An example – and there will be no names or identifying details to spare those involved – occurred a few years ago when a gorgeous young, wannabe reporter arrived on a newspaper not a million miles away from Sauer Street. With a few tosses of her blonde tresses, flickers of impossibly long eyelashes and a wiggle shown off to perfection in a tight mini-skirt, she charmed the male execs.
That charm, by the way, was necessary, because she had only a nodding acquaintance with writing.
All of them believed they were the sole objects of her attention, and devastatingly attractive. And they went out of their way to help her when the news editor, me (one thing life has taught me is to know when I am being played), refused to panel-beat her rubbish.
There are fewer things sadder in the world than men who do not realise in what league they should be playing… and they didn’t.
I was reminded of that male character trait by the latest Wimpy ad, where we see a man who believes he is the sole focus of the attention of an attractive waitress.
His name, we discover, is Mandla, and when she brings him his Wimpy Big W Breakfast, he thinks the hash brown W is an M.
Hey, I’m surprised, he says: I didn’t know you knew who I am. We didn’t she says, turning the letter around, it’s just the W as in Wimpy.
Undeterred – and that’s another sad thing about men: they are undeterred in the face of overwhelming evidence of lack of interest – he proceeds to suggest that the W means “We”… She is polite, but, no. Not going to happen. What fool believes…
It’s a little bit of light-hearted fun, grounded, though, in the understanding of that basic human truth about men.
At the same time, though, it also showcases the tempting and plentiful Big Breakfast. So it gets across the marketing point. Humour and a call-to-action marketing message rolled into one get an Orchid for Wimpy and its agency, FCB Joburg.
And, of course, not one man who sees the ad is going to see a reflection of himself in it…
If you choose the appropriate time and place and the appropriate activity, you can become a world record-holder, like me.
True story: I am the First Person To Toyi-Toyi In The Antarctic. It happened in early 1994 at the old Sanae base on the ice shelf. It was witnessed by Roger Makings of the Sunday Times. And no one has challenged me on it.
It’s a great dinner-table story because everyone knows, with certainty, no one beat me to such an obscure triumph. That sense of absurdity is present in Kia Motors planned “World’s Longest Test Drive” event, which is about to take place and will see a new Sportage driven around the country.
Firstly, my definition of a test drive is when one person takes a car on a non-stop journey to see how it goes. Will this happen with Kia? Nope. The car will take a couple of weeks to go around the country and will be driven by scores of different people.
That makes it, people at Kia, a roadshow, not a world record. I have googled “world’s longest test drive” and, to be sure, there is no such entry in the Guinness World Records.
There are, though, a number of car companies which have done long-distance cross-country drives to launch or test new vehicles. So, Kia’s concept, I’m afraid, is nothing new.
I do know South Africans are easy to fool – otherwise why would we be in such a general mess as a nation? – but this is a bit of an insult even to that level of intelligence.
So, Kia, you get this week’s Onion for World Record Motoring Hot Air. Then again – maybe the First Sportage To Squash A Cheeky Journalist slot is still open…
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