SABC 1 ad to feature in prestigious D & AD

D & AD recognises outstanding international design and art direction. The 2004 edition will feature TBWA \ Hunt \ Lascaris's "PF Jones" commercial for SABC 1. Holding up a distorted mirror to the "rainbow nation", this ad showed a typical day in the life of a Soweto boy. The twist is that the boy is white, as is everyone else in the township, while everyone living in the comfortable suburbs is black.

Shot by up and coming director, Lawrence Hamburger of Egg Films, the campaign featured an obsessive attention to detail. The way the whites walk, talk, gesture and greet each other had to be exactly the same as their black counterparts. Hamburger hired a black shadow director, Pule Hlatswayo, to ensure that every aspect of black South African life would be accurate. The lead character was cast by trawling the country's Kwaito clubs and township shebeens. He was eventually discovered working behind the bar in the trendy black nightclub, Kilimanjaro.

This week the "PF Jones" ad also won a Clio for original music.  The soundtrack that won the award, "Kleva" by Kwaito star Mapuputsi, made its way into the top 10 on the charts at Yfm within a week after the ad went on air.

Commenting on the success of the "PF Jones" commercial, Marie Jamieson (CEO of TBWA \ Hunt \ Lascaris) says, "I give a lot of credit to the SABC 1 channel general manager, Romeo Khumalo. He literally had to walk away from the old Simunye approach which was really well entrenched for him. But he is such a visionary. Once he had established his brand strategy he could see that Simunye didn't exactly fit. He acknowledged the channel had to have a bigger role in society and he acted on that. That took balls!"