Hard to miss

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Doing it for die Bokke

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Absa, official banking sponsor to SA Rugby and the Springbok Rugby Team, has teamed up with IRB Rugby World Cup 2007 worldwide partner Visa to offer lucky winners a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to support the Boks at the Rugby World Cup 2007 in France. The SMS and card-swiping promotion aims to drive acquisition and usage of its Visa Cards (credit, cheque and debit) while at the same time communicate Absa’s sponsorship investment of the Springboks.

Entitled “Do it for the Boks and win”, the campaign launched beginning of April 2007, supported by radio, press, billboards, below-the-line, branch promotions and direct marketing material.

The right choice

Caste Lite’s experiential TV series, Crossroads, broadcast its final episode on 29 March. The series (see Crossroads of content revolution in marketing, a vehicle created to communicate the brand’s message of “Making the Right Choice”, is reported to have attracted large audience numbers and peaked at 7000 SMSs sent in by viewers.

According to Shawn Katz, Castle Lite brand manager, “The campaign enabled viewers not only to interact with the show, but to determine the actual outcome. This interaction also successfully entrenched Castle Lite’s message of ‘making the right choice’. As far as we know, the format used in Crossroads was a first for South African television and was a perfect vehicle with which to communicate with our consumers.”

Castle Lite says audience participation was so successful that the number of viewers interacting with Crossroads increased three fold on a per-episode measure from the broadcast of the first show.

The series ended at a Castle Lite ‘Five Star Affair’, where a group of 30 winning viewers rubbed shoulders with the stars of Crossroads and other well-known personalities. Themba Molefi walked away with the viewer’s prize of R50 000.

Fresh eye for kids

A hat trick was scored this year when three directors from Fresh Eye Film Productions won their pitches to direct all three of Absa’s latest Small Business Solution ads. The latest collaboration between Fresh Eye Film Productions and joint venture ad agencies, Bambatha and Spa.za, has been directed Amy Allias.

Heartwarming visuals of carefree and inquisitive children playing in Thokoza Park in Soweto helps viewers draw a parallel between the future of South Africa and the future of their business with Absa.

“I have to admit I went into this shoot feeling like kids are aliens and scared s%#*less,” says Allias. “It also doesn’t help to know they smell your fear. But I discovered working with kids is rad. To get a performance out of them you have to make it fun, which is always on my agenda.

“Anyway… we are so privileged to be working in this cool, fun industry but half the time people forget to enjoy themselves. I loved this shoot. I was spinning around and learning clapping games and remembering how to skip just to get the kids to relax and trust me. The kids got really into it and you can see it on the screen.”

Hard to miss

Running for four months and measuring 525m², the large format boundary hoarding on William Nicol Drive, Sandton, Johannesburg - a major arterial route – SAB Brutal Fruit’s advertising campaign for its new Lavacious Lemon flavour is hard to miss.

Targeting the 18 - 34 age group in the upper LSMs, the sites on William Nicol Drive in Bryanston and in Seapoint and Observatory in Cape Town are strategically located to reach the desired target market.

The campaign was conceptualised by Publicis, placed by Mindshare with Wideopen Platform, and produced and erected on site by Media Foundry.