Ads24 firmly behind Pendoring

Linda Gibson, Ads24 CEO: "Although Afrikaans speakers represent the third-biggest language group in South Africa, the marketing and advertising community tends to ignore Afrikaans because of the high production costs of multilingual advertising."

"We therefore stand firmly behind Pendoring, as the only Afrikaans advertising awards, in its efforts to preserve the Afrikaans language and advertising, and to encourage Afrikaans creatives to grow and remain in the industry so that marketers can effectively communicate with this sought-after target market," says Ads24 CEO Linda Gibson.

As one of the main mediums for original Afrikaans advertising, Ads24 constantly strives to develop innovative advertising solutions for advertisers so that they can reap the benefits of communicating with this target market in its language of choice - Afrikaans.

Yet, the considerable buying power of the Afrikaans-speaking market is more often than not ignored by advertisers and marketers, with the result that this strong market does not get its fair share of advertising budgets.

Research by Ads24 shows that despite the continued exodus of people from the country in search of greener pastures, Afrikaans-speaking South Africans still constitute the biggest section of the white population - 58 percent. Moreover, 77 percent of all Coloured people in the country are also Afrikaans-speaking.

Gibson points out that while Afrikaans speakers constitute only 4.6m or 16 percent of the entire market, they represent 28 percent of the country's domestic expenditure, according to research by Unisa's Bureau for Market Research (BMR). Afrikaans is the home language of nearly 40 percent of the people in the upper LSM (10 high) and 32 percent of South African households with an income of more than R20 000 a month are Afrikaans-speaking.

"Although Afrikaans speakers represent the third-biggest language group in South Africa, the marketing and advertising community tends to ignore Afrikaans because of the high production costs of multilingual advertising. However, when one takes the unduplicated readership of Afrikaans newspapers into account, it clearly shows that these readers are extremely loyal and that they cannot be reached by using English media for advertising purposes. Actually, advertisers do not realise that very few Afrikaans speakers in fact also read an English newspaper," stresses Gibson.

Research abroad, for instance among Spanish-speaking Americans and Flemish-speaking Belgians, confirms that an advertisement in a consumer's home language is much more effective than in any other language, irrespective of his grasp of other languages, she adds.

"As effective advertising is firmly anchored in the culture of a specific target market, the language with which that market identifies and in which the people conceptualise and think, must be taken into account in order to have an impact on that market. Marketers who ignore this truth, do so at their own peril," stresses Gibson.

"Pendoring is the only place where Afrikaans creatives are acknowledged and rewarded for their sterling work, and the awards present a great opportunity to showcase this vibrant sector to the whole industry. As always, we are proud to be associated with the Pendoring Awards and look forward to seeing the winning entries," she concludes.