[Orchids & Onions] Mazda's modern fairy-tale theme is a roaring success

But it manages to retain a sense of youthful optimism and energy without descending into the world of kiddies who, after all, don't buy cars.

The spot, done in the style of wildly popular Japanese anime (adults' cartoons, basically), is an age old story of a knight rescuing a damsel in distress. In this case, she's about to be married off to a sugar daddy (and clearly doesn't relish the prospect) and the hero has only his wits and a pony tail, and no shiny metallic armour, to protect himself.

But instead of riding to the rescue on a white horse, his charger is a Mazda CX-3... and it carries him and his princess to safety, despite the attentions of the baddies (all suitably up to date on roaring superbikes).

It's a bit of fun and emphasises the fun nature of the CX-3 as a family crossover vehicle.

Good one, Mazda - Orchid for you.

Another Orchid heads the way of Cape Town agency Haas Collective, cofounded by one of the best creative minds this country has produced, Francois de Villiers. I had previously given one of the agency's clients, Spur, an Orchid for the clever "Taste Bud" billboard.

But I really couldn't resist this one either: Vleisbook (Meat Book) and a pic of the Spur menu. Clever in so many ways. Orchid to Spur and Haas.

Here is a little timely warning about being taken in by Telkom's smart marketing over the festive season. You may well come to regret it.

This is more than a personal whinge because it shows a cavalier lack of care for customers. Which is particularly foolish for a business like Telkom, because good customer service is the cheapest form of marketing - happy customers keep coming back.

Clearly, though, I am not a happy customer. And nor am I the only one. This week, just as I was about to do a screen-share conference call and presentation with people across the world, my Telkom service banged a pop-up notice on my computer screen, informing me I had exceeded my data quota and the speed of my internet connection was therefore being slowed down.

In a panic I bought an extra eight gigabytes of data on a pre-paid offer on the Telkom website. Then I decided to check whether Telkom's notice was correct.

It was not, according to my usage tracker - I had more than 90GB available for this month. And then began the tortuous process of trying to get an answer from Telkom's customer service.

Three e-mails. Two phone calls (each took about 25 minutes to get an actual human being to speak to). A promise to call me back. Guess what? Yep. No call.

Finally, a call centre operator told me there was nothing wrong, my service was not throttled back. In that, he was correct: when I got home, I had no service at all. Eventually, after three days, a switched-on chap called Kgabo sorted it out.

However, the reason Telkom gets a double Onion is dismal customer service.

First, for the obvious pathetic way calls are answered (where else on the planet would you get such a long wait? Most companies would employ more people.) Second, for the irritating messages you have to listen to while you're on hold. One urges customers to join the "Telkom community", which is a website where members can help each other out with problems - problems that are clearly beyond the interest or ability of the company's customer care people.

The site is monitored by Telkom, which routinely cheekily reminds people the site is not for complaints and that there are the proper channels for those. When you look at the comments by Telkom's community, the vast majority are from people who could get no satisfaction in following the proper channels. And the comments are overwhelmingly negative. A template for How to Damage Your Brand Without Even Trying. It's appallingly bad marketing, with only the customer service itself being worse.

That's why you get a Double Onion, Telkom. And, by the way, I did manage to get connected: through my daughter's Vodacom data stick. Thanks to Kgabo, you get a second chance, though.

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