[Orchids & Onions] KFC's kids vs Proteas pitch adds to the 'hit and giggle' of T20

Yet, I still quite like the KFC campaign to both encourage young cricketers and healthy lifestyles. Watching the “hit and giggle” (as John Robbie calls it) Twenty20 matches against Australia this week, I found the ad breaks almost more entertaining – and particularly KFC’s “Kids vs Proteas” inserts.

One I liked showed some of the national players – led by dynamo hitter David Miller – taking on some kids from a rural area. Clearly it’s all a set-up, as the kids appear to win, but it is fun and everybody (Proteas stars included) seems to be enjoying themselves. It works as marketing, both for KFC and the Proteas. For KFC, it positions the brand that puts its money into developing local sport as well as apparently getting kids to realise early on that their eating choices are critical. It also positions the Proteas as men of the people and clearly will help promote the sport in areas where it is not that popular. So Orchids to KFC for the initiative, and a couple of Orchids, too, to Cricket SA and the Proteas for being such good sports.

I do love a good line in an ad – one that combines good use of the language with a bit of a chuckle. An intelligent and gives-me-a-smile sentence in a Santam insurance radio ad this week had me paying attention. It spoke about someone who “drives a hybrid: part-hatchback, part-fire hydrant…” That is a clever way of getting people to take notice because it uses hybrid in a left-field context, but also paints a nice picture of what happens when the said hatchback ploughs into a fire hydrant. Such is the mess that it is often not easy to see where the car ends and the hydrant begins.

The ad then goes on to extol the virtues of Santam’s insurance policy, which will cover you for the outstanding finance if the car is written off. It’s simple, it’s effective and good writing. So Orchids to Santam and, I think, King James, which is their agency. Who was the actual author of the line, people? Let me know…

© Icetray – 123RF.com

We all know – thanks to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden – that evil lurks in that internet thingy. All of the systems we use – whether desktop or mobile – leave us wide open to tracking, assessment and analysis by a wide range of entities. Google is one such entity which, despite its vast size, promises that it will endeavour to “do no harm”. The search engine goes out of its way to assure users, but its systems and algorithms are so powerful that there is very little about you that they do not know or could not find out. A while ago, a tech-savvy friend of mine reckoned that, just using Google’s tools and your geolocation-enabled cell phone, could allow people to track you accurately and make very educated guesses as to what you were doing – including if you’re having an affair, along with the ability to guess your lover’s probable location.

That Big Brother spectre is why many people are opting for web browsers like Opera and Firefox which, apart from supposedly more secure (from snooping) architecture, also include ways to block ads, which Google’s Chrome browser does not.

However, I recently had a look into my personal account settings on Chrome – which we use for business here, although I run Firefox at home. On the ad settings menu on my Chrome account, I found that I can control the adverts I am served. “These ads are more likely to be useful and relevant to you,” it states. It then details the area of my interests, as Google’s clever algorithms and programs have determined them – “derived from your activity on Google sites, such as the videos you’ve watched on YouTube”. The ads do not include “Gmail interests, which are used only for ads within Gmail”. So, who does Google think I am? When I first did this, I was astounded that I had a love for “East Indian music”, “hair care” (seriously?), “urban and hip hop” (music I presume) and “toys”.

Given that I have neither searched for nor even mentioned these things in my e-mails, I am wondering about the efficacy of Google’s analysis. Checking this week, I discover I have moved on to “Brazilian music”, but now fancy “action and adventure films” as well as “shooter games”. And I am still a fan of hair care products. Why would I be? Sometimes it is difficult to raise the dead...

Also, I am now interested in Toyota – presumably because they recorded me going on to YouTube to look up the latest Toyota Hilux ad to get frame-grab images for a recent piece. No one at Google seems to have noticed I also looked at VW ads on YouTube, as well as plenty (and I mean plenty) of ads and videos of Subarus playing around in the mud.

So, sorry Google, you don’t really have a clue about who I am. And you’re selling ads to people based on that, which means that, if you’re doing it to everyone else, your advertisers are wasting a lot of money. And that will get you a digital Onion (he wrote, standing by for ads about vegetables to start dropping into his inbox…)

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