them to compare prices and products virtually instantaneously. You try that on a PC or smartphone...

I'm one of those people. We're looking around to replace a fridge and I know exactly what is out there in our price range. And we're going to choose one and get it. The inserts will have been my only source of information and I know I need nothing more upon which to base my purchase decision.

Every year, one of the sales inserts stands out for me - in terms of elegant, efficient design. This year, my Orchid for the best insert goes to Pick n Pay for their "Why pay more for the Perfect Christmas" mini-magazine, which I extracted from The Star last week.

It was printed on high-quality glossy paper and, like a magazine, had an index in front to cut down even further on your navigating time. Photography and design were excellent, as was the professional, magazine-style binding which held the whole thing together.

It may have cost them an arm and a leg to produce, but it will last much longer than the newsprint offerings from many of their rivals. And the longer the marketing message lasts in a consumer's
= home, the better for the bottom line.

A well-deserved Orchid to Pick n Pay.

One of the radio ads which annoys me most is that for Emperors Palace - not because I have anything, per se, against a place which is our Las Vegas Lite, but because they never, ever, use local voices or accents for the ads.

There is one annoying spot, with an English-voiced woman, telling us about the "Paliss iv dreams" in a very similar way to how Richard Hammond of Top Gear mangles the word "pounds", which comes out something "pow-yinds".

The out-of-place accent is bad enough, but the latest Emperors Palace ad features an American voice (a nod to Las Vegas which they used in the days when the place was known as Caesars Palace).

What grates is the fact the voice is talking about the location of Emperors, next to OR Tambo International Airport on the East Rand, where the International Trade Centre was - the venue for the Codesa talks (remember those?) before our first democratic election.

The voice says this was the place "our constitution" was hammered out. "Our"? Yours (going by the voice) was hammered out in 1776, boet.

Don't misunderstand me: I have no problem with immigrants who settle here and make a real contribution to society. But, why do we shy away from having a South African voice, particularly in an ad like this. It was South Africans who brought this country back from the brink of civil war and they who thrashed out their constitution.

An Onion to Emperors Palace for perpetuating the image that you're just an offshoot of Vegas. What happened there should have stayed there.