Havas JHB reach top three in Creative Circle December TV award

The Creative Circle is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting creativity as a business resource and maintaining high levels of creativity in the SA advertising industry.

“For our client, Gaviscon, a brand that prides itself on helping people’s stomach cope with the over-indulgence over the festive season, we capitalised on the viral success of Shirley Caesar’s ‘You Name It’ song and the social media meme-style adapting of it by people all over the world,” says Eoin Welsh, Chief Creative Office for Havas Johannesburg.

The agency wrote its own versions of the song in a variety of South African languages, reflecting on the wealth of South African “festive feeding” customs. The footage was filmed by staff on their mobile phones while other members of the creative team performed the song, with the video concluding with the tag line – “Keep Over-Indulgence Under Control”, which is Gaviscon’s messaging.

The video was placed on social media and had an incredible uptake with thousands of likes and shares, and all of this with a budget of zero cents.

“Our congratulations to our co-finalists MTN and Tusker, but we’re guessing your films, wonderful as they are, cost a little more than ours. All of which goes to show – the size of an idea can never be measured by how much it cost.”

As the Creative Circle continues to promote high standards when it comes to creative outputs, many agencies keep challenging the norm with the aim of producing high-quality work.

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